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D-naras
2014-06-29, 04:17 PM
I am designing my own system and after playtesting it yesterday the following question came up. Should strong characters hit as often as agile characters in melee? Should a character's strength or agility matter on attacks and damage rolls?

How do different systems handle this? We all know how DnD does it. L5R makes Agility a must for warriors since it pretty much defines your chance to hit and Strength is secondary at most and only factors in *small* damage bonuses. nWoD ties the attack to the damage roll. M&M using a totally different stat for melee attack rolls and strength for damage.

I personally think that both should do the same when it comes to attacking and damage. It opens up way more character concepts and minimizes the minmaxing need in some of us.

What do you think?

Spiryt
2014-06-29, 04:31 PM
Both should matter, and physically buff character can be nimble as well.

3.5 handles those things pretty poorly indeed.

Frozen_Feet
2014-06-29, 04:33 PM
First things first, you need to define better what you mean by nimbleness and agility.

Because explosive strenght, the ability to quickly accelerate your body and change motion, is very much a trait of muscular fitness. It's not the same as raw, or max strenght, but it's what's important to martial artists and the like. In the same vein, gymnasts, the iconic examples of "agility", actually need a very strong and well-developed musculature to perform the tricks they do. Pliability is a must too, but in itself is useless.

On the other hand, you can have a very big, buff person who has a lot of strenght, but can not utilize it explosively. This is usually a result of having trained for maximal strenght or big muscles while ignoring plyometrics. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plyometrics)

3.x D&D actually has it close to right, but achieves it through a combination of a huge deal of finicky little penalties and mechanics. For example, great strenght can net you a +4 to hit, but if you're not proficient (read: trained) with a weapon, you immediately lose that advantage due to a -4 penalty. In the same vein, great strenght can net you +4 to jump, but so can special jump training (ie. skill ranks).

The last skill system I personally devised was rather complex in this regard. On one hand, you could get decent at fighting skills without great strenght, but your advancement was capped based on your strenght score. On another hand, the skill and attribute use was decided by the situation, and you used weakest applicable skill. So for example, if you're fencing while balancing on a tightrope, your success is decided by your balance skill (which was nimbleness-based), even if your fencing skill (strenght-based) would've been higher.

Airk
2014-06-29, 08:06 PM
This is a terrible question to ask in a vacuum, and the phrasing isn't very clear either. But:

A) I assume you are talking about the equivalent of the 18 dex, 12 str character vs the 18 str, 12 dex character. If you meant something else, you need to clarify.

B) Trying to do this on the basis of "reality" is probably a bad way to make the determination

C) Even if you DO decide to 'base it on reality' there will probably be mitigating factors - an opponent with a light weapon will be much less likely to be able to parry a heavy weapon wielded by a strong opponent, for example.

D) Since you are already talking about trying to open up more combinations, you are probably approaching from a more gamist angle, in which case the right answer is probably closer to "It depends on what weapon you are using." - the idea of there being 'strength weapons' and 'agility weapons' is not a new one.

D) The correct answer is probably "It doesn't matter, because the most important factor in whether you hit should be skill, not stat." This is one of the huge failings of Iron Kingdoms, because in that game, weapon attacks are 2d6+Skill+stat but skill (at least, for 'first tier' characters, which is what you are for a really long time) goes from Zero to Two, but stat goes from 3 to 7, meaning that how "skilled" your character is is nearly irrelevant compared to how "statted" your character is. This is awful. Avoid it. Ability scores should not be more powerful than more specific skills. Of course, if you don't HAVE the idea of skill, that's something else entirely. Did I mention that this is a terrible question to ask in a vacuum?

Teapot Salty
2014-06-29, 08:28 PM
Strength can also mean physical coordination and conditioning, and skill in general. Meaning that the very strong guy can be extremely skilled in landing shots, swinging a sword etc. but still be a total clutz when handling pottery. Strength is more of a gross motor skill, dex is more of a fine. I would say that it depends on the weapon, a greatsword should use strength, but a dagger should use dex.

Arbane
2014-06-30, 12:08 AM
I recommend avoiding making one stat the 'God Stat' for fighters - White Wolf games have a bad habit of doing this with dexterity, 'because realism'.

If you're designing your own system from scratch, you can avoid the entire question.

Mutants and Masterminds 3rd ed has a separate 'Fighting' stat that is specifically combat ability, with no connection to Dex or Strength (both of which it also has). The old Marvel Comics RPG did the same thing.

BRP system has a percentile skill system for fighting skills (and just about everything else), with stats being a relatively tiny modifier - a truly amazing strength or dexterity would get you about a +8%, so actual skill was much more important.

How does your system work so far?

You could make a system where you roll d10 for 'Master Swordsman', d6 for 'Cat-like Reflexes', and d8 for 'Strong as an Ox', and just take the highest roll. So all three help, but without being directly additive.

Vitruviansquid
2014-06-30, 04:50 AM
Different stats doing different things is generally good, since it allows characters with different stats to feel appreciably different on the table.

However, designing your stats and how they interact with your system for combat resolution is pretty tricky. A good system punishes people for dumping stats, but also encourages people to set up different characters with different roles in a fight. A small amount of disparity between stats should be healthy and should matter both for the power and the feel of characters. Finally, yet another consideration you may want to take in mind is to not allow combat to be governed by too many different values that players will have to look up during play. Combat must strike a balance between being simple and being interesting.

You might want to check out the following systems for some combat mechanics:

1. DnD 4e works largely as a counter-example. There are mechanics at work forcing players to diversify their stats, but we generally see 18 or 20 in the primary stat, and then two more stats being relatively high to keep up NADs. In most cases, the system causes different stats to feel the same (strength for fighters is basically the same thing as dexterity for rogues, for example), and causes players to lean heavily toward their classes' primary stat, but it does include mechanics to allow players to make a little bit of decision choosing stats.

2. Savage Worlds has a system in which 4 out of its 5 stats are important to melee combat, but there are so many ways and reasons to take one stat over the others that it definitely allows players to make decisions regarding which stats they want higher and which lower. At the same time, I have also never felt that it bogs combat down with too many stats.

3. Fire Emblem games, despite not usually being tabletop RPGs, have a very easy to learn system that is very good at both punishing characters for having serious deficits of any stat and mechanics causing players to want units without perfectly balanced stats. Though too bloated with stats to make a good tabletop game, Fire Emblem is definitely a good game to study if you want to learn how different arithmetic interactions can create interesting dynamics between stats.

D-naras
2014-06-30, 05:13 AM
This is a terrible question to ask in a vacuum, and the phrasing isn't very clear either.

I am asking if you think it's fair for characters in an RPG that have to devote resources to their stats, namely between being strong in the RPG meaning of strong, that is to say something more like a weight-lifter than a gymnast, and being agile in the RPG meaning of agile, which from what I have seen in the few systems that I've tried is someone with fine motor skills, precise movement and speed, should have different results when they attempt to attack the same target in melee.

What I am asking is, should a player that made his character RPG-strong hit less often than an another player's character that was build to be RPG-agile, assuming they both have the same fighting RPG-skills? I am asking about the edge-cases here, not about characters that are equally RPG-strong and RPG-agile. I am specifically asking whether Hodor should hit as often as Inigo Montoya?


I recommend avoiding making one stat the 'God Stat' for fighters - White Wolf games have a bad habit of doing this with dexterity, 'because realism'.

If you're designing your own system from scratch, you can avoid the entire question.

Mutants and Masterminds 3rd ed has a separate 'Fighting' stat that is specifically combat ability, with no connection to Dex or Strength (both of which it also has). The old Marvel Comics RPG did the same thing.

BRP system has a percentile skill system for fighting skills (and just about everything else), with stats being a relatively tiny modifier - a truly amazing strength or dexterity would get you about a +8%, so actual skill was much more important.

How does your system work so far?

You could make a system where you roll d10 for 'Master Swordsman', d6 for 'Cat-like Reflexes', and d8 for 'Strong as an Ox', and just take the highest roll. So all three help, but without being directly additive.


Attacking in my system is handled like any other skill roll. Characters have 4 traits (Strength, Agility, Awareness and Intelligence) ranging from 1 to 10 with 5 being the average. Skills range from 0 to 6. A skill roll consists of rolling 3 d12, re-rolling once any die that resulted equal or less than your rank and keeping the best result, and then a player typically keeps the middle die of the 3 and adds the appropriate trait and skill rank to the total. Instead of modifiers, bonuses upgrade the roll so the players uses the highest die and penalties lower the die kept to the lowest one.

Example: I have 5 Strength and Combat rank 3. I attack and roll 2,3,12. I get to reroll the 2 and 3 because I have 3 ranks in Combat and I end up getting 1 and 12. So my final dice are 2, 12, 12. I use the middle die, which is 12 in this case, and I add my 5 Strength and 3 Combat ranks and get a total of 20.

As you can guess the system is bounded. It's impossible to get a result higher that 28 (12 die, 10 trait, 6 rank) and the average target numbers are 10-13. And there are indeed differences on which trait is used with which weapon. Damage is divorced from any trait or skill (save for getting the equivalent of a critical hit due to a really acurate attack, so in this case Trait and skill do play a role) and is mostly dependent on the weapon used.

So I will expand a bit on my initial question. Should characters that were build for strength be as accurate as character build for dexterity/agility/whatever is the non-strength, non-endurance physical stat, and should they both deal the same amount of damage with the same weapon?

Tengu_temp
2014-06-30, 05:19 AM
I suggest basing the chance of hit on dexterity, not strength, but at the same time make strength important enough for other things to avoid the L5R/Exalted problem of it not actually being very useful for fighting characters.

D-naras
2014-06-30, 05:22 AM
Different stats doing different things is generally good, since it allows characters with different stats to feel appreciably different on the table.
2. Savage Worlds has a system in which 4 out of its 5 stats are important to melee combat, but there are so many ways and reasons to take one stat over the others that it definitely allows players to make decisions regarding which stats they want higher and which lower. At the same time, I have also never felt that it bogs combat down with too many stats.


Oh right, I forgot about Savage Worlds. Its system is neat but way to swingy for my tastes, what with it being mostly 2 dice with maybe a +2 added to the total. The feeling I got when I played it was that the dice are tiny little fickle gods and I am at their mercy. Still it was fun. However it still made no sense to raise Strength unless you really wanted to melee, and since we played Deadlands to specifically fire six-shooters while riding El Cheapo horses, Strength was dumped all around. Meanwhile, the lowest Agility at the table was d8.

Savage Worlds took the focus out of the abilities though. In play it doesn't matter how high your Strength or Agility scores are, but how high your Fighting and Shooting skills are, so that is another way to handle it.

BWR
2014-06-30, 05:29 AM
I'm going to have to come down on the side of Strength. As Frozen-feet and Teapot pointed out, there is a lot of vital stuff to wielding a weapon that is best covered by a strength stat. The ability to move your body and weapon fast and hard, block or deflect the enemy's weapons, power through their defenses, move your weapon back and forth quickly: all these sound very much like Strength to me. Even avoiding fatigue is an aspect of Strength - the stronger you are the less effort you need to keep swinging that weapon around.

Dienekes
2014-06-30, 07:48 AM
For my own admittedly pisspoor attempts at swordsmanship (using longsword), I'd probably give the attack benefit to Strength of the two, assuming Strength is supposed to be explosive quick change power as opposed to max lifting. Most attacks are really just focused around hitting general areas rather than fine areas. However, both are really secondary to skill. I've seen a big guy swing an axe and utterly fail to even dent a Tatami mat because he had no clue how to hold the weapon and his swing was wild.

Though honestly, I would say that D&D has the right of it with Strength and "finesse" Dexterity weapons. I would however make the list of finesse weapons much more expansive, probably include most swords that aren't true Two-handed swords and some obviously dis-proportioned one-handed weapons like a falchion or a broadsword. However, truth be told I've never used either of those weapons for anything beyond a single swing so maybe they're finesse weapons too and I just don't know it.

Segev
2014-06-30, 07:55 AM
First off, thanks for the link to that "pylometrics" concept; it's an interesting one.

Secondly, it doesn't actually matter whether what we think of as agile movement is sourced in some form of strength; as long as what we think of as "hit hard/lift more" is a different kind of strength than that which goes into "move faster/accurate fine motion," then they can be represented by distinct stats.

I would worry first about your game balance in your design. Each of your stats should have a purpose, and, if they cost the same amount of resources to raise, they should be valuable roughly the same amount of time.

NichG
2014-06-30, 08:08 AM
I'm going to take a slightly different tack on this - specifically, I'd say that maybe you should consider designing a system where 'misses' aren't a thing that happens. When you have action choices of fairly limited depth per interval of real time (e.g. playing a fighter in a D&D party where there are some spellcasters/minionmancers/etc) then it really sucks when the main thing you get to do for the next 20-30 minutes has zero effect.

So instead, if one assumes that one always 'hits', but that what a 'hit' does can vary, then maybe the question becomes clearer/more interesting, and it also helps create diverse options for various character archetypes.

Here's a toy example. Characters have two damage tracks - stamina and health. Stamina acts as a gate on actions - that is to say, certain actions cost stamina to perform (or have their performance degraded if there is insufficient stamina). This might include defenses, special attacks, whatever. Stamina recovers quickly between fights but only slowly during a fight. At zero stamina you're unconscious. Health is a literal measure of injury, and you're dead at zero.

An attacker with a 'physical buffness' stat (Str) and a 'nimbleness' stat (Dex) uses both to determine the outcome of an attack. Lets say, because it makes sense to me for this particular system, that the way an attack is performed is by rolling dice pools and counting 'successes' as dice above a certain number. The dice that comprise an attack roll include your Str and your Dex, and different colors of dice are used to track which successes come from which stat.

The simple rule would be, successes on Dex go to health damage (you slip your blow past their defenses and pierce their body), whereas successes on Str go to stamina damage (you bash on them, they catch the blow/deflect it/dodge it in the nick of time, but it tires them out).

The defender gets to, say, subtract dice from your various pools based on their particular defenses. So a dodgy character might subtract dice from your Str pool because they can just not be where your blow lands, and a tough/armored character can subtract from your Dex pool because there are fewer gaps in the armor to exploit. Different weapons might give bonus dice to particular pools (so if you want to use a greatclub with high Dex, you can, though you're sacrificing focus-fire).

So with the right mechanics for stamina, a Str-based character is basically a sort of action-denial/debuffer, and a Dex-based character is a quick rush-to-the-kill character that doesn't weaken the enemy on the way to death. If stamina is easier to regenerate than health, or there are other wrinkles/interactions, then you have to be careful not to make one strategy absolutely dominant, but there's also a lot of opportunity to make various rich interactions between everything as well.

Frozen_Feet
2014-06-30, 09:36 AM
Secondly, it doesn't actually matter whether what we think of as agile movement is sourced in some form of strength; as long as what we think of as "hit hard/lift more" is a different kind of strength than that which goes into "move faster/accurate fine motion," then they can be represented by distinct stats.


My suggestion then would be to make a distinction between size and strenght, as in Runequest or some of my own systems.

Basically: the basis for how much a person can lift is their body weight (in kilograms), while strenght attribute is a modifier on this. Strenght attribute also dictates speed and power, which obviously translate to hitting easier and harder, but also ability to sprint, swim or jump.

In my current skeleton of a system, average strenght is 5, on a scale of 0 to 10. If you're of average strenght, you can lift 1.5 times your body weight off the ground and 0.75 times your body weight above your head. As such, a bigger, heavier character can lift more than a smaller, lighter character while not having any special edge in combat.

Spiryt
2014-06-30, 09:55 AM
As such, a bigger, heavier character can lift more than a smaller, lighter character while not having any special edge in combat.

But that doesn't really make much sense... Objectively, physically, this bigger character can move around more mass, and this matters very much in combat, just as size in general.

Jay R
2014-06-30, 02:54 PM
At least for SCA combat, raw strength does in fact make it easier to hit the opponent. The stronger guy can power through parries and blocks. He can accelerate his sword faster, so it's harder to block. Bodies are often in contact, and he can push my shield arm more easily than I can push his.

There are ways to try to counter that, and I've learned many of them. That is modeled in D&D as experience. But yes, with the same level of experience, the stronger guy does hit more often.

obryn
2014-06-30, 03:03 PM
Death to ability scores!

Don't use stats at all.

D-naras
2014-06-30, 03:36 PM
Death to ability scores!

Don't use stats at all.

Too late for that now! :smalltongue:
I promise you I won't in my next system though :smallbiggrin:

Doug Lampert
2014-06-30, 03:39 PM
Death to ability scores!

Don't use stats at all.

Oh, stats are fine for some things, just don't let them impact a character's main combat shtick or defenses at all. Defaulting secondary skills off them is fine and results in more coherent characters.

But for level based systems if level is supposed to mean power, then all having a fighter's weapon ability depend on a particular attribute other than class and level accomplishes is to pointlessly limit the space of potentially useful characters and to defeat the purpose of level as giving a reasonable idea of power.

A level 10 fighter has learned a technique that uses his attributes to give level 10 fighting ability. Maybe that uses speed and agility, maybe it's bashing through defenses, maybe its being so clever that the other guy is always facing into the sun and otherwise handicapped by environmental factors not specifically represented in game. But he's a level 10 fighter, he knows how to use what he's got.

IME attributes contributing to combat skills is even worse in point based systems, as the need to synergy stack and calculate the best point allocation usually winds up with single (non-obvious) optimal builds that people waste time and effort coming up with. And it defeats the customization ability that a point based system is supposed to be giving me.

Unless you actively WANT the character creation mini-game to determine combat effectiveness there's no reason combat effectiveness should be derived from anything but points spent directly on combat abilities or on your class and level in a D&D type game.

Knaight
2014-06-30, 04:11 PM
Unless you actively WANT the character creation mini-game to determine combat effectiveness there's no reason combat effectiveness should be derived from anything but points spent directly on combat abilities or on your class and level in a D&D type game.

If combat effectiveness is one of those peripheral secondary skills, I'd disagree with this. There are also cases where they can work for specialization and such. That said, having direct combat stats in a combat focused game is a very valid way to handle things.

Millennium
2014-06-30, 07:13 PM
Keep in mind that although most systems talk about attacks in terms of "hitting" and "missing", that's not actually what they're modeling. Systems like D&D actually model whether the attack was able to harm the opponent in some significant way: a "miss" could just as easily be glancing off the opponent's armor, for example. In systems like these, it makes sense for a physically buff character to hit as often as a nimble one, because the attack roll is actually trying to model many different factors at once. In the end it works out, but in very different ways for different characters. As a DM, you'll never even see most of them, because they take place in your players' minds.

If your system wants to get more detailed about how combat works, then this may not make sense for it, and that's OK. If we're going into the grit of the problem, then it makes total sense for nimble characters to hit more often than harder ones. However, it likewise makes sense for buff characters to hit harder, and you'll need a way of modeling this as well. It also makes sense for smart characters to time their strikes at just the right moments, but is it better to model that as more accurate hits (looking for openings) or more damage (hitting in the right places)? These are the sorts of questions that make designers throw their hands up and go for broader, more simplified models, but if your goal is to be more detailed, then these are things to think about.

Slipperychicken
2014-06-30, 07:44 PM
Being quick and hitting hard are very closely linked. Speed is power, after all.

Perhaps both should contribute to hitting harder. Mass (muscle) without speed or accuracy won't cause much damage, and speed is useless without mass behind it.

This is one reason I like Shadowrun's system: Its "speed stat" (agility) improves tohit rolls (exceeding the target's defense roll by a wider margin adds damage), while Strength adds to damage, but not tohit. Both are needed to make effective melee attacks*.


*Unless you're using a monofilament whip. In which case get to cut your own leg off by accident.

NichG
2014-06-30, 08:22 PM
IME attributes contributing to combat skills is even worse in point based systems, as the need to synergy stack and calculate the best point allocation usually winds up with single (non-obvious) optimal builds that people waste time and effort coming up with. And it defeats the customization ability that a point based system is supposed to be giving me.

Unless you actively WANT the character creation mini-game to determine combat effectiveness there's no reason combat effectiveness should be derived from anything but points spent directly on combat abilities or on your class and level in a D&D type game.

There's a difference here between making the stats/attributes conspire numerically to create an optimum, and with the (better design) of stats/attributes each providing effects which are 'incomparable' to each-other. The complexity of a tactically/strategically rich game comes from tradeoffs between things which do not have an easily determined mathematical relationship to eachother - that is to say, things which are mathematically incomparable. An example would be movement speed versus damage output. So as long as you have attributes contributing to combat skills in a way that the contributions are all on different axes and do not mathematically boil down to all just changing a single thing (e.g. damage output), then you can still have a lot of customization and you don't need to 'synergy stack' in the way you're talking about.

The question then becomes, what's the right set of incomparables for melee combat?

Zanos
2014-06-30, 09:27 PM
I'd just like to interject that while Strength to Hit in 3.5 may seem nonsensical, things like naturally tough skin(natural armor) and actual armor add to AC, rather than giving you some form of damage reduction. Your to-hit roll is partially a measure of your ability to penetrate these things, rather than the person dodging you.

The abstraction does fall apart when a 60 str 6 dex guy can hit someone with 30 dex and no armor basically all the time, but in order to change it you have to make considerable changes to the abstraction that make it over-complicated for a game.

If you're aiming for a simulation, both strength and dexterity are important for hitting someone with a weapon.

Slipperychicken
2014-06-30, 11:01 PM
The question then becomes, what's the right set of incomparables for melee combat?

You could have incomparables in the form of non-melee stuff too. You might be able to bisect a mecha with your karate chop, but that means taking resources away from your durability and speed, so you get killed before you can close the distance.

The setting can also serve to balance it out. Guns might be awesome for killing people, but they're really conspicuous, noisy, leave behind evidence, and are likely to get the cops on your tail. Or a minmaxed murderhobo might have a tough time getting things done, since he needs non-murder skills to both find/reach his targets in the first place, and to negotiate bounties.

NichG
2014-07-01, 03:07 AM
You could have incomparables in the form of non-melee stuff too. You might be able to bisect a mecha with your karate chop, but that means taking resources away from your durability and speed, so you get killed before you can close the distance.


I agree, though the original question was about melee combat and two stats which traditionally both contributed to melee combat in a not-incomparable fashion. I do think that if a given option makes you incapable of feasibly concluding the combat, its not really incomparable in the sense of avoiding the existence of strong optima. So this is ground where you have to be pretty careful (e.g. a choice that lets you trade away 50% of your damage output for something else is probably letting you trade away too much)



The setting can also serve to balance it out. Guns might be awesome for killing people, but they're really conspicuous, noisy, leave behind evidence, and are likely to get the cops on your tail. Or a minmaxed murderhobo might have a tough time getting things done, since he needs non-murder skills to both find/reach his targets in the first place, and to negotiate bounties.

I'm less sanguine about this sort of balance. In practice I find this kind of thing breaks down because its so dependent on the gaming style of the table and particularly how willing the DM is to introduce things that derail the game, or allow the game to stagnate in order to properly penalize people who did not take the necessary skills. That can basically encourage/force the DM to decide between a nicety of game balance and making the game run smoothly and in an enjoyable fashion. Its similar to the issue with a skill like e.g. 'Open Locks' - it makes sense in the simulation point of view, but it has a tendency to interrupt the flow of the game (okay, theres a locked door - does the party have the necessary skill level or not? Did the DM mess up and not put a way for things to continue if the party doesn't? If there is always a way to continue, is the investment in Open Locks still meaningful? etc).

Frozen_Feet
2014-07-01, 07:36 AM
But that doesn't really make much sense... Objectively, physically, this bigger character can move around more mass, and this matters very much in combat, just as size in general.

Most of that is covered by the lifting rules I mentioned, ie. moving around more mass. :smallwink: Old editions of Runequest also gave bonuses to damage and health for size, which captures all you're referring to and more. But if we look at it from the viewpoint of physics and biomechanics, it's not as straight-forward as you think.

Force of impact scaler linearly with mass, but quadratically with speed.

However, as you increase in mass, your body will have to do more work to accelerate and move at the same speeds. As you grow in size, only portion of your mass is functional muscle. Some will be blood, fat, bone etc.. This means that as you grow, you have to gain muscle in fairly specific proportion to other tissue if you don't want to loose speed. Losing speed means the overall force of your strikes will not improve, while hitting your opponent might actually become harder.

It is hence more than possible to get bigger without actually being better in striking martial arts. This is why my rules are how they are. It is related to square-cube law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law), and essentially means a heavier character with the same strenght score is slightly weaker in relative terms than a smaller character.

Morty
2014-07-01, 08:19 AM
Assuming that a system uses "strength" and "dexterity" as RPGs usually define them, a character who wants to effectively fight with weapons should need both. I could see, perhaps in a less than realistic system, it working on a scale - you can focus solely on one attribute or use a bit of both.

Airk
2014-07-01, 08:23 AM
Assuming that a system uses "strength" and "dexterity" as RPGs usually define them, a character who wants to effectively fight with weapons should need both. I could see, perhaps in a less than realistic system, it working on a scale - you can focus solely on one attribute or use a bit of both.

The quick answer to this 'quandary' is to have BOTH add bonuses. Equal bonuses.

Therefore a "really strong guy with average dexterity" and a "really dextrous guy with average strength" would be exactly the same, and both inferior to someone who was really good at both. (And depending on how the system works, probably inferior to someone who is pretty good at both.)

Segev
2014-07-01, 10:26 AM
Keep in mind that although most systems talk about attacks in terms of "hitting" and "missing", that's not actually what they're modeling. Systems like D&D actually model whether the attack was able to harm the opponent in some significant way: a "miss" could just as easily be glancing off the opponent's armor, for example.

Ironically, a "hit" isn't necessarily even really modelling physical damage being done. Just as a "miss" might really be a blow glancing off of armor, a "hit" might be a really close call that was only avoided by expending finite reserves of energy, luck, and focus. Hit points in D&D represent more than just physical integrity of the corpus. They represent ability to keep functioning in the face of extreme hazards. The dragon that does 90 hp of damage to the level 20 fighter, who is still fine and ready for his own turn to attack, may have merely grazed him, physically, but only because the fighter used supreme skill and effort to deflect and mitigate the blow just right. He can only do this so often before real serious damage is done.

That same 90-hp attack would utterly destroy a level 1 fighter because he hasn't got the capacity to minimize the actual damage it does; he takes it to the face and expires.

Frozen_Feet
2014-07-01, 10:47 AM
The quick answer to this 'quandary' is to have BOTH add bonuses. Equal bonuses.

Therefore a "really strong guy with average dexterity" and a "really dextrous guy with average strength" would be exactly the same, and both inferior to someone who was really good at both. (And depending on how the system works, probably inferior to someone who is pretty good at both.)

In a point-buy system, this also allows a jack-of-all-trades to remain viable. Eg. having Str 6 & Dex 2 will let you shine in Str related stuff, and 2 Str & Dex 6 in Dex related stuff, but at least Str 4 & Dex 4 will be as good in combat.

Morty
2014-07-01, 11:15 AM
Ideally, they would be equal in terms of raw, basic numbers but differ in terms of the specific combat actions they can perform.

Doug Lampert
2014-07-01, 11:29 AM
Ideally, they would be equal in terms of raw, basic numbers but differ in terms of the specific combat actions they can perform.

If ideally they're equal in terms of raw basic numbers then why have the attributes contribute to those numbers at all?

The easiest way to make all level 10 fighters have the same basic numbers is to make those numbers be based on the fact that he's a level 10 fighter.

Then let base movement speed and initiative be based on dex, carrying capacity and speed in heavy armor on strength, situational awareness on wisdom, healing up after battle and avoiding long term penalties from "major wounds" be based on constitution, knowing your enemy's weaknesses on int, and bluffing or intimidating the foe into not fighting at all on charisma.

The multiple axes/different stuff/not numerically comparable stuff is all FAR EASIER once you've divorced the basic combat numbers from attributes.

draken50
2014-07-01, 11:48 AM
Strength is an absolute benefit for basically any physical activity. As people have pointed out, gymnasts and the like are often very strong. Strength obviously benefits gross motor skills, and is tremendously beneficial to fine motor skills that have been trained. So just plain swinging an axe is a gross motor skill. Using technique with an axe to cut better, is a fine motor skill. Over use of strength ruins technique, but training allows strength to be used properly.

Dexterity I tend to see as the ability to perform fine motor skill actions, and the baseline a person has with those. This can be confusing as additional training/experience can make up for being... say poorly coordinated. Dancing requires fine motor skills to do well, as would gymnastics. I see throwing and shooting a bow to be similar in manner in that they are for the most part trained skills, but that people have a baseline of ability when they start. Sometimes you'll hand a bow to a natural shooter, and they'll shoot better than many people do when just starting. Are they better than someone who has been shooting for years? Not likely, bu they have a more natural control.

I'd think that Strength should benefit chances to hit in melee, as well as damage. Extra muscle tends to help protect against injury as well, and that could be considered.

Dexterity, I would have provide smaller bonuses to hit and damage, but be beneficial to avoiding damage.
Really though I think raw dexterity benefits should be completely replaceable by training. Folks with more dexterity should be a bit more able, and possibly learn faster, but with training (i.e. Feats,skills ect) a lower dexterity character should be pretty close.

When it comes to dexterity, I tend to think in terms of fighting a pissed off hippopotamus. It's big and dumb and doesn't "train to fight" but I wouldn't been on someone beating a full grown one hand to hand, because it's big and strong. As you give both the person and the hippo weapons the person has more of a chance, as the hippo doesn't really use weapons, but even as you look at firearms, the hippo being big and strong still gives it a pretty good chance.

Ultimately, the fantasy of being a crazy ninja that could flip past the hippo and kill it with a single kunai or tanto is great, just in my mind that's less not a character that is jut Dexterious. That's a character that has trained a huge amount.

sktarq
2014-07-01, 12:38 PM
Well strength would obviously help with some things-like moving a large heavy weapon around (so perhaps a min str score to use something like a maul, claymore, or great axe), it is also very useful in getting any weapon to punch through armor-which could be some kind of hit bonus or something else depending on how your armor system works-also the more force that the weapon has the more damage it does.
dex is about bringing a moving object (the weapon) in contact with another moving object (the target) but wouldn't help in getting through armor and would only help with damage when it is high enough to target more vulnerable places - so perhaps a critical like effect.
agility is and dex may wish to be separated by the way. A locksmith, or model maker could be useless on a narrow bridge and an acrobat may well be useless in chopping veg - they are different kinds of muscle control.

obryn
2014-07-01, 12:43 PM
If ideally they're equal in terms of raw basic numbers then why have the attributes contribute to those numbers at all?

The easiest way to make all level 10 fighters have the same basic numbers is to make those numbers be based on the fact that he's a level 10 fighter.

Then let base movement speed and initiative be based on dex, carrying capacity and speed in heavy armor on strength, situational awareness on wisdom, healing up after battle and avoiding long term penalties from "major wounds" be based on constitution, knowing your enemy's weaknesses on int, and bluffing or intimidating the foe into not fighting at all on charisma.

The multiple axes/different stuff/not numerically comparable stuff is all FAR EASIER once you've divorced the basic combat numbers from attributes.
:golf claps: all over. That's DTAS, precisely.

Jay R
2014-07-01, 09:53 PM
If ideally they're equal in terms of raw basic numbers then why have the attributes contribute to those numbers at all?

Because they do. That's not a game decision that we chose; it's a fact that we observed. Strong, dextrous people can fight better than weak, clumsy people at the same level of experience.

NichG
2014-07-02, 05:22 AM
Because they do. That's not a game decision that we chose; it's a fact that we observed. Strong, dextrous people can fight better than weak, clumsy people at the same level of experience.

This isn't actually a good reason to build the game in that fashion though. Realism can be a good inspiration, but its easy to forget that no matter what you do you're always making abstractions (even if you're playing FATAL), so it makes sense to choose the abstractions that make for the best game.

Spiryt
2014-07-02, 05:57 AM
Force of impact scaler linearly with mass, but quadratically with speed.

Well, energy, more preciselly, and:

However, as you increase in mass, your body will have to do more work to accelerate and move at the same speeds. As you grow in size, only portion of your mass is functional muscle. Some will be blood, fat, bone etc.. This means that as you grow, you have to gain muscle in fairly specific proportion to other tissue if you don't want to loose speed. Losing speed means the overall force of your strikes will not improve, while hitting your opponent might actually become harder.

It is hence more than possible to get bigger without actually being better in striking martial arts. This is why my rules are how they are. It is related to square-cube law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law), and essentially means a heavier character with the same strenght score is slightly weaker in relative terms than a smaller character.

Well, 'speed gain' only goes so far, especially as far as strikes go.
There's nothing really indicating that 'maximal speed' of smaller people will be much greater, after all many speed athletes are pretty big. Smaller bodies will change direction, accelerate and decelerate quicker, instead.

All other factors of impact will be more important. Size of bones will matter a lot, especially with striking witout any weapon.

Spore
2014-07-02, 06:21 AM
Then let base movement speed and initiative be based on dex, carrying capacity and speed in heavy armor on strength, situational awareness on wisdom, healing up after battle and avoiding long term penalties from "major wounds" be based on constitution, knowing your enemy's weaknesses on int, and bluffing or intimidating the foe into not fighting at all on charisma.

Isn't this DSA (the dark eye) in a nutshell? Works like a charm on the computer and is a pain to play at the table. 6d20 rolls for every combat attack. With calculating six stats to it depending on what you do.

Frozen_Feet
2014-07-02, 07:54 AM
Well, 'speed gain' only goes so far, especially as far as strikes go.
There's nothing really indicating that 'maximal speed' of smaller people will be much greater, after all many speed athletes are pretty big. Smaller bodies will change direction, accelerate and decelerate quicker, instead.

... and in combat, advantage of being able to change direction, accelerate and decelarate faster mostly nullifies the disadvantage of having less mass when it comes to proportionately strong people. Those "big, speedy athletes" fall to the group of people who specifically train to get muscle in right proportion to get faster. Even then, if you had a smaller person with same proportion of muscle, the smaller person would be as fast or faster.

There is a cut-off point where this ceases to be true, due to square-cube-law and other scaling factors of biomechanics. Afterall, efficiency of human muscles can't improve infinitely and in adult humans other tissue will take up a fairly set volume of space, so there's a point where you have to get bigger in order to fit that new muscle somewhere, whether you want to be stronger or faster. The problem is similar to trying to fit a new engine to an old frame.


All other factors of impact will be more important. Size of bones will matter a lot, especially with striking witout any weapon.

Quality of those bones matters much more. Size is relevant mostly because it directly affects that.

neonchameleon
2014-07-02, 08:22 AM
I am designing my own system and after playtesting it yesterday the following question came up. Should strong characters hit as often as agile characters in melee? Should a character's strength or agility matter on attacks and damage rolls?

How do different systems handle this? We all know how DnD does it. L5R makes Agility a must for warriors since it pretty much defines your chance to hit and Strength is secondary at most and only factors in *small* damage bonuses. nWoD ties the attack to the damage roll. M&M using a totally different stat for melee attack rolls and strength for damage.

I personally think that both should do the same when it comes to attacking and damage. It opens up way more character concepts and minimizes the minmaxing need in some of us.

What do you think?

What are you trying to do?

For realism strength matters more than dexterity. Strength quite literally is speed with your weapon and gymnasts and acrobats are all pretty strong. Skill and training matters more than either, and as well as enabling you to actually control how fast you can change the momentum of a weighted bit of steel, strength allows you to power through defences. Plus, unless you separate manual dexterity and agility there's a vast amount wrapped up in the dexterity stat.

In fact that's always been a problem with Dex - it's overloaded because it works for both Agility and Manual Dexterity. And the game never takes into account how big a component of practical agility strength is, crippling it.

For gameplay why do we need to even ask any of this?


Because they do. That's not a game decision that we chose; it's a fact that we observed. Strong, dextrous people can fight better than weak, clumsy people at the same level of experience.

Yes, but what goes where? And why don't we just jump to fighting ability?

Jay R
2014-07-02, 08:45 AM
This isn't actually a good reason to build the game in that fashion though. Realism can be a good inspiration, but its easy to forget that no matter what you do you're always making abstractions (even if you're playing FATAL), so it makes sense to choose the abstractions that make for the best game.

"[T]he abstractions that make for the best game" is begging the questions. We are debating what abstractions make the best game.

In mathematical simulations, the goal is to simplify what can be simplified without losing relevant information. But if the simulation creates incorrect results, then it has failed of its purpose. So you need to choose abstractions from within the options that simulate what you're trying to simulate.

I can see a game system that ignores strength and dexterity entirely. It would simulate effects, but not by modeling their causes. But if it includes strength and dexterity, then they should act like strength and dexterity.

If your system allows low-strength characters to carry more than high-strength characters, then it isn't merely "an abstraction that makes the best game". It's not an abstraction at all; it's a mistake.

If your system requires a character to have high dexterity to be able to solve equations, then your system's simulations are simply wrong - as wrong the the original D&D's mistake of having Chaotic characters be inherently evil.

And yes, if your system has weak, awkward people who fight exactly as well as strong, deft people on identical training and experience, then it's also wrong.

Just as wrong as using a sword to throw a missile and a bow to do slashing damage.

Frozen_Feet
2014-07-02, 08:52 AM
... a bow can easily do slashing damage, as your fingers will testify if you fumble around with the bowstring. Also, if you use the right kind of arrow. Though most of the time, if your arrow is dealing slashing damage, it means you somewhat missed what you were aiming for. :smalltongue:

Morty
2014-07-02, 09:28 AM
In fact that's always been a problem with Dex - it's overloaded because it works for both Agility and Manual Dexterity. And the game never takes into account how big a component of practical agility strength is, crippling it.


Sometimes it even covers reflexes and quickness of reaction, like with Reflex saves in D&D.

I3igAl
2014-07-02, 01:35 PM
I personally think that both should do the same when it comes to attacking and damage. It opens up way more character concepts and minimizes the minmaxing need in some of us.

What do you think?

I think that's a good idea. You also have to consider, what your design goal is. Do you want simulationism or do you want balance and options?

You could also assign certain weapons to certain stats.

Fencing Weapons = Dexterity
Two-Handed = Strength

etc.

D-naras
2014-07-03, 07:55 AM
I think that's a good idea. You also have to consider, what your design goal is. Do you want simulationism or do you want balance and options?

You could also assign certain weapons to certain stats.

Fencing Weapons = Dexterity
Two-Handed = Strength

etc.

For now weapons are divided like this: Heavy weapons like axes, clubs and maces, regardless of size, use strength for attack rolls. Daggers, rapiers and similiar weapons use agility. Swords, spears, staffs and other more versatile weapons use whichever trait is better for the character.

Knaight
2014-07-04, 05:57 PM
And yes, if your system has weak, awkward people who fight exactly as well as strong, deft people on identical training and experience, then it's also wrong.

Just as wrong as using a sword to throw a missile and a bow to do slashing damage.

This assumes that identical class/level combinations represent identical training and experience, and not identical effectiveness. If it's actually effectiveness involved, then there's an obvious solution - the weaker and less dextrous are more apt. Maybe they're capable of more aggression when necessary, maybe they're better at more technical aspects, maybe they're actually faster and more coordinated within the specific sphere of fighting by dint of experience. Regardless, the skills end up even. That model is completely fine.

Incanur
2014-07-04, 08:24 PM
As touching the knowing of them by their phisnomie, that are fit to beare armes, that shall be left vnto those that haue no experience of the warres, for it will suffice the others that haue experience, to looke that they haue sound limmes: and whether they bee reputed to bee honest men in the townes and villages where they are taken vp. The best tokens to knowe them by, that are fittest for this occupation, are liuely and quicke eyes, straight headded, high breasted, large shoulders, long armes, strong fingers, little bellied, great thighes, slender legges, and drie feete; all which poynts are comely in any man who so might finde them ordinarily: because he that is so shaped, cannot fayle to be nimble and strong; which are two qualities to bee greatly required in all good souldiers

So yeah, strength and nimbleness are both key.

Sartharina
2014-07-04, 08:36 PM
First off, thanks for the link to that "pylometrics" concept; it's an interesting one.

Secondly, it doesn't actually matter whether what we think of as agile movement is sourced in some form of strength; as long as what we think of as "hit hard/lift more" is a different kind of strength than that which goes into "move faster/accurate fine motion," then they can be represented by distinct stats.

I would worry first about your game balance in your design. Each of your stats should have a purpose, and, if they cost the same amount of resources to raise, they should be valuable roughly the same amount of time.

One of the problems is that "Hit Hard" and "Move Faster" are more closely linked than "Hit Hard/Lift more" or "Move Faster/Accurate fine motion". F=MA.

SiuiS
2014-07-06, 02:19 PM
:golf claps: all over. That's DTAS, precisely.

What's that?


One of the problems is that "Hit Hard" and "Move Faster" are more closely linked than "Hit Hard/Lift more" or "Move Faster/Accurate fine motion". F=MA.

Aye. The trick is to make "Combat skill" a skill, not a bunch off aggregate bonuses. Give people a Combat stat; let the combat stat apply to combat.

Otherwise, literally every attribute on the dnd list applies in combat to some degree, even comeliness.

Sartharina
2014-07-06, 02:50 PM
I wish there were more ways to have Comeliness apply to combat positively, so that we can get awesome battles like the ones in the 300 movies instead of just a bunch of tin cans bashing against each other.

Slipperychicken
2014-07-06, 03:06 PM
I wish there were more ways to have Comeliness apply to combat positively, so that we can get awesome battles like the ones in the 300 movies instead of just a bunch of tin cans bashing against each other.

That could be pretty good.

http://i.imgur.com/073w5e2.jpg

sktarq
2014-07-06, 04:22 PM
I wish there were more ways to have Comeliness apply to combat positively, so that we can get awesome battles like the ones in the 300 movies instead of just a bunch of tin cans bashing against each other.
I'm sure there is a feat for that somewhere. But it would be highly optional..It would piss off as many people who would find it acceptable.

Fiery Diamond
2014-07-07, 03:06 PM
Ironically, a "hit" isn't necessarily even really modelling physical damage being done. Just as a "miss" might really be a blow glancing off of armor, a "hit" might be a really close call that was only avoided by expending finite reserves of energy, luck, and focus. Hit points in D&D represent more than just physical integrity of the corpus. They represent ability to keep functioning in the face of extreme hazards. The dragon that does 90 hp of damage to the level 20 fighter, who is still fine and ready for his own turn to attack, may have merely grazed him, physically, but only because the fighter used supreme skill and effort to deflect and mitigate the blow just right. He can only do this so often before real serious damage is done.

That same 90-hp attack would utterly destroy a level 1 fighter because he hasn't got the capacity to minimize the actual damage it does; he takes it to the face and expires.

I've never been particularly fond of this explanation. I much prefer the anime-esque "A level one fighter take a blade to the gut and dies. A level 20 fighter takes a blade to the gut and proceeds to bisect you before pulling it out." Or, the kind of deal where an explosion levels a building but when the smoke clears the badass is just standing there, maybe a little scratched up, ready to pummel the guy who caused the explosion.

Which leads me to:


"[T]he abstractions that make for the best game" is begging the questions. We are debating what abstractions make the best game.

In mathematical simulations, the goal is to simplify what can be simplified without losing relevant information. But if the simulation creates incorrect results, then it has failed of its purpose. So you need to choose abstractions from within the options that simulate what you're trying to simulate.

I can see a game system that ignores strength and dexterity entirely. It would simulate effects, but not by modeling their causes. But if it includes strength and dexterity, then they should act like strength and dexterity.

If your system allows low-strength characters to carry more than high-strength characters, then it isn't merely "an abstraction that makes the best game". It's not an abstraction at all; it's a mistake.

If your system requires a character to have high dexterity to be able to solve equations, then your system's simulations are simply wrong - as wrong the the original D&D's mistake of having Chaotic characters be inherently evil.

And yes, if your system has weak, awkward people who fight exactly as well as strong, deft people on identical training and experience, then it's also wrong.

Just as wrong as using a sword to throw a missile and a bow to do slashing damage.

This approach assumes that the model you're attempting to simulate is reality. It doesn't have to be. @#$% realism. Also, this:


This assumes that identical class/level combinations represent identical training and experience, and not identical effectiveness. If it's actually effectiveness involved, then there's an obvious solution - the weaker and less dextrous are more apt. Maybe they're capable of more aggression when necessary, maybe they're better at more technical aspects, maybe they're actually faster and more coordinated within the specific sphere of fighting by dint of experience. Regardless, the skills end up even. That model is completely fine.

which is another good point.