In OD&D, the order in which abilities were presented and listed was: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity, Charisma. Today, the broadly accepted order is Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. When did this generally accepted order change and were any reasons for the change ever given in a citable source?
Asked
Active
Viewed 282 times
11
-
@JohnP Please avoid even partial or speculative answers in comments. It's better to just wait for a full answer to be posted. – Someone_Evil Feb 15 '21 at 21:37
-
I removed the link to the pirate copy of Men & Magic and changed the reference used name to OD&D as that's the more common (and unambigous) shorthand for that system. See: How many editions of Dungeons & Dragons are there? for more. – Someone_Evil Feb 15 '21 at 21:39
-
6I’m voting to close this question because the "why" part of this question is designer reasoning which is off-topic and asking for "logical theories" will only invite (even if well reasoned) opinions. – Purple Monkey Feb 15 '21 at 21:44
-
1I'm voting to close as well, but even so, I want to highlight that the order has flip-flopped between SDCIWC and SCDIWC over the last three editions, one way for practical reasons and the other way seemingly arbitrarily. – Firebreak Feb 15 '21 at 22:15
-
4While there are a lot of questions asking for reasoning behind design decisions or logical theories that never come under the boot of the close-vote police, I have changed the wording to ask only for citable sources. – ruffdove Feb 16 '21 at 00:36
-
1A lot of questions asking for designer reasoning that haven't been closed were probably asked before they became off-topic and as stated in the game-rec off-topicness meta there's no value in proactively closing old post until they naturally pop up on the front page. As for this question, the reason designer reasoning if off-topic is not because they can't be answered with citable sources, it's just that people don't answer with citable sources, even if the question is directly asking for them. – Purple Monkey Feb 16 '21 at 01:08
-
1The edit you've made to this question may be an "acceptable" way to ask for designer reasoning without explicitly asking for designer reasoning but at the end of the day it's still asking for why the designers made the choice they did. I will leave my close vote and if the question does get closed I would encourage you to open a [meta] asking if this type of wording is acceptably different to designer reasoning. – Purple Monkey Feb 16 '21 at 01:08
-
3So basically you just closed a perfectly valid question not because it is actually off topic or asking for opinion, but because you're afraid that other users will answer it inappropriately. Congratulations, I guess. – ruffdove Feb 16 '21 at 01:51
-
3@ruffdove If you want to discuss this further I suggest opening a meta discussion. – Thomas Markov Feb 16 '21 at 02:13
-
I just got done reading a couple of meta threads about why questions get closed because of how they get answered (or might get answered). Seems the community's made up its mind so I'm certainly not going to waste my time bringing it up again. – ruffdove Feb 16 '21 at 02:16
-
2@ruffdove While the community seems to somewhat agree in principle that designer intent questions are off topic, and history of gaming questions are on topic, there is significant community disagreement on how that is applies to questions. You will likely get some helpful answers from meta. – Thomas Markov Feb 16 '21 at 13:05
-
@ruffdove You changed the question in the body but not the title. Since you seem amenable to removing the explicit "why" I have edited the title and voted to re-open. Feel free to roll back the title or re-edit if my changes do not represent your intent. – Kirt Feb 16 '21 at 14:48
-
2"Under what circumstances" and "were any reasons … given" clutter up what would be a straightforwardly acceptable question. – okeefe Feb 16 '21 at 16:02
-
1@okeefe Yep, without those, this is perfectly acceptable. – NotArch Feb 16 '21 at 19:42