Strength weight

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Generally in Crawl, heavier weapons, armour and shields benefit more from strength than from dexterity, and also tend to require more strength to use properly in the first place. Strength weighting (abbreviated "str weight") is an attribute that determines relatively how much a character's Str and Dex affect a given weapon's damage output.

A given str weight value can be viewed as a quotient expressed as a percentage: the "amount of effect" that Str has on a weapon divided by the total amount of effect that Str and Dex together have on it. So a str weight of 100% (such as with a giant club) implies that strength is all that really matters when using it. Conversely, 0% (eg. quick blade) implies that strength has an very small effect on how well a weapon performs.

Almost all weapons fall somewhere in between the two extremes. The weighted average of strength and dexterity affects both damage potential and to-hit, the former being affected more by strength and the latter being affected more by dexterity. Thus note that that even 0% and 100% strength weightings don't imply that either stat has no effect: more dex always implies better to-hit and more str always implies higher per-hit damage. Ergo, 50% str weight still implies that dex has a bigger effect than str on to-hit, and conversely with str and damage.