Is Dexterity the stat to rule them all?

Cyberpunk has the "Dexterity" stat split into Reflexes for acrobat shit and Tech for dexterity shit. Acrobatic master surgeon locksmiths are dumb

That's the weird abstraction that makes Dex as good as it is. There's the fine manipulation (stabbing, pickpocketing), and there's the quick movements (acrobatics, stealth, dodging). Each of them would probably be good enough a stat on its own, but the two merged together are a very good investment for pretty much any character.

The distinction is what skills are for ya git.
Good gymnasts have high Acrobatics. Good painters have high Profession (Painting). Neither necessarily have good DEX, because they're probably 10 DEX commoners.

Those DMs are idiots. Any time on Veeky Forums should teach you that sometimes it doesn't matter how convincing you are, because people won't let you convince them.

Then having good Charisma won't help, because rolling well won't help those people be convinced either.

IRL 'dexterity' is tied into physical strength, because more working muscle = finer control and more physical exercise = better feeling for balance, but ingame DEX is completely divorced from STR while also being firmly associated with things like being able to pick locks or find suitable cover, which are learned skills that should really be governed by a nonexistent sensory stat. But then at the same time it does not help with other learned skills like climbing and jumping, despite acrobatics being far closer to the concept of DEX than skulking in shadows. And it's traditionally associated with archery, which doesn't have much to do with finesse. It makes no sense at all, and cannot be made to make sense, so it's best to just accept it as it is.

Except that's exactly why you roll. Are you capable of convincing this person, not just by making an argument, but by persuading them to let you convince them? Do you have the force of personality to make them not just shut you out? Do you have the skills to make them actually question what they've decided instead of just rejecting it outright? Did you catch them on a good day where they're feeling openminded, or a bad day where they're stubborn and angry? Roll, add your stats and skills, and hope for the best.

>/feg/

Fire Emblem General? Myrimidons are shit

Dex is the coordination of your muscles.
How good is your brain at telling your body what to do.
Sure, with high STR you could jump higher than anyone, but it takes DEX to jump and do triple somersaults.
You have high INT and know everything about how to transplant an heart, but you also have to cut and sew with extreme precision the parts of the patient, or else you could puncture a vein or break something. Same with lockpicking, even if you know exactly how to open the door, if you are inept with the finicky parts of a lockpick and a lock, no amounts of knowledge and experience are going to open that door.
Painting? You could have the best drawings in your mind, imagining landscapes that only the wildest dream could conceive. But if your hands are stupid and can't draw a straight line or a nice curve, good luck painting them and this last one hits me on a intimate level ;__;

It's called muscle memory and a fuckton of practice, user. Anyone(barring people with neurological disorders or some shit) can learn to be a gymnast, anyone can learn to be a surgeon(at least in the sense of cutting people up and stitching them back together, not necessarily in the sense of knowing what cuts to make), and anyone can learn to draw. It's a different matter when you approach olympic levels of skill of course - to get that far, you actually do need talent - but you're bad at drawing because you're a whiny bitch who would rather shitpost on Veeky Forums than practice, not because you're not dexterous enough.

Yeah, we've run into a problem with "Dexterity" turning into the "doing anything that's not magic" stat. It's used as the check for anything a person wants to do with their physical body unless it's blatantly obvious that it's a pure brute strength thing.

I'm glad that in 5e athletics is tied to Str. But I'm still annoyed at how many people roll up with characters all 18 DEX, 9 STR. That's not a thing. No one can be like that. Maybe a housecat is like that, but if you want to use a rapier or throw your body out of the way of an incoming strike, you need enough muscle for fine control and fast movement. Really it doesn't make any sense for anyone's DEX to be any more than 3 or 4 points higher than their STR. You can't have agility without some power.

And no-strength monks are just... But whatever. Just a game.

I know that, I gave you the textbook definition of DEX in the majority of rpgs.
And as for me being a whiny bitch-
Fuck you man! I used to play the piano and not be a total shit at drawing, it's not my fault if my main hand won't stop shaking after a ligament fracture.

You have two hands, don't you?

Nope.
That would be Intelligence or Wisdom, depending on which kind of caster you are.
That aside, DEX is one of the best stats, yep

You got to consider that this is the "archetype". Yes, we know that you really shouldn1t be able to wield a rapier effectively with like 8 strength... but the archetype is that dexterious fop with no muscles.

I'm more annoyed with constitution being a stat DESU. There's very few character concepts where high STR/low CON or vice-versa makes sense even from a trope perspective, so it just feels like extra tax on the strong guys.

gonna take the bait and say that not everyone is a special snowflake and ambidextrous like you, user.

Not really. Unless you're making a dex-built, it's generally tertiary at best, after your main stat and con.

Everyone knows charisma is best stat.

Heavy Armor+shield+armor ability is the best way to pump armor up to 21+

However, Monks and Barbarian's can get a 20 AC if you max Dex and Wis/Dex and Con respectively.

Which they can do by level 16 soonest (if you didn't roll, but if you did, you have no right to bitch about balance).

At which point the fighter will probably have AC boosting armors anyway.

That dexterous fop is fucking ripped under those poofy sleeves. You've got Inigo Montoya and Andre the Giant, and Inigo isn't as beef as Andre, but you better believe he can do his pullups.

I mean, I love that archetype. Played a Zorro ripoff in my last game. But those guys gotta have good strength. Not maxxed strength, but at least 14 or something.

Con, I'm more comfortable with. My wife's much weaker and slower than me, but she can stay up all night much more easily and she gets sick far less often than I do. High strength/low con and high con/low strength are both real things.

>Not using a tristat system
ISHYGDDT

This. But only if the DM isn't a railroading retard baby, which is the case about 65% of the time.

>tristat sytem
ugh

It's funny because it's the dump stat.

There is literally no reason to up CHA if you are not a sorcerer.

>using stats
wew lad

or bard or paladin right? Or is it still dump for those? I understand if for Paladin it is, but bard?

>That dexterous fop is fucking ripped under those poofy sleeves.

Yes. WE KNOW THIS. But the person watching only sees that the guy with the slender sword is defeating the big burly guy because of his superior speed and sophisticated style or whatever you want (except when the beefier guy gets a hit in and the tables turn every so often, see, Rob Roy).

> My wife's much weaker and slower than me, but she can stay up all night much more easily and she gets sick far less often than I do. High strength/low con and high con/low strength are both real things.

I'd ask if she can take punches better than you / run for longer than you, but this is Veeky Forums and you may be a fatass who can barely leave the basement. Basing CON on her ability to stay up and watch TV and not get sick is... silly, to say the least, either way.

And again, it isn't in theme with the archetypes. Andre could take hits, and most big guys who can take hits can also hit back hard. I can't think of a single "strong glass cannon" sort of person from fiction off the top of my head. Even the worst offenders were due to some fatal weakspot, and not some sort of imbalance in STR/CON. Having the two as separate is just weird.

>bard
Nobody not memeing plays bard through.

It's natural when you really have three things tied up under one stat, and they could be subdivided in other more sensible systems than just one umbrella stat like you have in DND.

manual dexterity - what sort of precision are your hands capable of, and how good your hand eye coordination is
reflexes - how fast you react, how trained is your nervous system
agility - how flexible, balanced, and well controlled your body overall is

Let me use my commanding presence, charm and eloquence to convince/manipulate/order you to think otherwise.

>make strength geberal physical stat
>make dexterity exclusively tied to hand/eye coordination
Could it work Veeky Forums?

Powerlifters = Str
Acrobats = Dex
Marathon Runners = Con

Raising Str or Dex in the real world involves exercise, also raising con.

In other words, Con should be the result of your max HP.

You can't tell me Lord Byron wasn't as queer as a two dollar bill. I mean just look at him.. Look into his eyes.

Dex is the most common god stat across systems, though.

Because it usually combines manual dexterity and full body agility, so it can be invoked for basically all physical activities.

Because it's the stat that lets you aim guns and drive cars in modern settings.

Because sometimes designers let it modify actions-per-turn, the true cross-system god stat.

Usually Strength in the older D&Ds. (But the best thing depends on exactly which combination of add-on rules you're using.)

In 3.5 it's class specific (primary casting stat). Con would be the best if you could pick, but nobody actually has Con as their casting stat. (In before some ridiculous prestige class has it.)

In 4E it's even more class specific. Con is still the best, but it's really splitting hairs.

I don't know shit about 5E.

Not really, you can still max out dex with light armor to get more AC than Plate.

If anything dex has gotten better because you can add the modifier to damage as well as to hit.

5E only really limits maximum you can put into it and that is overcome with magic as well.

Dude was a sex icon of his day. Ladies swooned at his passing.

Almost certainly enjoyed the company of both men and women.

Unfortunately the opposite is also true, break the umbrella into three, and they'd be equally useless.

toughness

In 5E at least, you ignore the speed penalty for heavy armor if you meet the Strength requirement. While a fighter in full plate will never outrun a monk or rogue, and will only be able to momentarily keep up with a barbarian, they can outrun pretty much everyone else barring the use of magic.

Can Marathon runners take punches or resist poisons well?

Are Marathon runners an often represented archetype in fiction?

Marathon running is a skill. Constitution is the idea of being tough against all sorts of abuse.

I'm not saying that there's no distinction between STR and CON as they are currently, I'm saying that it's a level of granularity that's not represented in fiction usually, and it ends up as a "tax" stat for melee characters.

Hell, even mechanically, if you fused STR and CON into... BOD or something, your fighter types would no longer need to have a larger hit die to make up for being in harms way more; they'd just have high HP on account of having high primary stat even if HD size was universal... not that it not being universal is a problem or anything, it'd be just mechanically simpler.

>Heavy armor is asking to be kitted to death.
'hey beardo, drop a meteor on this kiting faggot will ya?'
problem solved.

DEX is actually split from AGILITY in Mutants and Masterminds 3e, and does not affect damage, only ranged to hit rolls and skills. It's...not that amazing of a stat but in MnM 3e you really don't need the stats to do what you want.

You know, I'd rather have high charisma.

Just to know how it feels

Best Light Armor: Studded Leather, AC 12
Best possible Dex: +5

So that's 17.

Meanwhile, a fighter can put on Plate for instant 18, then take Defense style for 19 and use a shield for 21. All at level one, in theory.

So how did you arrive at that statement? I see no way for Light Armor to ever outshine Plate.

B-But I like playing bards...

Doesn't Mithril make armor count as the next lightest category? So Mithril Halfplate would count as light + Dex

I don't think you see those in 5e.

Mithral armor simply doesn't have Stealth disadvanage if the ordinary version would.

Strength
Constitution
Agility
Dexterity
Reaction
Reason
Willpower
Personality

Fuck, how to do a good stat list without bloating?

TOUGHNESS
-better
-faster
-stronger
SHARPNESS
-hawkness
-finesse
-batman
MAGIC
-mercy
-mastery
-mystery

by trimming other parts of the character sheet

sure, if I double the base attributes to 12, but use those exclusively and cut out things like attack bonuses, saves, initiatives, and a slew of other derivative stats it might work out to be LESS of a headache

how you would actually do that without limiting progression or affecting balance, idk

It's much easier to cut the ability scores themselves, and give players a pick of customization feats that give bonuses to relevant stats. Same for the skill system.

By determining what the most relevant aspects of a character are for a game, and then making the broadest of them into stats, rather than trying to create the One Statlist to Rule Them All. Maybe the statlist is like what you posted, or it could be aspects of their personality, or it could be a set of careers, or whatever. Then, make sure the stats provide roughly equal utility for a party (although not necessarily for a character) in the type of game you're creating.

Also
>8
>bloated
Get on my Essence.

>Filthy Dexfag
eww, get out of here and take your scrubbiness with you.

Do you plan on having a skill system? If so, just ignore D&D-style stats and skip immediately to it.

What's the mechanical difference if someone has +4 to hit because they're so strong nobody can block, or +4 to hit because they're so dexterous they always slip past your armor, or +4 to hit because they've studied the way of the sword for years?

>all stats can do is add bonuses to rolls
>all skills can do is add bonuses to rolls
>the only thing strongness, fastness, or swordness add to is how well you sword people
>all those other >implications
wew

>I don't understand what an example is.

Would you like to give one that isn't shit, then?

I dare you to tell me you didn't raise Dex even a single point.

Okay, what can D&D stats and skills do that's relevant besides add bonuses to rolls?

It's not like the bonuses really matter since the biggest bonus will always be the d20.

If you're playing any edition by TSR, Charisma is the only valuable attribute.

Instead of modifying the d20 roll, modifying how many d20s you roll.

I repeat, what else can stats and skills do that's RELEVANT?

Your shitty houserule isn't even related to the conversation so it's pretty sad how you just, y'know, threw that out there like a "I just cracked the code" moment.

Nobody not memeing plays D&D

CLAIM
YOUR
DESTINY

>D&D
Well, you got me. In D&D, the only thing you can do to a roll is increase or decrease it by a given number (or advantage in 5e, but we'll say that doesn't count). I guess this means there's no game where stats and skills could use independent mechanics of each other while both contributing meaningfully to building and playing.