But this shows that we don't need them to be individual attributes of their own. Disease resistance is an underlying stat that you don't have active control over but it is still there and everyone is good with that.
Mainly what I was talking about as obsolete is things like personality that are only descriptors, which your characters personality is decided by you and how you decide to answer in a conversation. You decide your character is a [censored], so you answer in a rude way to the NPC. That NPC now knows your character is a [censored]. See what I mean by we don't need those attributes to define those aspects of your character.
Well, I
can play like that, but I'd prefer it not be arbitrary; I'd prefer a back story and character attributes to base my decisions upon. In fact, I'm comfortable with a completely assigned character, as that usually means that the game's story is custom tailored to them.
Here is the thing about a constitution attribute (or any attribute)... By having it separate as a base stat. the mechanics can allow magic, drugs, and preternatural origins to affect the stat and have a cascading effect on the PC; both for good or bad.
Base stats define the unique biology and psychology of every PC and NPC. I can't help but think that multiple recombination of stats into three overarching values is a bad thing, and encourages homogenous PC design. Its bad enough that I read today that for Skyrim, all you do is pick a look ~and you're done; Heck, I'm not even sure that you enter a name for the PC, or if such a thing still matters in the game.
Its just not very appealing to me if the PC is just a McManikin race with contrived perk variations that do not seem to represent a unique personality, just a bag of exceptions to the rules.
But by expanding their use, you marginalize them. The more you expand an attribute, the more character types are going to benefit from it. You end up making everyone "smart", "strong", and/or "agile" because those attributes would have auxiliary effects that many character types you would have.
By cutting down to the three main attributes, and relying on skills and perks to define the character beyond that, you can still get the same effects as the expended attributes but in a much more granular way, which increases character diversity. You're no longer just "smart", you're "book smart" or "street smart". You're no longer just "strong", you're a "tank" or "martial artist". The attributes become redundant because you can already define the character as you want, through skills, perks, and health/magicka/stamina.
I see attributes as defining the individual's natural aptitudes ~Which could apply to several chosen skills at once. I see nothing wrong with this.