Council of Elrond

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What is an attribute?

Although the question of how to define an “attribute” rarely arises during a typical game, it becomes particularly important when determining whether an effect is applying an untargeted modification to an attribute and thus is a passive condition to which players may respond (and for further analysis thereof, readers should refer to our other question in this digest about “what is an action”).

The METW rulebook offers the following definition:

Attribute: Each character’s abilities are defined by the following attributes: race, skills, direct influence, prowess, body, mind, marshalling points, special abilities.

Much like the rest of the METW glossary, the construction of this sentence reads more like it was written as an example rather than an actual definition. And on that note, while the above citation seems to restrict attributes to characters, there are examples in ICE’s literature that indicate other types of cards also have attributes.

METW notes that strikes can have a body attribute:

If this result is greater than the strike’s prowess, the strike fails. Such a strike is defeated if its body attribute is “­-” or if it has a body attribute and fails a body check.

and that allies have a mind attribute:

Instead of the controlling character’s mind attribute, the influence check uses the ally’s mind attribute.

MEDM states that agents have attributes:

An agent has the same attributes as a character: race, skills, direct influence, prowess, body, mind, marshalling points, and special abilities.

MELE takes the original METW definition further, noting that attacks (not just strikes) can have attributes:

Attribute: A characteristic of a character or attack: prowess, body, race, a character’s listed skills, direct influence, mind, marshalling points, special abilities.

Given the wide breadth of what constitutes an attribute, as well as the fact that the word “attribute” in English generally signifies some sort of definable characteristic which corruption points would also presumably fall under given a lack of evidence otherwise, this committee recommends the following as a practical definition of an “attribute” in MeCCG:

Attribute: A characteristic of an entity (e.g. prowess, body, race, skills, direct influence, mind, corruption points, marshalling points, or special abilities).