Quote from: Kael;1105343"Strength should always matter in RPGs, and Males are stronger on average."

I disagree with the absolute nature of the first clause, and I agree with the second assuming we are talking about actual modern-day homo sapiens.

As I said pages back, in many sci-fi RPGs, physical strength can border on irrelevance. Unless the setting contrives a way to make it matter.

Quote from: Razor 007;1105480Yes, females are the biggest trolls....

:rolleyes: And if you want to finish that thought, the female trolls are not just bigger, but smarter too. (And far more powerful magically.)

Just been watching the Rugby World Cup. Nearly all of those guys are massive and extremely fit and strong. If there's any women in the world that are able to compete with any of those guys in a physical sense I'd be amazed.

Quote from: Kiero;1105481As I said pages back, in many sci-fi RPGs, physical strength can border on irrelevance. Unless the setting contrives a way to make it matter.

In D&D 5e, strength is surprisingly less important compared to almost every other edition; you need at least 13 for certain multiclassing, and the feats polearm master and great weapon master work with strength based weapons (or just to use weapons with the best damage, by a few points), barbarians have to be strength based, and you have to use strength to grapple (but not to defend against grappling). Yes, there are some strength checks and saving throws, but generally dexterity is more useful and you can't be good at everything.

Quote from: Bren;1105488:rolleyes: And if you want to finish that thought, the female trolls are not just bigger, but smarter too. (And far more powerful magically.)

Female trolls are a BIG problem....

STR is going to matter in any RPG which features hand-to-hand or melee combat. Even Star Wars has fist fights and Wookies tossing stormtroopers as not everyone has a lightsaber. In 40k, STR is necessary because lots of the big damage weapons are heavy. In these future worlds, cybernetics are an easy way for weaker characters to artificially gain STR.

Quote from: Brad;1105465Female trolls in Runequest (like real trolls) are some of the most powerful beings in Glorantha, but I guess it's because they're FEMALE the outrage brigade doesn't seem to care. "Better in every way than the males? Sure. Human males have a bonus to STR? REEEEEEEEE!"

Like, who cares?

The issue is the players are humans and giving penalties / bonuses / limits to human PCs is something that hits too close to home for some players. Its less of an issue when penalties / bonuses / limits pertain to non-human PCs.

For some players, apparently gender dimorphism in humans is important to their immersion and verisimilitude in games. For me, I can't care too much about realism in games about elves casting magic spells at cyborg dragons.

But it if pisses off the REEEEEE crowd, it must be a good thing.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1105496The issue is the players are humans and giving penalties / bonuses / limits to human PCs is something that hits too close to home for some players. Its less of an issue when penalties / bonuses / limits pertain to non-human PCs.

For some players, apparently gender dimorphism in humans is important to their immersion and verisimilitude in games. For me, I can't care too much about realism in games about elves casting magic spells at cyborg dragons.

But it if pisses off the REEEEEE crowd, it must be a good thing.

These are the same people who all think they have 18 INT and CHA if you converted them to D&D stats; I don't think they're very keen on what is "realistic". AD&D is "notorious" for the female strength limit, but that's just genre emulation. Conan would be an 18/00, and everyone else is below that. Someone brought up Red Sonya, well, Conan is stronger. That's not even debatable, but he's stronger than everyone, so it's not that big of a deal.

I thought I had a point somewhere, but I don't beyond echoing the sentiment that I'm sticking with human males being stronger in my games simply because it annoys people who need to get a life.

Quote from: Simon W;1105492Just been watching the Rugby World Cup. Nearly all of those guys are massive and extremely fit and strong. If there's any women in the world that are able to compete with any of those guys in a physical sense I'd be amazed.

The solution is of course to lower the bar instead of trying to meet it. Allready been done here and there. Which just shoots more holes in the "women are just as good at everything as men are!" boat.

Back on topic, such as it is...

Aside from AD&D which itself only using this a tiny bit. What other RPGs have had normal human stats being different between genders? I know there was at least one other. But I can not think of what it was. Probably Fantasy Wargaming.

Strength is not the only important stat.  It might not be "the" most important stat, either; but it definitely matters.  Many people say that Dexterity is a super stat, because it can influence success in offense, defense, and skills.  That's true, but Strength can add damage to successful attacks.  Sometimes a really strong PC can ace a foe in one round; whereas a less strong PC wouldn't have done enough damage to finish them off.

Quote from: Brad;1105511These are the same people who all think they have 18 INT and CHA if you converted them to D&D stats; I don't think they're very keen on what is "realistic". AD&D is "notorious" for the female strength limit, but that's just genre emulation.

Conan would be an 18/00, and everyone else is below that. Someone brought up Red Sonya, well, Conan is stronger. That's not even debatable, but he's stronger than everyone, so it's not that big of a deal.

I thought I had a point somewhere, but I don't beyond echoing the sentiment that I'm sticking with human males being stronger in my games simply because it annoys people who need to get a life.

1a: Its falsely notorious because people with an agenda, or who never actually looked at the entry want something to parade around and bitch about incessantly. Its manufactured outrage. Just read some of the posts in this thread.

1b: In AD&D Conan, Conan has STR: 18(90), and 18 in CON and DEX. I am not even going to bother listing Red Sonja's stats because whomever wrote that never actually read any of the comics.
In TSR Conan his stats are good and his total is 220 character points. Exceeding some other pregens by nearly 100 total character points. This is though a Conan who has done ALOT of adventuring since you start out with only 35 points. +5 points per weakness and Conan has three. So he started out with 50 points. But there are primary NPCs that come close, or actually exceed him, One even exceeding Conan by 100 character points. Sadly they never got around to statting Red Sonja.

Quote from: Razor 007;1105520Strength is not the only important stat.  It might not be "the"the most important stat, either; but it definitely matters.  Many people say that Dexterity is a super stat, because it can influence success in offense, defense, and skills.  That's true, but Strength can add damage to successful attacks.  Sometimes a melee attack specialist can Ace a foe in one round; whereas the ranged attack specialist wouldn't have done enough damage to finish them off.

But in D&D 5e, finesse weapons (slightly lesser damage - d8 for a rapier, d6 for a short sword or scimitar - versus d10 or even 2d6 for two handed strength weapons) use dexterity (or they can use strength, if it's better) for bonus to hit and damage; and bows use dexterity entirely. I noted various cases where strength is more important, but they are not that great or have similar dexterity equivalents (e.g., Sharpshooter feat to match Great Weapon Master feat). Archers are limited by the amount of ammunition they have, and probably cantrips should have a similar limitation, but I've rarely seen it come up.

I went back and edited my previous post.  A woman walked up and started talking to me as I was typing it....  A very good woman, too.[ATTACH=CONFIG]3860[/ATTACH]

That isn't even half of my miniatures.  I may have a problem....

Quote from: Omega;1105518Aside from AD&D which itself only using this a tiny bit. What other RPGs have had normal human stats being different between genders? I know there was at least one other. But I can not think of what it was. Probably Fantasy Wargaming.

HarnMaster (specifically HM3) has reduced Height and -3 to the Frame stat for human females, which affects their Weight, Strength, and (inversely) Agility. It's a famously (or infamously) detailed system, and I think this isn't out of place. For example, there is also a bonus to Height and thus indirectly Strength for being noble, who are better fed.

Human females also have +2 Aura, which is the core ability for magic. I think that's a workable balance. I'd contrast with GeekyBugle's suggestion,

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1105131Have a Witch class, witches are born (still need to study and practice tho) and female witches are more powerful than male ones.

I don't think that works well as balance. Strength is a broadly useful stat, which benefits not just fighters, but also any other melee combatant. A choice of a Strength bonus doesn't pigeonhole someone into being a fighter. For example, I've seen plenty of half-orc clerics, rogues, and others.

But a single-class benefit -- particularly into a class just invented for this purpose -- seems like it would pigeonhole female characters into that one class, which is sucky. I think people playing female characters would feel short-changed.

Bemusingly in the TSR Conan system. Valeria actually outclasses Conan point-wise and is actually rated stronger then the Conan presented in the last module. And is a slightly better swordfighter.

Quote from: Omega;1105518Aside from AD&D which itself only using this a tiny bit. What other RPGs have had normal human stats being different between genders? I know there was at least one other. But I can not think of what it was. Probably Fantasy Wargaming.

Dragon Quest does.  As noted earlier, -2 Str for female, but +1 Manual Dexterity and +1 Fatigue to compensate.  In the complexity of DQ, this actually gives female characters far more flexibility and more character concepts where they can excel, at the expense of not being able to do the brute nearly as well.  (High strength is needed for many weapons, but if you bump it to the expense of manual dexterity, that also cuts out a lot of options.)  But then, in DQ, an elf has something like a -5 to Str while a halfling has -6.  Meanwhile, a dwarf has a huge hit on Agility.  The human adjustments are tiny in comparison.  And unlike the racial adjustments, which are applied semi-randomly after ability scores are set, a player gets to make the determination of male/female when it will do them the most good.