Normalizing stats, for the better

[PK]

The Problem: One of the biggest issues with In Nomine, IMO, is that whether you're building a human or a (modestly powerful) celestial, there's a lot of room for swing. What I mean is, it's easy to completely suck in some areas but equally easy to be completely overpowered in some areas. And while the GM can strongly encourage players to build balanced characters, it's sadly true that those balanced characters tend to fail at most rolls until they earn more Forces (turning 2 Forces into a characteristic of 4 + a skill of 1-2 = sucking). So it becomes tempting to pump your key characteristics up to 12 to hit "autosuccess plus check digit bonus" as often as possible -- and it's kind of silly how easy this is to do for even starting characters! -- which leads to all of their actions being basically "pass/fail."

I don't think I'm saying anything that hasn't been said before, probably more eloquently, by others. But my POV is that the d666 isn't the issue here; the issue is the extreme amounts of swing. Just as the GMG fixed the problem with body hits, I think it's possible to fix the issue with characteristics. They shouldn't range from 1-12, because we don't need stats that go from "utterly useless" to "almost every roll breaks the system"; we want them to go from "poor" to "amazing" like most other games.

My Goals

1. Constrain characteristics to a reasonable range, in this case 4-10. (I've considered 3-9, but I think it's just more fun to default to more competent characters.)

2. Promote balance, so that the person with Strength 7, Agility 7 has some tangible benefits over one with Strength 4, Agility 10. (See rules for songs.)

I also plan to normalize a few other things, like starting character points for resources (defaulting to being a bit more generous) and combat stuff, but I don't want to make this post too broad as I'm looking for feedback.

Rules Changes

Characteristics: Every human and human-patterned character starts with 4 in each characteristics. Every Force in an area gives you 2 Characteristic Points to improve those, to a maximum of 10 (+6). Example: Sade, a new angel, has 3 Corporeal Forces, which gives her +6 to distribute between Strength and Agility. She takes +4 to Strength and +2 to Agility, for Strength 8, Agility 6.

Songs: To use a song, roll against the lower of the two relevant characteristics plus the song's level. Example: Sade has Song of Harmony (Corporeal)/3. Her Agility is her lowest Corporeal characteristic, so she rolls against Agility 6 + Song 3 = TN 9.

Success/Failure: You cannot roll if your effective skill is less than 2. Also, no matter how high your skill, a roll of 12 is always a failure. (This makes "pump everything to 12+" a bit less attractive, and a 2.8% chance of failure is hardly onerous.) If your TN would be higher than 11, you may add any "excess" to the check digit of a successful roll, as for the existing rules.

Essence and Rolls: Every 1 Essence spent before rolling gives +1 to a roll. You may also spend Essence after you roll, but the cost then doubles to 2 Essence per +1.

Thoughts?