Meep.
Still not feeling great in the intestines. Bah.
Read (novel): Renaissance Bear (Murphy Lawless): The boolean returned by bear.isFatedMate(person) is always correct, but that doesn’t mean things can’t be very confusing!
Read (manga): My Girlfriend’s Not Here Today vol 4 (Kiyoko Iwami): The big reveal! And yeah, I usually am in favor of the poly option but these characters are barely emotionally ready to date a single person each, if that.
Written (game design): 202:
No stats! The essentialism is bleah, and it only gets worse when you add
in racial stereotyping modifiers. They’re also an extra two hoops to
jump through on the way to getting the value you actually use in play,
instead of just buying the skill you wanted directly. Plus, it’s much
better for a character (as opposed to a wargame unit) to be described by
what they learned to do rather than by some immutable potential their
elementary school teachers saw in them. (Not that ability scores are
even that in more recent D&Ds, since they constantly increase; they’re
just bonuses to predefined skill groups.)
Strength has only a few skills, but it does have other aspects (damage,
encumbrance, lift bars and bend gates, etc) that make it worth keeping.
Without other stats to line up with, though, it doesn’t have to have any
particular shape; it could be less granular, like a feat with a couple
of levels.
Constitution has even fewer skills, only saves (which come up pretty
often unlike Strength) and hit points.