using the numbers

Beyond qualifying for bonuses or allowing you to play certain classes, stats in D&D just sit there on the character sheet. They don't do anything besides helping to visualize your character. But I have an idea to get more use out of them and to make players think twice about dump stats. Say your character is in a bar fight and some burly oaf wants to knock you over. Your strength score is his target number to succeed. He rolls a D20 adding any bonus from his Strength. Just like rolling to hit an Armour Class. Another example; a tricky merchant tries to sell your character some shoddy goods. He rolls versus your Wisdom. If he fails you don't buy it. Or he wins and you come back to the party bragging about your shiny new useless piece of crap. Any situation can be covered. A slippery passage in a dungeon; the DM rolls against each characters Dexterity with any modifiers the DM thinks are applicable. Every stat point comes into play, not just low medium or high. Characters can interact with the environment in new unique ways. And players have new things to think about during play. Like steering the naive Elf away from the shops or watching out for the clumsy Magic-User in the dungeon.