Morrowind talk:Strength

Weapon Health

Should it be mentioned that the amount of strenght also defines how fast your weapon breaks? One should be aware that incredibly hight strenght will result in your wepon breaking after 1 use. 85.141.193.101 14:30, 6 June 2009 (EDT)

Yes I've also noticed this, when I increased my Strength to 100k via console. I killed everything I touched, but my weapons also broke after one hit. Kertaw48 13:19, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

To quote an edit: Strength also determines the damage you do to your own weapons. As you get stronger, the weapons will take more damage. But is this a result of Strength, or a result of the damage you do? I want to have this figured out before it is added to the page. --DKong27 ^{Talk Cont} 01:59, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Regardless of the specific cause, this is still affected by the value of the strength attribute, and therefore it seems like it should be on the page. --87.115.180.223 17:22, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Please do not add the note back to the page. It has not been proven the strength itself has any effect at all of weapon damage. It is likely a function of the damage you are doing, not your strength. --Brf 12:44, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

The damage you do is directly related to your strength, so if that is the specific cause, which I am not claiming it isn't, then strength does indeed have an effect. --87.115.180.223 12:47, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

By the same token, you could also say that Strength affects how quickly you kill monsters. Should we put a note in there for that too? We do not need to list every secondary effect. The list is for effects that are directly computed from Strength. --Brf 12:57, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

It would, in fact, appear germane to mention that strength affects damage output.

Let me just expand on this point:

• From the Combat article, we learn "Your damage is modified by your Strength, with a Strength of 50 being the 'baseline' - so if your Strength is 100, you will deal 50% more than the listed damage, with 0 strength you will deal 50% less than the listed damage."
• From extensive playtesting, we learn that increasing your character's strength using the console to an extremely high value will cause weapons to break in noticeably fewer, and in some cases even one, hit. This supports the information on the combat article and is empirical evidence to support the conclusion that Strength does indeed affect the damage you do to your own weapons.

Granted, it seems we do not know the exact calculation for weapon damage as of now, but it seems there is sufficient justification for this information being present on the article regardless of whether the formula is included or not. This is a useful piece of information for readers and should not be omitted simply because we cannot identify the cause analytically. There is enough evidence to include it and no sufficient reason to exclude it as of now. Your note regarding monsters is irrelevant, as that information is in fact already on the article, albeit worded in a different way ("It affects: How much damage you do with weapons. This includes Marksman weapons."). Additionally, your specific statement, exactly as you just posted it, is easily deducible from the statement on the article, and is also intuitive to players, whereas damage to weapons is not, particularly as the calculations are different in other TES games and in Skyrim weapons themselves take no damage at all. --87.115.180.223 13:05, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

To go further: You write "The list is for effects that are directly computed from Strength." You believe that combat damage is the likely cause of weapon damage, and it would seem that this is indeed the case. Unless the Combat article is incorrect, combat damage is "computed" using strength. From this we can say, assuming both we and the article are correct:

• Weapon damage <- combat damage <- strength

so to claim that weapon damage is not directly computed from strength is to contradict your earlier sentiment. Even if we are incorrect in believeing that combat damage is the cause of weapon damage, and strength the cause of combat damage, the empirical evidence mentioned previously obtained from unmodded playtesting is certainly in support of the conclusion that strength affects weapon damage in some way. --87.115.180.223 13:11, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Combat damage is also relate to how long you hold back your weapon. Suppose I am using a weapon which does 1-10, and hold back my weapon and do 10 points of damage with a 50 strength.... Then I raise my strength to 100 and use the same weapon and swing quickly, so it only does 2 points of damage. We are claiming that the 10 point hit with 50 strength does more damage to the weapon than the 2 point hit with 100 strength. If Strength itself increases the damage to your weapon, than the 2 point hit with 100 strength should damage your weapon more. --Brf 13:19, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, you are ignoring the implications of the information on the Combat article: "if your Strength is 100, you will deal 50% more than the listed damage, with 0 strength you will deal 50% less than the listed damage." Regardless of the technicalities of particular and hypothetical instances, this information tells us that Strength always affects combat damage, even if the effect is insignificant (I would argue that a 50% increase in damage possible by increasing strength through levelling alone is very significant). Now, from this predicate, if we claim that combat damage affects weapon damage (which it may or may not do; I personally think it does) then we also claim that strength affects weapon damage because strength affects combat damage. You can test for yourself, as I and others have done, the effects of increasing and decreasing strength via the console on weapon damage without increasing or decreasing any other variable. If this is not solid evidence that strength affects weapon damage, and that weapon damage is "directly computed," as you put it, from strength, then our only other option is to locate the exact calculation for weapon damage in the construction set or the game's code, which, while desirable and certainly sufficient to prove the conclusion, is not necessary to do so, and therefore to justify including this information on the article. If nothing else, we can surely say that this information is important to readers of this encyclopaedia who wish to learn the observable effects of the strength attribute in the game. --87.115.180.223 13:34, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

You are ignoring my other reply. If you do more combat damage, you kill your opponents quicker. Therefore, if you raise your strength, you will kill your opponents quicker. Are you going to put that in the article too? By your own words, you want to put every secondary effect of damage in the article, so you would want to put that in there too, that raising your strength kills your opponents quicker. I already demonstrated with my example that raising strength does not directly affect damage to weapons, so it does not belong there. --Brf 14:40, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I addressed your other reply, whereas you have not addressed mine. "Killing your opponents quicker" is just another way of writing "doing more damage," as we assume the opponents in question have a finite amount of health, so the latter statement must imply the former. You provided no example that raising strength does not "directly" affect damage to weapons - in my reply I demonstrated extensively that we can safely say it does. There is no reason not to include this information. Unless you can refute the following logic, you cannot rationally claim that "raising strength does not directly affect damage to weapons:"

• Strength affects combat damage (as stated on the Combat article)
• Combat damage affects weapon damage
• Therefore strength affects weapon damage as a variable affecting combat damage

However, as I conceded, this may not be the case, as the second statement has yet to be proven true. However, you must additionally refute the evidence, which supports the above logic (or a variation of it), and provide your own evidence to the contrary, that:

• raising strength to a very high number using the console whilst changing nothing else causes weapons to break very quickly when used

Please tell me what your issue with the above statements are. I am beginning to find it absurd that you are still refusing to believe, or take into account, what I have said so far, despite having explained the issue at great length to you. --87.115.180.223 21:46, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

In anticipation of you stating otherwise, I will clearly address your responses here. I will discuss what I think are your main points (I apologise in advance if I misinterpret any of your statements).

1. "Combat damage is also relate to how long you hold back your weapon."

This is akin to examining the proposition x + y = z and claiming that the value of x does not affect the value of z because the value of y also affects the value of z. The remainder of this post is an exemplification of this statement, so I won't address that because it is unecessary. Continuing with this analogy, we could say that strength is "x," the length of time your weapon is held back is "y," and combat damage is "z." Regardless of the value, and indeed the presence or absence of "y," "x" still affects the value of "z." Rather than strength itself, "x" could represent a formula of which strength is a component, and this is likely to be closer to the actual nature of the calculation, but this makes no difference as strength is still a variable affecting combat damage either way.

1. "You would want to put that in there too, that raising your strength kills your opponents quicker."

I addressed this briefly above but I'll clarify my response here. How do you kill an opponent? By reducing their health to 0. How is this achieved? By doing damage. How would you increase the speed of the process (i.e. How would you kill an opponent quicker?) By doing more damage. Doing more damage will reduce an opponent's health by a greater value, so to kill an opponent quicker you must do more damage in a given period of time. Damage is the only variable we can change: we cannot change the health of an opponent except by doing damage. Therefore, the statement on the article: "[Strength] affects: How much damage you do with weapons." is no different to writing: "Strength affects how quickly you kill enemies."

Now this is relevant because, with regards to weapon damage, we are dealing with an entirely different subject, whereas with regards to the speed with which you kill opponents, we are dealing with the same subject using different terms. Therefore to add the statement: "raising your strength kills your opponents quicker" is to repeat ourselves.

--87.115.180.223 22:42, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Please do not add your edit back in. Let me give you another example.

Increasing Strength increases your encumbrance limit. Increasing your encumbrance limit increases the speed you move. Therefore, Increasing your Strength also increases your speed, keeping all other things equal. Are you going to add that to the list too? We do not need to add every single secondary effect. Do not add your edit back in. --Brf 13:06, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Wow, picking up where I left off two years ago, I'm totally in for adding all of the secondary effects (also I've checked in-game, damage to weapons is directly proportionate with the physical damage dealt). This article as is now looks poor and any new information that could be added to it would be helpful. Besides, there aren't that many secondary effects that result almost directly from Strength increase/decrease. It would be inefficient if a wiki user would have to open three different inter-linked articles to find out their speed would increase by increasing strength, when it could all be found on the article about strength.

My second point is the lack of rebuttal of the anon's arguements. He has wordily and eloquently laid out his arguements and they have not been analitically disproven (as in point-by-point). I'm not surprised he tried (twice) to put the note back on. I am even more appalled by the warning placed on his/her talk page, because it was obviously not vandalism, coming from such well worded arguements he had made. -- kertaw48 17:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The vandalism is in repeatedly making an edit after he has been told not to. --Brf 17:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Brf, you are clearly an experienced editor, so I am surprised you consider my edits to be vandalism. You have not provided any counter-argument to the points I have made, so, with the support of my argument and the lack of any substantial opposition from you, I re-added the note. You cannot argue a point by providing example after example to support a statement which has already been refuted. I could contest your point about encumbrance in exactly the same way I did your point about "killing opponents quicker."

Additionally, this page is exactly the kind of place where all effects, whether you consider them to be "primary" or "secondary," should be listed because readers come to this page to learn about the strength attribute, and therefore to learn about its effects. Why you would support omitting important information which has a noticeable or interesting effect on many readers' style of play is beyond me.

You cannot justify reverting my additions, telling me not to add the note again and particularly posting a warning note on my talk page without refuting my arguments, which you have not done by any stretch of the imagination. Please see sense and allow this information on the article!

Also, thank you for your support kertaw. --87.112.240.109 18:55, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for allowing the note to be added Brf, but speed and jump height are, like the speed with which you kill opponents, intuitive via an understanding of the effects of encumbrance, which is now linked to on the page (as is the damage section of the combat article). The reason I was proposing that weapon damage be added is that it is not an intuitive effect of the value of the attribute and it is an important and interesting factor affecting the playing styles of many readers, as mentioned above. --87.112.240.109 20:15, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes. But increasing your strength, keeping all else equal, results in faster speed and longer jumps. By your own logic, those effects should be added along with the weapon damage note. I agree that weapon-damaging is not an obvious effect, so its inclusion is warranted, but speed and jump are also not intuitive if you are a newbie to RPGs. --Brf 20:20, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I just explained why this whole discussion is about exempting damage to weapons from exclusion as un-noteworthy. The effect of speed and jump height are much more greatly affected by the speed attribute and the acrobatics skill, respectively, strength plays a much more minor role, and only through encumbrance, which is likely to be understood by readers and, if it is not, now has its article linked to on the page, on which its effects are detailed. Speed and jump height are things to be mentioned on the encumbrance article, and not the strength article, because when readers want to learn about the effects of encumbrance, they will read the encumbrance article. When readers want to learn about the effects of strength, they will read the strength article, and if they want to learn about the specific effects on encumbrance as well they can follow the link. This is primarily in the interests of keeping the article concise and relevant, which was your concern earlier. Now, damage to weapons is different from encumbrance in this case because it is unusual and particular to this game, and some readers may not be aware that weapon damage is affected by any other variables, particularly if they are used to Skyrim-style RPGs, or even Skyrim itself, which features invulnerable weapons. It is much more likely that a reader will understand, particularly if they are already a Morrowind player, the effects of encumbrance to some degree and strength's relationship to these effects, whereas weapon damage is less immediately obvious. --87.112.240.109 20:31, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

(←) I can't say I agree with anon this time. Both of these effect are secondary and should be listed separately from the others. I mean if we list one secondary effect, we might as well list them all, for consistency's sake. Besides, this article is not edited very often so, ANY information added to it would be a plus in my opinion. -- kertaw48 23:34, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Also, encumbrance is typically a negative effect -- slowing down the player and making jumps smaller. In this case, if you raise your Strength to very high levels, you will be able to move very fast and jump over all obstacles in your path. This goes beyond the normal obvious encumbrance effects, so it should be included. --Brf 11:59, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I see your point about consistency - I think I was becoming too bogged down in the defending weapon damage as an exceptional case. Have a look at my latest edit as see what you think; I thought it would be better to integrate the effects we discussed into the existing bullet point list rather than have another list without a clear seperation. --91.125.0.48 21:15, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Nice. --Brf 21:17, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I've also just noticed that the note about weapon durability has been on the Attributes page since 2008! --91.125.0.48 21:21, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

On the topic of weapon degradation I would like to state that I know exactly how weapon damage affects weapon degradation *directly*. If a weapon lands a blow of 1-20 damage it degrades by 1 point per use. If a weapon hits for 21-29 its 2 points. 30 - 39 is 3 points. 40-49 is 4. 50-59 is 5. So on so forth. When landing a blow on an enemy whatever range the number you hit on them falls into determines weapon degradation. --Rykros2005 20:43, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

(←) Interesting. With what amount of Strength did you conduct this experiment? -- kertaw48 21:32, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

50 strength. Results were from weapons such as daedric tanto(20 damage at 50),longbow (21+ with arrow),nordic claymore (30 damage is when 3 degradation occurs), daedric spear(40 damage 4 degradation),etc.

An additional test was at 100 strength such as Daedric shortsword(26 x 1.5 = 39) which resulted in 3 degradation.

I believe that this means the system tries to make weapon degradation = 10% of damage rounded down but somehow ends up giving an extra point of damage at 1 point degradation allowing weapons that hit for 20 with current strength values to still only reduce durability by 1.

Rykros2005 20:15, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

To test what REALLY effects weapon health make and hit (full hit) same target 10 time with :

A: char with 100 STR with weapon stats 1-1 dmg, 1 weight, 1000 weapon hp ;

B: char with 1 STR with weapon stats 100-100 dmg, 1 weight, 1000 weapon hp ;

C: char with 1 STR with weapon stats 1-1 dmg, 100 weight, 1000 weapon hp ;

And compare results.

I will self test it some time later

Ciberzombie (talk) 21:07, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Jump Distance/Height

I notice when you increase your strength using enchantments, your jump distance/height also increases. Is this because the ratio of your weight and encumbrance increases or does strength directly affects it? — Unsigned comment by 112.202.26.86 (talk)

it is because strength is the governing attribute of acrobatics and due to your encumberance (^{I plead Lazyness}_{Eddie The Head} 12:23, 2 October 2011 (UTC))

-It is directly caused by your current encumbrance to maximum weight ratio. It is not because of strength being a governing attribute for acrobatics. Being a governing attribute means raising that skill will give you a bigger level up bonus to that attribute it is governed by and nothing else.