Intelligence and Thac0

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I just finished reading RA Salvatore's "Starless Nights," and I couldn't help notice how much Drizzt's intelligence and cunning helped him win his battles. He anticipated the attack patterns of his enemies, analyzed their fighting styles, and drew upon the lessons he learned in the past to help him win the battles he faced in the present.

Perhaps a character's Intelligence should be included when calculating his Thac0 as much as, or even more than, his Strength score.

It stands to reason that a strong and smart fighter will beat a strong and stupid fighter any day of the week.

 

That's true, but it doesn't change the fact that a level 10 fighter with 18 Strength and Intelligence will outsmart and overcome a level 10 fighter with 18 Strength, but only 3 Intelligence.

In "Planescape: Torment," the higher your Wisdom score, the greater your experience point bonus for quests completed and battles won. In the same way, perhaps a fighter with high Intelligence should receive more experience points for battles won, since he was able to learn something more from his battle by virtue of his greater awareness, memory and understanding.

 

I believe that Clerics receive an xp bounus for high intelligence now, don't they?

 

Shure Steppenwolf. And a fighter with int 3 should be a lot easier to beat than a guy with int 15.
But since intelligent fighting styles are shunned by most players anyway there is probalby no point in awarding extra bonuses for those who don't.

 

But once you start down this route you open up a can of worms. For example, is it the inteligence of the figter that counts or rather his wisdom or maybe both. His wisdom means he knows about his enemies habits so that should improve thaco. Also, what about dexterity, surely a dextrous fighter would have an advantage over a clumsy one so maybe that should improve his thaco. Finally, what about charisma, everyone always says that the key to a fight bewteen two top competitors is who can outpsyche the other. Surely then Charisma could be used to intemidate the opponent and so lend a bonus to thaco.

The point is, yes inteligence should help a fighter but we are talking about a game that needs to model reality. The thing about a model is it has to simplify what it is modelling otherwise the model is as complictaed as reality. If this was the case we would all be running around in the woods hitting each other with swords. So once you accept that the game has to simplify reality into easy to use rules then you should accept that strength is probably the best attribute to affect melee fighting ability.

Sorry, got into lecture mode there.

 

I would have thought that it would be more obvious for dexterity to affect chance to hit and strength to affect damage.

 

In a way you´re right Ironbeard, but since dexterity influences THACO IIRC and THACO means "to hit armor class zero" in does in fact influence your chance to hit - it eases your hit dice by improving THACO

As for strength: wielding a heeavy weapon like a two-handed sword needs more than just dexterity to ensure a safe hit, so I hink it makes sense when this also influences THACO.

 

Dexterity only improves a character's Thac0 when it comes to missile weapons like bows and slings. I don't think it improves Thac0 in relation to melee weapons.





[This message has been edited by Steppenwolf (edited March 27, 2001).]