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Jun 17, 2012 -- 4:58AM, Daganev wrote:

Wisdom represents insight and life's experiences.

Access to divine spells does not require charisma, it requires insight and knowledge of life's experiences.
You need charisma to lead people, but you don't need it to have access to the divine based spells themselves.
The move from insight to perception is not that far off. 

I won't discuss about class mechanics here, as deciding how somebody gains divine spells is another matter of choice from the designers. I could object that cloistered clerics should be able to cast divine spell, even with their very limited "life's experience". I'm not sure it's wise to decide how faith functions (bad joke, but it has to be done )

Life's experience is also represented by strength, dexterity, Charisma, Constitution or Intelligence, as they all represent reactions to what life has thrown in our faces.

Insight is a vague term that can concern Intelligence and analysis, conscious or not, or Charisma, as relation to others is also a matter of social perception or "insight".

I only propose to organise abilities in a way that make Wisdom its own ability, as D&D will never drop the six iconic abilities.

Strength and Constitution overlap, but they are identifiable, Strength beeing the body strength mostly under the influence of your choice of life, and Constitution mostly beeing the body strength given by nature and environment.

Intelligence and Charisma can be opposed as internal and external relations to the world. Some parameters of these two abilities are your responsabilities, but a good part is imposed by nature and environment.

Dexterity is a complex ability, as it requires a coordination between Strength, Constitution and the five senses to work. It imposes itself as the basic survival ability, or Instinct. The physical interaction with the world.

As it is, Wisdom is as complex as Dexterity but fail to be clearly identifiable.
My idea is to make Wisdom the "opposite" of Dexterity, Mental vs Physical, Soul vs. Flesh, instinct vs. civilization.
I searched an aesthetical symmetry that made sense while keeping the six iconic abilities.

So my proposal is to make Wisdom a complex ability that requires coordination between Intelligence, Charisma and the five senses to work. It then imposes itself as an "advanced survival" ability, the representation of the strength of physically weak intelligent people : building civilizations to survive. It could represent the "philosophical interaction" with the world.

Jun 17, 2012 -- 8:15AM, Einlanzer wrote:

There's a lot of abstraction and arbitrary defining going on here, and the attributes could stand a little clean up work.  My biggest issue is that most people equate intelligence with "booksmarts" and wisdom with common sense, when in reality there is no dichotomy there; street smarts is nothing but intelligence combined with learning and situational familiarity.  

Intelligence should be renamed Intellect, because it speaks more specifically to the  mental attributes that intelligence is supposed to encapsulate - reasoning and problem solving skills, depth of thought, and breadth of education.    

What might make more sense than Wisdom is Focus.  People who exhibit the stereotypical "absent minded professer" don't lack wisdom (they are usually in fact very wise due to their education and introspection), they lack focus.  They are scattered easily and frequently lost in their own thoughts.  People with strong focus tend to be more alert and perceptive.  It is also possible to be very intelligent but have bad focus, be very focused but not terribly intelligent, be bad at both and be good at both.   

Religion/divine attunement is a different matter.  I sort of agree with an above poster that this could easily be rolled into Charisma and in many ways even makes more sense.  Religion is all about influencing others and, to be blunt, has nothing to do with wisdom.

Again, though, it's a tough thing to get a handle on.  Dexterity in many ways is both a physical and mental stat, so you could argue for some shifting around there as well.

I totally agree, and my proposal is of course totally arbitrary within the imposed parameters of these six iconic abilities and my personal aesthetism.