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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 6820431" data-attributes="member: 58172">All of the images in the original post photograph are tests of Strength. The images come from Olympic gymnasts, Parkour daredevils, weightlifting gyms, and elsewhere. Keep in mind, the images of people standing on their hands are actually in the midst of doing handstand pushups, and arent simply doing a stationary handstand. It is impossible for a person with low Strength to do any of the actions in the first post.The fact that gymnastics requires Strength, seems to upset certain individuals. But happily, the rules as written use Strength alone for highjump, longjump, and climb. The rules normally use Strength for actions that require accuracy. Strengh is often agile.Some individuals in the thread object. A less convincing argument is: they show me a picture of a muscular stout man who uses steroids, and then tell me this person cannot be agile. How do they know this person is not agile?People who look musclebound normally do things on their free time like, play football, do boxing, go mountain climbing, waterskiing, play racketball, and so on. I am confident, these bodybuilders have an agility that is much higher than that of an average person. The fact that they can walk on their hands, pull up their own bodyweight, spring up ropes, and so on, already makes them far more agile than the average person. If there was a bodybuilder who was not generally athletic, that would seem really unusual.There is one poster who seemed to make a more careful argument, implying that there isnt a direct correlation between weightlifting and gymnastics. The world record holder of lifting the highest weight is not also the same person who is the best on a gymnastics tumbling floor. Now that is true.A person who is generally strong will be good at both weightlifting and athletics. But the best weightlifter isnt necessarily the best athlete, and the best athlete isnt necessarily the best weightlifter. How does D&D represent this kind of relationship?Separate Weightlifting into a separate skill, that requires training, which it really is. This separate skill allows people to add proficiency and other kinds of modifications to become extremely good at manipulating weights. If they want, they can neglect the Athletics skill to represent the archetype of the bulky hulk that is extremely strong but not necessarily athletic. Oppositely, they can become extremely proficient at Athletics but neglect the Weightlifting skill, to represent the archetype of the jock.Both Weightlifting and Athletics are skills that represent Strength, which is ‘natural athleticism’. A hero that is innately strong thus has a high Strength score, will have a talent for both of these skills. But proficiency in either skill requires effort and training.It is even possible for a hero that has a low Strength score thus isnt ‘naturally athletic’ to nevertheless be highly proficient in Weightlifting, but this is unusual.As separate skills:Strength (Weightlifting): includes Bend Bars, Break Doors, and similar brute force.Strength (Athletics): includes any kind of body stunt, and similar agility.</blockquote>

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