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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5745442" data-attributes="member: 58197">This is why I have come to dislike the whole idea of mental stats. If it were up to me, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma would all go on the junk heap. Replace them with Lore, Senses, and Appearance. Lore gives you a bonus on rolls to dig up information about the game world*. Senses gives you a bonus on rolls to spot, listen, and so forth. Appearance gives you a bonus on rolls to win friends and influence people (functionally similar to Charisma, but without imposing restrictions on player behavior).In other words, stats should describe those elements a character brings to the table, and not constrain what a player brings to the table. I do like the idea of hindrances that give you benefits when they hinder you rather than at character creation; if the goal is to guide players to roleplay their characters as described, I feel this is a much better approach than arguments over whether a character with Intelligence 10** is smart enough to come up with this particular plan, or whether the character with Charisma 9 could pull off that particular bit of oratory.[SIZE=-2]*Although this does not entirely resolve the issue, since there is always the guy who knows the Monster Manual back to front and announces that fire and acid are what you need to fight trolls, despite having a Lore of 6 and getting a 1 on the knowledge check.**In practice, I find players and DMs figure a character with Intelligence 10+ is smart enough that you don't have to "dumb yourself down." Int 10 is supposed to be human average. Not to put too fine a point on it, the typical gamer is a lot smarter than average; given that Int is specifically "book smarts" with intuition and emotional intelligence falling under Wis, I think most gamers of my acquaintance would fall in the 15+ range. If you're not the party wizard, you're probably playing your character "too smart."[/SIZE]</blockquote>

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