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<blockquote data-quote="Jack Daniel" data-source="post: 8296713" data-attributes="member: 694">My suspicion is that the original order occurs the way it does because pulp sword &amp; 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&amp;D is, after all, a game of sword &amp; 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!S D C I W X. &quot;Charisma&quot; is a Greek word, after all! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jack Daniel, post: 8296713, member: 694"] 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 [I]other[/I] 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 [I]warriors and wizards[/I]. If you know nothing else about fantasy, you at least know that tales of magical adventure and heroic daring-do involve knights and magicians! S D C I W X. "Charisma" [I]is[/I] a Greek word, after all! :) [/QUOTE]

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