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 once the weapon scores a hit, strength is all that really affects the damage that it deals. Conversely, 0% (eg. quick blade) implies that strength has neglegible effect on how well a weapon performs.

Almost all weapons fall somewhere in between the two extremes. Also note that even 0% and 100% strength weightings don't imply that either strength or dexterity have no effect at all: dex affects to-hit while more str always increases weapon damage (this scales with weapon base damage).