That's just lazy on your part and most people that play RPG's a lot don't do that no offense but torchlight is by far one of the easiest stat based rpgs in creation. In case you haven't noticed the more complicated and RPG is in terms of character creation the more people tend to play it. Most people thought Planescape torment was terrible when it was released because they didn't understand it. Now it is considered one of the greatest video games ever created.
Call me lazy if you want, I don't care, but for me, there are cases of games which put in too many stats. Without it being very clear which stats would be better, it doesn't help make decisions. The more stats you have to consider, the more difficult decisions become.
Honestly I only finished Torchlight once and that was years ago. It was too boring and the kind of item fever which is supposed to drive those kind of ARPGs never clicked for me.
Also while yes Planescape: Torment is still highly praised for its world and story - the combat, not so much.
Personally, I'm on the side of the discussion that the attributes could use a little more "identity." Each attribute should offer something to a build (no matter the build) so that choosing which attribute(s) to increase becomes an important decision.
We can't compare it to D&D honestly because D&D accomplishes this by having a "skill" system with the skills being modified by the attribute (such as climb and swim being affected by strength while balance is dexterity), which this game does not have.
Instead, I would suggest finding a way to have each attribute contribute something to a build, something like:
My issue with that approach is simply that at the moment, you get only two attribute points per level. That is only enough to focus on two or three attributes anyway regardless of how many are useful.
Strength:
- Increases damage and accuracy with strength-based weaponry
- Reduces movement penalty for medium and heavy armors, allows the use of heavier armor
- Increases carrying capacity (weight)
- Reduces the AP cost for climbing during combat (contributes to the new height system)
- Affects Warfare skills
Finesse:
- Increases damage and accuracy with finesse-based weaponry
- Increases dodge chance
- Increases movement speed (move further per AP point)
- Affects accuracy and damage when dual-wielding (penalties for low Finesse while dual-wielding)
- Affects Scoundrel and Marksman skills
Intelligence:
- Increases damage and accuracy with intelligence-based weaponry
- Increases duration of status effects and control
- Provides bonus to Magic Armor (instead of Wits)
- Affects all magical school skills
Constitution:
- Modifies total Vitality
- Reduces duration of physical status effects and control on character
- Increases healing received
Memory:
- Modifies total number of abilities a character can have memorized and the power of skills that can be learned
Wits:
- Affects initiative, critical chance and detection (traps, hidden objects, stealthed enemies)
- Reduces duration of magical status effects and control on character
Still though, that looks like a pretty reasonable distribution of useful bonuses to different attributes.
Strength based characters can still benefit from intelligence because it modifies magical armor (thus increasing their immunity to magical control) and it will affect the duration of their own control abilities (like knockdown).
I'm having a hard time seeing how the balance for that would work. Would it be some kind of extremely steep diminishing returns, so a handful of INT points gets you a lot of bonus magical armor, but a truckload doesn't give you all that much more?
If it's linear, then either the bonus to STR characters from INT would be minimal, or the bonus to INT characters would be huge. There are other issues along those lines as well.
