Whats the point of mental ability scores?
Mental ability scores are somewhat trickier than other kinds. After all, the intelligence of the player may not correspond very well with that of the character. How does a person play a character who is smarter than they are? There no perfect answers. Sometimes particularly smart characters can take up more time to decide on actions, based on the notion that in the game world, they wouldn’t need all the time the player is using to work things out. Sometimes game masters are more likely to give hints to smarter characters. My experience tells me that more often than not, intelligence scores mostly just affect mind-based die rolls, like avoiding mind control, or something. What are these “other” scores? Most common are “spiritual” ability scores, or “social” ability scores, or some combination of scores related to these categories. These scores are usually directly related to the style of the game in question. For example, the game Mage: the Ascension has an Arete score that describes a
