I think that's a bit too much of a radical change at this point, though.
Not yet. We can still do that. That's why I explained that "changes are easy to make" because I expected to see discussions like this.
So a man and his son were traveling with a donkey. The man is walking, and the son is riding the donkey. And they pass an old woman, and she looks at them and says, "Isn't it disgraceful, that a young and healthy boy is riding in comfort while his aged father has to walk in this heat?"
Well the man and the boy hear this, and they change positions, with the man riding the donkey, and the boy walking. And they pass a second woman, and she looks at them and says, "Isn't it disgraceful, a full-grown man riding in comfort and forcing a little child to walk?"
So they both walk for a while; and people roll their eyes and say they must be simpletons, to both be walking when they have a perfectly function donkey right there.
And then they both try riding; but passers-by glare at them for overloading the poor animal.
Eventually, they do the only thing left, which is to carry the donkey themselves; but it's such a heavy burden, that as they're crossing a bridge, they stagger and fall, and the donkey goes into the river.
The moral being that no matter what you do, people are going to whine at you...
Ok, I have a new/improved proposal for the stat syteme. I would still split up combat and social skills because (I'm fully with Josh Sawyer here) you shouldn't try to bring P&P rules 1to1 to video games but instead you should try to find the best working system that offers the best gameplay in video games in respect of your focus there. And as Larian's focus is on combat AND on interaction/communication I still think a split would improve the system by large.
You should gain one stat point per level for either:
- strenght
- dexterity
- intelligence
- constitution
- speed
And another stat point per level for either:
- intimidation
- charming
- reasoning
I cut perception (because of the good comments above) and thievery (because thief abilites like pickpocketing and lockpicking should be active skills with basic/advanced stats in dexterity/speed and not stats themselves)
I admit that I like that idea, it does increase roleplaying opportunities. You could make a scary wizard or a charming thief or a thoughtful warrior.
Instead of being forced down the same path for conversations as you do for fighting, you can choose, and that's good. It would also nicely solve the problem of a ranger build not having any stats tied to persuasion.
