High Str Low Con?

[Sejs]

Large, overweight guy who, while quite strong, has no real staying power or endurance.

Skinny, wiry guy who is full of energy. Tons of pep. But is physically fragile. Bird-boned but hyper.

A physically developed guy who suffers from something like Hemoptsys, similar to Tachibana Uyko from the Samurai Showdown series of games.

 

[Snoweel]

There was a guy that I went to Basic Training with (USAF) who had fantastic upper body strength... they guy could do push ups all day long.

...snip...

To me a High STR, Low CON is the exact same way... great strength, no endurance.

If you can do push-ups all day long, you have incredible muscular endurance. My stringbean 13-year-old brother can do 100 push ups - far more than I can do, but he is hardly stronger than me.

That's why I bash him while I still can.

IRL the best elite infantry soldiers seem to mostly have a "lean and rangy" look

Likewise the best bricklayers' labourers. And just like special forces soldiers, they generally have to do more extended periods of carrying light loads than heavy lifting.

That's in real life today. Weapons are powered nowadays by chemical reaction. In an era of muscle powered weapons I suspect things were rather different. For example a Welsh longbowman of quality would use a bow with a pull well over 100 lbs. Lean and rangy isn't going to cut in when it comes to that.

Another factor that was crucial to the effectiveness of melee combatants was physical height.

The leverage available to a tall swordsman/axeman/whatever enabled them to generate more force at the 'hurty' end of their weapons than the just-as-strong shorter guy.

You can see this in the fact that most of baseball's power hitters are tall guys with long arms. Likewise the majority of fastball pitchers and speed bowlers in cricket.

Being tall will even aid in bending your longbow.

 

[Asmor]

Fat people are not neccessarily strong...

I've been extremely over weight for as long as I can remember and I'm probably the weakest person (not counting children ) I know, barring perhaps a few women.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I think the biggest factor in feudal combat was money!

You could be the heavily armoured guy, carried around on a highly trained (and heavily armoured) horse... or the guy covered in sores, wearing rags and armed with a pointed stick. Physicial attributes aside, I think I know who my moneys on

The high con, low everything character would get probably get played as a barbarian - might get a half decent str for some of the day ... I'd make them incredibly lazy, but hard to kill and 'don't make me angry, you won't like ....' etc.

Oh, right, in the Hawkmoon books!
One of Hawkmoon's sidekicks - not Oldann or Count Brass, I can't recall his name, I think he came from Granbretan (the evil neo-British empire) and was a consumptive aristocrat type? Great books BTW, must reread them sometime & remember how great Moorcock used to be...

Yup. That's the guy - definitely from Granbretan. It's a shame - looked for the book yesterday, but it's disappeared into my clutter somewhere. Time for a trawl of 2nd hand bookshops.

 

[Ghostknight]

Major factors in feudal combat was social class, both from a monetary point of view, upbringing and physical attributes.

Historical records state that the English Plantagents (early ruling class) were had and shoulders above the common man - literally. They averaged out at around 6' when the average peasant was arounf 5'6".

Also, nobles were trained from a young age in the arts of war like sword fighting, riding etc. Your average proffesional soldier got a bit of on training and the rest was learnt on the job. Most of medieval armies were made up of conscripted peasants, pulled off farm land and armed with whatever they could get hold off (thus the derivatives of various weapons formed from farm implements).

So your noble, in decent armor, with a decent weapon, physically stronger and trained, was at very little risk in warfare when fighting against, badly armed, unarmored and poorly trained peasants. In fact in many battles te winner was determined by wiping out the oppossing sides peasants and then taking the nobility as prisoners for ransome - very little killing of the opposition nobility as often you were related anyway!

 

[HellHound]

Once again in here with the obese angle.

I am 300 pounds. I can pick up refrigerators, move furniture with ease and so on. If you ever need to kick open a door, I'm your man (I pulled a metal fire door out of a wall at work once during an emergency - literally pulled the door frame clear of the wall to get through to the fire beyond).

But, at 300 pounds, don't expect me to do it for long.

On the other hand, I also know a lot of very large people who are NOT strong, (or just not skilled at throwing around their weight, I guess). The advantage for me is I grew up on a farm, heaving bales of hay, tossing sheep around, ya know, farmly stuff.

 

[Balsamic Dragon]

I just made a Str 16, Con 8 character. She's a pirate swashbuckler type who is fairly muscular from years of climbing ropes and swinging her heavy cutlass around. Unfortunately, she's also a drunk, hence the low Con. Years of grog have taken its toll, leaving her Fortitude Save substantially lower than the average fighter. The way I'm playing her, she doesn't have a problem with mere flesh wounds, but because of her low Con, any internal injuries are harder for her to recover from, due to the effect that contant over-imbibing has on her system.

She also has a hook hand! The GM and I worked out that she has a decent Dex, but she has a "negative feat" sort of like what they have in Unearthed Arcana that reflects the one-handedness problems.

Balsamic Dragon

 

[kenobi65]

The only thing that comes to mind for me is someone who is asthmatic or has a heart condition or similar - they have the strength but become breathless with strenuous activity, and if excited risk keeling over!

That's a good example...it perfectly describes a friend of mine. He's a blacksmith, and pretty much a bear of a man. His STR would probably be 16, maybe even a little higher.

But, he's overweight, and asthmatic, so he's got little endurance (and high levels of exertion leave him wheezing and gasping). And, he spends an awful lot of the winter with a cold (though having a 5-year-old germ factory in the house probably contributes to that ). So, his CON is very likely below 10.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I don't think it was any of them: He wasn't a main character, but was a rather stylish extra... Seem to recall he worked for an evil empire, in which almost everyone wore masks, different types to represent different castes. Got a funny feeling it was in the Runestaff books?

It's been so long since I've read any of his stuff. Having a strange desire to dust them off for a re-read.

It was a sidekick character in the Hawkmoon books (which was where the Runestaff appeared as well). He was a highly skilled, somewhat rogueish swordsman known for his skill, and for bedding wealthy women. He was also constantly complaining of illnesses, and so on. A perfect example of high STR/low Con. I can't for the life of me remember his name.

Elric's not such a good example, because his STR wasn't anything without Stormbringer either.