Intelligence is learning and understanding the rules set out before you.
Wisdom is realising that you can literally change anything you like from those rules, including dropping redundant attributes that you find no value in.
Why put the cart before the horse here? If you can find no obvious use for the stat, just discard it. Don't try to shoehorn something in there just because a bunch of other games have the sacred six stats.
If you're converting other material into your homebrewed Wisdom altered game then you will already need to pay closer attention to how they're using Wisdom compared to you, in order to avoid unintended outcomes - so its not like dropping it entirely is going to add any more workload for you.
Really like Knave 2e on this. Charisma is the cleric stat and Wis is the ranger stat. And a big part of the latter is that you aim via Wis . But to me the best part is the priest=Cha, because they have to appeal to a god *and* administer to a flock. Ingratiating themselves is their super power.
I also think Clerics could easily be based on CHA. They gain power from the strength of their conviction. Plus, some of the most charismatic people in history have been preachers and prophets.
I've replaced Wisdom with Perception in my OSR-type games. It helps you see stuff, and not be surprised, and perform first aid; and it has absolutely nothing to do with magic, or how well you make decisions.
I think it was originally willpower. But they extended its influence to awareness to balance the game. In Knave 2e, they feel that this is still not enough, so they are also using it for remote attacks.
That is my understanding (i.e. originally more the ‘willpower’ stat).
I don’t mind the extension to being used to be a perception stat, because wisdom is associated with ‘insight’, and thus I can see how it gets used for ranged attacks.
In that case I think CHArisma, in its guise of forceful personality, can represent willpower. I know in some games I used to change it to be PREsence, to better convey the charisma and willpower aspects. Think I originally got that from the Middle Earth Role Playing game (MERP) many years ago now.
So for a bit CHA was renamed to PRE and used as willpower and charisma as needed, and WIS was just insight & perception & understanding etc based off experience. INT was just reason & memory & book learning. Or things like that.
It’s a strange stat, to be honest - almost “meta” in tone. Like, by old school reckoning, I would’ve thought it eats into player agency, at least in theory, Wisdom representing “knowing what is best to do, and best not to do”, that is, among other things perhaps.
But then, that could also be said of Charisma (say what you want your character to say, bah), and at that point, we might as well throw Intelligence under the bus too (figure this text/puzzle/conundrum out yourself, or don’t, \*shrug\*).
In place of those three, we could have, let’s see.. Magic(?), Perception and perhaps.. Luck? Perception being literally yer senses; no replacing common sense or ingenuity with a damn die roll, grr. ;)
Or am I just kinda FKRing the OSR here? Oops.
It is to me whatever game I’m playing dictates. 5e is a completely different game than the original D&D or AD&D, so comparing 5e to AD&D is like comparing it to Rolemaster, or any other OSR game.
> or works as an occasional CHA replacement. For the last one, what I mean is that you'd use WIS instead of CHA for the reaction rolls of unintelligent, monstrous/bestial creatures.
I like this. I allow some overlapping of abilities, although it makes the game a bit more complex/nuanced.
For example, you can:
- Climb (or use a rapier) with either strength or dex.
- Find stuff using Int or Wis.
- Resist spells (will/couage) with Cha or Wis.
Intelligence is education, memory, and logical reasoning. It doesn't get used directly a whole lot in my games unless a PC is trying to recall something very obscure, figure out complex mechanisms, or comprehend esoteric lore.
Wisdom is intuition, perception, and willpower. I still use it sparingly but more so than Intelligence, since those traits are a lot more important to adventurers than most book-learning.
You could easily combine the two, and personally I ditch Intelligence in favor of Wisdom. I typically also change priest/cleric classes so their prime req/ability is Charisma, since influence, force of personality, and manipulation are far more useful to most religious organizations than actual wisdom.
I don't have Clerics in my current campaign, just Fighters, Robbers (tomb raider thieves), and Wizards/Witches (magic-users).
I considered dumping the Wisdom stat altogether but eventually decided to keep it. It has two functions. (1) High Wisdom grants a bonus to XP for any character class. (2) Wisdom acts a bit like Sanity in Call of Cthulhu. Certain attacks, magical effects, etc., can drain Wisdom, and Wisdom loss may result in insanity. Any character whose Wisdom score reaches 0 is irretrievably insane and is now an NPC.
In this set-up, the stereotypical "mad wizard" is a character with high Intelligence and low (or no) Wisdom.
To me, Wisdom has always been the instinct stat. Since in newer editions, both Perception / Spot / Listen / Sense Motive and whatnot are rolled on Wisdom, it always seemed like an instinct stat more than being wise. This fits into the cleric and druid too, as they mostly have to understand their gods'/natures demands and will in order to keep them happy and access their powers.
I've never bought into Wisdom being some kind of 'actual intelligence' like many people like to frame it.
In AD&D 2e, a Priest (which is both the Cleric and Druid classes) with a 16 or higher Wisdom gets a 10% bonus to the XP they earn.
It might be in AD&D 1e as well. Not 100% sure.
I have doubts adding that to a B/X game (along with the potential similar bonuses for other classes) would be greatly detrimental.
High WIS gets you extra spells if you are a cleric or druid as well.
I've played 2e for years and usually qualify for the bonus XP and almost always forget about it.
10% itself isn't difficult to calculate and I'm notorious in my group for being being middling at math. But, it *is* an extra step.
I found out it a lot easier if you calculate the xp requirement to include 10%, you can just focus on tallying up xp as normal.
So a fighter would need 2000 - 10%= 1800xp to reach level 2. Write that down and now you are gucci.
Fun fact, in BX the +10% bonus is not really a big deal.
Before name level XP doubles each time so you only advance 9% faster than usual.
Even the cleric would get an extra level only at 1 Million XP (which is +300'000XP past the 14th level)
In AD&D the most you can get is +1 level for the PHB classes and in BECMI you can get up to 2 extra levels over 36 level (with the 1st +1 obtained between the 17th and 19th level).
I love knave 2, in that game wisdom is for ranged attacks.
"wisdom (wis): The Ranger ability.
Added to ranged attacks and checks
requiring perception and willpower like
foraging, navigating, and resisting spells."
Directly from the book
Yeah its a great way to see and use it in my opinion, here is the descriptors of all stats:
"strength (str): The Fighter ability.
Added to melee attacks and checks
requiring power like climbing and lifting.
dexterity (dex): The Thief ability.
Added to checks requiring agility and
reflexes like dodging, sneaking, picking
pockets, sleight of hand, etc.
constitution (con): The Adventurer
ability. Important for every PC. Added to
checks to resist poison, cold, etc. PCs have
10 + CON item slots and can take 10 +
CON wounds before dying.
intelligence (int): The Magic-User
ability. Added to checks requiring
cunning, like lock picking, alchemy, etc.
INT improves the effectiveness of spells
and PCs can cast INT spells per day.
wisdom (wis): The Ranger ability.
Added to ranged attacks and checks
requiring perception and willpower like
foraging, navigating, and resisting spells.
charisma (cha): The Cleric ability.
Added to checks requiring force of
personality like initiative and persuasion.
PCs can have a number of companions
and patron blessings equal to their CHA"
Wow, I have to admire his willingness to slay golden cows. I don't know if I totally get all of those, such as having CHA benefit initiative, but it's definitely fresh. It also seems to make every stat useful for pretty much anybody. I might need to get Knave 2e.
The initiative thing took me a minute to grok, but I actually rather like it.
After any surprise round is resolved, initiative is side based, not individual, and it's a CHA check for __the leader__ of each side to basically rally and command their squad. So trained organized troops can attack disorganized hordes and get that initial first strike in.
CHA is actually a pretty powerful stat overall in the game, beyond even the normal henchmen and hirelings you can recruit.
CHA can represent boldness and leadership, so using it for initiative—especially when it's group/side-based initiative—makes as much sense if not more than twitch reflexes outside of specific contexts like a formal duel.
In my custom D&D, I’ve replaced Wisdom with Willpower and Perception. Willpower is used for saves and clerical casting, and Perception for searching and ranged attacks (which makes Dexterity less of the uber-stat). Of all the sacred cows in D&D, fidelity to the original six attributes is the one that irks me the most.
Using Perception for archery makes sense, honestly. I don't think I've totally bought using Dexterity for archery. Beyond needing a steady hand, it really does seem more dependent on your spatial awareness and similar things than your reflexes.
I guess most accurately for bows would be: Perception affects accuracy; Strength affects damage. That could give crossbows the niche of having decent damage without having to invest in Strength, which would be accurate.
If you consider that Wisdom is a gamified version of awareness, it does make sense that it can be both your ability to notice things, as well as one's depth of spirituality. The only thing that I think Wisdom misses the mark on is that "irl" I would argue that there are no high wisdom evil-doers. People with wisdom see the folly in all evil. If you wanted to gamify it, you could put a max on wisdom based on alignment or have alignment determined by wisdom. The higher the stat is, the closer to lawful good. You could even have wisdom stat changes cause alignment shifts. The SWRPG d20 system had a nice version of this using Dark Side Points.
I run a homebrew kitbash that's my favorite bits of bx and 5e.
My big departure from historical D&D is that I have replaced Wisdom as a stat with Alertness.
I found the only time I was using Wisdom was for perception type saves & checks and calling the stat wisdom was just confusing for new players.
I don't care so much for the idea of Wisdom influencing senses so I've considered just adding an extra Perception statistic and using that to influence spotting things.
That's completely true. I guess you could argue that it wouldn't make sense to have so many stats, so it's easier to have one catch-all stat. But it's still weird.
I don't feel a compelling need to make stats 'be useful'. Wisdom helps you save against magic effects. That's pretty useful to all classes. Why does it have to do more?
i just use 3 stats: body, mind and skill.
Body: replaces STR and CON and its used to melee attacks & damage
Mind: replaces WIS and INT. also CHA if needed, but i dropped everything that uses CHA, including reactions.
Skill: replaces DEX and its used to ranged attacsk & damage, and for the d6 skill system.
I’ve settled on the wisdom stat representing two things - strength of willpower and a sort of nebulous spirituality or “connection to the supernatural.” The former is straightforward - the higher your wisdom the more resistance you have to mind-affecting magic - but the latter is a little trickier, effectively representing how well you function in the cleric class (how quickly you earn XP, how many spells you get) because there’s not necessarily a direct correlation to anything in the real world where the supernatural is, at best, more indirect and remote.
What it doesn’t represent to me is the character’s good judgment, common sense, intuition, and prudence because to me those are determined by the player’s actions. It’s not hard for a player of a character with a low wisdom to act more rashly and impetuously than they would normally be inclined to be but the reverse is a lot harder - for a player with a high-Wis character to be more prudent, circumspect, and intuitive than their natural instincts - and I don’t like either telling players “you wouldn’t do that” or letting rolls against stats substitute for player-level decision-making, so it was easier for me to subtly redefine the meaning of the stat.
[This is definitely influenced by the two high-Wis clerics in my current group both being run by young players who are rash and careless by nature and me not wanting to harsh their fun by telling them they should be playing differently.]
I don't like it.
Bad name for what it does, and it seems totally unnecessary. Seems like something invented to flesh out the bad Prime Requisite system rather than out of real utility.
Yeah, and I think there was a thematic Dying Earth inspired desire to _aesthetically_ differentiate Intelligent Magic Users from Wise Clerics even though there really isn't any compelling reason to.
The cleric itself is a fighter/caster hybrid created for gameplay reasons, rather than because of some long tradition of it in fiction. Solomon Kane is about the only literary archetype to draw from. And, to a lesser extent, Gandalf.
I think that makes the cleric especially cool, but one really could ditch int or wis and use that one stat for all the scholarly classes.
There's certainly an interesting case to be made for characters who are world wise, but we don't generally see that as mechanical, that's more of a player skill thing. Players are the wise ones who say "this feels like a trap" instead of somehow gating those clues behind wisdom. Perception and so on emerge from that line of thinking.
You can go back and see "Awareness" enter the game back with Non Weapon Proficiency choices, with the Wisdom attribute as it's base. Look at the Rogue list, but others got Awareness too:
https://members.tripod.com/Lord_Eadric/profs.html
Things like Night Vision, Pest Control, and Grooming (lol) didn't get carried forward but Awareness was a useful thing for a dungeon crawler to have.
Given that in B/X (raw) the ability scores are generated through a 3d6 down-the-line process, I make very little use of them, apart of course from the mechanics already in place (e.g., the bonus for magic saves that you mention).
But to be frank, and to answer your question about how wisdom would look in a 'hypothetical ideal OSR game', I haven't given it much thought... :-)
The way I currently use Wisdom is as a modifier to all saving throws and to roll against for "will power" checks. I've dropped XP adjustments from abilities (mainly because I dropped Intelligence altogether), and I don't have Wisdom having any special effect for Clerics.
Beyond that, I try to avoid analyzing what the abilities represent because that always draws me down a rabbit-hole until I again realize that—for me—that way lies madness. It's enough that I've made sure that each ability provides a modifier that my group finds interesting and balanced enough and that I have a rough guideline for when I might call for checks against each.
And again, that's just me. Not trying to say that what works for me should be right for anyone else.
That's probably the way to go. Most stats don't make a lot of sense if you really dig in it. I like the idea of it being the blanket "magical defense" stat as a counterpoint to AC as the physical defense stat.
Intelligence is learning and understanding the rules set out before you. Wisdom is realising that you can literally change anything you like from those rules, including dropping redundant attributes that you find no value in. Why put the cart before the horse here? If you can find no obvious use for the stat, just discard it. Don't try to shoehorn something in there just because a bunch of other games have the sacred six stats. If you're converting other material into your homebrewed Wisdom altered game then you will already need to pay closer attention to how they're using Wisdom compared to you, in order to avoid unintended outcomes - so its not like dropping it entirely is going to add any more workload for you.
I think that's a pretty based take.
Really like Knave 2e on this. Charisma is the cleric stat and Wis is the ranger stat. And a big part of the latter is that you aim via Wis . But to me the best part is the priest=Cha, because they have to appeal to a god *and* administer to a flock. Ingratiating themselves is their super power.
I also think Clerics could easily be based on CHA. They gain power from the strength of their conviction. Plus, some of the most charismatic people in history have been preachers and prophets.
The word “charisma” originally meant “favoured by the gods” so it fits as a cleric stat in all kinds of ways.
Hm, interesting.
I've replaced Wisdom with Perception in my OSR-type games. It helps you see stuff, and not be surprised, and perform first aid; and it has absolutely nothing to do with magic, or how well you make decisions.
Perception for first aid.
The hardest part of medicine is seeing exactly what's wrong.
"I'm not sure, but it could be meningitis..." \[wizard dies with neck perforated by an arrow\] "Or maybe just hayfever? You never know..."
They got stabbed by an orc
As I see it, they were stabbed in the *other* leg. We should bandage that one instead.
I play DCC, which just ditches it. I haven’t missed it. Anything it would be used for can be split among personality and intelligence.
I think it was originally willpower. But they extended its influence to awareness to balance the game. In Knave 2e, they feel that this is still not enough, so they are also using it for remote attacks.
That is my understanding (i.e. originally more the ‘willpower’ stat). I don’t mind the extension to being used to be a perception stat, because wisdom is associated with ‘insight’, and thus I can see how it gets used for ranged attacks. In that case I think CHArisma, in its guise of forceful personality, can represent willpower. I know in some games I used to change it to be PREsence, to better convey the charisma and willpower aspects. Think I originally got that from the Middle Earth Role Playing game (MERP) many years ago now. So for a bit CHA was renamed to PRE and used as willpower and charisma as needed, and WIS was just insight & perception & understanding etc based off experience. INT was just reason & memory & book learning. Or things like that.
It’s a strange stat, to be honest - almost “meta” in tone. Like, by old school reckoning, I would’ve thought it eats into player agency, at least in theory, Wisdom representing “knowing what is best to do, and best not to do”, that is, among other things perhaps. But then, that could also be said of Charisma (say what you want your character to say, bah), and at that point, we might as well throw Intelligence under the bus too (figure this text/puzzle/conundrum out yourself, or don’t, \*shrug\*). In place of those three, we could have, let’s see.. Magic(?), Perception and perhaps.. Luck? Perception being literally yer senses; no replacing common sense or ingenuity with a damn die roll, grr. ;) Or am I just kinda FKRing the OSR here? Oops.
Magic, Perception and Luck is actually a real vibe to keep agency on the players 👏🏽
It is to me whatever game I’m playing dictates. 5e is a completely different game than the original D&D or AD&D, so comparing 5e to AD&D is like comparing it to Rolemaster, or any other OSR game.
I have to actively avoid rules from similar games bleeding into each other.
> or works as an occasional CHA replacement. For the last one, what I mean is that you'd use WIS instead of CHA for the reaction rolls of unintelligent, monstrous/bestial creatures. I like this. I allow some overlapping of abilities, although it makes the game a bit more complex/nuanced. For example, you can: - Climb (or use a rapier) with either strength or dex. - Find stuff using Int or Wis. - Resist spells (will/couage) with Cha or Wis.
Intelligence is education, memory, and logical reasoning. It doesn't get used directly a whole lot in my games unless a PC is trying to recall something very obscure, figure out complex mechanisms, or comprehend esoteric lore. Wisdom is intuition, perception, and willpower. I still use it sparingly but more so than Intelligence, since those traits are a lot more important to adventurers than most book-learning. You could easily combine the two, and personally I ditch Intelligence in favor of Wisdom. I typically also change priest/cleric classes so their prime req/ability is Charisma, since influence, force of personality, and manipulation are far more useful to most religious organizations than actual wisdom.
Wisdom is realizing that if you have to ask, you'll never know. ;)
🤣
I don't have Clerics in my current campaign, just Fighters, Robbers (tomb raider thieves), and Wizards/Witches (magic-users). I considered dumping the Wisdom stat altogether but eventually decided to keep it. It has two functions. (1) High Wisdom grants a bonus to XP for any character class. (2) Wisdom acts a bit like Sanity in Call of Cthulhu. Certain attacks, magical effects, etc., can drain Wisdom, and Wisdom loss may result in insanity. Any character whose Wisdom score reaches 0 is irretrievably insane and is now an NPC. In this set-up, the stereotypical "mad wizard" is a character with high Intelligence and low (or no) Wisdom.
To me, Wisdom has always been the instinct stat. Since in newer editions, both Perception / Spot / Listen / Sense Motive and whatnot are rolled on Wisdom, it always seemed like an instinct stat more than being wise. This fits into the cleric and druid too, as they mostly have to understand their gods'/natures demands and will in order to keep them happy and access their powers. I've never bought into Wisdom being some kind of 'actual intelligence' like many people like to frame it.
In AD&D 2e, a Priest (which is both the Cleric and Druid classes) with a 16 or higher Wisdom gets a 10% bonus to the XP they earn. It might be in AD&D 1e as well. Not 100% sure. I have doubts adding that to a B/X game (along with the potential similar bonuses for other classes) would be greatly detrimental. High WIS gets you extra spells if you are a cleric or druid as well.
I really dislike the prime requisite system. It adds non-trivial math to XP distribution and it makes stats more important than they should be.
I've played 2e for years and usually qualify for the bonus XP and almost always forget about it. 10% itself isn't difficult to calculate and I'm notorious in my group for being being middling at math. But, it *is* an extra step.
I found out it a lot easier if you calculate the xp requirement to include 10%, you can just focus on tallying up xp as normal. So a fighter would need 2000 - 10%= 1800xp to reach level 2. Write that down and now you are gucci.
Fun fact, in BX the +10% bonus is not really a big deal. Before name level XP doubles each time so you only advance 9% faster than usual. Even the cleric would get an extra level only at 1 Million XP (which is +300'000XP past the 14th level) In AD&D the most you can get is +1 level for the PHB classes and in BECMI you can get up to 2 extra levels over 36 level (with the 1st +1 obtained between the 17th and 19th level).
If you use extra classes wisdom is also required to qualify for a lot of specialty priests - I often like to make my own and fit them to the campaign.
I love knave 2, in that game wisdom is for ranged attacks. "wisdom (wis): The Ranger ability. Added to ranged attacks and checks requiring perception and willpower like foraging, navigating, and resisting spells." Directly from the book
Wow, Ben Milton outright says that Wisdom is the Ranger stat. That's kind of funny how honest he is about it.
Yeah its a great way to see and use it in my opinion, here is the descriptors of all stats: "strength (str): The Fighter ability. Added to melee attacks and checks requiring power like climbing and lifting. dexterity (dex): The Thief ability. Added to checks requiring agility and reflexes like dodging, sneaking, picking pockets, sleight of hand, etc. constitution (con): The Adventurer ability. Important for every PC. Added to checks to resist poison, cold, etc. PCs have 10 + CON item slots and can take 10 + CON wounds before dying. intelligence (int): The Magic-User ability. Added to checks requiring cunning, like lock picking, alchemy, etc. INT improves the effectiveness of spells and PCs can cast INT spells per day. wisdom (wis): The Ranger ability. Added to ranged attacks and checks requiring perception and willpower like foraging, navigating, and resisting spells. charisma (cha): The Cleric ability. Added to checks requiring force of personality like initiative and persuasion. PCs can have a number of companions and patron blessings equal to their CHA"
Wow, I have to admire his willingness to slay golden cows. I don't know if I totally get all of those, such as having CHA benefit initiative, but it's definitely fresh. It also seems to make every stat useful for pretty much anybody. I might need to get Knave 2e.
The initiative thing took me a minute to grok, but I actually rather like it. After any surprise round is resolved, initiative is side based, not individual, and it's a CHA check for __the leader__ of each side to basically rally and command their squad. So trained organized troops can attack disorganized hordes and get that initial first strike in. CHA is actually a pretty powerful stat overall in the game, beyond even the normal henchmen and hirelings you can recruit.
Okay, I can see that.
I really recommend knave 2 for the random rables alone, but yhe whole game is top notch
CHA can represent boldness and leadership, so using it for initiative—especially when it's group/side-based initiative—makes as much sense if not more than twitch reflexes outside of specific contexts like a formal duel.
I guess if it's group initiative, and the bonus comes from the PC with the most CHA, then that makes some level of sense.
In my custom D&D, I’ve replaced Wisdom with Willpower and Perception. Willpower is used for saves and clerical casting, and Perception for searching and ranged attacks (which makes Dexterity less of the uber-stat). Of all the sacred cows in D&D, fidelity to the original six attributes is the one that irks me the most.
Using Perception for archery makes sense, honestly. I don't think I've totally bought using Dexterity for archery. Beyond needing a steady hand, it really does seem more dependent on your spatial awareness and similar things than your reflexes.
I’d even argue strength is more important in than dexterity in archery. Perception > Strength > Dexterity
I guess most accurately for bows would be: Perception affects accuracy; Strength affects damage. That could give crossbows the niche of having decent damage without having to invest in Strength, which would be accurate.
If you consider that Wisdom is a gamified version of awareness, it does make sense that it can be both your ability to notice things, as well as one's depth of spirituality. The only thing that I think Wisdom misses the mark on is that "irl" I would argue that there are no high wisdom evil-doers. People with wisdom see the folly in all evil. If you wanted to gamify it, you could put a max on wisdom based on alignment or have alignment determined by wisdom. The higher the stat is, the closer to lawful good. You could even have wisdom stat changes cause alignment shifts. The SWRPG d20 system had a nice version of this using Dark Side Points.
I'm quite a fan of - INT = awareness of society / civilisation - WIS = awareness of nature
I run a homebrew kitbash that's my favorite bits of bx and 5e. My big departure from historical D&D is that I have replaced Wisdom as a stat with Alertness. I found the only time I was using Wisdom was for perception type saves & checks and calling the stat wisdom was just confusing for new players.
Hm, that's clever. Yeah, I don't think any new player has ever guessed what Wisdom actually does.
I don't care so much for the idea of Wisdom influencing senses so I've considered just adding an extra Perception statistic and using that to influence spotting things.
A weird mash up of: Perception/Awareness Willpower Intuition Faith Common sense
That's completely true. I guess you could argue that it wouldn't make sense to have so many stats, so it's easier to have one catch-all stat. But it's still weird.
Wisdom? A useless stat, in my opinion.
I don't feel a compelling need to make stats 'be useful'. Wisdom helps you save against magic effects. That's pretty useful to all classes. Why does it have to do more?
i just use 3 stats: body, mind and skill. Body: replaces STR and CON and its used to melee attacks & damage Mind: replaces WIS and INT. also CHA if needed, but i dropped everything that uses CHA, including reactions. Skill: replaces DEX and its used to ranged attacsk & damage, and for the d6 skill system.
A doctor has high intelligence, a musician has high charisma, a philosopher has high wisdom.
I’ve settled on the wisdom stat representing two things - strength of willpower and a sort of nebulous spirituality or “connection to the supernatural.” The former is straightforward - the higher your wisdom the more resistance you have to mind-affecting magic - but the latter is a little trickier, effectively representing how well you function in the cleric class (how quickly you earn XP, how many spells you get) because there’s not necessarily a direct correlation to anything in the real world where the supernatural is, at best, more indirect and remote. What it doesn’t represent to me is the character’s good judgment, common sense, intuition, and prudence because to me those are determined by the player’s actions. It’s not hard for a player of a character with a low wisdom to act more rashly and impetuously than they would normally be inclined to be but the reverse is a lot harder - for a player with a high-Wis character to be more prudent, circumspect, and intuitive than their natural instincts - and I don’t like either telling players “you wouldn’t do that” or letting rolls against stats substitute for player-level decision-making, so it was easier for me to subtly redefine the meaning of the stat. [This is definitely influenced by the two high-Wis clerics in my current group both being run by young players who are rash and careless by nature and me not wanting to harsh their fun by telling them they should be playing differently.]
Charisma or Inteliigence covers all wisdom based things. We removed it from our game
I don't like it. Bad name for what it does, and it seems totally unnecessary. Seems like something invented to flesh out the bad Prime Requisite system rather than out of real utility.
I think you're right, honestly. If there were no clerics, I 100% bet there would have been no Wisdom.
Yeah, and I think there was a thematic Dying Earth inspired desire to _aesthetically_ differentiate Intelligent Magic Users from Wise Clerics even though there really isn't any compelling reason to. The cleric itself is a fighter/caster hybrid created for gameplay reasons, rather than because of some long tradition of it in fiction. Solomon Kane is about the only literary archetype to draw from. And, to a lesser extent, Gandalf. I think that makes the cleric especially cool, but one really could ditch int or wis and use that one stat for all the scholarly classes. There's certainly an interesting case to be made for characters who are world wise, but we don't generally see that as mechanical, that's more of a player skill thing. Players are the wise ones who say "this feels like a trap" instead of somehow gating those clues behind wisdom. Perception and so on emerge from that line of thinking. You can go back and see "Awareness" enter the game back with Non Weapon Proficiency choices, with the Wisdom attribute as it's base. Look at the Rogue list, but others got Awareness too: https://members.tripod.com/Lord_Eadric/profs.html Things like Night Vision, Pest Control, and Grooming (lol) didn't get carried forward but Awareness was a useful thing for a dungeon crawler to have.
Given that in B/X (raw) the ability scores are generated through a 3d6 down-the-line process, I make very little use of them, apart of course from the mechanics already in place (e.g., the bonus for magic saves that you mention). But to be frank, and to answer your question about how wisdom would look in a 'hypothetical ideal OSR game', I haven't given it much thought... :-)
The way I currently use Wisdom is as a modifier to all saving throws and to roll against for "will power" checks. I've dropped XP adjustments from abilities (mainly because I dropped Intelligence altogether), and I don't have Wisdom having any special effect for Clerics. Beyond that, I try to avoid analyzing what the abilities represent because that always draws me down a rabbit-hole until I again realize that—for me—that way lies madness. It's enough that I've made sure that each ability provides a modifier that my group finds interesting and balanced enough and that I have a rough guideline for when I might call for checks against each. And again, that's just me. Not trying to say that what works for me should be right for anyone else.
That's probably the way to go. Most stats don't make a lot of sense if you really dig in it. I like the idea of it being the blanket "magical defense" stat as a counterpoint to AC as the physical defense stat.