Why is Str used for melee attack rolls instead of Dex?
- Thread starter Azlan
- Start date
iirc, a major difference for each of those listed and dnd is that they use a separate mechanic for to-hit and to-damage.
In such a system, it makes more sense to have strength only count in the damage step.
dnd has a different base assumption, that to damage is built in with to hit because armor adds to Ac and miss chance, not affecting damage at all.
thats the most basic reason some use dex and dnd uses strength.
In such a system, it makes more sense to have strength only count in the damage step.
dnd has a different base assumption, that to damage is built in with to hit because armor adds to Ac and miss chance, not affecting damage at all.
thats the most basic reason some use dex and dnd uses strength.
Celebrim
Legend
Azlan: Well, you would be wrong. I am zealous about many things, including games in general, but D&D is just another game as far as I'm concerned - nor am I known to be a rules lawyer if you mean it in the sense of 'one who argues that the letter of the rules should always hold', or 'one that spends time argueing at the table to gain an advantage for himself'. I am a rulessmith, in the sense of I'm generally a DM or the person that the DM turns to and says, "Do you have any rules for giving stats to babies... armwrestling... constructing sailing vessels...etc."
First, you should note that my first response to this was rather measured. I simply noted a basic game balance issue if you did it the way you suggested. But coming back to the thread I find this:
No. Judging from the replies here, it looks like you are the one that has got it wrong.
And then I find this:
At which point I give up hope that you are going to actually think about what someone else has to say except under the most extreme duress.
"If Intelligence and Wisdom can be calculated as independent variables, why can't Str and Dex?"
First of all, I didn't say that Str and Dex couldn't be _for the purpose of a game_. I was merely pointing out that in reality, high strength can and does often convert to physical speed and power - that more strong people are also fast people than weak people who are fast people - and this would at least partially justify having strength effect your ability to 'hit' even in the case of touch attacks. They aren't perfectly correlated, true, but they are corellated. They are even better coordinated if we separate agility (ability to move ones body gracefully) from dexterity (skill with ones hands), and it is the former which has a greater effect on touching something in combat.
As to Intelligence and Wisdom, personal experience leads me to believe that the coorellation between the two is not nearly so strong as is between strength and dexterity. You may or may believe that, but I feel there is strong evidence that intelligence does not equate to success in life, in making good choices in personal relationships, or in being aware, self-disciplined, strong willed, organized, or discerning, or anything else that indicates 'wisdom'.
Besides which, the failure to separate Int and Wis is something I find extremely annoying in a system like GURPS where the distinction is not made. The buy int and weak will exploit is justly infamous.
But that is off the point.
The point is that you are whining about how D&D has got it wrong, and your fix is no better and in fact worse. And people tried to tell you that, and you stuck your tongue out at them and generally dismissed thier comments without considering them at all. If you are bothered by the fact that Str unintuitively assists touch attacks, why aren't you equally bothered by the fact that Dex unintuitively allows blows that penetrate armor? Or had you even considered that until I mentioned it. I notice it doesn't get much coverage in your reply.
This a red herring, and also at least in part untrue. It has nothing to do with the internal consistancy of D&D, and more to do with your decision to run down a game system you clearly consider inferior in design and clearly don't understand. I've been in this hobby 20 years now, so I have a pretty good idea of how it has evolved. Most of the changes between 2nd and 3rd edition represent changes that had already been adopted as houserules by many DM's. Monte just collected, cleaned, and polished them. Probably he did so in many cases simply by thinking about the problems he had with the rules, since the same basic solutions have suggested themselves independently to many DM's. The RPG that is most proto-D20 in design is a computer game - Fallout. And, Fallout itself is obviously inspired by D&D like mechanics (D&D's attributes + Luck, levels, XP, hit points, etc.).
No, I'm not saying that at all. You seem to be the one that holds with that opinion. But, for the record, D&D's rules set does have most in common with a computer game - and a very excellent and sophisticated one at that. What I am saying is that D&D's rules set is by far and away the most successful and influential rules set ever to appear, and for all its flaws real and percieved, it is especially in its current form (D20) a very powerful and elegant rules set the equal in many gamers opinions to WoD, GURPS, Hero, and other influential rules sets. Every rules set has its limitations and oddities. We could just as easily get started a debate over whether GURPS would be better if STR gave h.p. and HTH gave fatigue points, and we'd could do so with alot more justification. Frankly, there is absolutely no reason to alter D20 as you suggest.
But on the other hand, it's your game. Play it how you like if you can find the players that are willing.
People have been trying to tell you why Str effects your 'to hit', but you just aren't listening.
First, you should note that my first response to this was rather measured. I simply noted a basic game balance issue if you did it the way you suggested. But coming back to the thread I find this:
Well, gee! Judging from the replies here, it looks like D&D is the only RPG that has it right, and all those other RPGs are wrong.
No. Judging from the replies here, it looks like you are the one that has got it wrong.
And then I find this:
At which point I give up hope that you are going to actually think about what someone else has to say except under the most extreme duress.
"If Intelligence and Wisdom can be calculated as independent variables, why can't Str and Dex?"
First of all, I didn't say that Str and Dex couldn't be _for the purpose of a game_. I was merely pointing out that in reality, high strength can and does often convert to physical speed and power - that more strong people are also fast people than weak people who are fast people - and this would at least partially justify having strength effect your ability to 'hit' even in the case of touch attacks. They aren't perfectly correlated, true, but they are corellated. They are even better coordinated if we separate agility (ability to move ones body gracefully) from dexterity (skill with ones hands), and it is the former which has a greater effect on touching something in combat.
As to Intelligence and Wisdom, personal experience leads me to believe that the coorellation between the two is not nearly so strong as is between strength and dexterity. You may or may believe that, but I feel there is strong evidence that intelligence does not equate to success in life, in making good choices in personal relationships, or in being aware, self-disciplined, strong willed, organized, or discerning, or anything else that indicates 'wisdom'.
Besides which, the failure to separate Int and Wis is something I find extremely annoying in a system like GURPS where the distinction is not made. The buy int and weak will exploit is justly infamous.
But that is off the point.
The point is that you are whining about how D&D has got it wrong, and your fix is no better and in fact worse. And people tried to tell you that, and you stuck your tongue out at them and generally dismissed thier comments without considering them at all. If you are bothered by the fact that Str unintuitively assists touch attacks, why aren't you equally bothered by the fact that Dex unintuitively allows blows that penetrate armor? Or had you even considered that until I mentioned it. I notice it doesn't get much coverage in your reply.
This a red herring, and also at least in part untrue. It has nothing to do with the internal consistancy of D&D, and more to do with your decision to run down a game system you clearly consider inferior in design and clearly don't understand. I've been in this hobby 20 years now, so I have a pretty good idea of how it has evolved. Most of the changes between 2nd and 3rd edition represent changes that had already been adopted as houserules by many DM's. Monte just collected, cleaned, and polished them. Probably he did so in many cases simply by thinking about the problems he had with the rules, since the same basic solutions have suggested themselves independently to many DM's. The RPG that is most proto-D20 in design is a computer game - Fallout. And, Fallout itself is obviously inspired by D&D like mechanics (D&D's attributes + Luck, levels, XP, hit points, etc.).
No, I'm not saying that at all. You seem to be the one that holds with that opinion. But, for the record, D&D's rules set does have most in common with a computer game - and a very excellent and sophisticated one at that. What I am saying is that D&D's rules set is by far and away the most successful and influential rules set ever to appear, and for all its flaws real and percieved, it is especially in its current form (D20) a very powerful and elegant rules set the equal in many gamers opinions to WoD, GURPS, Hero, and other influential rules sets. Every rules set has its limitations and oddities. We could just as easily get started a debate over whether GURPS would be better if STR gave h.p. and HTH gave fatigue points, and we'd could do so with alot more justification. Frankly, there is absolutely no reason to alter D20 as you suggest.
But on the other hand, it's your game. Play it how you like if you can find the players that are willing.
People have been trying to tell you why Str effects your 'to hit', but you just aren't listening.
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umm .. i might be wrong here but iirc the reason why people in the renaissance stopped wearing heavy armor was the appearance of the flintlock and muskets later on as well ... plate armor does not deflect a lead ball and usually added to the injuries inflicted ... i know its off topic and all but i saw this and my brain kinda went ... huh .... but i could be wrong ... could be ..
~Zehaeva
I do believe that Azlan's solution is better from an internal consistancy viewpoint than the current rules. However, you have to also change the armor rules to make armor absorb damage instead of making a character harder to hit.
However, we still end up with problems because whether you hit someone is also reflected in HP loss (HP can represent physical toughness, luck, skill in turning near hits into near misses, etc).
A good solution to this would be to switch to a life and stamina system like Star Wars d20 or Traveller d20.
Using the 3 above things (Using Dex to hit instead of strength, Armor reduces damage instead of affecting the to-hit roll, Life/vitality instead of HP) should solve most of the questions about whether an attack actually hits, penetrates, misses, etc. However, as was noted above, Str becomes a dump stat (Unless armor damage absorbtion is significantly high).
Changes of this nature alter the game from "D&D" into something else. In a way, these inconsistancies define D&D. Suggesting so adamantly that these kinds of things should be changed on this kind of board is asking for trouble, and I thought the comment about torches and acid was accurate, appropriate, and humorous.
However, we still end up with problems because whether you hit someone is also reflected in HP loss (HP can represent physical toughness, luck, skill in turning near hits into near misses, etc).
A good solution to this would be to switch to a life and stamina system like Star Wars d20 or Traveller d20.
Using the 3 above things (Using Dex to hit instead of strength, Armor reduces damage instead of affecting the to-hit roll, Life/vitality instead of HP) should solve most of the questions about whether an attack actually hits, penetrates, misses, etc. However, as was noted above, Str becomes a dump stat (Unless armor damage absorbtion is significantly high).
Changes of this nature alter the game from "D&D" into something else. In a way, these inconsistancies define D&D. Suggesting so adamantly that these kinds of things should be changed on this kind of board is asking for trouble, and I thought the comment about torches and acid was accurate, appropriate, and humorous.
Darklone
Registered User
First of all, armour absorbing damage is not really realistic. Second, if you want to do it that way, why play D&D?
If you fight with a dagger against a guy in plate, the armour makes it harder to hit. That's ok for everyone?
Now... if you take a sword, it's not a matter of how hard you have to hit to hack through the armour as many seem to think. You'll break your weapon. What you need is a clean hit or cut.
Now... as Vanguard said: You want no hitpoints, no armour that makes it hard to hit and no attribute definition as used by D&D and think there are many other systems who are different? Use them.
Btw: This should be in Houserules.
If you fight with a dagger against a guy in plate, the armour makes it harder to hit. That's ok for everyone?
Now... if you take a sword, it's not a matter of how hard you have to hit to hack through the armour as many seem to think. You'll break your weapon. What you need is a clean hit or cut.
Now... as Vanguard said: You want no hitpoints, no armour that makes it hard to hit and no attribute definition as used by D&D and think there are many other systems who are different? Use them.
Btw: This should be in Houserules.
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Celebrim
Legend
Darklone & Vanguard have the right of it.
I would like to add though that changes to the game design wouldn't stop there. There would be questions of how to bypass armor that would have to be addressed, otherwise you have say chain mail unrealistically providing full protection from a stilleto. This would potentially open yourself up to the question of called shots and all the problems that represents (see Skip William's comments).
Realistically speaking, certain armor gives better protection against different kinds of mechanical damage than others. Chain is hard to cut, but realively easy to punch through, and provides no protection at all versus blunt trauma. In fact, a person wearing only chain struck by a sword will still be severely lacerated even if the sword doesn't cut through the chain. You might have to start naming the armor and penetration bonuses to achieve the kind of realistic results you want.
As armor increased, it would open up questions of whether average damage from weapons needed to increase to maintain balance. Imagine for instance that the armor bonus provided by armor was replaced by DR of the same level. A breastplate would provide the equivalent DR 6/-! Full plate would provide the equivalent of DR 8/-! This is sufficient for near invunerability from most weapons sans a crit, increasing the length of combats and badly throwing off the games internal balance. But increasing average weapon damage would further relegate strength to a dump stat.
And in all of this you are moving D&D away from its internal balance. D&D tries to balance everything in the game versus every similar thing in the game - strength, dexterity, and charisma are supposed to be equally useful (at least in theory). Clerics, rogues, and fighters are supposed to be equally useful (at least in theory). Games like GURPS don't bother to be balanced and instead try to be fair - everyone is offered the same choices. GURPS has two stats of primary importance - IQ and DX; and two stats of lesser importance - ST and HT. This sort of thing famously encourages min/maxing. And with armor increasing in importance, certain classes start suffering by comparison to thier armored companions.
And after all these changes, there is a real question of whether you have really gained anything at all and whether or not the abstractions would not have served thier purpose just as well. After all, the primary purpose isn't to model reality. The primary purpose is to decide the outcome of contests between two entities with differing abilities so that the game can go on.
On the rapier/plate mail issue, what you have is armor gradually developing more and more of an armor bonus in order to protect the wearer. However, towards the end of the middle ages we start seeing weapons - crossbow, longbow, musket - which can penetrate any armor which is light enough (light being a relative term here) to wear. That is to say that they have extremely high 'penetration' modifiers. That is actually _more_ realistic than saying that they do enough damage to overcome the armor, since the mechanical damage an object does to punch through steel is somewhat different than the kind of mechanical damage that disrupts human life. To say otherwise is to claim that a strike from an arrow does more damage (to the body) than being struck by a sword - a rather spurious claim that requires imagining swords usually 'grazing' the target regardless of how well 'to hit' was rolled.
Since the armorer wearers found that there armor could not protect them any longer, they began adopting lighter and lighter armor. This encouraged the adoption of lighter, wielder melee weapons with in game terms lower 'penetration' modifiers, but higher 'accuracy' modifiers. So, as has been said by others, the decline of plate led to the rapier and the small sword - not the other way around.
I would like to add though that changes to the game design wouldn't stop there. There would be questions of how to bypass armor that would have to be addressed, otherwise you have say chain mail unrealistically providing full protection from a stilleto. This would potentially open yourself up to the question of called shots and all the problems that represents (see Skip William's comments).
Realistically speaking, certain armor gives better protection against different kinds of mechanical damage than others. Chain is hard to cut, but realively easy to punch through, and provides no protection at all versus blunt trauma. In fact, a person wearing only chain struck by a sword will still be severely lacerated even if the sword doesn't cut through the chain. You might have to start naming the armor and penetration bonuses to achieve the kind of realistic results you want.
As armor increased, it would open up questions of whether average damage from weapons needed to increase to maintain balance. Imagine for instance that the armor bonus provided by armor was replaced by DR of the same level. A breastplate would provide the equivalent DR 6/-! Full plate would provide the equivalent of DR 8/-! This is sufficient for near invunerability from most weapons sans a crit, increasing the length of combats and badly throwing off the games internal balance. But increasing average weapon damage would further relegate strength to a dump stat.
And in all of this you are moving D&D away from its internal balance. D&D tries to balance everything in the game versus every similar thing in the game - strength, dexterity, and charisma are supposed to be equally useful (at least in theory). Clerics, rogues, and fighters are supposed to be equally useful (at least in theory). Games like GURPS don't bother to be balanced and instead try to be fair - everyone is offered the same choices. GURPS has two stats of primary importance - IQ and DX; and two stats of lesser importance - ST and HT. This sort of thing famously encourages min/maxing. And with armor increasing in importance, certain classes start suffering by comparison to thier armored companions.
And after all these changes, there is a real question of whether you have really gained anything at all and whether or not the abstractions would not have served thier purpose just as well. After all, the primary purpose isn't to model reality. The primary purpose is to decide the outcome of contests between two entities with differing abilities so that the game can go on.
On the rapier/plate mail issue, what you have is armor gradually developing more and more of an armor bonus in order to protect the wearer. However, towards the end of the middle ages we start seeing weapons - crossbow, longbow, musket - which can penetrate any armor which is light enough (light being a relative term here) to wear. That is to say that they have extremely high 'penetration' modifiers. That is actually _more_ realistic than saying that they do enough damage to overcome the armor, since the mechanical damage an object does to punch through steel is somewhat different than the kind of mechanical damage that disrupts human life. To say otherwise is to claim that a strike from an arrow does more damage (to the body) than being struck by a sword - a rather spurious claim that requires imagining swords usually 'grazing' the target regardless of how well 'to hit' was rolled.
Since the armorer wearers found that there armor could not protect them any longer, they began adopting lighter and lighter armor. This encouraged the adoption of lighter, wielder melee weapons with in game terms lower 'penetration' modifiers, but higher 'accuracy' modifiers. So, as has been said by others, the decline of plate led to the rapier and the small sword - not the other way around.
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