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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5699945" data-attributes="member: 54877">This stuff never maps directly to stats or character experience in the game model, which is why it is so contentious. The three most important components in sports fencing, by so much that everything else is minor, are timing, precision (placement), and speed (and reach)--in that order.  A certain minimum in all three is necessary compared to the opponent, but if you have slightly superior timing compared to their slightly superior precision and speed--you probably win.   Strategy and tactics sit on top of all of this, and govern how well you do in the rough band where your timing, precision, and speed place you.  (And at most levels, also ego, especially in mixed bouts, where a woman getting under a man's skin can sometimes compensate for the inherent and immense speed superiority.) Timing is the most important of the core skils, and also the hardest to teach.  This is why musicians sometimes pick up quality fencing faster than superior athletes. The athlete has such an advantage in speed that they rely on it, win often at first, but don't develop the other skills adequately.  This is why if you have a high school team, you can get away with focusing on basic defense and quick attacks by the athletes.  About the time they hit the wall, they have graduated, and you move on.  If you started with 5th graders and taught them properly (and maybe started them in the band at the same time <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ), six years later they'd beat all their peers consistently. Speed maps more to Str than Dex.  There is a minor but significant part of it that is reflected in Dex--reaction time.  But mainly it is the correct muscle development, coupled with reach.  The business end of the weapon goes from here to there.  Once you can consistently start from "here" and get to "there", speed is helpful.  You can use smarts (strategy, tactics, skills) to slow down the pace at times.  Even varying the pace is helpful.  But if you leave a sufficient opening for the other guy, that speed will tell.  The skill part of speed is almost all about maintaining the other aspects in service to the speed.  (How fast can you tie your shoes?  If you practiced a lot, how much could you improve it?  There is a ceiling.  The practice would largely be about conditioning and removing extraneous elements.)  The skill part of "speed" is often reflected in an older fencer's ability to barely move their blade.  It isn't that they are faster.  It is that they are very efficient. Precision mainly maps to Dex, as far as natural ability.  Again, skill is about removing the extraneous elements.  If you parry 4 the same way every time (given that is appropriate), then you know where your point is.  This makes precision far easier.  Things like having your wrist turned at the proper position, the appropriate amount of grip, and so forth could be argued as more than extraneous, but I see them that way.  It is skill, and it does take a lot of practice, but that is because the correct way is not a natural thing to most people, and there are 20 bad ways for every 1 correct way.   But ah, timing.  Timing doesn't map to anything directly in a game model.  You take that minimum required precision and speed, combine it in a dance with your footwork (sometimes seeming independent of the upper body, as a great drummer on a trap set does with all four limbs), and the whole time your "mental stats" are concentrating on what you will do to your opponent and how that will make them react.  It is high speed chess with a blade, and it takes a certain amount of fencing experience in the spectators merely to see all the moves. All that above is in a highly regulated, safe, sport--confined to an artificial strip, one versus one.  No one has died from the blade since 1990, though there have been heart attacks and such.  You can't bring a bigger axe and chop through their shield.  There is no magic, though sometimes an official that isn't up to the level of the competition can make it seem that way.  (Fencing is chronically short of experienced officials at certain levels.)   So I am fairly certain that the reality of a D&D combat is high speed 3-D chess, where the number of opponents changes every second or two, the boards rotate at random, and magic changes the rules constantly.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" />  This means that the characters are pulling upon every resource, or they are dead.  So I would expect raw ability to be somewhat telling at the beginning of their careers, like those 4-year high school fencers, but quickly overshadowed by whatever can be leveraged.  A smart character, of any class, would use it.  And a relatively dumb one would find a way to compensate for being dumb.</blockquote>

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