D&D 5E Strength is agile

[transtemporal]

the image of an ‘athletic’ ‘agile’ ‘acrobatic’ stunt is the same thing as the image of muscle workouts in an exercise weight training gym.

No it isn't. None of the images are of actual body-builders. Those guys can hardly walk, let alone do parkour.

Take this guy for example. He'd make a great dwarf. I really can't see him in circ du soleil.

https://www.rdegges.com/static/images/2011/jay-cutler.png

 

[Yaarel]

While I do know that hand-eye co-ordination is a thing, unless these people can also reliably catch a ball, I'm having a hard time understanding them as Dextrous.

I agree catching a ball - if it is under difficult circumstances - probably requires Dexterity. It seems more like juggling.

Also, while preparing to catch, the ball the catcher is probably less agile, either standing stationary while waiting for it or running in a fixated way. Heh, it is sort of like driving while texting, and cripples normal agility.

D&D isn't a perfect model of real athletic (or mental, or any) skill acquisition. It's just a reasonable model for a game.

D&D isnt a perfect model for reallife athletic actions. But D&D mechanics are fluid, evolving, and improving.

Even as is, all athletic ‘agility’ actions use Strength.

Even falling and balance happen as part of the Strength checks for highjump and longjump.

Actual checks for body mobility use Strength anyway. Socalled ‘acrobatic’ checks are relatively rare, and could easily subsume into Athletics skill checks.

I once had a D&D character who I wanted to be an ‘agile’ hero. So I made the mistake of optimizing for Dexterity and the Acrobatic skill. But the fact is, in D&D, any real agility check uses Strength - jumping, climbing, and so on. During many adventures from levels 1 to 10, my character never made any Acrobatics check. Not ever. Not once. Falling was infrequent in these particular campaigns, and magic resolved it when it did happen. Others who lacked magic and took the fall, seemed to not really care about the rare opportunity to excel at falling. Acrobatics is little more than the ‘falling’ skill. Athletics can easily include the falling as part of jumping.

In any case, if I build an other agile D&D hero, I will make sure to optimize Strength and the Athletics skill to represent agility.

 

[Yaarel]

No it isn't. None of the images are of actual body-builders. Those guys can hardly walk, let alone do parkour.

Take this guy for example. He'd make a great dwarf. I really can't see him in circ du soleil.

Remember, this guy is taking (probably illegal) steroids. His body is unnatural. Possibly in D&D terms, his body might even suffer the equivalent of a ‘disease’ or a ‘condition’.

But despite his unnatural bulk, this strong guy is probably agile. Can he do handstands? Yes. Can he jump? Yes. Etcetera.

 

[transtemporal]

In fact, too much strength can hinder you. By and large, strength is increased by increased muscle mass.

Ha, so true. A great example is actually climbing. I went to a climbing wall with my gf a while ago. She thought I'd be awesome at it because I was strong. Granted, the leg strength helped in parts but mostly I found it hard going whereas she found it easy. Less mass, better overall fitness, more flexibility.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

well now I feel like a disgusting blob...

Haha, me too. Which is good, it means that maybe now I'll actually get up from the computer and go for a run like I've been meaning to do for the past hour or so.

I read once that men tend to respond positively to exposure to images of superheroes (Captain America, Superman) who are very muscular. The study did something like study how hard men exerted themselves on a test of strength (gripping a ball? calisthenics? I forget) after exposure to either the experimental or control images. Like most psychology studies it shouldn't be taken too seriously, but I think it has some truth to it. Despite being a disgusting blob, I find that being exposed to healthy masculine physiques is inspiring: "Hey, I should be like that."

 

[transtemporal]

But despite his unnatural bulk, this strong guy is probably agile. Can he do handstands? Yes. Can he jump? Yes. Etcetera.

Yeah... not convinced in the slightest. I can't picture this guy in Circ du Soleil or Bolshoi Ballet or doing parkour. All of which require grace, flexibility, fitness and DEXTERITY.

He just has way too much muscle mass for any of that to be practical.

 

[Yaarel]

Lets examine some of the images from Cirque de Soliel to think about how to represent what is going on in D&D.

First and foremost, these are mostly Charisma (Performance) skill checks. They do reliable, low-risk actions, that they can repeat for multiple performances, that are visually appealing.

Here is an awesome picture of two contortionists. Neither is especially using Strength, but the visual effect is beautiful to me.

In this picture, the two women are mainly doing contortion, folding their bodies. Neither is using Strength. Contortion is slow, precise, movements and arguably uses Dexterity. Currently, their bodies are moreorless stationary, standing in a still poise, moving slowly, and non-agile.




Here are two other contortionists. The one that is doing the handstand might be using Strength for it, but is stationary and non-agile, and is more likely using her Dexterity for the small precise movements.




So, probably all of the contortionists above are using Dexterity for stationary small slow motions. They seem to neither use Strength, nor be ‘agile’.

By contrast, compare performers from Cirque de Soliel who are doing actual ‘acrobatics’ - from a trapeze. These two are gymnasts, strong, and this case using their Strength for weightlifting, body lifting, and climbing.





Also here is an image of what D&D ‘tumbling’ might look when it lacks Strength, and only uses Dexterity to finesse the bodyweight. Notice, during this aerial cartwheel, her head is less than a foot above the ground. There is no highjump. Without the highjump, she can substitute Dexterity instead of Strength.

 

[Yaarel]

Yeah... not convinced in the slightest. I can't picture this guy in Circ du Soleil or Bolshoi Ballet or doing parkour. All of which require grace, flexibility, fitness and DEXTERITY.

He just has way too much muscle mass for any of that to be practical.

According D&D Rules-As-Written, all ‘parkour’ stunts use Strength for jumping and climbing. Also using an action in the middle of a Jump move, is also a Strength check.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Nevertheless Arnold Schwarzenegger is agile, moreso than the objection seems to imply.

Can Arnold do handstand? Yes.
Can he do handstand pushups? Yes.
Can he walk on his hands? Yes.
Can he run on his hands? Probably (but I havent seen him do it.)
Can he ‘jump’ by means of his hands? Probably better than most humans can.

Can he throw a javelin? Yes.
Can he wield a sword accurately in melee combat? Yes.

Can he play football? Probably.

Can he do longjumps, highjumps, and climb. Yes, yes, and yes. He is an action star. Many of his own scenes are examples of him using Strength for his agility - for explosive strength and body mobility.

Arnold is, in fact, agile..

Have you seen him do all of this? Just because he does some choreographed routine in a movie does not mean Arnold knows how to use a sword. You also seem to keep missing when people keep saying that most of these examples are BOTH strength and agility. Your argument only holds water if a person is either or, and can't have both qualities. It's a fallacy at the most basic level. "Look at this really strong person. He is walking on his hands. Therefore, the ability to walk on your hands is based on strength." That's essentially your argument. And it's horribly false. I'm actually a lot stronger now than I was when I was a teenager. But back then, I could easily walk on my hands and do many other acrobatics. Now? Not even close. They are completely different activities that rely on different traits. One can do both if one practices both, but one does not get better at one by only doing the other.

Also, you are also completely mistaken on weight lifting requiring mostly skill, and/or being a skill based activity. It requires discipline (which covers repetition and diet). It requires little actual skill. I can teach anyone everything they need to know in 30 minutes, covering the right technique for the core exercises you'll ever need to know for the rest of your life. Benching over and over again doesn't make you more skilled at it, unlike any other activity that actually is skill based. Once you know now to do a bench press, you do the same technique forever; you don't get more skilled at it.

Look, all you have to do to increase strength is to get the lactic acid going in the muscles you want to grow, have a good diet with lots of protein, and that's basically it. There is no skill involved. There is no agility that gets improved. Like Arnold said decades ago, weight lifting is like body sculpting. You focus on the areas you want, and do enough resistance anaerobic workouts to get the lactic acid produced (hitting muscle failure), and intake protein and do scheduled rests.

It doesn't matter how many images you keep embedding. You are simply very mistaken here, and clearly don't understand the topic about which you're trying to argue. Nothing you've used as examples actually works the way you think it does, from rock climbing to weight training. You'd know that if you had any experience doing both. I have. Trust me on this.

 

[Sacrosanct]

According D&D Rules-As-Written, all ‘parkour’ stunts use Strength for jumping and climbing. Also using an action in the middle of a Jump move, is also a Strength check.

Wrong again. parkour is more than just long/high jumping and climbing. RAW, it's acrobatics (dexterity) that covers: "...acrobatic stunts, including dives, rolls, somersaults, and flips." Parkour certainly seems to fall under that.