I've noticed that a lot of the auspices don't really use rolls that would make much of a difference to the characters, like Charisma not being used all that often for Philodox. Is anyone out there interested in altering the Gifts system so that it more directly involves how characters are built? Basically, we would define not just the role, but the attributes and abilities that each role would logically require, and have those used a lot for Gift general use.
I think that it was purposefully constructed the way it was so that you didn't pigeonhole every character of a certain Auspice as well as to discourage "perfect builds" and munchkinism.
There's an open-ended invitation in the books to create your rites and gifts as well, just do that instead of trying to shoe-horn illogical gift-attribute relations.
Your wording is more than a mite biased.
Ultimately, I thought that it would make sense that most of the Gifts in each category would directly apply to their duties according to Auspice, but that really isn't the case. And, the rolls needed don't really reflect the character roles for each auspice.
one of the beauties of the story teller system is that it allows you to play very representative characters.
Just because your character is a Philodox, does not automatically mean he is a good Philodox, or he might be excellent at 75% of his responciblities but horribly flawed at 25%. Or he could be amazing at them all, but broken in all other respects of his duties to gaia, or he might be an all rounder. Also, thematically these gifts come from different spirits with different pervues, it makes sense they not be the same
If you tie all a auspices gifts to a single stat, then suddenly you have a situation where a player loses that versitility of character design and is encouraged to focus his character. Net result?
player 1: "Dude, why doesn't your Ahroun have strength five"
Player 2: "I didn't think it fit my concept"
Player 1: "You automatically suck now"
You should take a look at the way Disciplines are done in Dark Ages Vampire. Makes a lot of sense, imo. And it is arguably far better designed than Apocalypse ever was. The point is, it helps to grant a flavor for the choices we make in game. A shaman really SHOULD have a high Perception score, so why not have Theurges roll that for their spirit manipulations?
There are lots of combinations of the various auspice, clan/tribe, and race such that even if they were each assigned specific rolls, you'd still have such a large amount of variety that the scenario you describe wouldn't occur.
Also, I am a big believer in reducing the things Dexterity is used in. The way White Wolf used it, it was the One Stat to Rule Them All. So for example, I had Celerity users roll Wits instead of Dexterity when taking their extra actions in Vampire.