High Str Low Con?
- Thread starter Tonguez
- Start date
Bodybuilder would be good example of high-STR, low Fort-save.
D&D has the problem that CON affects hit points, ie resistance to injury. IRL the more muscle mass (ie STR) you have, the more resistant you are to direct physical injury, eg broken bones. I remember training in the army reserve, instructors said several times that female recruits were injured far more often than male, due to less muscle mass sheathing their bones. Yet for most of what CON represents (susceptibility to cold, fatigue, disease - Fortitude save stuff), women have on average higher CON than men!
More realistic RPG systems tend to base hit points off a combination of STR & CON. D&D gets around it a bit by giving different hit dice based on class - so a Fighter, who usually has high STR, will have decent hp even w low CON.
D&D has the problem that CON affects hit points, ie resistance to injury. IRL the more muscle mass (ie STR) you have, the more resistant you are to direct physical injury, eg broken bones. I remember training in the army reserve, instructors said several times that female recruits were injured far more often than male, due to less muscle mass sheathing their bones. Yet for most of what CON represents (susceptibility to cold, fatigue, disease - Fortitude save stuff), women have on average higher CON than men!
More realistic RPG systems tend to base hit points off a combination of STR & CON. D&D gets around it a bit by giving different hit dice based on class - so a Fighter, who usually has high STR, will have decent hp even w low CON.
Inconsequenti-AL
Breaks Games
You could view strength stat as the ability to apply strength rather than sheer muscle mass...
Thus high strength/low con could be the tiny, skinny person that knows exactly where to throw their weight. If they punch you you always get a 'dead arm'.
Although if I was playing this I'd rather play someone who's ill - like MerricB said. IIRC, there was a great Michael Moorcock character like that, I can't remember the name, but I think it was in the one with the masks, airships and european setting? I need a brain 2.0 upgrade today.
Thus high strength/low con could be the tiny, skinny person that knows exactly where to throw their weight. If they punch you you always get a 'dead arm'.
Although if I was playing this I'd rather play someone who's ill - like MerricB said. IIRC, there was a great Michael Moorcock character like that, I can't remember the name, but I think it was in the one with the masks, airships and european setting? I need a brain 2.0 upgrade today.
Ghostknight
First Post
S'mon said:
Yep. All true but I would put a caveat on the above. High str does not necessarily indicate high muscle mass. I have trained for a large number of years in the martial arts, and have fought people with various builds. One of the important things to remember is that those thin wiry guys can be just as strong as the brick powerhouses (but are much faster and thus more dangerous) - these are the high str, high dex crowd. So I can quite easily envision a high str, high dex, low con character as being thin and wiry, very strong but without the protection of high muscle mass.
Of course, being a game I would allow a player to describe his character however he likes in order to make it fun for - lose a bit of realism in order to increase player satisfaction, an acceptable trade-off to me!
I think you're thinking of Elric (in the swords & sorcery Young Kingdoms)? Oswald Bastable of the King's Lancers in the (variously) masks & airships settings of Warlord of the Air & The Steel Tsar was pretty healthy. Or maybe you mean Jerry Cornelius - Elric's alternative incarnation in various weird 1960s Europas?
Ghostknight said:
I'd probably 'build' this guy with decent STR (say 14-16), very high DEX (17-18+), and ok CON (12-14)*. No matter how well you apply force, ultimately you do need the muscle to back it up, so IMC if you want a 1st-level human w STR 16 you need to weigh at least ca 115-120 lbs, or 150lb for STR 18.
*This kind of martial artist type IRL is probably extremely healthy, with, in game terms, a great Fortitude save.
Ghostknight
First Post
S'mon said:
But I disagree that muscle mass is the defining criteria in strength. Muscle fibres themselves can differ between individuals allowing some greater strength from lower mass. Also some have higher musclar density resulting in thinner builds from the same muscle mass (and would a lower volume of muscle provide the same protection from falls etc). Personally I wouldn't put weight figures to str amounts - weight is as much a function of fat, bone density etc as it is of muscle mass. So the persons weight to muscle ration is going to vary dramatically even though two people may weigh the same.
As for the martial artist necessarily having a good/ok con - not necessarily. I can think of one person specifically that I have trained with - excellent fighter, low weight (in competitions he was generally in the 50-60 kg class - exact classification varying between martial arts and we were training kung fu and ju jutsu and competing in both), but had an immune deficiency syndrome (not AIDS, a lesser one that is treatable) and was often sick. There is always a way to explain a low con (hey, if you are prepared to play it a very low con character could have one of the brittle bone diseases and every time they fall they stand a chance of breaking a bone - even from a minor fall - could still be strong and nimble - just don't fall or get hit by a blunt weapon!)
Yeah, I was just thinking a 'typical' martial artist (N)PC. I use minimum-weight-by-STR figures - 80lb elves with STR 18 just bug me, assuming elves are like humans (rather than Vulcans or cats) in terms of muscle/STR ratios. My Midnight PC has STR 16 (now 17) and she's a pretty trim 120-lber, 5'6", I see her as wirily muscular, martial artist type. Making her 5' and 80lbs would just have bugged me, as would making her 120lbs & STR 20 (like our resident min-maxer advised, possible w Midnight racial mods). And I didn't want a "Bulgarian woman weightlifter" type PC.
Ghostknight said:
A muscle is capable of pulling 3-4 kg/ square centimeter of cross section. That's really all it's about. Some people might be able to pull 4.5 kg/square centimeter and some people 2.5 kg but still the strength of a muscle is directly proportional to how big it is. But:
1) The size of the muscle and the size of for example an arm doesnt have to be the same thing, especially not in an obese person.
2) All instances of muscle use is improved by practising; this is most obvious in martial arts but that's true even for weight lifting. In martial arts you almost never use one muscle so a small, wiry guy with exceptional coordination can practically be very strong. But isolate the wiry guy's muscle in an exercise and you see that his strength isnt really that dramatic. For D&D purposes I would say that you are right, though.
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On topic: I could imagine a high strength/low con person as a fat guy, a very skinny yet muscular guy, someone with a chronic disease and someone with a low pain threshold. The problem IMO with Con and Dex is that both of those abilities are very broad and that they factor in things that doesnt have with each other to do very much from a physiological POV.
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Inconsequenti-AL
Breaks Games
S'mon said:I think you're thinking of Elric (in the swords & sorcery Young Kingdoms)? Oswald Bastable of the King's Lancers in the (variously) masks & airships settings of Warlord of the Air & The Steel Tsar was pretty healthy. Or maybe you mean Jerry Cornelius - Elric's alternative incarnation in various weird 1960s Europas?
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.
