Stength vs. Speed (4th ed/Any)

[Grynning]

So I was musing on this earlier, and thought I'd throw it up here for discussion. I've noticed, that for whatever reason, in most RPG's, high Strength characters are thought of as being slow vs. high Dexterity/Agility/whatever characters. Conversely, high Dexterity characters don't often need much strength. I think a lot of this has to do with the video (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FragileSpeedster) game (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MightyGlacier) archetypes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheMario) many of us are familiar with.

In 4th edition, with one primary stat always being your "attack" stat, this means that it's not possible to make the "Dex Fighter" that many people seem to love, and so people tend to think of all the Strength based classes as slow, lumbering bruisers due to the mechanics, particularly people who have difficulty separating fluff from mechanics. I have one friend who is particularly uptight about mechanics matching fluff, who always wants to play a Dex-based melee characters because he loves the archetype and seems to think that agility/speed is superior to hitting hard (even when discussing "real" fighting, although I don't think he's ever been in any kind of fight, not that that's a bad thing). Thank god the Monk came out, because for a while we didn't hear the end of how 4th edition didn't have a Dex based melee character (for some reason, he doesn't think of Rogues as real martial warriors).

What I was musing on was, I've never thought of my Strength characters as being particularly slow or clumsy (and I play a lot of Strength characters - my 4th ed characters have included a Warlord, a Barbarian, a Sorcerer, and a Fighter so far). Any skilled warrior is going to have a certain amount of grace and speed, or they're not going to be very good (even Tank Abbot is probably much more coordinated than the average Joe). So my question is, does Dex (or the equivalent stat in other games) really represent "quickness" and "grace," or is it really much more abstract than that, and more representative of a particular style of fighting rather than actual physical ability? The same could be said of Strength. I don't think that a guy with Dex 18 and Str 8 is really a weakling or out of shape and just happens to be fast and precise. One look at any real-world athlete who does a "dexterity" type of sport like acrobatics, gymnastics or archery will tell you they're in very good physical condition, and likely stronger than average, but if you were to build them in 4th you'd likely be dumping Strength for many reasons.

There's been many, many threads discussing the fluff of mental attributes like Wisdom and Charisma, but most of the time physical stats are taken at face value. I was just wondering if anyone else ever thought about it, or ever had to argue with someone that just because my sheet says my Dex is low doesn't necessarily mean my guy is a klutz or super-slow.

[MightyTim]

I think what you're referring to as "grace" or "clumsiness" would be more accurately represented by either the Acrobatics or Athletics skill rather than either Strength or Dexterity.

As for the issue of it difficult to be an actual effective fighter without having a degree of quickness, when fighting, objective speed really isn't quite as important as you'd think. What's really more important is efficiency of movement (which is often perceived as speed, but actually is something else). If you train in a martial art, when you go from white belt to black belt, you're probably not going to get significantly truly 'faster' but you do learn to move much more fluidly and efficiently, and that in turn means that an opponent is going to have a lot harder time reacting to your movements. You'll seem to be moving faster in combat, but if you had to run a foot race, you probably wouldn't be appreciably faster.

[Mando Knight]

There's been many, many threads discussing the fluff of mental attributes like Wisdom and Charisma, but most of the time physical stats are taken at face value. I was just wondering if anyone else ever thought about it, or ever had to argue with someone that just because my sheet says my Dex is low doesn't necessarily mean my guy is a klutz or super-slow.

Good point. The three physical attributes are as much of an abstraction as the three mental ones, even in older editions of D&D. While their domains are slightly easier to define than the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom, they don't directly measure your character's physical appearance any more than its Charisma does.

A high-Dex low-Str character might have a lot of lean muscle or specialized muscles (such as the bow-arm muscles), and can use them quite adeptly to accomplish a wide variety of delicate or precise tasks, but not able to use them to bench press twice her weight or smash through an enemy's shield with an axe. The opposite may be quite good at picking out and exploiting weak points in armor and his sheer physical strength may let his blade arm move fast enough that its devastating wake is a blur that catches his enemies by surprise, but he's no good at the "fancy stuff" like twirling his sword about his fingers, or flicking a knife in the right way to slip its edge between the legionnaire's armor plates.

[Vitruviansquid]

You have to keep in mind the follow:

1. AC in the game tends to represent either a character's ability to dodge OR ability to withstand the blow (often with the help of armor).

2. DnD is a game about heroic, often non-human, individuals with realistically impossible abilities.

So yeah, I would say the Fighter with 18 strength and 8 dexterity *is* going to be more uncoordinated than the average individual, but his *heroic* (and thus, "unreal") strength makes up for it, as well as his keen understanding of fighting and technique, which defines the Fighter class and is also represented mechanically by their Wisdom and Weapon Training feature, makes up for it. I would say the physical stats indeed measure a character's physical abilities, such that a character with low strength is weak and a character with low dex is uncoordinated, due to the existence of strength checks for doing things like breaking doors. That's a measurement of pure physical brawn, not "fighting style."

[Draz74]

Yeah, for my own game, I started fiddling with the mental ability scores, but eventually realized that the physical ones needed an overhaul just as badly.

Under current plans, Acrobatics and Dexterity are (separate) Skills, governed by no particular ability score. Brawn, Fortitude, and Reflex are the physical ability scores.

[Zaq]

Somewhere along the line, I realized that stats in 4e mean even less than they do in previous editions. They've always been abstract mechanical concepts, but now they're REALLY abstract mechanical concepts that honestly don't really match what your character is, does, or looks like. They're just numbers that mean less than HP. Critical for mechanics, but they don't actually mean anything. At least, that's how I see it.

[true_shinken]

Somewhere along the line, I realized that stats in 4e mean even less than they do in previous editions. They've always been abstract mechanical concepts, but now they're REALLY abstract mechanical concepts that honestly don't really match what your character is, does, or looks like. They're just numbers that mean less than HP. Critical for mechanics, but they don't actually mean anything. At least, that's how I see it.

I completly agree with you. 4e manages to do this with everything. You never get that feeling of 'oooh, Fireball, he must be a wizard' because basically everyone has a Fireball now.

[DeltaEmil]

Where can I find the fireball power for fighters? It must not come from magical items or multi-class feats and similar...

[Kurald Galain]

Somewhere along the line, I realized that stats in 4e mean even less than they do in previous editions. They've always been abstract mechanical concepts, but now they're REALLY abstract mechanical concepts that honestly don't really match what your character is, does, or looks like. They're just numbers that mean less than HP. Critical for mechanics, but they don't actually mean anything.
Absolutely.


Where can I find the fireball power for fighters? It must not come from magical items or multi-class feats and similar...
Well, rogues get Cloud of Steel, which is pretty much the same thing as a fireball. And there's not much of a difference between the warlock's magical Armor of Agathys and the fighter's martial Rain of Steel.

[DeltaEmil]

How is cloud of steel any close to fireball? How is any martial class' power any similar to fireball?
Did cloud of steel get upgraded to similar effects like fireball in an errata?

[Devils_Advocate]

In 4th Edition, you get to add half your level to all of your rolls and defense stats, right? Pretty much? So, for most purposes, it's as if each of your ability scores went up a point with each level (in addition to the actual, official increases to ability scores!), except represented in a different way.

In 3rd Edition, bonuses accrue at various rates depending on class, which means that the balance of power changes with character level in a screwy way. Regardless, 3E, too, has plenty of bonuses beyond those granted by ability scores. And by looking at how success and failure at tasks are actually determined using the rules, we can see that descriptive text like "Dexterity measures hand-eye coordination, agility, reflexes, and balance" is basically lying. Dex adds to that stuff, sure, but for a Dex-based character, those things will mostly be comprised of other bonuses. (And since you have to use Strength with some weapons, it would be more accurate to say that BAB measures hand-eye coordination.)

(3E AC is especially weird, since it seems like an obvious choice for one of the things to automagically increase as characters go up in level, but instead the system is set up for characters to buy a whole bunch of relatively small, relatively cheap, mostly magical bonuses to AC if they want to keep it relatively high. And AC in particular is peculiar in working like this for no readily apparent reason. :smallconfused:)

[Meta]

*tries to get thread back on topic*

I picture my high dex low str avenger as looking something like myself. I'm around 5"7 and sitting at around 2-4% body fat. I have a small frame but a pretty toned physique. So I can accomplish feats that would normally require high str, such as many pull ups in a short amount of time. But really my str is probably only like 10 compared to the average person. And I do likely have a higher than average dex.

Just my real world 2 cents