Hacking 2e: Wisdom

Wisdom has always been an odd bird. In OD&D this ability doesn’t do squat, serving only as the prerequisite score for Clerics and their access to an XP bonus. There’s not even a description of what Wisdom is until the Player’s Handbook drops in ’78. Yet that edition’s description didn’t remain static in the same way that Strength has always represented physical power or Intelligence has represented learning. To see how this has changed over the past five decades, let’s look at the keywords each edition uses to describe Wisdom:

Edition	Description of Wisdom
AD&D 1e	enlightenment, judgement, wile, will power, intuitiveness
Basic D&D (81)	inspiration, intuition, common sense, shrewdness
AD&D 2e	enlightenment, judgement, guile, willpower, common sense, intuition
D&D 3.5e	willpower, common sense, perception, intuition
D&D 4e	common sense, perception, self-discipline, empathy, willpower
D&D 5e	awareness, intuition, insight, perception, willpower

This doesn’t take into account 2e’s nonweapon proficiencies, which tie Wisdom to animal skills, sensing direction and weather, tracking, healing, religion, and… mining. However, it’ll serve for our discussion.

There’s some interesting takeaways here. ‘Willpower’ is common in all editions except Basic, though this is only implied in 4e with its contribution to Will defense, while 5e shoves the concept exclusively into the DMG. ‘Intuition’ is also common aside from 4e. ‘Common sense’ is another baseline that appears everywhere aside from 1e and 5e. Many Charisma-like descriptions are applied to Wisdom as well, such as wile (1e), shrewdness (Basic), guile (2e), and self-discipline and empathy (4e).

Of course, the most notable change is ‘perception’ in 3rd Edition, which carries on into all later editions. As these editions had strictly defined skills, Wisdom became a tool for auto-finding (Spot, then later Perception) and lie-detecting (Sense Motive, then later Insight). Much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments has occurred over this by those who portray it as the natural end-game of the ability check, devolving the game into thoughtless, push-button ‘rollplay.’ This, in my opinion, is bunk – you can read my thoughts about that argument here.

It makes sense that this ability would eventually find its way toward an actionable definition. Aside from the entirely reactive Constitution score, the other scores allow you to lift, push, sneak, steal, remember, solve, command, and schmooze. Meanwhile, AD&D gives Wisdom only the static ‘willpower,’ which can only serve as an adjustment to saving throws, and the utterly useless ‘intuition’ and ‘common sense,’ which is the purview of the player rather than the character.

In other words, much of Wisdom is stored in the character’s head and doesn’t translate well to play in the same way as the other mental scores; using Intelligence to remember or know something provides an excellent opportunity to distribute an occasional lore-dump, but using Wisdom to use one’s gut can only serve to give up information that the player should be figuring out for themselves.

In short, I don’t find the shift surprising, and given that it has become an acknowledged domain of Wisdom for the past quarter century, we should probably retain it.

Well, that’s a hideous amount of preamble, but I wanted to peg down this ability before we moved on to the columns. I have no idea if I’ve done that. Onward!

 

1. Magical Defense Adjustment

Our last saving throw adjustment, once again applied to a circumstance rather than an actual save, is for throws against “magical spells that attack the mind,” such as charm, fear, possession, and so on. It also includes illusions, which means it overlaps a bit with our changes to Intelligence. This is where the ‘willpower’ part of Wisdom makes itself known, but it’s complicated by being broad and ephemeral; you can see why 3e just settled on a Will save and why 4e turned it into a static defense.

If we turn to Basic for guidance, that edition gives a bonus to ‘magic-based’ saves, which is a strange choice considering that this sounds more like the domain of Intelligence. It is of no help to us here.

To make any good use of this, the Will saving throw needs to come to AD&D. It’s not that radical of a suggestion, as many modules reference specific saves versus “enchantment/charm.” However, as I’ve noted before, this is not the place to make that massive change, so I’ll put a pin in it and keep it as “Mind Save” for now. The bonuses start at 15 like other saving throw bonuses, which is where it should be, though it ramps up a bit too fast. I’ll smooth it out similar to the Poison and Illusion saves.

 

2. Bonus Spells

This is great! The cleric gets a few extra spells in their pocket due to their ‘enlightenment,’ which works thematically and mechanically. Aside from the name of the column, which should note that these are for priests, I’m a big fan. It’s good enough that I imported it into Intelligence, so I’ll definitely keep it here.

 

3. Chance of Spell Failure

This is terrible! It’s a screw job, which isn’t always bad, but in this case it’s nothing but bad. This requires clerics with scores of 9–12 to always make an additional roll when using any spell (a percentile roll at that) to find out if they can play their class. 2e extends this to scores below 9; considering that clerics need a minimum of 9 in Wisdom to even be clerics, this can only pertain to clerics under some debilitating affect, and is therefore an edge case at best. Also, it’s exclusively for cleric spells, which are provided to PCs by the gods themselves, and doesn’t apply to wizard spells, which are crafted from the skills and memory of the individual wizard. Which of these seem more likely to randomly fail? Why does this exist, but low Intelligence doesn’t cause the same issue for the wizard?

And somehow, none of this affects Turn Undead.

Restrictions on spells is fine. Introducing a chance of spell failure due to choices made by a PC is fine. This does not qualify. As such, I’m tossing it.

 

4. Spell Immunity

Finally, we come to our last Deities & Demigods addition, which provides blanket immunity to specific spells. This one is a mess of text and I don’t think it’s worth saving. In the event that a character reaches into the upper echelons of Wisdom scores, I would suffer no one to write these down on their sheet. In any case, most of the spells found here are mind-based spells, so we can emulate the idea of these immunities by boosting the ‘Mind Save’ at the epic scores, rather than leaving everything as a flat +4.

 

Final Table

Wisdom	Surprise	Mind (or Charm) Save	Bonus Priest Spells
1	-6	-4	–
2	-5	-4	–
3	-4	-3	–
4	-3	-3	–
5	-2	-2	–
6	-2	-2	–
7-8	-1	-1	–
9-12	–	–	–
13	+1	–	1st
14	+1	–	1st
15	+1	+1	2nd
16	+2	+1	2nd
17	+2	+2	3rd
18	+3	+2	4th
19	+3	+2	1st, 3rd
20	+4	+3	2nd, 4th
21	+4	+3	3rd, 5th
22	+4	+4	4th, 5th
23	+5	+4	1st, 6th
24	+5	+4	5th, 6th
25	+5	+5	6th, 7th

 

Wisdom seemed a little empty, so I figured I’d add a bit of that ‘intuition’ in the form of a modifier to surprise rolls. It fits well here, and adds a bonus at a score of 13 that doesn’t require you to be a cleric. It also means the wisest of characters cannot be surprised, which I like.

The adjustment to mind/charm saves has been aligned to other saving throw bonuses, though the more I look at it the more I’m wondering if Dexterity’s accelerated defense bonus shouldn’t apply to all of these saves. +1/+2 at mundane scores doesn’t have a lot of kick. In any case, nothing here is set in stone; terms and conditions are subject to change.

I didn’t touch the bonus spells. I’d say ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,’ but I’ve violated that maxim consistently during this deep dive into the ability scores.

Next time, we’ll hit the favorite score of your theater-kid player: Charisma.