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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 6081019" data-attributes="member: 54877">Assuming the six ability scores are scared cows (and I think they should be), then "force of personality" is always what Charisma has been.  Gygax and company were aware of what the word means, which I'm sure is why they made such an odd choice.  If they had meant "looks" or simply "personality" they would have picked that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />What happened was that some of the broad strokes of the original D&D got interpreted different ways, and then gradually mutated out of those original assumptions.  Not least of all, the simulation influence kept trying to pin down things that weren't exactly meant to be pinned down--the same way that Str as the stat includes quite a few things that many would, if they didn't think about it very long, put under Dex.The one odd cat in all of this has always been "perception," but there is a reason for that too.  It is a hard concept to deal with cleanly in games, as readily seen by how many different ways it has been done.  I think in D&D that perception properly pinned down is neither ability score nor skill nor feat nor racial ability nor some magical boost.  Rather, it's a one of a few truly derived abilities--like "speed" or 3E base attack or Next weapon attack bonus.  Ideally, it would get influenced by Int, Wis, level (to a very minor degree, in the Next bounded accuracy mode), and maybe two or three feats or racial abilities.  Then skills, other feats, and other racial abilities would run off of this derived "Perception" score and/or interact with it according to the situation. I usually dislike intensely any derived abilities in games.  However, a few carefully chosen, well-thought out derived abilities, that have sharply constrained but varied bases, and then feed into the rest of the game in a clear way--can be a very powerful technique compared to tweaking ability score definitions or getting fuzzy on what "skill" means. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></blockquote>

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