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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 1456905" data-attributes="member: 1106">Yup.  That's why I reckon that D&D should ideally remove the ability scores which are actually roleplaying determined (intelligence/wisdom/charisma) and replace them with something more neutral that has bearing on game-meaningful things like saves and spells, but with no bearing on roleplaying (e.g. magical aptitude, divine aptitude...or analogous terms to those, such as mana and spirituality).The arguments against such an approach seem to boil down to "it scuttles the skill system" and "it's wrong, because then a dumb player can't play a smart archmage".  I see the responses to these criticisms as self-evident - removing them scuttles the skill system because it was designed with mental ability scores in mind, and a dumb player won't be playing a smart archmage anyway, simply because he has a 28 in the intelligence slot.  (Note that this discussion of the bard class points it out to be perhaps the biggest victim of this weakness in the system - the discrepancy between stats and roleplay.)Note too that such an approach opens up new roleplaying possibilities, such as the gullible high priest, and the simple archmage, which otherwise aren't exactly practical without severe compromises...or ignoring the big stat numbers.Of course, this will never happen. I can't think of a bigger sacred cow than the one which is so fundamental to people's assumptions that it's not even recognised as a sacred cow...  <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    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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