Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A Can my character specialize in torture ; but physically be not that strong?

Torturers don't need to be fit or strong, they need to be possibly scary, knowledgeable, and competent at what they do. There are a lot of kinds of torture and "beating someone senseless" is just o...

posted 6y ago by Liquid‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T11:56:46Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30025
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:57:55Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30025
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T06:57:55Z (over 4 years ago)
Torturers don't need to be fit or strong, they need to be possibly scary, knowledgeable, and competent at what they do. There are a lot of kinds of torture and "beating someone senseless" is just one of them, maybe the simplest.

You don't need to be strong to break a finger of someone - you just have to bend it in the wrong direction or use an hammer. After all there are a wide variety of tools that can allow you to inflict pain, or terror, with little effort (pincers, nails, fire ...).

Torture is mostly dealing a controlled amount of pain, be it physical or psychological. The psychological part is maybe more important, if your character does this not out of pure sadism but to get some kind of information. The sooner she can get a mental breakdown from their subjects, the sooner she can question them.

As reference, there are forms of torture that doesn't deal with strenght at all: [Chinese water torture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_water_torture), [sleep deprivation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation).

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-09-01T12:32:06Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 10