Fable
Use Strength Experience to improve your Physique, Toughness and Health. Become a better fighter, wield heavier weapons, and protect yourself from damage. With each advance you will become more muscular and powerful.
In Fable, the following abilities can be learned.
Physique
- Physique dictates the force with which you can swing a weapon, and thus the amount of damage you can cause. It also causes the character to "bulk up" to somewhat comical sizes.
- With greater strength also comes the ability to wield heavy weapons more effectively.
Health
- The healthier you are, the more damage you can take. Your health attribute defines the length of your health bar.
- There is a cap on how long it can be, with maximised Health and Fable: The Lost Chapters the player can end up with more Elixirs of Life than what can be used to increase their life bar.
Toughness
- Toughness is your basic resistance to damage - your 'natural armour'. The tougher you are, the less damage you will take from each blow.
- Maximising this ability made the hero very durable if they chose not to use physical shield, however due to the frequency of scarring in the original titles (could become scarred by taking any health damage) many people focused instead on Magic Power and Physical Shield.
Experience Costs
| Level | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | |
| Physique | 500 | 1200 | 3000 | 9000 | 24000 | 45000 | 86000 |
| Health | 400 | 1000 | 2500 | 6000 | 13500 | 28000 | 58000 |
| Toughness | 350 | 900 | 1800 | 4800 | 9000 | 19000 | 38000 |
Fable II
A player utilising strength.
In Fable II, the following abilities can be learned.
Brutal Styles
- Block (Hold down (X) while not pressing in a direction or moving)
- The games simplistic combat, life stealing augmentations, Health Regeneration sleeping bonuses, healing potions and foodstuffs make all blocking relatively pointless except on the basis of personal opinion and manipulation of tracked statistics (hits taken).
- Flourish (Holding (X) and the left thumbstick in the desired direction of the attack and then releasing (X) when the controller starts to rumble.)
- This ability can penetrate the defense of enemies who are blocking, as well as knock them down for an instant kill attack. Performing the instant kill requires you stand still for a moment near the body on the ground and press (X) to stab them while they lie there.
- Chain Attack (At the peak of each swing, tap (X) to cause a chain attack, a blue streak behind the attack will indicate it was done correctly)
- These attacks are faster than normal and inflict more damage, albeit somewhat difficult to pull off regularly without significant practice.
- Reversals (Press (X) as an enemy attacks, done correctly the hero will cause the enemy to spin around, pressing (X) again will shove the weapon through the back of the enemies skull and out their mouth with one-handed weapons and a decapitation will occur with two-handed weapons)
- A hero who has mastered this technique will be nearly invulnerable in one on one melee combat against most enemies. The enemy must be similarly sized and humanoid in order for this ability to function, enemies such as Shards are not affected.
Physique
- As in the original Fable, Physique increases the damage of melee weapons and also makes you appear more muscular. The increments are 1.25, 1.50, 1.9, 2.3 and 3.0.
- The appearance effect is not appreciated by many players, as it gives the hero an extremely bulky appearance that appears unnatural, particularly on female characters (where maximised physique and bulky clothing can make females hard to distinguish from males). Unlike the effects of Accuracy (increases height), Physique appearance changes cannot be countered using potions available in the Knothole Island downloadable content, the player is stuck with a bulky appearance.
Toughness
- This does not decrease damage done to the Hero, as in Fable, but increases maximum Health with every level.
- Augmentations are required to reduce damage taken, other methods of raising maximum health include Potions of Life and Health Boost.
Fable III
In Fable III Strength has all but vanished in the word, it's meaning, and it's use in gameplay. Although Strength is still considered to be one of the three Hero attributes, it is never actually mentioned in the game. Strength's changes are as follows:
- Health can no longer be increased, due to no health bar being present.
- Blocking and flourishes are automatically known at the begining of the game.
- Chain Attacks and counters are no longer present in gameplay.
- The power of a weapon and how much damage it does per hit, is decided on what it's augments are and what level of melee the Hero has purchased on the Road to Rule.
- The Hero's muscular structure will no longer be decided on their level of strength/melee. It is now changed depending on whether they use swords or hammers and how often. Also a muscular hero no longer looks overdone or comical, but instead is more realistic.
- A female hero with level five melee/strength, will appear just as they did at the beginning of the game, despite being as strong as a male hero with level five melee.