Human mechanics

White Wolf's movement rules are based off of Dexterity. Also To-Hit for almost everything. Also dodging. And successes over target number give additional dice of damage above strength. Dexterity is God Stat in White Wolf combat.

God White Wolf's combat system is bad.

>Only one kind of muscle

The strength requirement to go fast is already accounted for in weight limit / encumbrance rules. The problem is most GMs don't enforce those for whatever reason.

GURPS uses (DX+HT)/4, keep fractions, to determine general reflexes. Move is the same number with fractions dropped, in yards per second (+1 if sprinting all out). This is 5 for the average person.

Up to +3 or -3 Move can be purchased by "normal" individuals, representing training and general fitness or lack of fitness/slight disability.

Oh, and there is a Running skill in GURPS as well.

The stronger you are, the more muscle mass you have.

More muscle mass, more weight. More weight, less speed.

You'll never offset the speed loss with power. Ever seen a semi-truck beat a stock car in a race? That's what I thought.

Yeah, because big meaty arms mean you can run really fast.

bullshit

there's a reason marathon runners and sprinters don't look the same

You'll never offset the speed loss with power. Ever seen a semi-truck beat a stock car in a race? That's what I thought.
Ever see a V8 lose to a V6 with the same body? That's what I thought.

>don't need muscles for dexterity

>Strength measures your character’s muscle and physical power.

where does it say "arms"?

Fallout, I suspect.

Moving distance in shadowrun is agility x 2 for walking and agility x 4 for running.
Running skill is only used for sprinting and generaly useless.

>Ever seen a semi-truck beat a stock car in a race?
yes

Usually when STR is used to determine damage, the character uses weapons he holds in his arms. But you are right, I forgot about unarmed combat.

>bows need dexterity
>swords need strength

Shouldn't that be flipped

yeah whatever post more butts

Good game design bases it on DX and HT, Like GURPS

bows are built for your STR (adds damage), but DEX aims

I hate you contrarians that never shot with a bow. You still use something like dexterity to hit something with an arrow.

no, all weapons would require a mix of both strength and dexterity. for bows, dexterity would govern the hand-eye coordination involved in aiming, while strength is involved in drawing the bow. logically no decent fighter would be weak, neither would they be clumsy.

>OP has never had sex with a woman
>don't need women to have sex

Is this proof that OP is a faggot?

oWoD has the running athletic talent paired with strength for running, jumping, etc. Just stop playing something that isn't D&D

The reason speed is Dexterity based is because running isn't just about how hard you push yourself off the ground, but it's also in your stride and how long each movement is. Lots and lots of quick movements give the best results, and for that you need coordination to not trip over yourself and maintain proper technique. If you're running for more than a minute or so, you also need great Stamina to keep supplyng your body with the energy (blood and oxygen) it needs to keep going, otherwise you're going to peter out very quick.

Hence, top speed = Dexterity and Endurance Running = Constitution.

How well you hit with your bow isn't determined by how hard you pull the string, user. After a certain point, the string will just snap - the damage you get from a bow comes from where you hit and how close you are to the target. Hence, it makes more sense that bows would simply have a minimum Strength rating and use Dex for hitting and damage.

Swords, meanwhile, can be either precise, quick movements (Dexterity) or sheer raw power (Strength), with one being more apt for defense and the other being more apt for offense. However, they still require a minimum Strength rating.

Because encumbrance is the most boring game thing ever.

Hitting a target is the easiest thing in the world when you're strong enough to draw without any strain.

source: me and the lads did archery on a stag weekend and the top three scorers were two huge dudes and me, a hobbyist olympic weightlifter

Aim is a learned skill. There's no finesse to it.

Strength is requirement/damage bonus.
Dexterity is ability to use it well - accuracy/chance to hit

>using DEX to aim
um, now that i think about it, shouldn't you be using perception for ranged weapons?
>needing high agility to pull a trigger or let a string go
yeah, that makes perfect sense

Realistically, yes, your vision does play a role in hitting with ranged weapons, but the reason you need high dexterity is because you need to, you know, aim. It your hands can't line up the shot with what you're seeing, the fact that you have 20/20 vision is worthless.

Good sight doesn't help if you can't align you weapon properly. Meanwhile with good coordination you can shoot wherever you want. I'd say eyesight just sets maximum distance at which you can aim properly.

>source: me
See pic related.

Considering that you are not bullshitting, who would have guessed that people doing sport on a regular basis are good at sport?

I don't want to ad-hom, but this line of reasoning sounds to me like some real fat guys don't want to admit that nimble and agile characters are good for something aside from being a dick-ass thief

No they don't.

>The reason speed is Dexterity based is because running isn't just about how hard you push yourself off the ground, but it's also in your stride and how long each movement is. Lots and lots of quick movements give the best results, and for that you need coordination to not trip over yourself and maintain proper technique.

you can say that about anything physical, though. there's technique involved in weightlifting, for instance, including making the right movements. would a little girl with proper technique outrun someone with the body of an olympic sprinter but none of the skill?

personally, if I were designing a system, I would leave out dexterity and just roll it together with skills. your dexterity at any given task would be determined by training, not an ability score. the rest would be strength, raw physical power.

i'd argue you'd need a high Dex to aim/switch targets quickly, but it doesn't take much finesse at all to move sights to a target

>pathfinder
I am not even surprised.

I'm still mad.

Naturally, sights would make aiming pretty piss easy, but not every weapon has sights.

>Holy shit I can't run 30 feet in six seconds without getting winded. I should give a penalty for moving and attacking in the same turn.

A game shouldn't have dexterity as a physical star since it is actually representative of the CNS and not agility. Speed = Strength + Reaction time. Steady hands is a genetic feature and strengthening hands doesn't do a ton.

A more accurate system would use just strength and constitution for almost any physical activity. Muscle speed and endurance is responsible for really all movement.

If I redid ability scores for 3 physical and 3 mental it would be Athleticism, Fitness, Constitution, Memory, Discipline, Charisma.

If you had piss-poor hand-eye coordination like me you would know how retarded your argument is.

Would you care to explain the difference between Athleticism/Fitness/Constitution? I'm interested.

>I know, I'm in several fantasy leagues.

Athleticism is the raw power/strength/speed

Fitness is physical training and experience.

Constitution is endurance

Huh. I guessed exactly backwards on Athleticism and fitness.

Well, it could go either way. One just should be "training" and on should be "ability".

I'd go with Strength, Training, Endurance

>personally, if I were designing a system, I would leave out dexterity and just roll it together with skills. your dexterity at any given task would be determined by training, not an ability score. the rest would be strength, raw physical power.

Mind you, STRENGTH is also largely affected by training. At that point, maybe just not having stats would be your thing.

So is endurance.

>DEX = high agility
Dexterity in D&D is a heavy abstraction that covers manual dexterity, move speed, and aiming ability. Arguably, this is one of the more fundamental problems with the system.

Cardio kills your gainz bruh.

Cardio is literally just training for your heart and lungs.

>dextiry just means skill

No. It is your hand to eye coordination and your flexibility.

Skill has been kept seperate from the attributes since AD&D - honestly you could argue that that is a problem that has spread through the D&D editions since then, but it's still how the "Core Attributes" are supposed to be used.

>human mechanics

This thread makes me think, what is the fewest stats you'd need to really cover 99% of characters? Let's see, you need to be able to distinguish between a marathon runner and a sprinter, so "Strength" for fast twitch muscles, and "Stamina" for slow-twitch. Then, you need to be able to distinguish between a gymnast and a locksmith, so "Agility" for full-body coordination, and "Manual Dexterity" for fingerwork. Mentally, you need to distinguish a math prodigy from that weird guy at the bar who has memorised the whole Baseball encyclopedia, and both of them from the streetsmart, so "Recall" for the memory, "Intelligence" for raw brainpower, and "Wits" for quickness of thought. And socially, you need to distinguish between charming paladins and manipulative conmen, so "Charisma" for charm and genuine friendliness, and "Cunning" for deception and false friendless. I make that 9, which seems an lot. Did I miss anything? Magic, obviously, but that's a setting issue.

Okay so I'm working on a system that uses the same attributes as D&D, and how I'm thinking of working out a PC's movement speed is just adding their STR, CON and DEX together, and just having that be how many feet they move per round - so your base normie would be able to move 30 feet per round

2, body and mind really, soul often then gets thrown in for magical stuff too.

though if I remember correctly, the rob leifeld rpg just had Bags and Muscles, which was the HP and attributes all in one.

Confirmed for never shooting or only shooting at IPSC hustle distances

Most non-SHW and quite a few SHW powerlifters can sprint fast as fuck.

THey just don't often do it, because you have to stop that weight on joints which you can't train.
I'm barely 240 and unless I sprint uphill, it'll feel my knee and hip joints for several days.

yeah, you always need to factor in that constantly recalibrating your movement speed in relation to your encumbrence and the weight of what you're holding.

that's for 5e. in 4e the movement speed was dependent on metatype only.

>body and mind
what exactly does body determine? does a high body mean that you are both strong and flexible and have high precision? is a high mind high charisma, intelligence and perception?

to be fair the movement speed had to be abstracted to individual tiles and keeping that shit tracked if it could change too much during the course of a campaign would be a nightmare.

Yup. Body is anything physical, mind is anything involving mental acuity, from social skills to memory.

I avoided strength because I would have a "Brawn" skill for lifting and such.

>brawn
>not "thews"

you had one job, user.

I don't see why these are seemingly different ends of scales. Like, what's the difference between "charisma" and "cunning" except moralizing? If a Paladin is intending to convince somebody of something, how does that differ from someone nasty trying to convince somebody of something nasty or untrue? I mean, answering that is already going to be a pain in the ass, and I'm not convinced that an examination of "Recall" vs. "Intelligence" vs "Wits" as distinct mental features is going to hold up to any kind of real psychological scrutiny.

Fallout doesn't have dexterity, it has Agility and it does make you faster.

Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck

Using a bow requires stability more than anything. In the time between aiming and releasing, even small movements will completely fuck your ability to hit what you were aiming at.
Being stronger means that you are straining against the bow less, which naturally reduces extra movement or shakiness.

That is so wrong... but also explains a lot about the rules.

DEX is a retarded stat that mostly gets used in situations where the only thing that realistically matters is practice and acquired skill.

Strength is a pretty straightforward stat in that it's easy to envision how it affects actions: you are able to do them better/harder/faster because you have more power to put into it, simple.

But dexterity is this catchall stat that way, way too often influences actions where, realistically, you are using a skill acquired through practice, not relying on your innate physical ability.

Doing cartwheels, lockpicking and target archery are not actually related to any meaningful degree in the same way that upper body strength related skills are. You can be an amazing dancer and a terrible archer, or a great juggler who's fat and clumsy as fuck.

The hilarity being cardio more than strength training is what's going to keep you from dying.

Yep. In a pre-civilization world, I'd rather be able to outrun anything than be stronger than all the other cavemen.

You need muscles to be dextrous in general, ya fucking idiot.

You need muscles to move your face too, but talking or smiling are not STR actions.

The thing is, Str is a stat that will realistically be just as affected by training.

It's really an issue with both STR and DEX, less with CON. The stats don't move too much while realistically they would change massively over time.

I can't think of any game worth playing that does something like this.

But using Dexterity to determine bonus movement speed makes some sense. You can be strong and a tree is still going to stop you if you can't dodge it.

So, like, you're wrong, but it shouldn't matter at all.

>Running skill is only used for sprinting and generaly useless.
I hope you like defaulting on a running test with 2 strength. You'll end up with tied shoelaces and tripping down the stairs.

(it's a dumb mechanic, sprinting in 5e)

You're realistically not going to be able to out run any predator. Instead you'll be able to run down most.

Remember that humans aren't build well for short bursts of speed but for long distance pace changing races. If something is already barrelling down at you, you've got issues.

You should be the one behind it.

Being stronger than all the other cave men doesn't mean jack shit if you get exhausted. There's a reason a lot of apex predators go for speed over brute strength.

The big, overarching problem is that character creation in a lot of games is a fucking mess.

Level of skill and physical attributes are often connected, but not by a lot, and skill sets are all over the place.

This is why I much prefer systems that uses background or class as a skill, or has skill packages depending on background etc.

Pick and choose character creation is how you end up with Knights who know only 2 weapons and no riding "because I didn't pick it because we're going to be in a dungeon anyway" or people who grew up on a farm but have no farm related skills, or with completely lopsided physical stats (all str, no dex!) as if they spent all their time in a gym exercising ONE muscle group, instead of developing a good overall physique through rough living.

Sure, being a predator is kind of tricky if you're slow as fuck, but what apex predators are weak? They're all really fucking strong compared to the things they prey on aren't they?

A tiger can severely fracture a waterbuffalo skull with a swipe of it's paw, and basically crumple a human skull, same with a bear.

Dark Heresy etc.

>They're all really fucking strong compared to the things they prey on aren't they?

Some overpower, some outnumber (canines), somee outlast (cheetah).

>though if I remember correctly, the rob leifeld rpg just had Bags and Muscles, which was the HP and attributes all in one.
It's Pouches, Muscles, and Cyber. Muscles is your strength and how many guns you can hold at the same time, and Cyber is your speed and armor.

I'm the builtfat mode DM, I have a curlbro and a literal powerlifter in my group.
Tell me, Veeky Forums how Veeky Forums is your group?

Not necessarily, you can be a fat brain surgeon for example.

>fat means weak
Anyway, surgeons tend to have pretty strong arms.

You don't need to be faster than the predator. Just faster than the other cavemen chased by it.

You use the higher of your Strength or Agility when determining your overall movement speed. Agility only for moving through difficult terrain.

My ideal stat set would look something like:
Power: Strength and Endurance
Finesse: Agility and Dexterity
Mind: Intellect and Perception
Persona: Charisma and Cunning

A fighter would have good Strength, Endurance and Agility, but wouldn't necessarily be dextrous since they're mostly about holding a weapon; add a side of Charisma, perhaps, if they're the town watch type, Perception for the grizzled veteran, Intellect for the studied knight.
A rogue might have great Agility, Dexterity and Perception, allowing them to spy their goal, perform fine manipulations and fight with light weapons if necessary; add a side of Cunning for the liar in the night, Strength for the bowman, or Intellect for the art thief.
A nobleman might have higher stats in Intellect, Charisma or Cunning, and Dexterity; representing studies, their social graces and their soft babylike hands. Maybe they paint; that'd be Charisma limited by Dexterity; maybe they practice fencing, in which case they might have higher than average Agility.
I feel it's granular enough without being too much. Eight is about the highest I'd take the number of stats.
Predefined skill lists tend to be shit, too. Either too verbose or not well-defined enough.

Wasn't there this system were you wrote down whatever you were good at, trying to explain it and be specific, and then just gave it some score +,++,+++ etc?

Doesn't The Burning Wheel do this?

I arrived at something similar, but it ran something like

Strength Agility Vigor
Reasoning Intuition Charm
Magnetism Tenacity Poise

Strength is how hard you hit
Agility is how smooth you move
Vigor is how well you endure

Reasoning is how smart you logic
Intuition is how keen you grok
Charm is how good you talk

Magnetism is how strong you emote
Tenacity is how never you give up
Poise is how calm you keep your shit

I'd rename them now - at the time, I was insistent that they all start with different letters, for reasons. Still, it's the set I arrived at, which is in a lot of ways similar to what you've got, but does have notable differences. Same number though!

We playing the same game? Movement is Str+Dex+5, Dex is only half of dodge, the other half is wits, and Dex is only added to ranged attacks, unless you grab the fighting finesse merit, all melee is strength based. Plus most good weapons have strength requirements to use, so it can't be totally dump statted. This applies even to guns.