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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 781560" data-attributes="member: 4937">Azlan: Well, you would be wrong.  I am zealous about many things, including games in general, but D&D is just another game as far as I'm concerned - nor am I known to be a rules lawyer if you mean it in the sense of 'one who argues that the letter of the rules should always hold', or 'one that spends time argueing at the table to gain an advantage for himself'.   I am a rulessmith, in the sense of I'm generally a DM or the person that the DM turns to and says, "Do you have any rules for giving stats to babies... armwrestling... constructing sailing vessels...etc."First, you should note that my first response to this was rather measured.  I simply noted a basic game balance issue if you did it the way you suggested.   But coming back to the thread I find this:No.  Judging from the replies here, it looks like you are the one that has got it wrong.And then I find this:At which point I give up hope that you are going to actually think about what someone else has to say except under the most extreme duress."If Intelligence and Wisdom can be calculated as independent variables, why can't Str and Dex?"First of all, I didn't say that Str and Dex couldn't be _for the purpose of a game_.  I was merely pointing out that in reality, high strength can and does often convert to physical speed and power - that more strong people are also fast people than weak people who are fast people - and this would at least partially justify having strength effect your ability to 'hit' even in the case of touch attacks.  They aren't perfectly correlated, true, but they are corellated.  They are even better coordinated if we separate agility (ability to move ones body gracefully) from dexterity (skill with ones hands), and it is the former which has a greater effect on touching something in combat.As to Intelligence and Wisdom, personal experience leads me to believe that the coorellation between the two is not nearly so strong as is between strength and dexterity.   You may or may believe that, but I feel there is strong evidence that intelligence does not equate to success in life, in making good choices in personal relationships, or in being aware, self-disciplined, strong willed, organized, or discerning, or anything else that indicates 'wisdom'.  Besides which, the failure to separate Int and Wis is something I find extremely annoying in a system like GURPS where the distinction is not made.   The buy int and weak will exploit is justly infamous.But that is off the point.The point is that you are whining about how D&D has got it wrong, and your fix is no better and in fact worse.  And people tried to tell you that, and you stuck your tongue out at them and generally dismissed thier comments without considering them at all.  If you are bothered by the fact that Str unintuitively assists touch attacks, why aren't you equally bothered by the fact that Dex unintuitively allows blows that penetrate armor?   Or had you even considered that until I mentioned it.   I notice it doesn't get much coverage in your reply.This a red herring, and also at least in part untrue.  It has nothing to do with the internal consistancy of D&D, and more to do with your decision to run down a game system you clearly consider inferior in design and clearly don't understand.   I've been in this hobby 20 years now, so I have a pretty good idea of  how it has evolved.   Most of the changes between 2nd and 3rd edition represent changes that had already been adopted as houserules by many DM's.   Monte just collected, cleaned, and polished them.   Probably he did so in many cases simply by thinking about the problems he had with the rules, since the same basic solutions have suggested themselves independently to many DM's.  The RPG that is most proto-D20 in design is a computer game - Fallout.   And, Fallout itself is obviously inspired by D&D like mechanics (D&D's attributes + Luck, levels, XP, hit points, etc.).No, I'm not saying that at all.   You seem to be the one that holds with that opinion.   But, for the record, D&D's rules set does have most in common with a computer game - and a very excellent and sophisticated one at that.   What I am saying is that D&D's rules set is by far and away the most successful and influential rules set ever to appear, and for all its flaws real and percieved, it is especially in its current form (D20) a very powerful and elegant rules set the equal in many gamers opinions to WoD, GURPS, Hero, and other influential rules sets.  Every rules set has its limitations and oddities.   We could just as easily get started a debate over whether GURPS would be better if STR gave h.p. and HTH gave fatigue points, and we'd could do so with alot more justification.   Frankly, there is absolutely no reason to alter D20 as you suggest.But on the other hand, it's your game.  Play it how you like if you can find the players that are willing.People have been trying to tell you why Str effects your 'to hit', but you just aren't listening.</blockquote>

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