[caeril]

It depends on the complexity of your campaign. Back in the day when I played D&D, we had a DM who would throw together typical hack-and-slash-and-loot campaigns, in which you wanted to maximize your STR, CON, DEX, and INT( if you were a magic-using class ). Nobody wanted to assign points to anything else, as they would be a waste.

It takes a good DM to balance a campaign, especially for years. And I suspect most DMs are pretty bad (I'm guessing, haven't played in over a decade now).

[brightball]

This is a valid point and it's honestly one of the things that I really enjoy about the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. One of the main character's best weapons is charisma. Multiple different types of spells or abilities are modified by secondary stats, like charisma with charm or illusion spells.

I haven't played D&D in, like 30 years, but I don't ever remember those types of game mechanics being involved. If they are now it would make for some great potential combinations. If a dwarf gets -1 INT and +1 CON, but certain types of spells use CON as a modifier then it creates an interesting combination.