In Sorcerer & Sword, are lopsided inhuman stats legal?

Question

In Sorcerer & Sword, I can trade down my Humanity stat to get more Stamina or Will.

So if I create a character

Stamina 5
Will 4
Lore 1
Humanity 5

I can trade that Humanity down to 3 for 2 points of Stamina and get

Stamina 7
Will 4
Lore 1
Humanity 3

However, if I start and decide to make a real Stamina beast,

Stamina 8
Will 1
Lore 1
Humanity 8

I can trade down Humanity to 3, buy back all the missing Will, and have points to spare.

Stamina 10
Will 4
Lore 1
Humanity 3

So I don't see any reasons to do the former rather than the latter.

Is this legal or am I missing something?

Answer 1

The Sorcerer-wiki offers two points from discussions on this:

If your character has traded in three points of Humanity during creation, then those points were lost over something thematically important in your character's history. He's extra bad-ass, but there's some significant reason that he's lost that Humanity, and that significant reason should be just as bad-ass.

Clinton R. Nixon

I have used as a house rule that Humanity trading can only be used to raise your highest attribute of Stamina/Will. The mathematically inclined may see why this is appealing. This is a house rule, though, and not endorsed by anyone official in the slightest.

Ben Lehman

A quote from Ron Edwards, creator of the game:

I guess I don't see the question. If you're saying that you can arrive at different numerical "places" through different means, and that some of these means end up with higher Humanity than others, then the answer is "Yes."

Pick the one that makes the most sense for your character concept.

It ain't GURPS. There's no particular need to balance points in any way.

From this thread on the Forge.

Answer 2

There's nothing I can see in the rules that stops you from using the more optimal math. This is (in my opinion only) probably a bug in the design of the Humanity-trading rule, but you could consider it a feature if you're playing with people who enjoy rules-mastery play.

It's worth noting that in the first case, only Stamina will get the "inhumanly" descriptor attached to it, while in the second case both Stamina and Will will be inhuman.