I think that while it is true that you can't have int lower than 8, that wis and int rangos should offer different options without having to roll all the time. After all, 14 or higher intelligence or wisdom is supposed to be high, yet it is just 10% better than 10 on a d20 roll.
In the same way that someone with strenght 14 can automatically carry more weight and jump more, an intelligent/wise character should be offered some insights/conversation options with no dice involved. Just to reflect the character.
And yes, it is more work. But it is also customization being acknowledged. After all, Gale treating you as an idiot and you not being able to answer back when you have the same intelligence and wisdom makes no sense. For example
"You look like a rashemy looking at a blackboard"
Intelligent character:
"Rashemy witches hold her ground against thay wizards. Do you understimate everyone like you understimate rashemi?"
Of course, then Gale doesn't get to shine as much or, if done well, you can enlace both characters by creating a friendly competition, sexual tensión or other dinamics instead of "Gale intelligent and custom character basic/less intelligent".
Sure, that would require coding, ifs and branching in conversation. But so do origin characters and some of them would even less played than intelligent characters.
In factor, some people would never play as origin characters.
This is more or less my problem with the current system.
"Making checks" (
kind of) makes sense for things that can realistically be attempted by anyone, like lifting a heavy rock (Str), pickpocketing (Dex) or understanding a difficult text (Int). If you're not good, you just fail. That's what most skill proficiencies are for.
However, this doesn't make sense with regards to dialogue options. A brilliant character should have the option to say something that makes use of that intelligence. Like in EMC_V's example. This can't be reflected with a check; if it would, it would be completely ridiculous; are you rolling to check whether you can come up with this specific dialogue line? The random element would be jarring here.
There should be extra options for characters with very high mental stats that would reflect that yes, they are actually very intelligent/wise/charismatic. I'm currently playing Torment and it's this game's bread and butter. You actually feel that TNO is intelligent, because you can choose a dialogue option that is clearly something only someone intelligent could come up with. Not just a marginally better chance at succeeding on a roll. Of course, BG isn't P:T, but there were stat-gated extra dialogue options in BG2 and it worked very well. Felt rewarding, immersive and that your character's ability scores actually reflect something.
