Strength

Version 0.14: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Strength (or STR) is one of a character's three main attributes, along with dexterity and intelligence.

Strength affects the following:

• Slightly increases accuracy and damage in combat (heavy weapons with a high strength weight benefit slightly more). Also reduces attack delay for launchers. See weapon damage and ranged combat for details.
• Increases constriction damage.
• Increases your carrying capacity by 25 per point.
• Reduces the impact your armour's encumbrance rating has upon your unarmed combat speed, accuracy, evasion, stealth, and spellcasting success rate.
• Slightly decreases body armour's penalty to dodging. Dexterity is a much more efficient way to raise your EV, however.
• Slightly increases your SH bonus with shields or large shields.
• Increases the chance of doing auxiliary attacks.
• Increases the chance of doing retaliatory headbutts when you are a minotaur.
• Increases the range of large rocks.

Dexterity is often more useful than strength. The bonus damage from strength is generally very minor in all but the most extreme cases, while boosting your evasion is helpful for any character. However, a high strength score can go a long way toward allowing you to cast spells or dodge attacks while wearing heavy armour.

If your strength is ever reduced to 0 or lower, you will eventually suffer stat zero.

History

In 0.15, Crawl will lose all concept of weight, so strength will have no impact on carrying capacity. Also, ranged combat will be drastically simplified, removing strength from the attack delay equation.

Prior to 0.13, the weapon damage bonus from strength was half as large. Strength also played a role in the now-obsolete Armour EV-Penalty system, which was replaced with encumbrance ratings.