D&D 5E Folding Constitution into Strength

[BookBarbarian]

Funny thing is, whenever I discuss Intelligence vs Wisdom with my wife or her family, all we have to do is point out her brother-in-law who is classic high intelligence, low wisdom.

I think one of the reasons D&D has always made sense to me is because the breakdown is fairly decent.

Just to clarify do you mean low Wisdom in the traditional sense where the person in question makes poor choices, or the 5e D&D sense where they are terrible at perceiving their surroundings, interpreting a persons intent, or have bad situation awareness etc?

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

*coughcough* The original Wisdom stat, representing Wisdom and mostly affecting how good of a priest you are, has been mostly abolished in 5E in favor of a new stat called Wisdom which represents willpower and perception.

Same name, different stat.

Not really. I don't have OD&D, 1e AD&D, or D&D 4e, but 2e and 3e both describe Wisdom in a way that is not identical to 5e, but very similar.

(...) describes a composite of the character's enlightenment, judgment, guile, willpower, common sense, and intuition.

Also, 2e characters with a high Wisdom score gain a bonus against mental attacks. While it's probably a priest's favored stat, any character can benefit from a high score.

Wisdom describes a character’s willpower, common sense, awareness, and intuition.

Wisdom reflects how attuned you are to the world around you and represents perceptiveness and intuition.

Now, English is not my primary language, but I don't believe saying "perception and willpower" radically breaks from the descriptions above. If anything, newer editions have made the Wisdom stat clearer, but they didn't outright change it more than making Dexterity give a bonus to damage changed it.

 

[cbwjm]

*coughcough* The original Wisdom stat, representing Wisdom and mostly affecting how good of a priest you are, has been mostly abolished in 5E in favor of a new stat called Wisdom which represents willpower and perception.

Same name, different stat.

Wisdom has affected willpower since at least 1e. The magical defence adjustment was there to give heroes blessed with a high wisdom a save bonus against mind-affecting spells or a penalty for those with a low wisdom. I don't think it ever affected perception until 3e though, before that it was just a 1 in 6 or 2 in 6, etc to spot something.

 

[cbwjm]

I see similar threads to this pop up from time to time and all I can really say it, I don't want to get rid of the 6 ability scores, I like them. I have seen other games have more or less ability scores and they worked fine for them, but D&D has always had the 6 base ability scores and I wouldn't want them to disappear.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Not really. I don't have OD&D, 1e AD&D, or D&D 4e, but 2e and 3e both describe Wisdom in a way that is not identical to 5e, but very similar.

Notice that 2E has no link at all between perception and Wisdom. There's a minor link between perception and Intelligence, in that extremely intelligent characters gain immunity to low-level illusions, but none at all to Wisdom.

Also, 2e characters with a high Wisdom score gain a bonus against mental attacks. While it's probably a priest's favored stat, any character can benefit from a high score.

Sure, but that was a secondary role of Wisdom similar to illusion immunity for Intelligence, not its primary function. I acknowledge the point though--Wisdom was more closely tied to willpower (some link) than to perception (no link) in AD&D. (That's why I originally said "mostly affecting how good of a priest you are", not "exclusively affecting how good of a priest you are.")

Now, English is not my primary language, but I don't believe saying "perception and willpower" radically breaks from the descriptions above. If anything, newer editions have made the Wisdom stat clearer, but they didn't outright change it more than making Dexterity give a bonus to damage changed it.

Those quotes are from 3E and 5E respectively. The change I'm referring to (Wisdom becoming Perception) occurred in 3E and 5E just followed suit, which is kind of the point: if you change the definition of a D&D attribute, eventually people get used to it. If Strength started giving bonus HP to represent muscle mass, some people would hate it and some people would like it, but by the time 7E rolled around it would be enshrined in tradition, except for old grognards still playing 5E and earlier.

 

[PapaKhor]

Every time I make a house rule, my first question is why? Followed by is it needed or am I just mucking about?

Is there a need to fold Constitution into Strength? What in game situation occurs so frequently that the idea of folding the stats together was conceived?

give me a sword and I'll win this war for you

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Sure, but that was a secondary role of Wisdom similar to illusion immunity for Intelligence, not its primary function. I acknowledge the point though--Wisdom was more closely tied to willpower (some link) than to perception (no link) in AD&D. (That's why I originally said "mostly affecting how good of a priest you are", not "exclusively affecting how good of a priest you are.")

The link you claim to be nonexistent is there, if you look for it. In 2e, the few NWPs which somehow relate to perception are all Wisdom-based (tracking and direction sense, for example), while Intelligence keeps those NWPs that relate to reasoning, learning and memorizing (which appear to be Intelligence's thing even these days). At some points, I get the impression that the 2e designers were just afraid of using the word "perception", so they used all kind of substitutes such as "awareness of one's surroundings" and "intuition" that, in the end, account for your character's ability to grasp relevant information through sensorial means. That may or may be enough for you. For myself, it's enough to prove that, while there was no perception stat properly, Wisdom was the nearest one.

Still, I agree that the role of stats changed with editions. I believe, though, that it was more a matter of making things clearer and more organized than creating new roles out of nothing. Wisdom as perception has been there in AD&D, even if some perception-related situations called for Intelligence (resistance to illusion magic is still related to Intelligence to some degree, even in 5e).

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Hmmm. Perhaps I am mistaken. I'll have to peruse the NWP tables some more then.

 

[Fanaelialae]

From the 1e PHB (pg 11):

Wisdom is a composite term for the character's enlightenment, judgement, wile, will power, and (to a certain extent) intuitiveness.

It lacked much in the way of perception (beyond intuition) early on, but it certainly encompassed more than just being a good priest.

 

[cbwjm]

The link you claim to be nonexistent is there, if you look for it. In 2e, the few NWPs which somehow relate to perception are all Wisdom-based (tracking and direction sense, for example), while Intelligence keeps those NWPs that relate to reasoning, learning and memorizing (which appear to be Intelligence's thing even these days). At some points, I get the impression that the 2e designers were just afraid of using the word "perception", so they used all kind of substitutes such as "awareness of one's surroundings" and "intuition" that, in the end, account for your character's ability to grasp relevant information through sensorial means. That may or may be enough for you. For myself, it's enough to prove that, while there was no perception stat properly, Wisdom was the nearest one.

Still, I agree that the role of stats changed with editions. I believe, though, that it was more a matter of making things clearer and more organized than creating new roles out of nothing. Wisdom as perception has been there in AD&D, even if some perception-related situations called for Intelligence (resistance to illusion magic is still related to Intelligence to some degree, even in 5e).

Those proficiencies I think got folded into survival which was also a wisdom skill. In 2e, religion was based on wisdom probably because that was the cleric's stat. Apparently, clerics also made really good miners in 2e and still would have in 3e since profession was based on wisdom (I think).

In 2e, when it comes to perception you have the Rogue's Detect Noise ability and then you have a chance on a d6 to detect a secret door as long as you're actively searching for one; Elves had a bonus to this. I think when 3e rolled around and they decoupled thief skills from the class, turning them from a % check into a skill check, they had to come up with a stat to base it on. Wisdom may very well have been chosen based on the direction sense and weather sense proficiencies from 2e but it could have easily have been due to the designers looking at the skills spot and listen and then crossing off the stats one by one until they were left with wisdom as the one which made the most sense simply because the other 5 stats made less sense.