Realism; Strength is not important for swordsmanship(?)

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Gollum

Right. And that is even more true (at least, more sensible) with bowmen. More you are skilled, more you are able to hit a far target. Hitting a far target requires precision, of course (DX, in GURPS). But it also requires strength, in order to stretch the bow to give the arrow enough speed.

Yep I think it's more true of bowmen than melee because if you lack the ability to draw a bow that is powerful enough to reach your target, all the accuracy in the world won't matter you still won't hit.

What I really think is true is that while we tend to look at these things as completely separate in these discussions, the reality is they end up being liked just by the practicality of real life.

So yeah in GURPS it's possible to build a DX15, ST5 adult with Skill +10, in reality that combination of things won't happen with a human swordsman*.

(however because it's GURPS it has to be able to accommodate the non human and non realistic, i.e. no human swordmaster is likely to have the above build, but a hobbit one might).


When it comes to modelling humans, especially one's who excel at something I try and go for a holistic approach that brings in several factors. Because the reality is when your training very hard at something there tends to be a lot of synergy with several factors.

So while my preference is for stat normalisation, which means I won't have C14th English archers walking around with ST20 in order to pull heavy bows, but neither will I have them be ST8 and have +12 in a technique that allows them to.

Instead I tend to give them a combination of things that working together given them a combined ability to do a thing. Archery is great example of this as there is a pretty coherent set of advantages that build on each other and narrow in specificity.

TBH I've found a nice side effect of this approach is that I tend to avoid the knock on issues that can come with very high scores in advantages that have a wider scopes. e.g my English HYW archers know to avoid arm wrestling a 1,000lb polar bears!



*yes OK may soem outlandish culmination of events could give you this, but I suggest it wouldn't be a static ongoing situation