Do most RPGs get the combat effects of STR & DEX wrong?

[Trojan_generic]

but what increase firearms damage? strenght or dex?

Although I was inclined to say 'INT' or 'PER', the correct answer is of course 'CHA'.

Because you can get them to take off their armor before shooting them.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Now technique is not so well defined and more difficult to explain so i will be more sloopy.

 

[Projas]

Everyone knows that to truly master the blade the most important things are watching anime and abstaining from the pleasures of the flesh. Those should be used as attributes in RPGs if we care about realism.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Cool. Now link a video of people fighting in full plate armor, actually trying to pierce that armor and kill each other because that's what RPGs (the ones relevant to the discussion anyway) are trying to portray. Whether such fighting is historically accurate is another matter.

Fighting in harness 1v1 is more wrestling/grappling. You use a sword more like a staff than anything else. Leverage, balance and footwork are even more important. It's more about pinning your opponent and driving your dagger tip into his face than anything else.

Pollaxes and other weapons with long handles and their mass at the tip are most effective against armour when in melee. Picks and hooked-hammers are especially good. Big Zweihanders can deliver enough force to hurt someone in armour, but they're not going to cut through metal plates. Any sword lighter than them is pretty ineffective unless you half-sword and go for the eyes/joints.

[/QUOTE

lolL

lol, all this is all defiantly SWPL

 

[Darkzone]

Spoiler

Yes and no. Brute strength is mostly associated with the ability to lift heavy weights, but that is not necessary so. Strength is the result of intra and intermuscular coordination (results in pulling abiltiy of x kg per cm^2) and muscle diameter in cm^2 (which is related to the muscle type and amount of fibres).
With his strength the power lifter is lifting relative slowly heavy weights, while the fighter accelerates his fists or feet or a sword to a certain fast speed to deliver a momentum ( p = m * v ) in a strike to the opponent. Both events result in an Work (W = F * s ( Unit Nm ) ) with a Force (F = kg * m / s^-2).
The amount of Work may be even the same, but the Force is different in both cases.
The muscles are classified into fast twitch (typ 1 and 2) and slow twich muslces fibres. But the same kind of muscles fibres are the main contributer for this kind of Work, because the slow twich are only responsible for sustaining a certain low amount of Work for a very long periode of time. In other words both the fast 100 meter runner and the heavy power lifter require a high percentile amount of fast twitch muscles fibers, while the long distance runner needs more the slow twitch fibres. The muscle diameter is also different on all athlets. The fighter needs a diameter that allows him to punch as fast as possible, but if the diameter is too high or too low then the punch becomes slower. One the other hand the fighter can pull more weight in kg per cm^2 of muscle than a power lifter, while a power lifter has a higher diameter.
The intra and intermuscular coordination is a result of the central nervous system neural adaptation to to the kind of exercise. The neurons of a power lifter need to shoot impulses more often to the the muscle fibers than that of the fighters who needs upon one impuls activate more fibers for a muscle contraction.
The power lifter needs different muscles in an lift attempt at different stages of the movement, while the fighter needs all the muscles involed in the movement nearly at the same time ( very good extreme example is Bruce Lee and his one inch punch ).
I hope that you can now understand what strength is and how it comes about.

Thanks, that's interesting and exceedingly applicable to unarmed fighting. When you throw long levers with centres of percussion and mass into the equation it changes things quite a bit. Once you get strong enough to handle your weapon effectively, any additional power offers little benefit. It's more about using leverage and body position to gain advantage than raw power at that point.

It changes nearly nothing for the strength part and the physics needs to take other additional things into the account, but everything else is correct. Keep in mind that one strong character with much strength and a strong grip ( like me ) can swing a Longsword one handed with nearly the same ease like a arming / knightly / side sword, but it lacks the controll / accuracy part that it could have while using it with two hands (guiding hand).

Spoiler

Now technique is not so well defined and more difficult to explain so i will be more sloopy. One movement or form of attack requires also and is a technique and several movements combined is also a technique.
The first one needs to be exercises correctly and fast if an window of opportunity is perceived or the defence is necessary. Several movements combined into to a technique have either a goal to open a window of opportunity for a strike or to deliver several strikes after each other.
Now i will quote the awsome statement from Conor McGregor: "Precision beats power and timing beats Speed. These are the fundamentals." Think carefuly about this!
Reaction times is faster than action times, and the cowboy who draws second is mostly faster. But what technique you will use to attack and to defend yourself and how well you execute the technique is based on trainings experience and the central nervous system. Precision and timing is also learned through training like Speed (equates to power). Overall in a duell a good training with a certain amount of strength is better than only with high strength with few or no training. And that is the reason why martial arts are trained and why a boxer will beat a power lifter in a fight.
In DnD 3.5 (DnD 5th has fucked this up) terms this would mean that a 10 Lv fighter with STR 14 is better than a 01 Lv fighter with STR 18.

Also, in most sword fights there's a lot of weapon to weapon contact, far more so than in unarmed martial arts. You can feel what your opponent is doing far more quickly than you can see it. You can also tell how much force he's putting into an attack. If he over commits to his strike, it's possible to redirect the force then strike into the opening that the attack came from more rapidly than he can return his weapon to guard that area. That's why I said using too much strength to power an attack can leave you open.

The same force to accelerate is also needed to a negative acceleration, but if someone thinks that he will hit in a real fight, he might commit this mistake. I'm a Kendo practitioner and therefore to learn to stop a strike right slightly before the contact point is a necessary exercise. So i would need to unlearn this reflex for a real sword fight. Overall the teaching in martial arts are that you have to return to the starting position with the same speed that you strike to close the window of opportunity.
If the weapons are touching then the signaling is also due to the touch. I try to avoid the weapons touching each other for this reason.

Spoiler

Also, two handed weapons such as longswords or Dane axes need less strength and conditioning to use effectively than sabres or rapiers do, but one handed weapons generally have a better effective reach.
1 YES and 2 NO! The threat range of a spear can be up to 5 meters, while the sword is up to 3 meters.

Sorry, my initial point was muddy and badly written. I meant to say that given similar weapon lengths, a one handed weapon has a greater effective reach than one carried in two hands. A rapier has a similar length blade to a longsword, up to about 40-odd inches, but because of the fact you hold it in one hand, you gain considerably more reach with it. Longswords have better leverage, though.

Yes that is a correct correction and i have just pointed out that sloopy statement of the two handed vs one handed swords. If you have a one handed sword and a two handed sword of similar length then naturally the one handed will have a further reach of some few inches.

The idea is not stupid, but DEX is reserved for the hand eye coodination and skills like balance, slight of hand and etc. And in an DnD fight this represents the ability to pull body parts from the line of attack, therefore you dont get this bonus if you are constrained.

Thanks for your reply, it was an interesting read!

De nada.

 

[laclongquan]

After learning a bit about HEMA...


Also, two handed weapons such as longswords or Dane axes need less strength and conditioning to use effectively than sabres or rapiers do, but one handed weapons generally have a better effective reach.

WHat a fucking piece of opinion. An axe need less strength than a sabre and rapier... Sure.

A two handed sword or axe has (wait for it) two hands on it that allow you to apply leverage onto the weapon. Most two handed weapons don't weigh a lot, otherwise they wouldn't move quickly enough. A Dane axe is a big stick with a narrow axe head on the top, it weighs between 2 and 4 lbs. A two-handed longsword weighs about 2.5lbs. A Zweihander weighs about 3.5-5lbs. All of these have two hands on the hilt and have guards that allow you to recover by holding the mass of the weapon close to your body.

A rapier is not a smallsword, it's a big, heavy thing with a very long blade and a heavy, complex hilt. A rapier weighs about 2.2lbs but is used in one hand, and is held out in front of you in a way that an axe generally isn't, as the rapier isn't used to defend in the same way. Also, some rapier stances are pretty uncomfortable and put far more strain on the knees and hips than the standard longsword stance.

TL;DR Its far more physically demanding to use a rapier than a Dane axe.

Bitch, you just need to do this one exercise with me

Find a meter and a half staff (your wooden clothes dryer should do). Attach a 1-kg weight to one end to simulate an axehead. What you have is a simulated long handled axe. Dont worry about the crude mechanism, it's not important in this exercise.

Exercise start: raise this fucker upright and smash it down to simulate an overhead smash. This should be 70% of your attack so do it 7 times. Then hold it with two hand and thrust forward to simulate a thrust attack. This should be 30% of your total attack so do it 3 times. And it's a move total parallel to the ground for a good thrust.
That give you a feel for how strong you need to be for an newbie axe fighter.
Now find a simple one kg weight, and wave it from left to right to simulate a swing, do it 9 times because noob sucker more often than not just swing. And a full thrust to simulate the single 10% time they would remember to thrust.
Get a feel for how strong you need to be for a newbie sword swinger.

Which one need stronger arm?

This one ignore the endurance and dexterity requirement because if you can not even swing (strength) you can not do anything fancy like strike at weak point or do it correctly.

(JUST ONE FUCKING EXERCISE SHOULD BE ENOUGH YOU LAZYASS MOTHERFUCKER! GET OFF YOUR BASEMENT!!!)

 

[Falksi]

Yeah, I get that but not all games have to be the same just because convention pushes them that way.

I'd love to find an RPG that tried to simulate combat in a fashion that followed on from what has been learned about medieval martial arts. I think there would definitely be a place for it.

Things like attacks having to not only strike at your opponent but also defend, that gaining and seizing the initiative in a fight being important.

I'd quite like (for example) there to be a footwork skill that would boost both your ability to fight effectively, and for height and weight to actually matter (I realize that the latter set works in Dragon's Dogma but I found that game so tedious in other respects I couldn't get on with it at all).

As an example, this video shows three instructors each sparring against two advanced students. Especially watch out for the third instructor's technique and how differently he approaches the fight. Despite being the shortest and heaviest of the three, his footwork, aggressiveness and balance mean that he performs far better than the other two.

Brilliant vid.

That's a great shout. From watching this two things really stand out - commital to aggression & the moves which turn defence to attack.

There's a lot of scope there to tie that in with the decisions the player makes to keep it fun, and try stuff like say a system where you have to gamble poker style & it's often better to commit & lose "light" than it is to retract, ultimately causing you to lose "heavy".

Nice shout.

 

[Elex]

Yeah, but what about katans, man?

Are the samurais better than knights?

based on this topic pirates wins.

 

[Stoned Ape]

It changes nearly nothing for the strength part and the physics needs to take other additional things into the account, but everything else is correct. Keep in mind that one strong character with much strength and a strong grip ( like me ) can swing a Longsword one handed with nearly the same ease like a arming / knightly / side sword, but it lacks the controll / accuracy part that it could have while using it with two hands (guiding hand).

It might be that your style is quite different, but most longsword techniques rely on using both hands not just for accuracy, but also for applying leverage and torque as well as keeping advantageous body positioning to allow a strong defense to counter attack from.

The same force to accelerate is also needed to a negative acceleration

Not if your structure and stance redirects the force of your opponents blow to add it to your own movement thus allowing you to counter attack more quickly. Some of the techniques in this video rely, at least in part, on that principle.

but if someone thinks that he will hit in a real fight, he might commit this mistake. I'm a Kendo practitioner and therefore to learn to stop a strike right slightly before the contact point is a necessary exercise. So i would need to unlearn this reflex for a real sword fight. Overall the teaching in martial arts are that you have to return to the starting position with the same speed that you strike to close the window of opportunity.
If the weapons are touching then the signaling is also due to the touch. I try to avoid the weapons touching each other for this reason.

That might work for practice swords, but when fighting with live blades it is of fundamental importance to control your opponent's sword as much as possible and to keep dominance over the 'centre' the point of mid distance between two fighters. Above all else, when fighting with sharp blades the goal of the warrior is to not get hurt. To achieve this, the easiest way is to make blade contact so you know what your opponent is doing. If one person seeks blade contact, it's really hard for their opponent to keep moving their blade out of the way without getting stuck by the person they're fighting.

Here's a sharps sparring video so you can see what it looks like when done properly:

 

[Stoned Ape]

Bitch, you just need to do this one exercise with me

Find a meter and a half staff (your wooden clothes dryer should do). Attach a 1-kg weight to one end to simulate an axehead. What you have is a simulated long handled axe. Dont worry about the crude mechanism, it's not important in this exercise.

Exercise start: raise this fucker upright and smash it down to simulate an overhead smash. This should be 70% of your attack so do it 7 times. Then hold it with two hand and thrust forward to simulate a thrust attack. This should be 30% of your total attack so do it 3 times. And it's a move total parallel to the ground for a good thrust.
That give you a feel for how strong you need to be for an newbie axe fighter.
Now find a simple one kg weight, and wave it from left to right to simulate a swing, do it 9 times because noob sucker more often than not just swing. And a full thrust to simulate the single 10% time they would remember to thrust.
Get a feel for how strong you need to be for a newbie sword swinger.

Which one need stronger arm?

This one ignore the endurance and dexterity requirement because if you can not even swing (strength) you can not do anything fancy like strike at weak point or do it correctly.

(JUST ONE FUCKING EXERCISE SHOULD BE ENOUGH YOU LAZYASS MOTHERFUCKER! GET OFF YOUR BASEMENT!!!)

Heh! Good one!

Why would I be doing slow overhead smashes when diagonal cuts have more efficient biomechanics and are quicker?

Also, why in all the layers of hell would I swing a rapier?

Besides, cutting with a one handed sword properly is bloody hard work and uses your forearm more than anything else, which for most people are among their less well developed muscles, even if they weight train. You'll get tired far more quickly doing that than swinging a an axe using your larger muscle groups.

 

[Stoned Ape]

Brilliant vid.

That's a great shout. From watching this two things really stand out - commital to aggression & the moves which turn defence to attack.

There's a lot of scope there to tie that in with the decisions the player makes to keep it fun, and try stuff like say a system where you have to gamble poker style & it's often better to commit & lose "light" than it is to retract, ultimately causing you to lose "heavy".

Nice shout.

That's a game I'd be interested in playing!

 

[Falksi]

Some of these videos are fucking brilliant, and any RPG dev worth his salt will be using this info to take the next step forward in RPG development.

Cue EA churning out awesome buttons for another 10 years tho

 

[DraQ]

TL;DR

You think that's bad?
One word: archers.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

The DraQtistic One is correct, if anything, strength is a much more important stat for archers than for melee combatants. Most military bows require a lot of strength to pull back, so much so that they found skeletons of archers with deformed backs from constant exertion.

 

[Delterius]

'Member CLANG!?!

 

[Bohrain]

Some of these videos are fucking brilliant, and any RPG dev worth his salt will be using this info to take the next step forward in RPG development.

Cue EA churning out awesome buttons for another 10 years tho

The thing is that converting actual combat to enjoyable battle system is difficult. Not to mention that games tend to have these unrealistic scenarios where a single person or half a dozen murderhoboes are constantly fighting against superior numbers with relative ease.
One aspect that I'd like to see experimented with more would be the use of different stances. You obviously want to do things differently depending on how close the opponent is, which of if any has superior leverage at the moment, did you block on high or low guard and so forth. Instead of say, presenting turn based fights with the same attack and movement options all the time you could make your options depends on the stance you ended up with after the previous round.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

The thing is that converting actual combat to enjoyable battle system is difficult.

The problem is the logical jump from "actual combat is extremely complex" to "well, then, let's just go full Todd Howard and implement whack-a-mole".

You don't have to implement every single guard/movement/technique/attack/animation from actual combat. Just capture the spirit of it, by having different attacks/defensive moves, and the need to react to what your opponent is doing. He does simplified move A, you react with simplified move B, then you follow with C, and he reacts with D. And so on. Something like this would already be way more interesting than every combat system out there.

 

[vonAchdorf]

but what increase firearms damage? strenght or dex?

Might.

 

[Falksi]

Some of these videos are fucking brilliant, and any RPG dev worth his salt will be using this info to take the next step forward in RPG development.

Cue EA churning out awesome buttons for another 10 years tho

The thing is that converting actual combat to enjoyable battle system is difficult. Not to mention that games tend to have these unrealistic scenarios where a single person or half a dozen murderhoboes are constantly fighting against superior numbers with relative ease.
One aspect that I'd like to see experimented with more would be the use of different stances. You obviously want to do things differently depending on how close the opponent is, which of if any has superior leverage at the moment, did you block on high or low guard and so forth. Instead of say, presenting turn based fights with the same attack and movement options all the time you could make your options depends on the stance you ended up with after the previous round.

I agree it would be a challengem but an exciting one. If we can conquer Everest I'm pretty sure something can be done. May take a few attempts, may noe be perfect, but if I were developing a game I'd be very excited at tackling that challenge.

 

[Mastermind]

Yes, I've started threads about this before. Stats are absolutely retarded in D&D, following some ancient uneducated nerd-view that physical strength is super important in armed combat (its not beyond some basic thresholds). Technique is most important, followed by what we usually call athleticism, which is some combination of speed, coordination, reflexes, and the ability to see things quickly. In an interesting system, technique would be represented by actual moves/abilities, instead of just a number.

actually the idea that you can be athletic without more than a small minimum of strength and muscles like you present here is the uneducated nerd-view.

*teleports behind u*

athleticism = muscles + practice/genes

 

[aweigh]

one thing i've taken away from this thread is that using a buckler should deduct points from DAMAGE not from Accuracy (or slow down attacks in the game and thus decrease DPS).

the buckler itself does not look like (nor does it in the video) affect the actual accuracy whatsoever but inability to use two hands plus having to raise the buckler itself constantly for shielding really hampers the attack.

of course using the buckler for striking in a video game-like "dual wielding" scenario would increase the damage output but it would nullify any defensive use and would prove unwieldy and cumbersome as a striking object since it is not designed for that.

that buckler video is the most interesting one from the bunch to me.

 

[laclongquan]

Bitch, you just need to do this one exercise with me

Find a meter and a half staff (your wooden clothes dryer should do). Attach a 1-kg weight to one end to simulate an axehead. What you have is a simulated long handled axe. Dont worry about the crude mechanism, it's not important in this exercise.

Exercise start: raise this fucker upright and smash it down to simulate an overhead smash. This should be 70% of your attack so do it 7 times. Then hold it with two hand and thrust forward to simulate a thrust attack. This should be 30% of your total attack so do it 3 times. And it's a move total parallel to the ground for a good thrust.
That give you a feel for how strong you need to be for an newbie axe fighter.
Now find a simple one kg weight, and wave it from left to right to simulate a swing, do it 9 times because noob sucker more often than not just swing. And a full thrust to simulate the single 10% time they would remember to thrust.
Get a feel for how strong you need to be for a newbie sword swinger.

Which one need stronger arm?

This one ignore the endurance and dexterity requirement because if you can not even swing (strength) you can not do anything fancy like strike at weak point or do it correctly.

(JUST ONE FUCKING EXERCISE SHOULD BE ENOUGH YOU LAZYASS MOTHERFUCKER! GET OFF YOUR BASEMENT!!!)

Heh! Good one!

Why would I be doing slow overhead smashes when diagonal cuts have more efficient biomechanics and are quicker?

Also, why in all the layers of hell would I swing a rapier?

Besides, cutting with a one handed sword properly is bloody hard work and uses your forearm more than anything else, which for most people are among their less well developed muscles, even if they weight train. You'll get tired far more quickly doing that than swinging a an axe using your larger muscle groups.

Talking about a fucking neckbeard who never exercise once.

You are using a stick with a weight on it (fake axe) of course you use overhead smash because that way give more attack point. Go ahead: overhead smash on a rock and diagonal cut on a rock, see what give a better OOMPH.

You swing a sword because you are using a sword and because rapier is not for the noob. In a noob's hands it's just a stick, opponent can just swing it once to smash it out of the way and cut/thrust. Ie a sword user versus a rapier. Rapier using mostly thrust attack which means noob need not apply, or you better off using sword.

You'll get tired far more quickly doing that than swinging a an axe using your larger muscle groups.

Now that's what I I call a fucking quality shit post.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Stoned Ape cannot into highschool physics.

Completely neglecting rotational inertia, torque and moments.

 

[Lord Rocket]

ok fuckos go to google or ddg or whatever your search engine of choice is and do an image search for 'male gymnast'
now, we can agree that these guys have high DEX right? But they also seem to have big muscles too?! but if these things were entirely disconnected in the way people in thread seem to assume, the latter wouldn't necessarily have to be true, so, uh, maybe it's fair to assume that STR in D&D terms measures more than just pure weight lifting power. But don't take my word for it -- by the rules, the stat affects combat, pure lifting ability (bend bars/lift gates*) and endurance (encumbrance limits)
(compare 'male ballet dancer' -- also high DEX and less universally huge but most of them still look like hemp ropes with a thin layer of skin stretched over the top)

now I can see where the confusion might arise because the game muddies the waters by folding some agility stuff into STR and some into DEX (notably AC modifiers). That said it's still more fun to play than it's imitators and successors so this is forgivable, and even if it wasn't the stats in 0e circa 1974 do fuck all nothing beyond granting XP bonuses so just play that version instead

* Talking about D&D exclusively here, not gay rolemaster

OK point two, the 'to-hit' roll. Guess what nerds, armour reducing hit chance does affect damage! wow I know right? Here, let me prove it to you:

game 1: chain mail reduces damage by half
AD&D: chain mail reduces to-hit by half (AC5 vs unarmoured default of 10)

let's say you and I both have chain mail, but you're playing game 1 and I'm rocking AD&D. some orcs playing 1974 0e roll up and attack us 1000 times each with a zweihander (1d6 damage). Your orc can hit you half the time (base chance in both systems) and me a quarter of the time (because of my AC bonus), but you only take half damage from your armour, so you get hit 500 times for 1-3, average 2 so roughly 1000 damage total, and I'm going to take it 250 times for 1-6, average 3.5 so approx. 875 HP. Or some shit, I'm pretty terrible at maths to say the fuckin least but even a tard like me can recognise that having a better (lower!) AC will reduce damage over time compared to an unarmoured person (although somewhat less predictably than in game 1 style systems)
Anyway if the attack roll had been termed 'to-hurt' instead of to-hit the nature of the abstraction would be much clearer and you never would have had to read this shitty fucking post. thanks Gary and Dave, you fuckers

 

[Stoned Ape]

I'm a double posting idiot.