AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Yeah, I think that is the general idea. I had no problem really with how 4e parsed that. It seemed pretty 'trad D&D' in that sense, and I've always been pretty comfortable with D&D's ability score handling (I mean, noting that HoML just gets rid of the scores and keeps the bonuses, not that this is very radical).Is intelligence including quick and predictive thinking it is in 4e (where for instance we get it as potential reflex fuel)?
Is wisdom getting perceptivity and general awareness?
So, if you look at the 'knacks' (I just like the name better, I think its more accurate than 'skill' for how 4e uses them) they're basically the same as the 4e ones, I haven't really found much that I can significantly improve on, aside from trading the more limited 'dungeoneering' label for 'Engineering'. I consider everything to be pretty broad.
I left religion/religious tied to INT, which I believe 4e did partly for balance and partly the notion being that 'religion is not piety, it is knowledge of the doctrines, etc.' HOWEVER, it does seem to me that by explicitly calling them 'knacks' the "how I solve problems" aspect is stronger than the 'knowledge' aspect. So, maybe it really should shift to being "I'm good at using my piety to solve problems" in which case WIS seems like a better match. The problem then is WIS is getting a LOT of knacks!
Of course, we could parse things differently, or more finely, etc. I mean, I could see CON having both "solve things through Stamina" and "solve things through sheer ability to Endure/Survive" High CON helps both, and at the 4e level of parsing they are just all 'Endurance' and that is fine, but you could squeeze out a second aspect for CON that way. OTOH I'm not sure it would always be clear which is a better match to govern a situation.
I guess we could go the other way and just abolish knacks altogether. In some sense Abilities do some of the same work. I guess another option would be to break with the classic 6 scores and maybe have something like 9, that would maybe get you some added things. I mean, you could have 'MOXIE' that would handle 'Streetwise' type "I can handle this" situations, maybe Alertness to take perception and similar out of the realm of WIS (which is not the very best fit), and I suppose you could have an actual POWER Ability score too. That would certainly lead to some interesting optimization questions if it affected your power points!