[STR or Dex]

I give up, which one determines how often
you hit?

Neither. Only your level, offense, and
weapons skill
figures into the chance to hit.

STR determines max damage and average
damage.
Higher STR will raise your damage cap, and
will also
increase your likelihood of hitting closer
to your max.
The exception to this is Archery, where Dex
determines
this.

Dex determines how often a weapon will fire
a random
process, and also figures into critical hits
for warriors. It
also figures into some of the rogue skills.

-Gordon

This was on EQVault. At one time I had 116 STR and 151 DEX and I still
missed alot. Dex didn't seem to improve my hitting ability at all. So
eventually I scrapped DEX altogether since I felt it was useless to a
bard, despite being a "primary" stat. I feel cheated to have given my
bard a starting dex of 90 but oh well.

Now DEX does add mana for a bard though right? I suppose this is true,
but I hardly get a chance to use dirge in the first place, seeing as how
whenever I get res'd, all my mana zips to 0 and before I can regain 4
bars of it, I'm dead/getting res'd again. And yea, hunting in the planes
at 50, I die too often. Also, another thing about bard mana... I got
super drunk which dropped my int to 15, then sobered back up to where my
int was back to normal and I was missing a full bubble of mana. So int
definitely plays a part in our mana amount, but I have yet to confirm
dex or cha for doing so. I'll have to test that out.
So I'd suggest you sacrifice dex for STR, unless you have a Proc'ing
weapon in which it'd be good to have some dex without totally killing
strength.

Maev Lorekeeper
Tarew Marr