Quote from: SHARK link=topic=46024.msg1276616#msg1276616
140-lb waifu women beating the fuck out of a man--let alone three or four men at the same time--becomes silly, stupid fantasy.

And if the 140lb. waifu is the demigod daughter of Zeus or was an Amazon (from Russia where all is backwards... a very punny irony that)?

Or how about if she's a sorceress who's magic grants her superhuman strength?

Or has stone giant ancestry or dragon blood carried down from her great grandfather?

No making the argument about ignoring sex differences is talking about "campaign set in Britannia c. AD 1093."

They're talking about worlds where gods walk among men (and men of power can go visit the gods while still alive), human accessible magic is powerful enough to turn dead stone into living animals, and someone having some degree of supernatural blood in their ancestry is common enough they have "half-X" rules for their most direct ancestor with the non-human.

But no... all of that and it's still impossible for a woman to have an 18/50 Strength score (even when that was fully possible who women weightlifters in the 1970s and the male limit of 18/00 is literally 2-3x stronger depending on category measured).

No, unless they're rolling 3d4 for their Strength (as suggested by someone upthread) it's not a realistic spread for heroic adventures in a setting where someone of sufficient skill can kill a dragon the size of a house with a longsword.

Having a Strength cap like AD&D is fine; anything above an unmodified 18 for humans is non-existent outside of classed fighters and their subclasses anyway.

There's no need for anything like the penalities some here want to assign because PCs aren't intended to be "Joe Average" in most campaigns (a starting fighter is already a "Veteran" by title and 0-level warriors exist), so any woman choosing to be an adventurer isn't going to Jane Average; she's going to be a Red Sonja or Atalanta.

Quote from: Glak on February 04, 2024, 01:47:11 AM
After all, we only give Halflings a -1 Str in older systems and a -2 in newer systems, when in reality halflings should have a huge Str penalty.

This is an excellent point. It's pretty hypocritical to make female characters "realistically" weaker, while leaving halflings abnormally strong.

You know, we're going about this the wrong way.

If a GM rules that female characters can have the same strength as the males, but their characters look realistic (I.E. looking like a side of beef filled with doorknobs,)  99% of women would refuse to play them, and that would be that.

No more cute waifs with 18 str.

So you're saying you don't think women would want to look like this?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsUUfuWlAmS/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=5494d5e8-8906-4c83-98d6-d8d1a3866bbb

Quote from: pawsplay on February 09, 2024, 06:44:22 PM
So you're saying you don't think women would want to look like this?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsUUfuWlAmS/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=5494d5e8-8906-4c83-98d6-d8d1a3866bbb

A woman that benches 130lbs?

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2024, 06:53:53 PM

Quote from: pawsplay on February 09, 2024, 06:44:22 PM
So you're saying you don't think women would want to look like this?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsUUfuWlAmS/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=5494d5e8-8906-4c83-98d6-d8d1a3866bbb

A woman that benches 130lbs?

For fun. She's a fitness person. Her personal record at one time was 182 lbs.

Quote from: pawsplay on February 09, 2024, 07:09:19 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2024, 06:53:53 PM

Quote from: pawsplay on February 09, 2024, 06:44:22 PM
So you're saying you don't think women would want to look like this?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsUUfuWlAmS/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=5494d5e8-8906-4c83-98d6-d8d1a3866bbb

A woman that benches 130lbs?

For fun. She's a fitness person. Her personal record at one time was 182 lbs.

The estimated bench for an average man with no lifting experience is 170lbs.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2024, 07:14:30 PM

Quote from: pawsplay on February 09, 2024, 07:09:19 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2024, 06:53:53 PM

Quote from: pawsplay on February 09, 2024, 06:44:22 PM
So you're saying you don't think women would want to look like this?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsUUfuWlAmS/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=5494d5e8-8906-4c83-98d6-d8d1a3866bbb

A woman that benches 130lbs?

For fun. She's a fitness person. Her personal record at one time was 182 lbs.

The estimated bench for an average man with no lifting experience is 170lbs.

So the average man can get pasted by a woman fitness instructor who looks like a cheerleader, got it.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2024, 07:14:30 PM
The estimated bench for an average man with no lifting experience is 170lbs.

This may have been true in some earlier period, but is not true of men in the 2020s.

I say this after over thirty years being involved in strength training, and working as a trainer since 2009, working 1:1 with some 200 people over that time, and giving programmes to at least twice as many people on top of that, and extensive conversations with other trainers and coaches. I have trained a man to a 250kg deadlift, a number of women to 120kg or more squats, IT desk workers to 200kg deadlifts, guys recovering from lymphatic cancer to squatting 162.5kg and deadlifting 200kg, untrained paediatricians on nightshifts to do chinups, a woman in her 50s squat 100 and bench 60, and a woman in her 70s to deadlift 120kg, which I don't have a video of, but here she is deadlifting 90kg a few years later when she was 75yo.

Don't ask me about competitive lifting, I don't train talented athletes. But I do have a very good grasp of what a previously sedentary person can do without huge dedication to their chosen sport. I do not train the 600lb squatter, I train his mother - and his nerdy brother, and nightshift worker wife.

Most men think they are much stronger and fitter than they are. And the older they get, the stronger and fitter they were in college where they benched "about tree-fiddy" and at the same time ran a four minute mile.

The order of strength ability, broadly-speaking, goes like this,

• Trained men
  
• Trained women
  
• Untrained men
  
• Untrained women
  

There will be exceptions where a person is much smaller than usual and this drops them a rank, or much larger and this raises. Likewise they may not have barbell training, but have been an active participant in sport, eg a woman who regular plays soccer will have a bigger squat on day one than a woman who has been sitting on the couch, and this pushes them up a level.

If anyone has proven experience contradicting this, I welcome their contribution. But again, it is not relevant to elves & fireball games, and weakling unfit neckbeards who like to pretend to themselves that their flab is muscle and they're not headed to an early grave should stick to their anime porn. [/list]

Quote from: pawsplay on February 09, 2024, 07:09:19 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2024, 06:53:53 PM

Quote from: pawsplay on February 09, 2024, 06:44:22 PM
So you're saying you don't think women would want to look like this?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsUUfuWlAmS/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=5494d5e8-8906-4c83-98d6-d8d1a3866bbb

A woman that benches 130lbs?

For fun. She's a fitness person. Her personal record at one time was 182 lbs.

  her overhead press is probably around 120 or so.  So her strength for AD&D is 12.  Unsure of the point being made here.

Quote from: pawsplay on January 23, 2024, 03:42:07 PM
So I looked it up, and in 1988, Florence Griffith-Joyner set a 100m sprint record at 10.49. There is some controversy about the wind reading that day, so the next woman to reach that kind of speed was Elaine Thompson-Herah in 2021 with 10.54. That would put them even with all four men who set a record in 2011-2012 of 10.5 seconds, and ahead of the 10.6 seconds set in 2012 and 2020 that were measured with modern automatic timing.

So, during the 20th century, there is overlap between the fastest 100m woman sprinters and the fastest 100m man sprinters.

  She was roided to the gills. 

  I have trained A LOT of people for BJJ, Kickboxing and MMA.   I have have a good number of women train and compete as well.  Most of the women I would say fall on the more athletic side of the pool with regard to natural physicality relative to other women (several college scholarship athletes).  Most of the men I would rate average (to me if you are not college scholarship athlete you are pretty average in the sense of how that will relate to fighting, and then the sport you were high level in matters to a degree).   Men are A LOT stronger and faster and more explosive than the women.  This is a fact.  I can take ANY man under 40, able bodied,  and within a year he will be able to squat 300 below parallel for reps.  This is not true of the vast majority of women who train.  The ones who can do that will be big outliers.   The average man is stronger, faster and more explosive than a pretty athletic woman.  An athletic man will look like he is mauling a child if he is going against an athletic woman. 

    This is reality and strength for AD&D from what I remember was the military press (to give a rough estimate of strength to lifting capability) not a clean and jerk or a jerk.   The press can be fudged to a degree (with some layback, but you still have to be very strong to do it standing) unlike the bench press (where grip width and crazy flexibility can certainly circumvent the effectiveness of determining upper body strength) which can be gamed to a big extreme.  The differences between where a man and a woman fall on a standing press is big.  I get some of the people doing all they can to pretend women can compete in a physical arena with men (especially with no exogenous hormone use) are likely physically lacking in both experience and time training themselves to understand how big the difference is.  The difference is huge.

   Now...all that said in a fantasy game I do not think it matters too much at all if the women are as strong as the men.  I do think the limits for max human strength for men vs women was pretty close to spot on... I do not think its necessary to use them.  The odds of having an 18 ST in AD&D are extremely rare and top end exceptional strength more so.  So for me I would NOT represent these differences.   if you want to show the difference or if you do not I think the existence of many ways to increase one's strength for instance or other attributes sort of makes it not matter so much any way.   First gauntlets of ogre power and doesnt matter if you were the weak-sister fighter with a 13 strength.  You are the captain now.

  Fun side note my AD&D strength would be 18/60 assuming military press is the standard (standing).

The SCA is a medieval and Renaissance reenactment group. One of the things they do is armored combat. Mind you, it's not a deadly game. But it pits people in heavy kids, overcoming reach, size, strength, and endurance to defeat an opponent. There are a lot more men active in armored combat in women. The Monarch is chosen through tournament, by right of conquest in battle. The number of SCA monarchs who are women is greater than zero.

Quote from: oggsmash on February 10, 2024, 03:46:55 PM
She was roided to the gills.

Disproven allegations. She never tested positive for any performance-enhancing substance. You may be remembering the allegations but she was exonerated.

Whenever we get to the stage where someone brings up SCA bullshit the thread should be euthanized for the sake of its dignity.

Let the SCA guys slam the women around and really try to hurt them, and the LARPing delusions disappear like a fart in the wind. "Oh but I know this chick, and when you're bonking each other with padding and a ref, she can..." blah blah you've already lost the argument.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 10, 2024, 06:27:17 PM
Whenever we get to the stage where someone brings up SCA bullshit the thread should be euthanized for the sake of its dignity.

Let the SCA guys slam the women around and really try to hurt them, and the LARPing delusions disappear like a fart in the wind. "Oh but I know this chick, and when you're bonking each other with padding and a ref, she can..." blah blah you've already lost the argument.

It's an athletic event, with no gender divisions, using the same muscles and abilities you would in actual combat. It doesn't even have size or weight classes. It's a lot closer to combat than, say, professional tennis, we have already discussed.

Btw the world record for women's unequipped bench press is April Mathis, 207.5 kg (~457.4 lb), which would give her an 18/100 Strength in AD&D.