Thinking About Wisdom

Since D&D's beginnings, Wisdom has always been a bit of an oddball attribute. It's easy enough to tell what Strength does, or Dexterity, or Constitution, or Intelligence, or Charisma--each of these have easily quantifiable affects on the game. But wisdom? "The word 'wisdom' refers to inspiration, intuition, common sense, and shrewdness" (B6). How does one rule that without taking away from player agency? Other than as a prime requisite for clerics and a very minor bonus to saving throws vs. magic, it's usually used as a dump stat.

There have been some attempts to rectify this over the years. Swords & Wizardry, for example, gives a bonus to experience for any character with a high Wisdom, not just clerics. In 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition D&D, many survival skills, such as foraging and direction sense, have been tied to the Wisdom stat, as have skills relating to perception. The unfortunate side-effect of this is that this makes your clerics your best survivalists. Now, that wouldn't be so bad if you conceived of a cleric as being basically a ranger--a divinely-empowered guardians of the outskirts of civilization. And honestly, that would be a pretty cool take on the class, though you'd have to loosen the weapons restrictions (what ranger couldn't use a bow and sword?) and figure out another way to balance it. But that wouldn't be the D&D cleric, and I want to hold onto the basic assumptions of the game.

Finally, the idea came to me that maybe the bonuses to hunting, foraging, maintaining course, and so forth could be a unique feature of fighters (and elves, halflings, and to a certain extent, dwarves). That actually made perfect sense, the more I thought about it: Clerics may be wise, but most would come from some kind of militant or monastic order--not the sort of people who spent all their time hunting in the woods. But why not let the Wisdom ability give fighters a boost to their survival skills?

The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It made it possible to have an illiterate fighter (low Intelligence) who is nevertheless quite smart and adept in the ways of the wilderness (high Wisdom).

Why do we assume that all abilities must affect all classes the same way, anyway? There are plenty of class abilities that are affected by ability scores, so why not let certain abilities function differently depending on your class?

• Fighters, elves, and halflings: Wisdom modifies one's rolls to hunt, forage, and maintain course in the wilderness. 
• Dwarves: Wisdom modifies one's rolls to hunt, forage, and maintain course in the hills and mountains, and one's dwarven detection abilities underground.
• Thieves: Wisdom modifies one's ability to detect traps and secret doors.
• Magic-users: Wisdom grants additional languages/knowledge, as it reflects the greater diligence of the magic-user in his studies.
• Clerics: Wisdom modifies experience, of course, but a cleric with a Wisdom score of 16+ also casts spells as if a level higher (so a 1st level cleric with a 16 Wis casts one first level spell, instead of having to wait until second level). 

This would give Wisdom some importance to all characters, and keep it from being just a dump stat, but without sacrificing flavor in the classes. Something to consider.