HTWMDS - Does Greater Strength Make You Better at Hitting Things?

[Jack7]

It's hard to answer, merely yes or no. For instance I both bat (hit baseball) and throw discus.

Strength is a necessary component of hitting a ball well, and of throwing well. So is dexterity and muscle control.

However hitting and throwing both are really determined by skill and practice, just like in boxing or sword fight (and I used to do both), not strength or dexterity. What strength and dexterity really do is augment skill and capability.

No matter how good or how much muscle control you have, unless you are well practiced and skilled you can easily miss a moving target in any effective way, especially a living one who knows what they are doing, if you are unskilled and unpracticed and untrained.

Yes, strength and dexterity and coordination and muscle control and speed all affect performance, but skill is paramount in being able to bring all of these elements together in a useful, effective, and efficient fashion.

Training and exercise and practice makes less experienced and able people faster, stronger, better coordinated, and most importantly, more effective and efficient.

Skill is what really tells.

I'd think that nearly every swing "hits" your opponent in some way. I know that's pretty much how it works when my kids are fighting with "swords". If you are strong, a higher percent of those hits will wear out your opponent (or in D&D hit point terms, cause "damage"). It isn't simulating hitting, nearly all swings hit. It is simulating which of those hits exhaust your opponents' ability to continue fighting.

I'll agree Z that when you have two basically untrained and inexperienced fighters standing toe to toe with basically non-lethal weapons there is little incentive to exercise finesse. But when you have two opponents using real close combat weapons and any particualr blow might cause death, severe injury, or maiming, and you know the other guy intends to kill you if he gains some small advantage, people learn real skill in combat. Awful quick.

It's the difference between beating a man in a fist fight by sparring with him and seeing who can outlast the other, and a fighting a man who you know intends to beat you or stab you to death. In situations like that you have no incentive to see who is stronger, instead you want to be mo lethal, much mo faster. It ain't a fight to the exhaustion time anymore, it's a fight to the expiration date.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Seeing as how D&D doesn't seek to actually simulate blow by blow combat, the role of strength is ok. An "attack" is meant to represent your offensive melee output for the round, as opposed to a single swing of the sword. STR serves to determine how good overall, a character is for melee as opposed to missile combat. Other systems such as GURPS handle simulated combat and the effects/benefits of strength much better.

There is also the class/ ability score connection to consider. In a more simulated system, one would expect DEX to modify accuracy and STR to modify damage. Since the fighter class is heavily STR based, the modifier is used for both. Its kind of like the INT/WIS thing for magic users and clerics. INT would serve just fine to determine skill with arcane or divine magic. WIS is used to provide a difference in prime requisite for two different character classes, and no other reason is needed actually.

 

[Zaukrie]

True, but when fighting a dragon, how often will a trained fighter miss actually making contact? How often won't a blow land on a shield, or be blocked by a weapon? I see the strength modifier meaning "super, you blocked my blow, but I'm so strong your arm is weaker now, and you are more tired". YMMV of course.

 

[Spatula]

D&D in recent editions uses greater strength as both a benefit in hitting the opponent as well as dealing damage to them

Recent editions?

Your thoughts?

It works in D&D because of how AC works and the overall abstract nature of combat. It may not be as defendable in other systems that model armor differently, but then again as mach1.9pants and others allude to, modelling realistic combat is a bit beyond the scope of most games. Strength, endurance, hand-to-eye coordination, reaction times, training, judgement, etc. are all important elements in a hand-to-hand fight but how do you combine them all into a system that's playable? Every game identifies the level of abstraction that its comfortable with and goes from there; in D&D's case it's very abstract.

 

[Lanefan]

I have no problem with it in general. In 1e, the damage modifier went up faster than the to-hit modifier as your strength increased, which might be a bit more realistic than having them always go up the same; but the idea of superior strength translating into more opportunities to breach your foe's defenses makes a lot of sense as a general principle.

Lanefan

 

[monboesen]

Look at it this way. If you take two equally skilled people, the stronger of the two will win most fights between them.

In fact strenght (reflected by size) is so important that that most unarmed combat sports divides participants into groups solely by strength in order to make even matches.

Strenght will have less impact in armed combat, but still be the second most important factor (skill being the most important).

Skinny untrained people who think quickness and dexterity will save their ass in a fight vs. a slower, heavier but stronger opponent are sadly mistaken.

 

[Aus_Snow]

If Strength and Dexterity (or equivalent attributes) must influence attack and defence capabilities directly, then Dragon Warriors provides an interesting example of another way this can be implemented.

In that system, Strength and Reflexes both affect Attack and Defence scores directly, but in the first instance, Strength slightly more so, and in the second, Reflexes.* It's staggered, so that at the first increment, Strength will add one to Attack, and Reflexes, zero. Then, at the second increment, Strength adds 2, and Reflexes 1. And so on, should your characters ever reach the lofty heights of having stats beyond the 16-18 range.

For certain derived stats in one of my own fantasy mashups, integer averages are instead the order of the day, but I suppose the principle is much the same.

* Oh, and a very high Intelligence score adds 1 to Attack, Defence, Magical Attack and Magical Defence. Quite the advantage.

 

[S'mon]

More fast-twitch muscle means you swing the axe faster, which makes you better at hitting the opponent. For typical medieval melee weapons, STR certainly does make you better at hitting. The 3e weapon finesse feat allows for precision strikes with light weapons replacing power & speed.

If there is an issue, I think it is that the 3e STR to-hit bonuses are too big, due to the unified mechanic. 1e's to-hit bonuses were around half the damage bonuses, I think that worked better. Classic or C&C caps bonus at +3 (for STR 18) which again works OK.

 

[blargney the second]

I've come to view the Strength attribute in D&D as the athleticism stat: it's an indication of how good you are at applying the right amount of force at the right time.

In comparison, I see Dexterity as the reaction stat: it's how good you are at reacting to the changing environment around you and predicting your opponent's moves.

 

[NilesB]

More strength improves weapon control. a stronger fighter can strike faster and harder without overextending. when parrying, parried, or when making or resisting beats and binds, a stronger fighter's weapon can be brought back into position and under control more quickly, and renders it more difficult for their opponent to retain control of their own weapon.