Strength and dexterity in RPGs

[Damned Registrations]

You might be able to imagine a better RPG fighting system if you step away from bad RPG tropes and imagine a game-world where people have regular people strength and fight bears with specialized hunting weapons and don't fence them.

Ah yes, your superior RPG system that can't take strength into account at all because you made stupid assumptions about the players and setting. "Excuse me Sir Druid, kindly command your bear to stand down while we prepare our specialized hunting equipment (apparently nobody ever killed one with a spear, or that uses entirely different rules?); the very universe itself cannot comprehend me trying to fight it with a sword."

Maybe a good RPG system is one that is general purpose and takes into account the widest variety of scenarios without a ton of niche systems that will rarely be used?

 

[Lhynn]

Physical power is very useful, maybe not as much in damage terms as in everything else that happens in a fight. and we arent talking mere 10%s, we are talking doubling or tripling your chances of success. It matters in defense, it matters in maneuvrability, it matters in precision, it matters in speed, it matters in offense, when it comes to facilitating the strike, it matters in endurance, it matters even in mobility.

Its NOT a balanced stat, its the single most important thing on the equation, and to make up for it you have to train years and learn a lot of shit, and you are still in disadvantage compared to someone that did the same but is stronger than you. Technique actually multiplies the impact your strength has, it doesnt replace it. There are other advantages like good eyesight, great eye-hand coordination, great reflexes, but these dont matter if you got overpowered and are unable to act.

Nothing is absolute of course, but you only need to look at sports to get an idea of how important it is. Sports that mostly eliminate the need for strength because of rules exist for a reason.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Early MMA/UFC is not boxing: the specific sphere at hand in relation to which you made a laughable statement.

An argument can be made that strength and size are MORE important in MMA, since on top of having strikes as in boxing, it also has grappling.

Heavyweight boxers are not slow and unskilled: that is a misconception made by ignoramuses (big = slow, clumsy & dumb: it's bullshit). A pro heavyweight is just as skilled as a pro middleweight; they work just as hard on their technique and don't gas out like ppl think. A middleweight would stand no chance, all things being equal.

They are skilled compared to you and I of course, but as someone who follows boxing, I can tell you there is a huge deficit of talent in the heavyweight division these days. When was the last time you had a great heavyweight boxing fight that people were excited about? You probably have to go back to the 90s at least. So you do have slow, plodding guys with limited skills (most of them) or guys with a lot of skill (Klitchkos) but very little natural talent. So while I am not saying a middleweight is guaranteed to win, I think under the right circumstances, a good middleweight certainly can win against some of those guys. We don't have any exact evidence since boxing doesn't allow those kinds of fights, but look at Roy Jones Jr, who fought most of his career at middleweight, then once he got older, became a light heavyweight champion, and then fought Ruiz and won the heavyweight title. He did bulk up for that, but he was still 33 pounds lighter than Ruiz during their fight and won. And this is a guy who is older and slower (due to extra weight) from his best days. So why do you think he would automatically lose if he was say 170 or so instead of 193?

So you found one example of a 180 dominating a few fat slobs in another discipline: big deal, it's not boxing. And it's not Tyson, Foreman or Frazier. I think Tyson's death gaze alone would make a baby faced middleweight quake at the knees.

Oh, it's more than one. Google the images for the following people Royce Gracie defeated and you will see why your fat slobs comment made me smile:

Ken Shamrock
Dan Severn
Kimo Leopoldo

Especially since early UFC included MacFitness Karate Teachers out of Buttfuck Alabama without any proveable record.
Early Pride & UFC included literal Jokes, yes like those Sumos are perfect examples of Strength and not FAT....

See my response above. Ken Shamrock was an accomplished Pancrase/MMA fighter at the time, Dan Severn was an accomplished wrestler, and so on. And sumo wrestlers are actually very strong, do you think you can push other 500 pound men around with fat?

Maybe a good RPG system is one that is general purpose and takes into account the widest variety of scenarios without a ton of niche systems that will rarely be used?

If you try to make a very general system, it leads to silly results, like what we have today with most RPG systems. People slowly poking dragons to death with tiny swords and spears that would be like needles to a dragon and other stuff like that. Imagine how silly it would look if you saw something like that in a movie. Wouldn't it be better to have a system that distinguishes between common humanoid encounters, common animal encounters (hunting) and special monsters that require other means?

Physical power is very useful, maybe not as much in damage terms as in everything else that happens in a fight. and we arent talking mere 10%s, we are talking doubling or tripling your chances of success.

Well, I understand you not wanting to take my word for it, I am just another forum poster, but you have people who practice this stuff all the time like the video earlier in the thread from Skallagrim, or Scholagladitoria, or lindybeige all telling you strength doesn't matter that much in weapon fighting, but you persist in your opinions. Ok, to each their own.

 

[Lhynn]

Well, I understand you not wanting to take my word for it, I am just another forum poster, but you have people who practice this stuff all the time like the video earlier in the thread from Skallagrim, or Scholagladitoria, or lindybeige all telling you strength doesn't matter that much in weapon fighting, but you persist in your opinions. Ok, to each their own.

He said strenght doesnt matter much when swinging a sword, which is true. To kill someone you dont need much power, to get to that point you do.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Wouldn't it be better to have a system that distinguishes between common humanoid encounters, common animal encounters (hunting) and special monsters that require other means?

No, because then you've only spent 1/3rd as much time balancing and developing each system (or more likely 1/10th as much time on a couple of them and 4/5th on the main one), and you'll end up with something incredibly retarded like a guy that can kill a wild boar with a sling because he's got surprise and he's upwind or whatever stupid shit seemed like a good idea when you were cramming in your stupid hunting system that never got tested. Hell, I'll even give you an actual example: Fallout 2's retarded locational damage that made the only logical choice for any encounter ever to go for the eyes. Bare hands? Punch the eyes! Sniper rifle? Eyes! Knife? Eyes! Legs? Fuck no! Irrelevant anatomy! EYES ONLY. Maybe if they didn't bother with that shit they could have polished some other things.

But no, keep raging at infinity engine games for not giving you some awshum cutscene when you attack a dragon where the isometric stuff fades out and you get to see the rogue climbing up the dragon's body to stab it in the neck or cut a tendon or gouge an eye. God forbid they abstract any of that. Please, remove 90% of the content from the game so midget man here can feel cool when he attacks a big tough dragon.

 

[Kutulu]

See my response above. Ken Shamrock was an accomplished Pancrase/MMA fighter at the time, Dan Severn was an accomplished wrestler, and so on. And sumo wrestlers are actually very strong, do you think you can push other 500 pound men around with fat?

Did anyone and i mean ANYONE say that strength is the sole deciding factor? I dont.... You just seem to underplay it when it comes to hand-to-hand combat.
Do you consider Severn or Shamrock small or nimble? They are both 80KG, 180+cm guys... and so was Royce at the time. Thats like "insert meme here" above
average everywhere.
Do you honestly want to say that Akebono isnt a joke? He was just there to entertain the Japanese audience just like the giant black Football Player.

 

[DraQ]

Yeah but I'm just trying to draw a comparison of str alone here. Using DnD, you'd get something along the lines of this for an average character's stats: 14, 12, 10, 10, 10, 8, with their best scores in appropriate places. So heres average people:

8 Str - scribes, mages, noblemen, wealthy merchants, etc. People who never need to lift anything.
10 str - poor merchants, craftsmen, couriers, etc. Average people. Soldiers with both con and dex above str go here too (Probably a safe bet for most of them, especially those carrying crossbows.)
12 str - farmers, blacksmiths, soldiers with more con or dex
14 str - soldiers wielding particularly heavy weapons like halberds, pikes, zweihanders (yes 7 lbs is hard to lift when it's center of gravity is 5 feet away from yours dumbass), dudes who specialized in lifting heavy shit or otherwise using strength exclusively, like loading seige weapons, hauling a rikshaw, carrying all your shit, etc.
16 str - a local freak, biggest dude in the village, elite guards and gladiators and the like.
18 str - someone so strong they are worthy of being world renowned, you'd expect such a person to be famous for their strength alone. This is where the Mountain is.
20 str - literally beyond natural human limits. The kind of person that remains famous long after dying. Now we're talking Conan or Captain America.

There should be somewhat diminished returns from attribute scores above certain level.
After you get somewhat high-ish score in your primary attribute further increases should be no more desirable than increases of any of your remaining attributes, they should just give you different advantages.

If you're a wizard then you've got to be smart to be able to rely on your wizardry, but after that you shouldn't benefit more from being a supergenius than you would from being able to wear a breastplate to mitigate that big bullseye painted on your chest without wheezing yourself to death, being able to carry more ingredients, defend yourself with a sword or having a way with people.

along with a decent damage bonus which is mostly overkill for decent weapons anyways, unless you're fighting something unreasonably tough like a bear or something (please, tell me more about how strength doesn't matter because fencing bears will deflect blows and not resist anything.)

Get rid of derpy HP inflation and then we'll talk.

I agree with this. But lets not forget just how many ants it would take to bring down a dragon. Sometimes numbers simply dont matter.

Except you're not going to advance from ant to a dragon. You'll at best advance from ant to a lvl20 ant with kickass gear.

OTOH...

Why not? I think that gameplay evolving from having to take precautions and setting up plans to simply being able to face a threat head on is cool. There will always be other threats.

...here you have your ants VS dragon in full force. So "why not?" - because ants.

You might technically be able to match or outlevel any playable race character given enough time and scope (realistically you should probably never *have* enough time and scope to match for example a millennium old wizard), but that's it. So a party of six may be able to get to a point where it could at least have a fair chance at tackling any group of six playable race characters in fair combat. Trying to do the same with either an army of even much weaker characters or a single outclassing foe? Splat.

TINYNESS TRANSLATES INTO FUCKING NOTHING POSITIVE IN COMBAT.

If hobbits existed in any time period that is not now they would be the funny little sex & gardening slave race, because
you picked the shortest straw if you are midget when it comes to fighting.

Tinyness is pretty good for hiding, though.

And if you were born a tiny fucking rat thing then you'd better adapt and fight like one.
Guerilla hobbits with slingshots, blowpipes and an assortment of poisons could be a fucking nightmare.
Hobbits going toe-to-toe with normal size humans should get fucking smeared maybe apart from 1 or 2 freaks who would probably still mostly rely on stabbing people in the dick (most "legendary" combatants weren't particularly big or strong, they were most importantly epic assholes).
Still, coordination and agility are very much real things. You can be strong AND agile, but you can also be just an oaf.

 

[Lhynn]

Except you're not going to advance from ant to a dragon. You'll at best advance from ant to a lvl20 ant with kickass gear.

magic doesnt scale to size, and how about a lvl 60 archwizard ant?

You might technically be able to match or outlevel any playable race character given enough time and scope (realistically you should probably never *have* enough time and scope to match for example a millennium old wizard), but that's it. So a party of six may be able to get to a point where it could at least have a fair chance at tackling any group of six playable race characters in fair combat. Trying to do the same with either an army of even much weaker characters or a single outclassing foe? Splat.

Leave that to the DM i guess. To where he wants to start and to him and the players about when to stop. Thats not yours or anyones bussiness.
The big problem with most systems, especially nowadays is that they dont evolve, they just scale, trying to keep a mechanical balance that should not exist.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It's only May, and the reward for the most autistic thread of the year is already locked.

 

[DraQ]

Except you're not going to advance from ant to a dragon. You'll at best advance from ant to a lvl20 ant with kickass gear.

magic doesnt scale to size, and how about a lvl 60 archwizard ant?

If your dragon is your regular fantasy dragon (intelligent, with a knack for magic) then you're likely facing a lvl 60 archwizard dragon based on timescale alone. Still splat.
As for army, just send them in spaced out and in small groups. A wizard, especially of Vancian type is easy to wear down, then he is just an old guy in a robe.

Leave that to the DM i guess.

What about cRPGs? DM is a bit of a cop-out here, as good DM will make even a shitty ruleset work. That doesn't make this ruleset any less shitty.

 

[Lhynn]

If your dragon is your regular fantasy dragon (intelligent, with a knack for magic) then you're likely facing a lvl 60 archwizard dragon based on timescale alone. Still splat.

Timescale? what are you even taking about. It has to be the single most retarded statement ive read this week.

As for army, just send them in spaced out and in small groups. A wizard, especially of Vancian type is easy to wear down, then he is just an old guy in a robe.

Sure, if the wizard doesnt have a grain of intelligence and stays there to take it i guess.

What about cRPGs? DM is a bit of a cop-out here, as good DM will make even a shitty ruleset work. That doesn't make this ruleset any less shitty.

What bout crpgs? if anything the scope of a crpg doesnt need to be big, because they usually just cover a small part of the adventuring life. Both in growth and experiences, so you have even more control over the development of the adventuring party. Why even make it an issue if thats the case?
On games like skyrim or morrowind, why does it even matter if can max everything? at the end of the day no one does, people either finish the game long before that and move on. And you are not designing your game for the cuck that spends 6 years playing a single character, if he does and he finds unlimited development fun, more power to him.

 

[Neanderthal]

Talkin wi me mate whos a right chubby chaser about strength today at gym, an he says to me, "Aye tha might be stronger than me on bench, but i've ad an eighteen stone minga on end o me dick! Thats what tha calls strength." Cunt argue wi bloke, then again not someat i'd wanna do.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

He said strenght doesnt matter much when swinging a sword, which is true. To kill someone you dont need much power, to get to that point you do.

Come on, that's just cheap sophistry.

No, because then you've only spent 1/3rd as much time balancing and developing each system (or more likely 1/10th as much time on a couple of them and 4/5th on the main one), and you'll end up with something incredibly retarded

A finely balanced turd is still a turd. I mean this stuff was ok for early RPGs because everything in them had to be extremely abstracted due to hardware constraints, but these days, it's time to cast a wider net.

Did anyone and i mean ANYONE say that strength is the sole deciding factor? I dont.... You just seem to underplay it when it comes to hand-to-hand combat.

Well the point is, games have to abstract to some degree, since they can't at the moment implement every little detail. So you have to decide which aspects you will model as most responsible for melee success with weapons, and my contention is that technique and then agility/speed/dexterity are ahead of strength in that regard beyond some minimum thresholds.

 

[gaussgunner]

................................................

It's only May, and the reward for the most autistic thread of the year is already locked.

 

[DraQ]

If your dragon is your regular fantasy dragon (intelligent, with a knack for magic) then you're likely facing a lvl 60 archwizard dragon based on timescale alone. Still splat.

Timescale? what are you even taking about.

Simple. Your typical dragon lives for a bunch of centuries at least and if you're made of - real or alleged - powerful and prized ingredients and are said to be a happy owner of (again, real or alleged) sizeable mound of valuable shinies, then you need to be pretty fucking smart to not only ever hope to make it anywhere near your species' typical lifespan but merely to not go extinct by the time pesky two-legged mayflies figure out how to smelt iron. And given how good humans (and presumably other humanoids) are at being crafty assholes if any combination of survival, money, status and girls is at stake, by the time you reach your adulthood you are going to be extraordinarily good at detecting, thwarting and most of the time preempting constant attempts at taking your life, stuff and good part of your anatomy, some by force and most by guile. Given natural magical aptitude that includes becoming really good at it as well.

So, from adventurer's pov a dragon can be expected to:

• most be likely smarter than anyone in the group
• have innate magic talent
  
• have at least an order of magnitude more of accumulated continuous experience, including experience with magic
  
• have gone over and proofed itself against countless variants of whatever you may come up with against it, with multiple layers of contingencies and stuff
  
• have actually defended against sizeable portion of those in practice too - successfully
  
• have keen understanding of humanoid psychology, at least regarding how they go about trying to kill stuff
• harbour at least deep distrust of humanoids
• still possess enough raw physical power to casually flatten, roast or chomp in half any party member dumb enough to try to fight it face-to-face
• be able to fall back to high altitude bombardment if things go sour.

Most of those apply to other high powered beings characterized by high intelligence, long lifespan, and often antagonistic relations with humanoids like demons and so on.

Sure, if the wizard doesnt have a grain of intelligence and stays there to take it i guess.

Running the fuck away doesn't quite count as winning. If I can force you to run for your life I can coerce you to do shit I want or at least stop you from doing shit I don't want.

What bout crpgs? if anything the scope of a crpg doesnt need to be big, because they usually just cover a small part of the adventuring life. Both in growth and experiences, so you have even more control over the development of the adventuring party. Why even make it an issue if thats the case?

Because they don't have DM so you can't offload shit onto him.

 

[Azrael the cat]

He said strenght doesnt matter much when swinging a sword, which is true. To kill someone you dont need much power, to get to that point you do.

Come on, that's just cheap sophistry.

No, because then you've only spent 1/3rd as much time balancing and developing each system (or more likely 1/10th as much time on a couple of them and 4/5th on the main one), and you'll end up with something incredibly retarded

A finely balanced turd is still a turd. I mean this stuff was ok for early RPGs because everything in them had to be extremely abstracted due to hardware constraints, but these days, it's time to cast a wider net.

Did anyone and i mean ANYONE say that strength is the sole deciding factor? I dont.... You just seem to underplay it when it comes to hand-to-hand combat.

Well the point is, games have to abstract to some degree, since they can't at the moment implement every little detail. So you have to decide which aspects you will model as most responsible for melee success with weapons, and my contention is that technique and then agility/speed/dexterity are ahead of strength in that regard beyond some minimum thresholds.

Plus most systems remember to put in the fluff that 'in this game, strength is an abstraction not only of raw power, but also of one's ability to apply that power in a useful manner',

 

[Azrael the cat]

You might be able to imagine a better RPG fighting system if you step away from bad RPG tropes and imagine a game-world where people have regular people strength and fight bears with specialized hunting weapons and don't fence them.

Ah yes, your superior RPG system that can't take strength into account at all because you made stupid assumptions about the players and setting. "Excuse me Sir Druid, kindly command your bear to stand down while we prepare our specialized hunting equipment (apparently nobody ever killed one with a spear, or that uses entirely different rules?); the very universe itself cannot comprehend me trying to fight it with a sword."

Maybe a good RPG system is one that is general purpose and takes into account the widest variety of scenarios without a ton of niche systems that will rarely be used?

Well, I guess if you're looking at it realistically, the druid would go 'yeah, no problem. You know I don't really need to tell him to stand down, even a grizzly isn't likely to just straight up charge a group of primates with pointy things. He's probably just going to do some hunting in the general area, and you can get the specialised equipment ready when you see his droppings/tracks.'

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

You might be able to imagine a better RPG fighting system if you step away from bad RPG tropes and imagine a game-world where people have regular people strength and fight bears with specialized hunting weapons and don't fence them.

Ah yes, your superior RPG system that can't take strength into account at all because you made stupid assumptions about the players and setting. "Excuse me Sir Druid, kindly command your bear to stand down while we prepare our specialized hunting equipment (apparently nobody ever killed one with a spear, or that uses entirely different rules?); the very universe itself cannot comprehend me trying to fight it with a sword."

Maybe a good RPG system is one that is general purpose and takes into account the widest variety of scenarios without a ton of niche systems that will rarely be used?

Well, I guess if you're looking at it realistically, the druid would go 'yeah, no problem. You know I don't really need to tell him to stand down, even a grizzly isn't likely to just straight up charge a group of primates with pointy things. He's probably just going to do some hunting in the general area, and you can get the specialised equipment ready when you see his droppings/tracks.'

Then the Bard would say "Why fight at all? Let's sit together by the campfire and sing koombaya".

 

[Lhynn]

Simple. Your typical dragon lives for a bunch of centuries at least and if you're made of - real or alleged - powerful and prized ingredients and are said to be a happy owner of (again, real or alleged) sizeable mound of valuable shinies, then you need to be pretty fucking smart to not only ever hope to make it anywhere near your species' typical lifespan but merely to not go extinct by the time pesky two-legged mayflies figure out how to smelt iron. And given how good humans (and presumably other humanoids) are at being crafty assholes if any combination of survival, money, status and girls is at stake, by the time you reach your adulthood you are going to be extraordinarily good at detecting, thwarting and most of the time preempting constant attempts at taking your life, stuff and good part of your anatomy, some by force and most by guile. Given natural magical aptitude that includes becoming really good at it as well.

So, from adventurer's pov a dragon can be expected to:

• most be likely smarter than anyone in the group
• have innate magic talent
  
• have at least an order of magnitude more of accumulated continuous experience, including experience with magic
  
• have gone over and proofed itself against countless variants of whatever you may come up with against it, with multiple layers of contingencies and stuff
  
• have actually defended against sizeable portion of those in practice too - successfully
  
• have keen understanding of humanoid psychology, at least regarding how they go about trying to kill stuff
• harbour at least deep distrust of humanoids
• still possess enough raw physical power to casually flatten, roast or chomp in half any party member dumb enough to try to fight it face-to-face
• be able to fall back to high altitude bombardment if things go sour.

Most of those apply to other high powered beings characterized by high intelligence, long lifespan, and often antagonistic relations with humanoids like demons and so on.

All in the monster manual champ, dragons arent that smart either, lizard brain holds them back i guess. Still, the smartest of them are genius, but nothing where the DM is forced to meta to make up for it, and nothing beyond human capabilities unless we are talking very extreme cases from the best races, and even then, not that high. They arent that strong either, for their size (and they were even weaker on earlier editions). An ogre is usually stronger, while being much smaller. All dragons are very clumsy, about as graceful as a peasant.
Their understanding of human psychology is about as indepth as their understanding of the rest of the world, remarkably wise creatures as a rule, but nothing beyond human capabilities either, if they even bother to study them, most of the dont, for the same reason most humans dont study sheeps or ants.
Your typical dragon is lazy, proud and overindulgent, on top of having a remarkably high life expectancy, what they achieve in 100 years a disciplined human can achieve in kist a few. They just start further ahead and have a natural talent for it, which further feeds into their overbloated egos. Add to this the boundless greed that afflicts most of them and they spend too much time trying to get valuables and setting up defenses that they dont have time for much else but their ever important long naps.
Also a dragons wings are the first thing you should take care of, they are brittle, fragile and too much of a tactical advantage to be left alone. CRPGs have to make concessions, the player cant cripple their wings because of lack of game mechanics, but the dragons wont usually fly away for the same reason.

Running the fuck away doesn't quite count as winning. If I can force you to run for your life I can coerce you to do shit I want or at least stop you from doing shit I don't want.

Why be so extreme? you can merely reposition. Its not either stand your ground or flee bro. battles have a bit more depth than that. You can often chose to fight the battle on your own terms, youll live longer if you do.

Because they don't have DM so you can't offload shit onto him.

Which is why you set the world state and let the players do as they will. If you are so inclined devote resources to an evolving world, but to be honest adventuring parties are usually a lot more active than anyone else, and they risk a lot more, therefore they are rewarded with a lot more, knowledge, wealth, glory and a lot of times premature release from their mortal shells. NPCs are largely risk free and have already obligations and set positions, therefore they shouldnt be improving at a noticeable pace, if at all. There are exceptions of course, usually because the story necessitates them.

 

[Sigourn]

Dexterity: control over one's own body. Directly affects your strength, since a better dexterity allows you to maximize the use of your strength.
Strength: the strength of your body.
Agility: how agile your body is.

That's how I see it. And how I wish it was applied to isometric games:

Dexterity: stealth abilities, small bonus to fighting skills.
Agility: stealth abilities, small bonus to fighting skills, Action Points.
Strength: HP, resistance to poisons and the like, melee and barehanded power.

Of course, all of this means shit if your character has low skills in the respective fighting styles. Also, how bad of an idea would it be to be able to specialize in different types of combat? Like Karate, Kung Fu, etc.

 

[resilient sphere]

ker-bump

can any of you passionate medieval combat-heads recommend me a book about the swords of the period? Concerning how they're used, I mean, how they looked is a distinctly secondary matter right now.

 

[TedNugent]

Bows should have hard strength and dexterity requirements. Both strength and dexterity offensive requirements should be higher than swords, because it's not hard to stab a pointy object into someone or swing it around like a bat at someone until they say ow. Dexterity should primarily influence offensive critical hit chance for both weapons, to represent stabbing a half sword into vulnerable armpits, underneath the armor plates and visors.

However armor should have a strict null damage against swords with only a portion of blunt force trauma reaching through. Crit damage should ignore the majority of armor reduction to represent stabbing through gambeson or leather at the joint.

Once the strength requirement for a bow is met, the primary determinant of both critical hit percentage and hit chance should be dexterity for obvious reasons.

By contrast, dexterity and strength should both play a huge rule in defensive sword statistics, because it's incredibly hard to prevent from getting stabbed by a similarly long and sharp object.

 

[Norfleet]

Dexterity: control over one's own body. Directly affects your strength, since a better dexterity allows you to maximize the use of your strength.
Strength: the strength of your body.
Agility: how agile your body is.

One of the most pernicious myths is that it is even possible to be agile without being strong. Physics is clear on this point F=MA. In order to be agile, that is, in order to accelerate quickly, you must generate a large amount of force: You must be strong. It is possible to reduce the amount of Force required by reducing Mass, but humans only have so much variation in mass. Conversely, to be strong, you will necessarily be quick, because again: F=MA. If you can generate a lot of force, you can accelerate your mass quickly. Unless you are dragging around a lot of extra M, that is, you are grossly obese, the ability to generate force means quick acceleration.

Big = Slow is one of the most enduring myths that constantly makes itself into games. The Big Guy is always slower than the Little Guy. This simply isn't true.

 

[Sigourn]

One of the most pernicious myths is that it is even possible to be agile without being strong. Physics is clear on this point F=MA. In order to be agile, that is, in order to accelerate quickly, you must generate a large amount of force: You must be strong. It is possible to reduce the amount of Force required by reducing Mass, but humans only have so much variation in mass. Conversely, to be strong, you will necessarily be quick, because again: F=MA. If you can generate a lot of force, you can accelerate your mass quickly. Unless you are dragging around a lot of extra M, that is, you are grossly obese, the ability to generate force means quick acceleration.

Big = Slow is one of the most enduring myths that constantly makes itself into games. The Big Guy is always slower than the Little Guy. This simply isn't true.

I didn't mention size in my post, though. I understand strength and agility are related, but there comes a point where mass starts to drag on your speed, which is why you don't see overly muscular Usain Bolt dudes. They are all fairly thin. Muscular, but very thin.

 

[adrix89]

Dexterity: control over one's own body. Directly affects your strength, since a better dexterity allows you to maximize the use of your strength.
Strength: the strength of your body.
Agility: how agile your body is.

One of the most pernicious myths is that it is even possible to be agile without being strong. Physics is clear on this point F=MA. In order to be agile, that is, in order to accelerate quickly, you must generate a large amount of force: You must be strong. It is possible to reduce the amount of Force required by reducing Mass, but humans only have so much variation in mass. Conversely, to be strong, you will necessarily be quick, because again: F=MA. If you can generate a lot of force, you can accelerate your mass quickly. Unless you are dragging around a lot of extra M, that is, you are grossly obese, the ability to generate force means quick acceleration.

Big = Slow is one of the most enduring myths that constantly makes itself into games. The Big Guy is always slower than the Little Guy. This simply isn't true.

Everything is an aspect of fitness.

High fitness in scrawny and flexible body would be agility.
High fitness in a more bulky body would be strength as it generates more force.
Both are on a balance given that you have the maximum possible fitness.

If we think about it the equations are poorly done. It would be better to have as factors bulkyness and fitness as attributes instead of the weird merged and that doesn't make a whole lot of sense agility and strength.
Dexterity is another amalgamation. Then again they do work better as abstractions.