In "Once Chance to Be More Specific," I explained how characters are essentially constructed of Abilities, each of which represents one of the character's past or present vocations or avocations. Attributes as they are conventionally understood in role-playing games do not really exist in Omnia except as factors that may contribute to an Ability (sometimes made explicit in the Ability with an adjective). I wrote, "If a player insists on using run-of-the-mill generic attributes as their Abilities, I, as a moderator, will just mentally substitute a generic avocation. Your Ability is not Intelligence 3. You are a Generally Intelligent Person 3."
That may seem harsh, but there is one other alternative. Instead of listing a desired attribute as an Ability, one could move it into the same category as Health and Psyche. The 3 points that would have been part of the pool of available Ability points is transferred to the pool of points the attribute will share with Health and Psyche. (For ease of discussion, I should probably designate a name for this category—perhaps Stat.) In this category, the attribute is reactive rather than active, and it can be increased during character creation by taking Complications in the same manner as Health and Psyche. Stats (if I am calling them that) improve more slowly than Abilities if at all. One possibility is that a character seeking to improve a Stat must meet the requirements of Accomplishment and Instruction before a Stat can be increased by 1.
The other benefit of permitting attributes in the form of Stats is that it makes it much easier to describe creatures in game terms, especially if they are not the kind that would ordinarily have professions or hobbies. I shall be experimenting with this idea.
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