D&D 5E Strength is agile

[Yaarel]

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.

In this case, your post is partly wrong.

Yes, Dexterity can cover ‘acrobatic stunts, including dives, rolls, somersaults, and flips’.

However, Dexterity CANNOT cover highjumps.

Without a highjump, these ‘flips’ are less dramatic, and less useful in D&D.



Moreover, Strength includes the ‘agility’, such as to wield a sword accurately. The attack is only a Strength check. There is no extra Dexterity check to aim the sword. Accuracy is an aspect of proficiency and Strength. Dexterity is irrelevant in agile melee combat.

 

[Sacrosanct]

clearly you've seen as much parkour as you have rock climbing and weight training...

 

[Yaarel]

clearly you've seen as much parkour as you have rock climbing and weight training...

Perhaps you misunderstand the D&D rules.

Jump = Strength

 

[Yaarel]

For what it is worth, my brother is an athlete and a bodybuilder.

My dad in highschool is a national champion athlete, and even at the age of 70 keeps in shape and participates in city marathons.

 

[Yaarel]

I'm going to side with Sacrosanct since he actually sounds like he knows what he is talking about.

Sacrosanct claims to know what he is talking about. But then he says things like ‘aerobic exercise’ uses Dexterity, which makes less sense. For example, I have never heard anyone in D&D use a Dexterity check to jog or swim.

 

[Yaarel]

My dad does a routine of body lifting exercises (calisthenics) every morning before eating breakfast. I have a good idea about how difficult this is, and how much strength it requires to locomote the body.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

In this case, your post is partly wrong.

Yes, Dexterity can cover ‘acrobatic stunts, including dives, rolls, somersaults, and flips’.

However, Dexterity CANNOT cover highjumps.

Without a highjump, these ‘flips’ are less dramatic, and less useful in D&D.

Parkour requires both Athletics (Jumping, Climbing etc.) and Acrobatics (Falling, particularly in a flashy way, flexibility.)

I think part of the issue, as demonstrated by Remathilis, is that people are still hung up on earlier edition definitions of Strength. Hence the perception of the bodysculptors, literally muscle-bound people as high-strength characters rather than including other athletes. This isn't saying that bodybuilders aren't strong, but they not only tend to bulk up to the point that their flexibility and movement is restricted (hence the term muscle-bound), they often build for looks or specific routines. They look quite different to the really strong athletes who train for general strength.

5th ed doesn't distinguish between different types of strength though. High-jumpers, sprinters, weightlifters and many sportsmen all have high strength in 5th ed terms.

Even most acrobats tend to be very strong for their size. The square-cube rule has a lot to do with how 5th ed Strength stat works.

Moreover, Strength includes the ‘agility’, such as to wield a sword accurately. The attack is only a Strength check. There is no extra Dexterity check to aim the sword. Accuracy is an aspect of proficiency and Strength. Dexterity is irrelevant in agile melee combat.

Dexterity covers reflexes, which are useful for reacting to an opponent's attacks. The reason why strength is the default for melee attacks, armed or unarmed is partly that physical power determines the control you have over a weapon, and partly that D&D's AC system means that the force with which a blow lands (and thus its capability to deal meaningful damage past armour) is also part of the "to hit" roll.

 

[TheLoneRanger1979]

Strength and agility are not the same, cannot be swapped interchangeably, and feats of strength can't accomplish feats of agility and vice versa. Every example the OP gave is someone who has BOTH.

Basically this. But to elaborate as a part time sportsman myself (swimmer, distance runner, table tennis)......

All the agile people in the OP photos are "strong". Not all the strong people out there are agile. Especially when you compare the power to weight ratios of different sports people. Take the strongmen and the gymnasts are two opposite sides of the equation. Now, if we really want to make a proper ruling here, interconnection is the word we are looking for (as mentioned before). And there is one down to the point example in DnD i always like to mention and i think makes the perfect analogy. The LONG BOW in DnD. How come a weapon that had a draw weight of over 100 pounds can be considered a dexterity weapon? The plain and simple truth is, it can't. You must be one strong dude (or dudette) to ever pull the thing effectively. But you also need good hand-eye coordination and a steady grip to be any good with it. So it takes both. Just like gymnastics.


The real question that bothers me though is the unification of agility and dexterity. While the former requires some minimum level of strength and a some minimum level of body wide muscle control, dexterity in most of its incarnations require almost none of the above (paining, sculpting, aiming a weapon, throwing light objects at short range...). But can assure you having the ability to paint a perfect replica of Mona Lisa, or Dismantling a lock won't help you one bit when doing somersaults. Strong core muscles, arms and legs will. Flexible mid and lower back will. Painting skills??? Not so much.

So, from a rule based context, what we as nerds need to develop is a system that would reflect what we observe in reality. For a long time i was a proponent of making Str, Agl and Dex separate attributes...... But as i wrote this block of text, i got another idea..... What if Agility is a derived value? Like AC is. Let's say you have 2 basic abilities, strength and muscle control (dex). Each of these would give you an arbitrary bonus to your total agility. Agility which you can use to add to your dodge actions. Other actions, like parry or aim, will count on your dex bonus alone.

We could probably go this way for other attributes as well.

EDIT: I would put the manual aspects of dexterity almost completely in the skill tree (disarm traps i.e)

 

[Noctem]

clearly you've seen as much parkour as you have rock climbing and weight training...

+1 the problem here is that the OP has a clear lack of understanding of the subject(s) he's trying to discuss.

 

[Noctem]

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.

furthermore this is the correct answer that the OP is choosing to ignore. The rules specifically state that Acrobatics covers the things he's attributing to Strength. Acrobatics is tied to Dexterity. /thread.