D&D General History Question: Why are DnD Stats in the order they are in?

[jasper]

I'm thankful for the correction in the order. The first person who corrected me. Why others felt the need to repeat as much is amusing to say the least.
So any thoughts as to why we still have this jumbled order? Why not alphabetical? Just hard headed tradition, which clearly doesn't hold up as the order has been altered already?

Some of it is piling on. Others just read the first post and reply.

 

[Jack Daniel]

My suspicion is that the original order occurs the way it does because pulp sword & sorcery heroes are always warriors, and villains are always sorcerers — and Gary Gygax was known to be fond of warriors and more than a little leery of magic-users (even to the point of bafflement at the notion that a player would want to be anything other than a human warrior relying on naught but brawn, wits, and steel). So it stands to reason that Strength comes first, and then Intelligence for the game's other character class — fighting men first, magic-users second. Clerics, of course, were added later (the proverbial Van Helsing to counter Sir Fang), necessitating the addition of a Wisdom stat. Con, Dex, Cha then come in a more or less arbitrary order. And, as others have said, the inclusion of the thief class all but assured that Dexterity would jump up in the order, giving us the classic Str/Int/Wis/Dex/Con/Cha order that grogs are still so fond of.

The 2nd Edition order, Str/Dex/Con/Int/Wis/Cha, really does just seem to be a straightforward attempt to group the stats as physical and mental (I agree with everyone else who's said so), but it does also notably keep the prime requisites ahead of the non-primes, and it puts the fighter and the mage ahead of the thief and the cleric, respectively—making it a quite rational arrangement that also pays deference to the game's history and genre. D&D is, after all, a game of sword & sorcery—of warriors and wizards. If you know nothing else about fantasy, you at least know that tales of magical adventure and heroic daring-do involve knights and magicians!

I will never forgive Mr. Gygax for using two words that start with the same letter for his six abilities. It was only six words... he didn't have a thesaurus handy to find a way to give each ability its own initial letter, thereby letting everyone write them down easier? Phooey! Phooey on Gary!

S D C I W X. "Charisma" is a Greek word, after all!

 

[Aging Bard]

It might be because OD&D only had fighting-men, magic-users, and clerics, whose primary stats were Str, Int, and Wis. The remaining stats followed from these. Who knows where Dex would have fallen had thieves been introduced earlier.