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<blockquote data-quote="Guest 6801328" data-source="post: 8184416">Here's why I don't buy the whole &quot;strength score tells the whole story&quot; narrative:D&amp;D 5e uses Strength for jumping, swimming, and climbing.&nbsp; Certainly athletes who do those things well are highly physically fit, and have excellent strength-to-weight ratio.&nbsp; But the top climbers in the world...regardless of which sub-sport we are talking about (sport, alpine, mountaineering) are typically fairly small, and the exceptions tend to be tall but lithe.&nbsp; They certainly aren't going to excel at the Shove action, or swinging a greataxe, or bending bars/lifting gates.&nbsp; Same thing for swimmers and high jumpers.But, as has been pointed out, the Strength score is an abstraction that combines many things.&nbsp; Just as it's silly to imagine that a dwarf excels at clinging to dime-thickness protrusions in a rocky face, or doing &quot;a series of one-fingered pullups&quot; (Action Directe, 9a/14d, f.a. Wolfgang Güllich 1991), it's also kinda silly to imagine a halfing succeeding at a Shove action on a Hill Giant.And, yet, them's the rules.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Guest 6801328, post: 8184416"] Here's why I don't buy the whole "strength score tells the whole story" narrative: D&D 5e uses Strength for jumping, swimming, and climbing. Certainly athletes who do those things well are highly physically fit, and have excellent strength-to-weight ratio. But the top climbers in the world...regardless of which sub-sport we are talking about (sport, alpine, mountaineering) are typically fairly small, and the exceptions tend to be tall but lithe. They certainly aren't going to excel at the Shove action, or swinging a greataxe, or bending bars/lifting gates. Same thing for swimmers and high jumpers. But, as has been pointed out, the Strength score is an abstraction that combines many things. Just as it's silly to imagine that a dwarf excels at clinging to dime-thickness protrusions in a rocky face, or doing "a series of one-fingered pullups" ([I]Action Directe[/I], 9a/14d, f.a. Wolfgang Güllich 1991), it's also kinda silly to imagine a halfing succeeding at a Shove action on a Hill Giant. And, yet, them's the rules. [/QUOTE]

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