>Seeing "Warrior" listed next to a name inspires the imagination more than "Strength: 30" does.
>
And, by extension, seeing "Garn, the burly Warrior with a Strength of 30, a scar across one eyebrow, and a kindly disposition towards serving-maids and small defenseless herbivores", is all the more inspiring.

Since I'm in a silly mood anyway (staying up all night banging out page after page of rebuttals to the Barthian critique of Schleiermacher's doctrine of the Trinity will do that to you), how about some customizable "fluff" in the game? Such as, for example, a personalized tagline for certain routine character actions. Then when Garn the burly Warrior with a Strength of 30, etc., successfully hits his foe, maybe it reads like this: "Garn swings at the orc and hits for 80 points of damage, killing him. That's gotta hurt!" Okay, so I stole the "gotta hurt" line from _How To Be Funny_, but there are other possibilities. Maybe something a little simpler, such as a wide variety of verbs used in the combat reporting system. Instead of "X 'hits' Y", possibly something more along the lines of:

X "smites" Y
X "whomps on" Y
X "cooks Y's goose"
X "pops open a can of whoop-butt on" Y
etc...

Iss "I gotta stop now" achar