Response to Brokkr

I'm a dope for checking a thread that I was quoted in and responded to? Hence why I posted in the first place, here. Does that make you a dope for checking out my account activity? Man, you lack self-awareness. Your interest in me is a little creepy, too.

To answer your question: I haven't done as much number crunching as the well-read coders and P&P players here have, but anecdotally I'd say good-very good human strength and above is "good enough". So whatever equivalent that is across the races. You can prevent bouncing off armor if you have the equivalent of good human strength with most weapons or by adjusting what you're doing, skill wise.

Go bash a carru and roll up a new character.

That's the best bang for your buck in terms of mitigating that shit strength.

Otherwise, if you're hell bent on making the character work.

Realize that you'll never be an effective melee combatant.

Rely on archery/throw/slings and hide/sneak. Use poison. Have lots of friends. Never put yourself in dangerous situations.

Pretty much like any other character except much less effective/dangerous and competent.

Okay, now we're getting somewhere there, Pinky.

Never be an effective melee combatant. You know, that's fine. It's a video game trope and a D&D thing. Don't put your wizard on the front row.

But can I still be an effective combatant in other ways? Coded ways, not social manipulation ways.

Because, in Arm, most anyone you try and manipulate has seen it all fucking before. Every half-giant may grunt and say stupid shit but when it comes down to the bleeding, they all become Sun Tzu with the tactics and blocking exits and shit. Nobody who isn't already willing to potentially lose their character is going to go in a cave, or apartment, or even a tent if they in any way suspect someone might want to kill them.

I know that agility doesn't provide a whole lot for melee ... but can you be a pretty effective ranged combat character? What would that look like, in practice?

Yep. Look at old posts from delerak and lulz.

They are good oldies and they both played very successful d-elfs and high-agi rangers.

The former swore by hit-and-run archery and poison arrows. They both recognized that strength was OP but knew there were ways around it.

Granted, stuff like this has already been said in the thread. Everyone recognizes that there are ways other than high strength to be a successful PKer and combatant.
Despite that, strength is obviously broken and dominant and leads to a bunch of other problems which have mostly been laid out...

I used to play a Black Numenorean scout on a mud called MUME. People laughed because that combination is ridiculous. The stats are bad for that race, who is meant to only be mages, and there is no infrastructure.

But it was difficult and I'd done everything else so I thought, why not? And I did it and succeeded and then put out a little set of instructions for how to do it. For instance, you can't teleport so learn to swim. People can't track you across a river and they are reluctant to abandon their mounts, so cross rivers, swim a lot, to break off pursuit. Little tips that just seemed common sense, but all put together in one guide. Or how to successfully disengage from a fight. Any fight. Knowing you will never win a fight if the enemy knows you are there because you are so fundamentally weak, so just be a submarine and strike from ambush and then disengage.

And pretty quick there were a lot of BN scouts roaming around, with varying degrees of success. It went from "unplayable" to "a fun style to try".

So I wonder if the same is do-able here ...

Is a human scout/stalker/miscreant/infiltrator ever going to be a powerhouse with ranged, and how would it be done?

Yeah. And they have just uber stats across the board, even looking past strength. I'd discount desert elves in general in our theorycrafting.