I’ve never been a fan of the attribute+skill system but that is what they have used since 4e where they equally value natural ability and skill. Just being strong or agile or whatever stat you want to use doesn’t mean you have any idea how to strike or parry. It’s why people go so nuts on having high stats they are fairly easy to max and get you a solid dice pool with minimal investment.
I wish defaulting was a bigger penalty and there was a limit too how much of your attribute you could bring to bare depending on your skill. But assuming you do connect you will maximize the damage done not just by skill and good form but the speed gained through strength.
Mechanics exist to tell a story, they set up the 'laws of physics' of the fiction and encourage people down certain paths.
Attribute focus in SR does a few important things that are subtly integral to how we play SR, and changing that without understanding the work that attributes do would probably be bad.
For one, it isn't an accident that pretty much every major archetype cares mostly about 1-2 attributes (Sam care a lot about agility due to its effects on combat, as well as moving around and stealth, and intuition to a lesser extent because they also are often CYBERNINJAS and perception is important in addition to its use in dodging and initiative, at least in 5e), faces pretty much exclusively care about charisma and thus can branch out to other roles really easy, deckers about logic+intuition, mages about their magic score, ect. This is why non-burnout adepts struggle: Roles are secretly entirely based around attributes that contain a bunch of synergistic skills (Being able to lie and disguise yourself has synergy, gymnastics and sneaking help each other because you can get to weird places and not be noticed sneaking about em, and both help shooting because ambushes HURT in SR, ect), and Adepts are defined by being bad at attributes, which would sorta like being 'bad at having a class' in D&D. They work, but they have to be way more narrow than everyone else and that is why there is such an intense pull towards attribute 'ware: Losing 1 magic to basically
have a 'class' is very worth it.
Secondly, attributes help the themes of SR, which include the concept of transhumanism and the inherent unfair advantage transhumans would have. It is sorta a big conceit that someone who is able to literally buy raw talent to the point they pass normal human limitations (AKA push an attribute past their racial attribute max, which almost every PC ends up doing) can transform that difference of capabilities into them being transcendent at basically anything they do. It isn't actually unrealistic to assume someone who has motor control and spatial reasoning so sublime that it bypasses anything an existing human could achieve simply because they are just fundamentally good at getting the pointy end of an object from A to B regardless of the fact they haven't been in a fencing studio ever. The idea that a mundane, unaugmented human literally can't compete with an armored hyper-agile cybernetic monster who sees all of time in slow motion (which essentially makes them a super-intelligence regardless of their actual logic score!) in a domain they are even casually interested in learning about is sorta baked into the setting, it is why HTR exists and why corpsec focuses on being 'button pushers' turning on security systems, sounding alarms, tossing smoke, ect, rather than actually trying to down the samurai.
It is why the game system skews 'basic' actions to the point where it is assumed you are doing things that would be dumb for a modern, realistic human with 3 agility and 3 skill to do, like shooting a gun while literally not even aiming it, which the default SR attack assumes, which is why corpsec are 'bad shots' vs normal unauged human defenders; they actually aren't, having a 30% hit rate vs someone trying to avoid being shot when you aren't even trying to line up your sights at all is actually pretty darn good!
On to the topic of 'str to damage.' There is an... element of strength to damage in 'real life's mechanics' but in reality most weapons are designed to maximize harm while minimizing effort. Like it is 'in theme' for a crazy deadly cyborg to throw a knife or slash with one so hard they can rip through steel and bone, but when talking about the normal human STR range almost all of the damage being done with most edged weapons is the knife's work, not yours. And that knife is going to really mess you up as long as you aren't so weak you literally can't cut through flesh. Same with most blades. Clubs is a bit different but, again, most maces or hammers or clubs really are just trying to get to the speed where they break bones and once you get past that you aren't going to notice much more effect because you already mangled and broke the person you hit. Sure, maybe a crazy killer cyborg should be able to swing a hammer so hard it looks like their target was chopped in half by a meter thick axe, and you need some strength to get that mass moving, but even though blunt weapons ARE doing damage with the college level collision physics of 'speed x mass' or whatever the body does not care past a certain point that most humans already can hit pretty easily. Put another way, a katana can already be fatal wielded by an average joe on a body hit and on a good day literally bisect you. I know that katanas are sorta overhyped blades in real life but it is important to remember that getting slashed with a sword will already kill you super dead even without super strength, like the average person swinging one can sever someone's spine.
That said STR not adding to DV at all does definitely FEEL weird. Realistic does not mean 'a simulation of reality.' To bust out that overused 20 dollar word, despite str not applying to many melee weapons being a somewhat better simulation of reality than assuming a body builder is significantly more deadly with a knife than a couch potato, it isn't verisimilitudinous, it doesn't
feel real. Hopefully stuff like str augs will add to DV in the same way how bone lacing still gives soak dice even though soak mostly went away, because it definitely does feel appropriate for super strength to make these weapons unrealistically traumatic. That or there is some other really major strength related benefit to fighting in close combat outside of DV.
