Did some serious research into wrestling and related areas:
- An unskilled creature can barely wrestle another unskilled creature of the exact same size (random creature size differences disabled)
- A grand master wrestler (with other skills at grand master level if that matters) can easily wrestle unskilled creatures of the same size, but starts having serious difficulty with creatures about 1.3x larger.
- Conversely, even with no wrestling skill you can beat creatures that are 0.75x your size.
- Ability to dodge a charge is a combination of the dodge, observer, and fighter skills, but you are required to jump out of the way of the incoming attack, and that may not happen:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=3778- Notably a creature that fails the observer check "looks surprised by the ferocity of Your onslaught!"
- Once the game has determined that two creatures will collide in a charge, a WRESTLING skill check is performed to determine who will fall over. As above, size matters a huge amount.
- Part of the equation is "number = size/100 + strength/100". So a strength of 5000 is roughly equivalent to an increase in size of 1.6x over 1000 strength. Note that sizes in the code are 1/10 of that in the raws, so humans are 7000 base. The equation uses the "current" size rather than the base size, so FAT and MUSCLE sizes both help. I saw a dwarf in a test fort who was effectively 1.3x larger due to being corpulent and very strong.
- The enemy AI is aware of the above and appears to gleefully charge you a lot once it realizes it has the advantage. This should be a warning sign. In adventure mode, you can test the potential success of wrestling moves by attempting to charge the creature - if you can't knock it over, don't bother wrestling.