Slime Squisher
Posts: 419
Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25
Is Strength just better than Dexterity? (Spoiler: yes.)
tl;dr: it was so clearly true that I stopped before doing anything extensive, so this is just a summary of how far I got. Even with a character especially arranged to get minimal benefit from Strength against an opponent where Dexterity might be expected to be beneficial, there is only a very small advantage to taking Dexterity.
From attack.cc:
Take weapon base damage
Add (r2(STR-9) * 2) / 39. In other words, each point of STR over 10 adds 2.6% damage. (STR under 10 subtracts (r2(11-STR) * 3)/ 39 - 3.9%. Try not to have STR under 10 if you are bashing monsters).
Weapon skill and fighting skill are multiplicative modifiers - STR bonus unchanged - which is fortunate because then we don't have to account for them.
Then come slaying bonuses, including weapon plusses. Slaying bonusses are additive, however, and not affected by STR bonus. Hence if you have a lot of slaying and/or your base damage is low, the effective value of your STR bonus drops considerably. If you were using a +0 weapon (or a thrown weapon) and had no slaying, your STR bonus is at maximum value.
Monster takes off d(AC) -1. This means against high-AC monsters you get more effective benefit from higher STR (or anything that causes additional damage) because the first however-many points of damage are being lost.
Brands kick in. Most brands act as a multiplier on damage done, rendering the value of STR unchanged. However, electrocution is a fixed bonus (reducing the effective value of a STR bonus), and protection gives its bonus independently of damage.
[There was going to be some consideration of accuracy here, but I started running some fsims instead.]
As an extreme example of a character where one would not expect STR to do much, an unarmoured STR 10 character with a +6 ring of slaying and a +9 QB of electrocution versus a killer bee:
(Note that I have upped the number of fsim rounds to the maximum of 500,000, and run it multiple times to check there's no significant variance between runs.)
- Code:
AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
Attacking: 13.8 | 42 | 61% | 8.6 | 35 | 2.86 | 24.5
With 20 STR:
Attacking: 14.4 | 45 | 61% | 8.9 | 35 | 2.86 | 25.5
A 4% damage boost, where naively we might have expected 26%.
With 20 DEX:
Attacking: 13.8 | 42 | 65% | 9.0 | 35 | 2.86 | 25.8
A 5% damage boost, barely more.
With 15 STR, 15 DEX:
Attacking: 14.0 | 43 | 63% | 8.9 | 35 | 2.86 | 25.4
Worse than either all-STR or all-DEX.
It is worth noting this gives a fair picture of the situation against a high-EV low-AC monster with decent HP, but - to be fair - does underestimate the use of DEX against actual killer bees. Killer bees have 10-22HP, so many of these hits where electrocution kicks in or even where the slaying bonus rolls high will overkill a killer bee, wasting the excess damage. The extra 4% accuracy would have more value than it seems here.
However, this was an extreme example. Against a high-AC poor-EV monster, a stone giant, and wearing a scale mail (with a bit of Armour skill, and some Dodging since I'm also now looking at defensive benefits):
- Code:
Attacking: 9.8 | 42 | 93% | 9.1 | 35 | 2.86 | 26.1
_Defending: 16.2 | 40 | 57% | 9.4 | 100 | 1.00 | 9.4
With 20 STR:
Attacking: 10.3 | 43 | 93% | 9.6 | 35 | 2.86 | 27.4
_Defending: 16.1 | 40 | 50% | 8.2 | 100 | 1.00 | 8.2
A 5% damage boost.
With 20 DEX:
Attacking: 9.8 | 42 | 93% | 9.2 | 35 | 2.86 | 26.3
_Defending: 16.2 | 40 | 50% | 8.2 | 100 | 1.00 | 8.2
A 1% damage boost, and no defensive benefit over getting the STR-based AEVP reduction.
With 15 STR, 15 DEX:
Attacking: 10.0 | 43 | 93% | 9.3 | 35 | 2.86 | 26.7
_Defending: 16.2 | 40 | 49% | 8.0 | 100 | 1.00 | 8.0
A 2% damage boost and a very marginal defensive benefit.
I stopped here because it seemed clear that if I can't make DEX look good with a character completely stacked against STR, I can't make it look good at all.
Of course, this only considers melee. A caster, however - well, if they are wearing armour they will clearly prefer STR which improves casting chances to DEX which doesn't (STR v. INT is another question), and if they aren't they'll generally go INT.
There might be a remaining question about armourless dodgers like kitties, where STR has no defensive benefits because there's no AEVP to eliminate. Even then I expect STR will come out on top because it will provide a whopping damage bonus (especially on a kitty or other UC character with no weapon slaying bonus or brand) and accuracy is pretty good anyway with no AEVP (and a kitty's high starting DEX).