I've been experimenting with creating various sorts of characters and one of them is 4 Brawn, 3 Agility and has 5 Melee. His fighting style is dual wielding Vibroswords in a fencing style. He also has Armor with a Strength Enhancing System pushing his Brawn up even more. Because of this character's build, I realized that there is an interesting issue where a character with a high Brawn and a comparatively low Agility can swordfight very effectively. Picture an Ithorian with 5 Brawn and 1 Agility dueling a Kyuzo with 3 Brawn and 4 Agility.
I have a couple thoughts on this matter:
- Change Brawn to Agility for Melee (a little bit too cut-and-dried, introducing some of the same problems it's supposed to fix)
- Use Agility for Swords and comparable, but for bludgeoning weapons, heavy weapons (battleaxes, warhammers, etc.), and knives use Brawn.
- Base the Characteristic used off of the character's fighting style. So regardless of characteristics, you pick at the beginning, are you a sword dancer, or do you just whack at your opponent? You could also extend that to Brawl and pick, are you a Martial Artist, or a WWE guy? (I think this might be the best solution).
Damage would still be calculated using Brawn though, because a Brawn 1, Agility 5 character would not be able to deal an amount of damage comparable to a 5 Brawn, 1 Agility character.
P.S. I am a big proponent of switching out characteristics on occasion (You want to make him think you know a lot about mechanics? Okay, make a Deception check with Intellect instead of Cunning).