Strength and dexterity in RPGs

[PorkyThePaladin]

I was thinking more along the lines of Talhoffer, actually.
Lindybeige is quite cool and can be pretty fresh and insightful at times, but I wouldn't compare him to an actual XV century master swordsman and mercenary, and Talhoffer's fighting manual features an awful lot of grappling, hooking and binds (typically followed by people getting brutally stabbed in all sorts of places).

Well, a few points:

1) All those manuals come from late Medieval times (you mention 15th century), so yes, plate armor was seen more during those times, but that particular era represents a relatively short period of the entire Dark Age - Medieval Ages timeframe.
2) Since mercenaries/soldiers/duelists in those times engaged in something that was a matter of life and death, they would want to cover all their bases. Just like soldiers today in most armies train hand-to-hand combat, because there might be rare occasions where they have to use it, but overall, it's a very fringe thing, and completely overshadowed by firearms. I imagine grappling in late Medieval times was similar to that, it was a nice thing to have in your arsenal should there be an occasion to use it, but ideally, you would want to bring an actual weapon that works against plate (warhammer, mace, flail, axe, halberd, crossbow, etc), and not put yourself in harm's way.
3) The "binding" you are talking about in those manuals is not the kind of binding Hollywood typically potrays, where two guys cross swords and both start pushing as hard as they can, to see who can win the pushing contest. In real swordfighting, sometimes swords do cross, but swordsmen might just try to push the other guy's sword out of the way quickly, so they can attack his undefended body, and in those cases, you would probably get better results from proper technique, accuracy and timing than from physical strength.

Also, a few words regarding grappling and RPG combat in general:
cRPGs typically don't simulate historical reality. They borrow a lot of elements but their settings are also very different in some regards no matter how much realism and meticulous worldbuilding they involve. cRPG settings involve things without RL counterparts, like strange races and beasts, magic, weird materials, strange environments and so on and that puts a lot of mechanics in a different context. For example no matter how common grappling was in real life melee combat, if you're facing a magician who has rendered himself pretty much impervious to any sort of damage you may inflict by the means of Stoneskin or somesuch and is about to incinerate you with a well aimed fireball, dogpiling him may be a surprisingly effective tactics.

I get that, but in that scenario, if the skinny Royce Gracie could grapple with the massive behemoths in early UFC, I am sure your average warrior wouldn't need too much strength to take some nerdy mage down. Well..., unless the mage looked like Azar Javed...

 

[Beastro]

There's a problem with comparing MMA to real fighting for obvious reasons. In MMA there are rules, and those rules change everything. In a real fight you can bite, poke the eye, grab the nuts and all sorts of nasty things. That makes grappling very dangerous and unpredictable, so you'd be better avoiding it at all costs.

I'm a brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt myself but I'd never use it on a real fight situation unless I had no alternative or unless I'm sure I'm fighting only one opponent and he doesn't know what he's doing. That's what my instructor always taught me too.

I think stuff like Krav Maga is much more effective for uncontrolled environments.

That only goes into my point further. I brought up MMA because, at least early MMA, there were less rules than every other martial art. I'm thinking of UFC when there was no timer and fights only ended when someone finished their opponent, so we had fights where someone turned Oleg Taktarov into a bloody mess, but the man held on round after round refusing to tap out and often times won his fights physically looking like he lost them.

Medieval tournaments were more like that than any sport we know today, only they had weapons, melee weapons not effective at quickly killing people that could have someone yield in a fight only to due of bloodless hours later or an infection from being covered in cuts or broken bones.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Finally, while grappling does require some strength, it is much more about technique, as the skinny Gracies winning against massive muscle bound dudes in the early MMA showed.

Grappling is a lot about technique but Gracies were winning in early MMA days because it was a chaotic mess of different styles and BJJ was unknown. Nowadays with the sport matured and standardized, everyone incorporates at the very least some takedown defense and you have to be more well-rounded to compete (let alone dominate).

It's not strength you are talking about. Tyson was a great puncher because he could put his entire stocky frame into every punch, a very complicated coordination of total body movement that most people can't do as well. To illustrate this point, if Tyson in his prime entered a bench press contest, he might have put up some pretty shitty numbers, but that in no way prevented him from throwing amazingly hard punches.

I wouldn't consider bench press as the only (or even defining) measure of strength, depending on the physical activity/sport you practice you develop different muscle groups, wouldn't really equate DnD type of Strength attribute solely with numbers you post at the gym. Of course Mike Tyson was devastating because he was so explosive and used leverage perfectly to put his whole body into the punch but he also had a powerful bull-like physique.

Weight classes aren't based on strength, they are based on weight, as the name implies.

There is a correlation there, if we use your proposed measurement of strength such as bench press, do you think anyone that weighs under 300lbs will break the current bench press record set by this guy:

Using technique, heavier fighters can put more mass behind their punch, but they could actually very well be physically weaker in the sense of having worse bench presses or arm wrestling for example. How many times do you see a larger fighter with a beer belly against a smaller fighter with massive biceps? The latter is most likely stronger, but the former can throw a harder punch if they are both similarly skilled, because mass > strength in striking, as long as the guy is not a complete fatso.

Of course I can't know for sure but I would bet that on average a bigger fighter would both bench press more and defeat the smaller fighter at arm wrestling regardless of how chiseled the latter is. Who do you think bench-presses more, Floyd and Pacman or the Klitschko bros?

See my reply to Draq above, about the prevalence of grappling, but even aside from that, that is not how RPGs model strength. They don't give you a damage bonus during grappling, or part of the time, higher strength gives you a constant damage bonus, implying it's related to the strikes themselves.

Sure, I can agree with that. It's far from being optimal simulation-wise. You could solve it partially by having different weapon groups be governed by different stats I guess but even then there would be a limit to its usefulness.

 

[Ninjerk]

janjetina alkeides 2.0 Kz3r0

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe there is an extremely strong correlation between mass and raw strength.

See: Schwartz formula (I've also just found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilks_Coefficient and apparently there's an O'Carroll formula or coefficient as well)

 

[Beastro]

The draw does affect penetration at a same distance though, which is not absurd to say would equal to damage in a game(the greater the penetration, the higher the chance to kill or wound the opponent).

Trouble is, penetration is one of those things that most rpgs don't factor in their rules, which is what I was saying. Sure very old d&d did (on a table nobody used - weapon v. class of armor), and Millenium's End builds a core part of their combat around it, but these are rarities in the rpg world.

However, be that as it may, penetration is normally bad for damage. It's good for piercing armor and getting hits where you otherwise wouldn't, but it's bad for dishing out the big damage because the things that cause good penetration tend to narrow the wound, thus making less of a chance of hitting something vital, while also causing much less of a chance of the head stopping inside the body where it can do increased damage. Thus, penetration targets armor, not body health. Unless your rpg has wearing armors add to hp (and such rpgs do exist, believe it or not), then having penetration cause bonus damage runs counter to the purpose of adding in that much detail. It should be making it easier to hit, but harder to damage. Just like a modern armor-piercing round. And thus the reason for the by-weapon table in ancient d&d where each weapon's to hit was adjusted based on the class of armor it was targeting - a direct reduction in armor value based on the penetration of the weapon in question.

What you want for doing damage is something big, preferably fragmentary, with low penetration, so it gets into the body and stays there and fucks lots of shit up.

A good example of that is old Age of Sail combat where the most dangerous weapons were the heavy, low velocity cannonades whose larger rounds would smash into the side of a ship an transfer for more energy into them than the small, faster, more penetrating long guns.

Well, sword "binding" is a bit on the Hollywood side of things, if you watch Lindybeige or Scholagladitoria type videos on youtube or better yet, watch actual sword fighting on youtube, you really don't see much of that. Not saying it can't happen ever, but in a fight where it's all about lightning fast and lethal strikes, you don't really want to commit yourself to some relatively pointless pushing movement that your opponent could easy exploit.

Crossing swords is a dramatic compromise to provide moments of intense, face to face exposition between protagonists and antagonists. So much of the pace of movies is shoving manufactured situations that would never happen to allow the two sides a chance to see and talk to each other while in real life they'd never meet unless they bumped into each years before hand or after (like two generals whose armies who fought in soandso war).

A good example of that kind of segment in movies is in the first Star Wars when Millennium Falcon is captured by the Death Star so the good and bad guys can spend time interacting instead of spending the middle of the movie off doing unrelated things.

Within that is also Obiwan being cut down by Darth Vadar. Conveniently the fight lags and is barely a fight at all so we can see Light and Dark talk as Obiwan basically shuffles backwards so he can die within sight of Luke to provide the necessity dramatic moment in movies when the mentor dies.

TBH we all know what a real dramatic fight's dialogue is if we ever fought in school and shit. The dialogue is pratically Shakespearean - nothing but animalistic sounds and bunch of "You fuck! Fuck you you fucking fuck!!!!".

That is and of itself can be effective, like when the released German in Saving Private Ryan kills one of them in a near dialogue-less fight that has a lot of quiet desperation and "Shhhhh (just let the blade go in)".

And how do intelligent players play dumb characters other than LARPing all the way through?
That's why I would drop intelligence stat in cRPGs - there is no way to enforce it mechanically.

You do that and you'll be railroading dumb play-throughs more than they already are.

Locked out content because you're too dumb is a given, making playing a dumb person annoying frustrating and less fun will make people play them more infrequently than they already do (and demand more development time for an already niche playstyle that already gets a lot of attention for what it is).

All of this is window dressing when the intelligence of the writers of high intelligence is notoriously bad "You fight the good fight!" crap. I'd rather have more attention given the high intelligence builds and make them more convincingly intelligent, because it's one of the main play styles mechanically and RP (admit it, we all like to play smarter than average characters).

 

[DraQ]

And how do intelligent players play dumb characters other than LARPing all the way through?
That's why I would drop intelligence stat in cRPGs - there is no way to enforce it mechanically.

1) Ignore any player you'd consider dumb when you cook up the design. Keep your standards as high as possible. Fuck tutorials fuck all that retardo shit. Anyone not able to RTFM is by default: out.
2) Only allow the player to indicate the will to do something, without any say in the actual resolution.

For example, don't present a puzzle as an actual puzzle, but as an astract that the character needs to solve (not the player).

Then don't present combat as actual combat, don't present any in-game problem as an actual problem that could be solved using gameplay means - use rigid scripting and cutscenes instead - and under no circumstances allow player to do anything clever whatsoever in your game.

And here I thought big game companies were bad.


I only wonder who is supposed to be those dumb players given that game is evidently supposed to be tailored to anyone capable of unassisted breathing.

Eh, it works well enough as an abstraction for things like access to skills and tactics (int requirement to use things like disarming, tripping, etc.), discerning/disarming traps, all sorts of shit. There's also no way to enforce charisma, alignment, character relationships, etc. They're still interesting because of the gameplay options they add. Hell, there's no way to even enforce basic knowledge of the setting any dumbass should have, like who the local ruler is or whether or not trolls are real.

You can easily enforce charisma. Just let the rolls fail, it's not like you have true AI in your game player may be able to charm using his RL magnetic personality ( ). You have full control of dialogue, after all. Charisma would be unenforceable if the AI was fully capable of working with natural language AND if player was also in full control of nonverbal cues, but it isn't and they aren't so it isn't.

OTOH intelligence is a general problem solving ability and cannot be boxed in by the mechanics as long as there is mechanics in game instead of just a series of canned solutions that may fail or succeed based on a statcheck so the only way to eliminate player's intelligence is by eliminating gameplay or dumbing it down to the point of vanishing.

And if you have boxed intelligence in mechanically, then by definition you have made a true AI - what the fuck are you still doing making silly games?

As for alignments and forcing emoshunal engagement down player's unwilling throat - I agree it's crap that doesn't even work, so indeed, why bother?

 

[DraQ]

2) Since mercenaries/soldiers/duelists in those times engaged in something that was a matter of life and death, they would want to cover all their bases. Just like soldiers today in most armies train hand-to-hand combat, because there might be rare occasions where they have to use it, but overall, it's a very fringe thing, and completely overshadowed by firearms. I imagine grappling in late Medieval times was similar to that, it was a nice thing to have in your arsenal should there be an occasion to use it, but ideally, you would want to bring an actual weapon that works against plate (warhammer, mace, flail, axe, halberd, crossbow, etc), and not put yourself in harm's way.

Possibly, but a lot of those manoeuvres involve pollaxes (which definitely do work against plate) or guys without armor.

3) The "binding" you are talking about in those manuals is not the kind of binding Hollywood typically potrays, where two guys cross swords and both start pushing as hard as they can, to see who can win the pushing contest. In real swordfighting, sometimes swords do cross, but swordsmen might just try to push the other guy's sword out of the way quickly, so they can attack his undefended body, and in those cases, you would probably get better results from proper technique, accuracy and timing than from physical strength.

Yes, but both will try to do it at once and both may try to apply leverage to have their way. If I can wrench your sword or dagger around in a way that leaves you unable to act for a moment while freeing my own, then stab you in the dick, I'll do so.

I get that, but in that scenario, if the skinny Royce Gracie could grapple with the massive behemoths in early UFC, I am sure your average warrior wouldn't need too much strength to take some nerdy mage down. Well..., unless the mage looked like Azar Javed...

True, but you need to be able to do so and the mage may have various stats or you may want to wrestle someone else for some other reason.

The thing with the mage, BTW is inspired by how infuriating a situation like this was in IE games and how awesome it was to finally be able to use similar technique in Skyrim Requiem to crush a powerful wizard while severely underleveled.

 

[Naveen]

The way stats are used in cRPGs is typically derived from D&D [...] As you pointed out, strength has almost nothing to do with melee combat. Sure, you need to be somewhat in shape and not a couch potato, but you sure as hell don't need to have a lot of strength.

And it does not have much to do in D&D either. In 1st & 2nd D&D edition STR only mattered when it was very high (16+ for damage and 17+ for hitting probability if I remember correctly). Only when you had Olympic weightlifter or superhuman strength STR became an important factor (which makes sense.) In fact, I think that STR (at least in hand-to-hand combat) mattered too little.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You can easily enforce charisma. Just let the rolls fail, it's not like you have true AI in your game player may be able to charm using his RL magnetic personality ( ). You have full control of dialogue, after all. Charisma would be unenforceable if the AI was fully capable of working with natural language AND if player was also in full control of nonverbal cues, but it isn't and they aren't so it isn't.

But the player still has the option of doing charismatic things, like playing the hero for the sake of his reputation (Elderscrolls is horrible for this), when an uncharismatic one should just go ahead and let people hate him. Charisma isn't just about chatting with people and getting better shop prices, it involves knowing how to manipulate your image in the minds of others. And what about the rest of what I said? Players can take their lifelong pals and stab them in the back for no reason at all, and generally behave in totally nonsensical ways only an insane person would. I think having a mere mortal walk up to a god in Morrowind and attack them is more out of character than having a dumb one use a levitation potion to safely fire arrows at melee monsters.

 

[Beastro]

I think having a mere mortal walk up to a god in Morrowind and attack them is more out of character than having a dumb one use a levitation potion to safely fire arrows at melee monsters.

Especially if the PC has has high Wis.

Things like that show how much Wis is just "Priest intelligence". IMO, Wisdom should make your more powerful, but also limit what you can do, as in prevent you from doing dumb options like you describe because that isn't what a wise person would ever do unless he had a damn good reason and chance to survive.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I generally prefer 'Willpower' to a wisdom stat for that reason. Intelligence has similar problems, but there's really no substitute for the mechanics it tends to govern, and in the end, intelligence isn't necessarily an all-encompassing attribute anyways- one can be highly intelligent in some regards but stupid in others. What kind of Int score does Rainman get, for example? A character could be a genius at fighting tactics but a moron in almost every other regard, or vice versa.

 

[DraQ]

Especially if the PC has a has high Wis.

Thankfully in Morrowind there is no Wis. The closest is willpower and you can perfectly well be stubborn while insanely stupid.

But the player still has the option of doing charismatic things, like playing the hero for the sake of his reputation (Elderscrolls is horrible for this), when an uncharismatic one should just go ahead and let people hate him.

You're confusing heroic and charismatic. Charismatic person is simply the kind of person that has their way with people. Hitler was charismatic, but sure as fuck wasn't heroic (in before some durrhurr bubbling up from /pol/).

And what about the rest of what I said? Players can take their lifelong pals and stab them in the back for no reason at all, and generally behave in totally nonsensical ways only an insane person would. I think having a mere mortal walk up to a god in Morrowind and attack them is more out of character than having a dumb one use a levitation potion to safely fire arrows at melee monsters.

Then maybe simply don't make assumptions about character you cannot enforce? Don't assume that character is sane, don't assume they care about any of your precious snowflake NPCs, don't assume they are smart or dumb. Just don't.

At least with most relevant sorts of insane behaviour you can either pack your toys and go home (predefined character suddenly stabbing their friends resulting in game over) or they solve themsleves quickly enough (a lvl1 character dickslapping local demigod in the face). With intelligence you can't because game isn't smart enough to discern whether player is smart as intelligence is all about breaking out of the boxes. Want mage-y stat? Call it magic aptitude (Diablo had the right idea with its Magic stat), want smart sounding dialogue stat? Call it eloquence. Want abstract puzzle solving stat standalone or merged with mage-y stat? Do. But don't fucking have general purpose intelligence stat.

Besides, characters dominating opponents purely physically make for shit stories and shit gameplay, so why not have intelligence be a prerequisite for a successful character and make this intelligence player's?

It's "Conan the Barbarian" not "Moron the Durrhurrian" for a reason.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Because then you have no difference between a brute that only knows how to fight in the simplest way, and a master rogue who has mastered multiple fighting styles and weapons, and is an expert at climbing, picking locks, detecting and disarming traps, smithing, speaks multiple languages and commands an impressive knowledge of history and legends. They're both equally intelligent according to Draq because they were both suspicious of the moustache twirling villain, when he wanted that to require 'intelligence' while everything else requires... some undefined thing he doesn't have a word for.

 

[Beastro]

Then maybe simply don't make assumptions about character you cannot enforce? Don't assume that character is sane, don't assume they care about any of your precious snowflake NPCs, don't assume they are smart or dumb. Just play every game as a amoral Malkavian

 

[DraQ]

Because then you have no difference between a brute that only knows how to fight in the simplest way, and a master rogue who has mastered multiple fighting styles and weapons, and is an expert at climbing, picking locks, detecting and disarming traps, smithing, speaks multiple languages and commands an impressive knowledge of history and legends. They're both equally intelligent according to Draq because they were both suspicious of the moustache twirling villain, when he wanted that to require 'intelligence' while everything else requires... some undefined thing he doesn't have a word for.

There is very easily quantifable difference. Dumb brute is the one lying face down in a pool of own blood (assuming you mean an actual dumb brute not a big oaf that can't really fight technically, but isn't necessarily stupid) if they ever try anything more adventurous than beating people up for ale money.

Take a potential Fallout - the game that arguably did intelligence better than any other - story:
"a retard takes on an army of well armed supermutants led by a mutated supergenius and capable of wiping often well defended human settlements full of hardened wasteland survivors and wins because HE STRONK and PUNCH HARD". Does it make any fucking sense? No.
Would he fare any better against power-armored remants of gubmint nazis?

 

[Neanderthal]

Not read all thread but from personal experience havin a bit o heft behind me never hurt when doing doors, grabbin a fucker an smashin is head into a wall a few times afore raggin im through to fire exit were a lot easier because I were bigger an stronger than most anybody else. Then again once got hit in temple by this kid wearing one o them big arse signet rings an went wobbly legged an staggering for a few minutes, durin which time I got a right pastin, so I mainly put it down to luck an awareness.

I imagine push o pike, legionnary squares an Greek phalanx involved a lot o muscle work, pushin back enemy as well as stabbin em. I'd think personal combat duellin were place for dexterity an agility, but even then i'd say you'd need a good general level o strength an health. Bit o gristle never hurts.

 

[Damned Registrations]

So it instead makes sense for a pencil necked asthmatic to sneak casually stroll through a heavily fortified complex and convince someone who just met them to abandon their lifelong ambition and kill themselves? What part of that plan is intelligent exactly?

 

[DraQ]

So Fallout is overrated?


Well, he must have been smart to pull it off.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Or he reloaded 50 times just like the hulk did. Nothing you do in Fallout makes sense because it's all suicidal and you only succeed through savescumming. A lot.

Besides, the fun is in having both options. If it's not possible to make a strong character that lacks skills, then all the characters get a little more samey, the player has fewer decisions to make and the game is that much more shallow.

 

[J1M]

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

Raped. Too bad they didn't buy another katana and cut that in half with a bastard sword too.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Possibly, but a lot of those manoeuvres involve pollaxes (which definitely do work against plate) or guys without armor.

I doubt any of those maneuvers would require anything beyond ordinary strength, and as far as guys without armor, maybe it was just a manual drawing of guys practicing without armor, but intended for use with armor? Because from what I know about medieval grappling, it made much more sense to use it with armor. The reason was, if you didn't have an anti-armor weapon such as a warhammer, you couldn't cut through armor with a sword, but if you could grapple the other guy down, you could take out your dagger and shove it through his eyeslit or under the helmet or in the exposed underarm areas. But if neither of you was wearing plate armor, grappling was downright dangerous, for the same reason BJJ can be dangerous in a street fight, if you grapple the other guy, he can always take out his secondary weapon, like a dagger, and just gut you.

Yes, but both will try to do it at once and both may try to apply leverage to have their way. If I can wrench your sword or dagger around in a way that leaves you unable to act for a moment while freeing my own, then stab you in the dick, I'll do so.

I really don't think it works this way. The whole idea of a bind being this forceful thing is a movie invention. If one guy tries to push against the bind, it's just too easy for the other guy to give in but use his sword to redirect the other guy's somewhere, creating an opening for himself. That's why instead of this commitment, most fencers would rather just quickly hit the other sword and then do something else.

The thing with the mage, BTW is inspired by how infuriating a situation like this was in IE games and how awesome it was to finally be able to use similar technique in Skyrim Requiem to crush a powerful wizard while severely underleveled.

Good thing you crushed him before he had a chance to use that Radiant AI.

Grappling is a lot about technique but Gracies were winning in early MMA days because it was a chaotic mess of different styles and BJJ was unknown. Nowadays with the sport matured and standardized, everyone incorporates at the very least some takedown defense and you have to be more well-rounded to compete (let alone dominate).

Yeah and all MMA guys are in shape, but you don't hear them talk about "Oh I deadlifted this much today", instead they talk about practicing some techniques or dropping weight to become faster. They do need some level of strength of course, but in the end, strength is almost a secondary factor, something assumed to be there, and the guys who win win 99% of the time with superior technique, endurance or speed/athleticism. And that's in a sport where you need strength because you are using your body parts to do damage. With weapons, it's completely different, and the level of strength you need to use them effectively goes down significantly from unarmed arts.

I wouldn't consider bench press as the only (or even defining) measure of strength, depending on the physical activity/sport you practice you develop different muscle groups, wouldn't really equate DnD type of Strength attribute solely with numbers you post at the gym. Of course Mike Tyson was devastating because he was so explosive and used leverage perfectly to put his whole body into the punch but he also had a powerful bull-like physique.

I just used bench press as an example, but you can substitute deadlift, squats, arm wrestling, world's strongest man competition, etc, any widely accepted measure of physical strength, I bet Tyson wouldn't do so well in it, because he trained with running and bodyweight excercises. So basically endurance-type training, that will certainly make you stronger than the average person, but not the kind of massive strength gain people get from lifting heavy weights.

There is a correlation there, if we use your proposed measurement of strength such as bench press, do you think anyone that weighs under 300lbs will break the current bench press record set by this guy:

On average, yeah, the bigger guy is stronger, but in any given situation, that doesn't have to be the case. I watch American football, and there are lot of times where you have massive players playing certain positions that aren't gym strong at all, but can still use their weight effectively in the game, whereas, on the other hand, you have small cornerbacks and safeties benching ridiculous amounts of weight.

Who do you think bench-presses more, Floyd and Pacman or the Klitschko bros?

That's a pretty extreme example. Floyd is like what, 120-130 pounds and the Klitchkos are like 230-240? That's like an adult fighting a child. Obviously, when certain threshold are passed, strength can play a factor, like if a person fought against an elephant or a whale, but the vast majority of fighting you do in RPGs is against other humans and/or humanoids and/or human sized animals/creatures, and you have to presume both you and them will be "regular" sized most of the time, so I am not sure how it would apply to the original discussion.

 

[mutonizer]

Then don't present combat as actual combat, don't present any in-game problem as an actual problem that could be solved using gameplay means - use rigid scripting and cutscenes instead - and under no circumstances allow player to do anything clever whatsoever in your game.

In this concept, players are not supposed to do something clever, they are supposed to play their character and the game should allow them to do this fully.
Somehow everyone agrees to this basic concept when it's about anything physical (well of course my character can't break that door, I gave him 5 STR!) and yet, they can't comprehend that this should apply to mental activties as well. That's why my basic premise was: Get rid and/or ignore dumb players.

 

[adrix89]

That's why I would drop intelligence stat in cRPGs - there is no way to enforce it mechanically.

There's also no way to enforce charisma, alignment, character relationships, etc.

Cut them out or enforce them painfully.
Tabletop RPGs might get away with it by bullshiting the GM but in a CRPG everything that isn't systematized in game will be dumped.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

I generally prefer 'Willpower' to a wisdom stat for that reason. Intelligence has similar problems, but there's really no substitute for the mechanics it tends to govern, and in the end, intelligence isn't necessarily an all-encompassing attribute anyways- one can be highly intelligent in some regards but stupid in others. What kind of Int score does Rainman get, for example? A character could be a genius at fighting tactics but a moron in almost every other regard, or vice versa.

Many people equal intelligence to opportunistic behavior: doing the thing that seems to benefit you in the short term. That is totally not what intelligence is. Many people call this "smarts".

Intelligence is the ability to abstract everything. The most obvious example is mathematics. It is what allows you to notice that many different things behave in the same way. And if you know how one of them works, you know how they all work. You only have to fill in the names.

That's also how creativity works. Because, if you want to do something and you know of some way that it can be done, you can do it in any other context as well. So, essentially, an IQ test measures your creativity.

The easiest way to see this at work is in scientific disciplines. They all do their things in a different way, because that's how the person that discovered the discipline did it. While you could do all those things in a way like one of the other disciplines do it, that's not how people learned it at school or from their mentors. People don't like change.

This is best noticeable in a hospital, where each discipline uses a different word to describe or name something.

 

[DraQ]

And how do intelligent players play dumb characters other than LARPing all the way through?
That's why I would drop intelligence stat in cRPGs - there is no way to enforce it mechanically.

You do that and you'll be railroading dumb play-throughs more than they already are.

I won't be railroading them. I will be eliminating them.
Since intelligence is impossible to limit mechanically while also retaining any measure of gameplay depth, intelligence as stat needs to go.
Same with alignment and similar idiotic shit.

The only dumb playthroughs in this context will be the ones where player is behaving in a dumb manner. Fortunately they will be brief, although they might be entertaining.

You *can* have eloquence stat or any other controlling any part of intelligence that can be easily locked down mechanically.

Intelligence works in PnP, where you have an actual intelligence controlling the game, that can call you out on your out of character play or drop the rocks if you persist, and where you have other players that may handle intelligent parts if you're playing a dumbfuck and they don't.

Intelligence can sort-of work in true party based cRPGs as you will typically have at least one smart party members, but it already has corner cases where it doesn't.
In any cRPG featuring designated protagonist, whether it is solo, solo + followers or BG-style party based, intelligence just doesn't work properly and I would say that it's a part of good design contract that any introduced mechanics shouldn't be a dummy.

Then don't present combat as actual combat, don't present any in-game problem as an actual problem that could be solved using gameplay means - use rigid scripting and cutscenes instead - and under no circumstances allow player to do anything clever whatsoever in your game.

In this concept, players are not supposed to do something clever, they are supposed to play their character and the game should allow them to do this fully.
Somehow everyone agrees to this basic concept when it's about anything physical (well of course my character can't break that door, I gave him 5 STR!) and yet, they can't comprehend that this should apply to mental activties as well. That's why my basic premise was: Get rid and/or ignore dumb players.

My character can't break down doors, because the game can prevent him from breaking down doors. But regardless of his intelligence my character can and will strategize and employ out of the box solutions as long as you haven't turned the game into a screensaver.

If the only way of making a proper RPG is making it a screensaver then kindly take your proper RPG and GTFO - the 'G' part is there for a reason.

I doubt any of those maneuvers would require anything beyond ordinary strength

The thing is that if you are opposing the opponents strength every little bit helps. Of course, the whole point of techniques is to circumvent the other guy's strength, but still.

and as far as guys without armor, maybe it was just a manual drawing of guys practicing without armor, but intended for use with armor?

Doubtful given that most depictions are of lethal combat in (what can be assumed) realistic context.
Mostly stuff like duels, judicial combat and what looks like street fighting.

I really don't think it works this way. The whole idea of a bind being this forceful thing is a movie invention.

The idea of two guys trying to, against all reason, push their swords through each other while breathing looking menacingly at each other and engaging in combat dialogue definitely is, but twisting their weapons around simultaneously trying to apply leverage avoid having their own weapon wrenched out of their grasp or hopelessly stuck in an awkward position and stab the other guy while not getting stabbed themselves?