Bedrockgames
I post in the voice of Christopher Walken
That's true, but 4e also uses the stats for other things - Str for damage bonuses, Con for starting hit points, different skills...
Also, if you are going to merge Str with Con, you probably also need to merge Dex with Int and Wis with Cha to maintain the balance. And, of course, the argument for merging Dex with Int is rather less clear!
It might be easier, and not saying this is a good idea, to merge WIS+INT, and DEX+CHR (maybe calling it something like grace). But I think if they brought it down to they would probably have an easier time getting rid of CHR altogether and going with: POWER, MIND and AGILITY.
Not advocating this at all. However it does seem to be the direction 4E is moving things. Though they could backtrack next edition in order to reclaim people who switched to pathfinder or stayed with 3E---it probably depends more on their raw sales data (something I've only seen debates about, but never anything concrete) than on any overal gaming philsophy on the part of the designers.
