Strength weight

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Generally in Crawl, heavier weapons benefit more from strength than from dexterity, and also tend to require more strength to use properly. Strength weighting (abbreviated "str weight") is an attribute that determines relatively how much a character's strength and dexterity 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 strength has on a weapon, divided by the total amount of effect that strength and dexterity 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 a 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 dexterity always implies better to-hit and more strength always implies higher per-hit damage. A 50% str weight still implies that dexterity has a bigger effect than strength on to-hit, and conversely with strength and damage.