Why Strength?

Why are weapons that should be devoted to speed linked to the Strength attribute? You'd think a stun baton (Which only needs contact to work) wouldn't need strength behind the blow. Just a thought as I begin developing a third character.

I have thought the same thing before when it comes to agility weapons like knives and katanas (when used properly anyway). Might be worth a house rule? Ideas?

To be honest...it's because strength was considered the 'norm' for melee attacks since the earliest days of role-playing. No other really good reason. There are definitely weapons that could be better served by using Dex/Quickness/Reflexes/etc instead but to make things as simple as possible, most games have kept it to strength. Some games get around it by failing to offer any sort of armor proteciton against certain items (like the stun baton) but I don't believe SR does that (though I'm not positive).

Another related question to that is: Why not strength when dealing with certain aspects of firearms? Recoil is a big issue in real firearms. Really, what comes to mind is the video I saw of the cute, dainty little chick popping off a single shot with a Desert Eagle .50....and then watching as the recoil and her lack of upper body strength slung that DE .50 into her forehead. Proper stance, technique, and readiness can mitigate many of the effects of recoil...but not all. Sometimes it just takes a bit of the old brute force to handle it.

Was contemplating adapting a weapon min str system like CP2020 has. If I can figure the math out properly, the system would be almost intuitive in figuring whether that weapon is just too much for you or not.

Nah, I think it make much more sense that it isn't strength but Body.

Let's face it, the 98 lbs girls holding .357's are 98lbs girls. But you see a bigger guy (Be it muscle or otherwise) and he can still fire the gun just fine. To me it makes sense that the guns are linked to Quickness because you get into that whole "Who fires first? Who can aim and fire before anybody else?" so that makes sense testing your speed against other people's speed.

So yeah....... but I wouldn't mind linking melee weapons to speed (Especially things outside the clubs group..... with the exception of the stun baton of course)..... they do it in 4th and I hate to seem like a broken record but... it seems right.


However, because I've been reading more 3rd edition books I have to say this:

I am horribly sad that they don't have Landmines in ANY books for 4th. It made me very very very sad.