How useful your stat mods are depends on how often you use the moves that are tied to them. For instance, if you want to learn more about the monsters you encounter, you can use the spout lore move to have possibly read something about similar creatures. Also keep in mind that each time you level up you get to increase on of your ability scores by one, so that negative strength mod doesn't have to stick around for very long. And besides, I thought your character was supposed to be the scholarly type.