I think that Gromnir has a very good point.
Character development in a CRPG is the most important thing IMO, because of the R in RPG. The whole game is based on the role (ie. Char) you play. From what I heard the Devs (at least tried to) made skill choices more important in TSL, but I can't judge for myself if this works because of international gamer.
I think they are somewhat limited in their freedom to fiddle with the attributes due to the D20 rules, but I think attributes are important enough as they are, because they still play a major role depending on which class you choose to play.
As for the workbench, I really hope this will be fixed in the PC version. I like a balanced game, and this sounds like unbalanced to me.