One stat to rule them all, or what if we merged Dex and Str?

[diplomancer]

Because the nimble waif can still carry 300 pounds of gear without breaking a sweat, and manage 600 pounds with difficulty.
A strong but small PC is superheroic in their realm of expertise. No, it doesn't make sense from a realism point of view, but it fits the fantasy.

When the rules explicitly say "You can do X," and you just choose not to, it's at a bare minimum inelegant. And honestly, to me? It's bad, generally speaking. Not always, but usually.

Spoiler: An Exception I Can Think Of

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Country Bumpkin Cleric.

Wisdom 20, and so +5 to Insight. No proficiency, because they're a bit naïve, but they've got the raw stats. When the party visits a city, they choose to roll with disadvantage or just outright say "I rolled a 1" without actually rolling when falling for tourist traps.

The reason I'm okay with this? Couple of points, but mainly that this is probably fun for the table. If it's not, then it's worth talking to the player OOC about it, but most tables I've been it will find it funny, believable, and enjoyable.

Notably, this is not a life or death scenario.

As far as I'm aware, most PCs don't go around carrying their maximum capacity (assuming their DM cares in the first place), even if they can¹. They actually don't do a lot of things that they could do, as a matter of fact (and so does everyone, all the time).

But what if it's a life-or-death situation? Then, if you want, you can choose to let your Waif try to do it (she will probably suceed), and it's trivial to explain that in-game, since it's a life-or-death situation, specially once you remember that, having what would be in the original rules a high Dex, she's already somewhat fit.


1-IIRC, in BECMI (which did care a lot about it), all characters had the same carrying capacity, regardless of their strength. I honestly don't think 5e would change at all if that was the rule