regarding persuasion, you're half right
the persuasion skill is, from my experience, more important for passing a check than having the stat associated with the option you chose. however, it's not a bland skill check; the options most likely to succeed will depend on what makes sense writing-wise for the character you're persuading. for example, if you're talking to a bridge troll, an intimidation check (like strength) is unlikely to work even with high persuasion
also, you only listed one (and arguably the least important) aspect of loremaster. the much more useful advantage it provides is information about enemies in combat. without loremaster you can't see things like resistances and immunities. identifying items is just a side benefit, and if that were loremaster's only use you could forego it entirely since many merchants have level 5 loremaster and can identify things for you
agreed with sneak and bartering though
