Strength and dexterity in RPGs

[Mangoose]

Actually I forgot one very real advantage: Reach.

 

[Aothan]

I find Dexterity (AC, bows and Weapon Finesse with melee) with Charisma (Saves, AC, added to weapon rolls) works well, also helps with some of the social and perception skills available

edit: should also include saves from additional Dexterity modifiers, as with Combat Reflexes and Tumble (how it works in ToEE) and Initiative bonuses

 

[Damned Registrations]

Redirection where? Into chopping your legs off at the knee or the middle of your neck? If you aren't strong enough to either halt the momentum or add enough of your own to change the angle so it misses, you're getting hit.

Actually I forgot one very real advantage: Reach.

The only game/system I've played that modeled this well was PnP Shadowrun (I forget which edition) where every point of reach advantage gave you a +1 to your d6 rolls, which had to succeed vs some flat number. If you had a troll (+1 reach) with a halberd (+2 reach) you were basically an unstoppable wargod in melee, even if you had very little actual skill, since every d6 you rolled from your combat pool would hit the target number, while your opponent would need 6's to score a success.

 

[DraQ]

I agree with OP's massive sperg.

Actually, dexterity adding to bow damage is relatively modern invention in cRPGs, in older ones, even ones made after full 3D became the norm - like Wizardry 8 and Morrowind - physical damage scaled with strength and strength alone.

TBH, I'm not sure weapon damage should even change much regardless of stats.

The way I see it:

• There should be little hard limitations on gear use with possible exception of bows and manually drawn crossbows (STR).
• Damage might be flat as far as stats are concerned - whether you get speared in the guts or brained with an axe by wimp or a strongman deosn't really change that much, alternatively some capped damage system would be called for to distinguish between getting nicked without further penetration and getting cleaved, but I'm not sure individual strength matters enough once the weapon builds momentum for non-flat system to be called for and you don't need that much strength to actually get swing to speed - weapons have been optimized for that for countless centuries.
  
• Low strength penalties should include rapid fatigue and mobility/agility maluses (for armor+shield), fatigue, lower attack rate, add latency and incur attack/defense penalties (for weapons + shields) depending on weight and balance. Even a wimp can technically swing about any human(oid)-usable weapon but they will take more time to build momentum, get fatigued more and have trouble reacting swiftly with a heavy weapon.
  
• Melee attacks should only incur any sort of to-hit check if the target can actively defend against the attack. If you are effectively pinned by Bob the Barbarian who has locked blades with you and Willy the (wimpy) Wizard, having ran out of spells/mana decides to pick up that 2h axe, HNNNG! it over his head and drop it on yours, then he just hits and you've most likely just died of acute chunky salsa.
• Having any sort of weapon should greatly factor in any sorts of defensive ablility, weapon skills should govern defense even more than offense. Being disarmed should pretty much prevent active defense (see above) unless they are magical dodgy monk of some sort who has invested heavily into unarmed fighting. If you don't have a weapon of your own to put in the way of enemy weapon or discourage them from just coming over and fucking you up you can pretty much only opt for trying to cover your head with your arms and maybe living long enough to see your hands fly off in a bloody arc.
• STR should factor in heavily when blocking, grappling and standing your ground. Low strength character might be pushed back while defending even when successfully avoiding damage.
  
• Dexterity and agility should be separated, the former dealing with all manual skills and weapon work, the latter with general movement and dodging
• There should be willpower stat affecting resistance to pain, morale (if applicable) and if there is magic, casting and mental statuses
• The more I think about, the more intelligence stat seems like a lost cause - there is no way to implement it without player's own intelligence leaking through and it looks too critical for about any successful character to meaningfully balance it, maybe add mental stats dealing with specific types of activity like focus for magic and eloquence for dialogue (if you really want your Fallout style dialogue experience) but drop intelligence as general stat. You still can have dumb NPCs if they are written and scripted like that and dumb PCs if they are played stupidly (synonymous with "dead")
• Perception stat could, among other things, affect the angle in which you can defend against incoming attacks. Melee attacks coming from outside this angle should just hit you unless you're engaging in some sort of extreme movement and ranged attacks should disallow any sort of defensive bonuses based on character (obviously armor and such would still apply, so would anything related to attacker's skill and range).

 

[Mexi]

Huh, it's kind of funny that you do see that somewhat in boxing. Since it's the day before weigh-ins, boxers drain down and rehydrate back up 10-20 pounds. Mass gives a clear advantage when everything is equal. That's why you see fighters draining down and trying to get a weight advantage over an opponent. It doesn't always work, Mayweather/Canelo, but sometimes it makes even the best fighters look like they're fighting a brick fucking wall, Lebedev/Jones.

Not that I know anything about swinging a sword, though. Just saying that mass is definitely a plus, and oftentimes, greater mass does come with greater strength.

Also, Mayweather's defense has a lot of names: shoulder roll, shell, and Hopkins calls it the turtle shell.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

I think perception and intelligence together replace luck as it is used.

Luck is an interesting thing, as in who you happen to meet and such. Things totally out of your control. But as it is used, it is more like perception for a detailed knowledge of your surroundings, and intelligence to know how to put it to the best use.

With training you have learned to react in a certain way: block the swing with your shield, etc. But with high perception and intelligence, thinking can replace reaction.

Even more so: fighters often express that untrained opponents are very dangerous, simply because you have no idea what they are going to do. And they are often flipped out of their mind from fear or rage. You cannot anticipate. And as the first contact often decides the battle, that makes them very dangerous.

So, if you don't fight by reflex, the enemy is unable to anticipate what you are going to do, but you are able to do so if they do something unexpected.

 

[DraQ]

Also, I'm all for intelligent planning and generally being an asshole being a decisive factor. Players often play some sort of underdog and even if they don't, being able to outclass pretty much the entire world is a hallmark of bad design. Having to use your wits and grab onto any advantage you can should be a given and game should be designed around it as a prerequisite for victory, with attempts at reasonable counters for cheese being not a corner case but part of core AI functionality (as the player would be set up to lose if they tried to approach the challenges fairly).
Of course that's further argument for dropping intelligence as attribute - in such a game you wouldn't be allowed to LARP a dumbass even if you rolled one, instead being forced to play an expert tactician with HURR dialogue options - what's the point of a stat if it forces you to play out of character?

Not that I know anything about swinging a sword, though. Just saying that mass is definitely a plus, and oftentimes, greater mass does come with greater strength.

I'm not at all versed in melee combat but do mind that boxers generally sock each other repeatedly, putting their weight behind strikes and requiring multiple hits for KO, OTOH weapons can kill or incapacitate you very rapidly even with single strike.
I'd expect mass to matter more when wearing heavy armor (as a knight in full plate is very hard to kill), when standing your ground and when going into all sorts of wrestling maneuvers.
Of course there is also reach which correlates with mass to some extent.

 

[Ludo Lense]

I think you are putting the cart before the horse.

In most games strength, dexterity, intelligence etc. can be translated to "the meele dmg stat, the range dmg stat, the magic dmg stat etc.".

Would Diablo be a better game if the name of the statistics were more pertinent to reality? I really don't think so.

Like how many combat systems look even vaguely close to this (which doesn't even include that many grapples).



Keep in mind most games don't even implement the full functionality of weaponry as it was designed. (Turn-based would probably have a harder time design wise )

In how many games have you seen the Halberd represented as a Spear with slightly different DMG ratings even though its a completely different weapon that requires different techniques to make full use of its blade,spike and hammer.
Or how many games allow you to grip a Longsword and hit with the pommel.

NOTE: I am not saying a more realistic combat system would immediately be more enjoyable. Slaughtering things by the thousands in Dynasty Warrios or Diablo certainly has its appeal. I am just saying that using more realistic metaphors for completely abstract combat systems like those is probably unnecessary.

Spoiler

For those interested in something more realistic Mordhau is looking good though a long ways off.

 

[adrix89]

In the real world we don't have excludatory attributes.

You have a specific training with a specific weapon, training specific muscles and burning into the brain specific moves as reflexes.

The rest is overall fitness.

 

[Prime Junta]

Stats don't have squat to do with realism to start with. There isn't any such thing as "dexterity" or "strength" that you can point to and identify, and a lot of what looks like it is actually skill. Even apparently similar contests of raw strength often aren't: who is stronger, the bench-press champion or the armwrestling champion, assuming they're different people?

What's more, these kinds of things are inherently mutable. Neither the bench-press champion nor the arm-wrestling champion started out that way; they got there through years of dedicated and single-minded training.

TBH I'd like to see D&D style stats go. If you have them, abstract them out more and put the beef in the skills, and above all make them mutable. It would have more verisimilitude and be more interesting to play.

 

[DraQ]

I think you are putting the cart before the horse.

In most games strength, dexterity, intelligence etc. can be translated to "the meele dmg stat, the range dmg stat, the magic dmg stat etc.".

Hold it right there, criminal scum.
This is the kind of clear-cut mechanics that makes cRPGs objectively shit.

It gives you a bunch of valid builds, each with pretty much single valid approach and you beat the game by repeatedly swinging, shooting, casting or more rarely talking at any problems that appear until the game is beaten. It's shit. It's dumb. It's boring.
With a more complex and less clear cut system you can have:

• multiple builds centered around single archetype - ok, so you build a fighter, but what kind of fighter? A hulking brute, nimble fencer, fearless leader, fearsome archer (and fuck you, archery does not imply rogue, see the ending of this post)?
• multiple ways of attacking problems with a single build - does your brutish fighter fight your way in, intimidate a guy for keys or information, something else?

Now neither building a character nor using this build is just a mindless exercise in applying an archetype over and over, you have non trivial decisions to make involving deciding your build and then determining what approaches are available in given situation and which ones of them have a chance to work rather than turning into a disaster.

Where the realism comes in? Players can obviously memorize simplistic rules (that are shit) even if they are arbitrary, designers can design such rules without much room for glaring mistakes (other than the act of using such rules in the first place), but if you try to make a complex arbitrary system you'll end up with a confusing mess both for the players and for the designers which almost guarantees it to be hilarious trainwreck. You will also run into trouble portraying what happens in such system using either audiovisuals or fluff text, ending up with a dissociated, confusing, likely broken and overall not very attractive pile of garbage.
Some measure of realism gives you a fairly solid set of guidelines, both your designers, implementors, artists/writers and your player have roughly the same idea of what is supposed to be happening at any given moment and at least this idea, if not its particular implementation, has been rather thoroughly tested.

Would Diablo be a better game if the name of the statistics were more pertinent to reality? I really don't think so.

Original Diablo's saving grace in this context was that it encouraged hybrids and that you had to make do with whatever dropped against whatever popped up (which further encouraged hybridization and ad-hoc build decisions since you had no guarantee that drops were suited for your build, against enemies or that your build was effective against the enemies).

Keep in mind most games don't even implement the full functionality of weaponry as it was designed. (Turn-based would probably have a harder time design wise )

TB's main problem is shit temporal resolution which could be problematic here (an RT game is pretty much processing tens of turns each second). OTOH at least you won't run into interface problems in TB.

In how many games have you seen the Halberd represented as a Spear with slightly different DMG ratings even though its a completely different weapon that requires different techniques to make full use of its blade,spike and hammer.

Well, it's a Swiss Army knife spear.

Or how many games allow you to grip a Longsword and hit with the pommel.

As far as I can tell only The Witcher and it only occurred as a part of a finisher animation with no associated mechanical meaning.
Would definitely want.

NOTE: I am not saying a more realistic combat system would immediately be more enjoyable. Slaughtering things by the thousands in Dynasty Warrios or Diablo certainly has its appeal.

I think that slaughtering incoming hordes of opponents is inherently non-RPG as RPG should be governed by its systems so an enemy of playable race or any other physically similar should be governed by the same kind of stats in similar range to the PC(s), so if there is horde of enemies coming at you, you either run or die unless you have something that can specifically deal with this sort of crowds, but then such mechanics can also be used against you.

For the record - here in Potato Diablo was never considered an RPG.
For that matter Diablo's rogue was generally referred to as "łuczniczka" (archer) so fuck this shit too.

 

[DraQ]

I can't grasp the concept of abstraction.

Neither can I.

 

[ragnor]

I might miss some games but as far as i remember most of the time dexterity/agility stat determines wheter you can hit your opponent or not and the strength determines how hard was it if you can hit your opponent. It might not be the most realistic solution but a very simple and sensible solution to the problem.

I don't understand what is OP's problem? What am i missing here?

 

[varangos]

yes i agree,but katanas are the best weapon ever constructed,better than any european longsword ever build.

 

[Prime Junta]

I can't grasp the concept of abstraction.

Neither can I.

 

[Norfleet]

Actually I forgot one very real advantage: Reach.

This is why the dominant weapon of ancient warfare has generally been some manner of spear or pike. Swords were generally held as a backup. The ability to stab the other guy before he can even touch you is a huge advantage.

 

[DraQ]

yes i agree,but katanas are the best weapon ever constructed,better than any european longsword ever build.

<-poke me

 

[varangos]

This is why the dominant weapon of ancient warfare has generally been some manner of spear or pike. Swords were generally held as a backup. The ability to stab the other guy before he can even touch you is a huge advantage.

in japan they fought with dual wielding katanas.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

This is why the dominant weapon of ancient warfare has generally been some manner of spear or pike. Swords were generally held as a backup. The ability to stab the other guy before he can even touch you is a huge advantage.

in japan they fought with dual wielding katanas.

In Japan they had no metal armor. Or much steel at all. That's why katanas were as expensive as they were, not because they were so exceptionally good. They were about as good as an average European longsword, which was far cheaper. Because here in Europe, good quality steel was abundant.

 

[Prime Junta]

On the off-chance that varangos wasn't trolling, I'll just leave this here.

 

[DraQ]

In japan they mostly fought with bows and spears. Katana was a glorified blinged-up sidearm - as was pretty much almost every other sword ever for that matter.

 

[varangos]

Katanas were made with meteor steel,and the techniques Japan smiths used to produce them are long lost.

They where very strong swords,able to cut the barrel of a modern day machine gun.

 

[Mangoose]

Actually I forgot one very real advantage: Reach.

This is why the dominant weapon of ancient warfare has generally been some manner of spear or pike. Swords were generally held as a backup. The ability to stab the other guy before he can even touch you is a huge advantage.

In terms of one-on-one, fucking definitely. You have exactly echoed my beliefs.

Edit: Even Liechtenauer was not all gung-ho about the German longsword; his plates (manuals) included other weapons, and much use of grappling during swordfighting. I assume he just kinda liked it and wanted to write a treatise. Well, in addition spears are a bit difficult to use against plate, where you primarily want to attack the unprotected areas (joints usually?), and so with a sword you can half-sword (incidentally it was thus less about using the sword "typically") and have better ability to deal with plate (which btw is not just about armor strength, but deflection because of its curvature). Of course said nobleman/knights would also carry a poniard and the such.

In addition, much cheaper and easier to find resources.

"Troop vs troop" is more about strategy/tactics. You know, the Roman cohort(?) where it is much about attrition, focus on shield defense while trying to get kills with the gladius, and then the first rank moving to the rear while the second line takes over when the first line is tired, etc. Not sure if short spears would be as more or less or equally useful, though. But just from historical fact that's how it was done.

Katanas were made with meteor steel,and the techniques Japan smiths used to produce them are long lost.

They where very strong swords,able to cut the barrel of a modern day machine gun.

Hehehehe

 

[Mangoose]

In japan they mostly fought with bows and spears. Katana was a glorified blinged-up sidearm - as was pretty much almost every other sword ever for that matter.

True that. Albeit also a lot of horseback in Japan, basically due to the environment and resources.

Also I forgot to mention. The sword in Europe was highly respected because of its resemblance to the Christian cross.

And then cut-and-thrust swordfighting did come into popularity during later times, for duels.

 

[Mangoose]

Caveat: I was a armchair sword-geek in my pre-adult stages, studied some kickboxing in college (from a fellow student who had trained for a long time in a Muay Thai school, and from another student who has actually participated in a lot of events), and then I actually practiced Eskrima later. Eskrima (which again is derivative of of Spanish... again "Espada y daga") still being used in the Philippines, part of training in law enforcement and military (I mean, hey, ASP/baton usage really is useful). I purposely chose to study Eskrima because I believed it is practical (and I hurt my neck so I can't really train unarmed).

I won't say I'm an expert on these things but I'm pretty sure I understand the fundamentals of fighting. And the fundamentals are really the most important part.

Also studying mechanical engineering gives me a bit more insight into the physics of things. Incidentally proper lifting also gave me some insight. Because I'm very nerdy about these things and I research deeper into the kinematics.

Again I'm no expert but I do think I'm not just only blowing hot air in my armchair.