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Author Topic: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign  (Read 19882 times)

Pat
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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #30 on: August 04, 2021, 11:42:41 AM »
What part of hit points demands realism?

The CON bonus?
If hp primarily represents the heroic je ne sais quoi that separates a swashbuckling hero able to accomplish astounding feats of derring do from the mundane man-at-arms troubled by earthly woes, why not use Cha instead?

Zelen

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #31 on: August 04, 2021, 12:55:10 PM »
I've always liked the idea of mechanically representing differences between men & women, but I've never seen a very compelling way to do this in the D&D attribute set. I think realistically what you should be looking at isn't flat modifiers but a different numerical distribution of stats.

One possibility is to use the normal 3d6 range but have the effects of ability scores vary by race or sex. So a man, a woman, and a hobbit each with an 18 Strength will all be able to lift different amounts and have different damage bonuses.

This seems like it defeats the purpose of using numbers at all if you have to interpret the numbers through a subjective lens first.

ScytheSong

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #32 on: August 04, 2021, 01:15:25 PM »
I've always liked the idea of mechanically representing differences between men & women, but I've never seen a very compelling way to do this in the D&D attribute set. I think realistically what you should be looking at isn't flat modifiers but a different numerical distribution of stats.

One possibility is to use the normal 3d6 range but have the effects of ability scores vary by race or sex. So a man, a woman, and a hobbit each with an 18 Strength will all be able to lift different amounts and have different damage bonuses.

This seems like it defeats the purpose of using numbers at all if you have to interpret the numbers through a subjective lens first.

I'm pretty sure this is the inverse of the way the attribute tables were used in 1ed AD&D, where your scores forced a limit on your character choices -- so, STR below 9? You can't be a fighter. STR above 16? you can't play a Halfling (or a human female) Int below 5? you can only be a Fighter. STR8, Int 4? Roll a new character.

Wrath of God

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #33 on: August 04, 2021, 01:22:12 PM »
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What do you all think, friends? I have heretofore mostly just gone by the book, and handwaved it all as fantasy. Keeping things simple and straightforward has its attractions, after all. I think though that having some discussion and consideration of such topics has some merit.

I think D&D have not nearly enough of basic attributes to count it.
I mean I could agree with Strenght clearly, not sure about Constitution - women lives longer, seems to endure long-term afflictions and pregnancies, and more injury seems to came with bit stronger weakening of joints and bones with age - often due pregnancies who weakens skeletal system generally, and because women are less fit generally, society put lesser pressure here - as long as you're not obese and clean you're fine. So this links to lower Fitness. But as we talk about adventurers I'm not sure it would apply.
Dexterity - this is another kitchen sink thing - while young girls (and children generally - those Chinese gymnasts are frequently underaged) are way more Agile - that does not necessarily links to higher Precision, Hand-Eye Coordination, Manual Dexterity overall. If you had separate Agility I'd give women +1.
Inteligence - simmilar average but very different distribution, unless you wanna change dice profoundly I think leaving it as it, is fine.
Wisdom - I would go with equal. There are different pros and cons. If you divide it into Perception/Intuition/Spirituality I'd give stronger Intuition I think. And generally speaking Wisdom will probably be least NATURAL and most culturaly/nurture inflicted attribute.
Charisma - well women are more charming and can be persuasive - though it often depends on how society regulates gender relations. But in terms of leadership charisma, being funny comics, and so on, they are generally weaker. If you'd apply Charisma and Charm as separate attributes I'd give them -2 Charisma /+2 Charm. But then even in Charm while femme fatale is more famous archetype in reality it seems male fatale is way more common - suave tricksters, gigolos, psychopaths using women with premeditation and malice.

So it's all very very complex.

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I have long considered the merits of creating specific attribute caps and modifiers for female characters in the game, especially Human women.

The merit is - you want game that realisticaly mirrors society of real men. Or game with gender dymorphism but no real - so +2 to 3 random attributes for each gender and -2 for other 3 - you get strong shift - I for instance rolled for women Dex, Con and Cha - so you've go now males with av: Str 12, Dex 8, Con 8, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 8, and women with Str 8, Dex 12, Con 12, Int 8, Wis 8, Cha 12... now deal with it ;)

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But in a fantasy game? Why try to enforce it?

Because we enjoy dark realism flavour in our games and limitations put on PC due to it.,

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If you want to talk about realism, cool, bring me your PHB, DMG and MM, I'll tear out all the spells, magic items and monsters other than men and animals.

Just roll 3d6 in order and you get what you get.

Adding fantasy elements does not mean changin human biology unless stated otherwise.

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I think it's really hard to argue that women are more charismatic than men in the abstract, given that men overwhelmingly are leaders, entertainers, generals where actual charisma matters.

Charisma in D&D is kitchen sink stuff for all social graces so it's not as simple. Indeed if we use real world term then it's very male indeed.

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Steven Mitchell

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #34 on: August 04, 2021, 02:02:03 PM »
While I obviously find the subject interesting from an intellectual design perspective, I admit that the main reason I don't include such rules anymore is that I don't find them to be a good use of time or space in the game rules relative to what they bring to the game.  They are a little like having involved rules for shopping.

Note that you can get such rules down to a small word count, but they can still cause handling time issues.  For example, I sometimes do pregen characters with all the mechanics but no name or gender, leaving that for the player to supply as part of the personality that will emerge in play.  If the gender causes a changes to mechanics, then you need to pick it fairly early in the process.

Chris24601

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #35 on: August 04, 2021, 03:59:29 PM »
First observation; the ladies in my gaming circle who want to be physically strong badasses these days reference Gina Carano as how beefy they want to look.

Second observation; the 18/50 Strength limit in 1e for human females is pretty close to what champion female weightlifters can achieve. So a flat -X to Strength in the OSR will actually produce inaccurate results since even a -1 that would drop their top end to just a fraction of what real women have achieved.

Because, and this is actually really important, the attributes in D&D aren’t a linear value, but exponential. 18/00 was twice as strong as 18/75, which was twice that of a straight 18, which was twice a 16.

That 18/50 Strength is about a third of the maximum male human strength in 1e. A -2 Strength mod means the best possible strength for the strongest woman in the world is 1/16 that of a man.

Similarly, in 3e, a 20 Strength was not twice as strong as a 10 Strength; it was FOUR times stronger (the formula in 3e was that carry capacity doubled for every +5 Strength... so 25 Strength is 8x stronger than a 10).

Heck, in 3e an 18 Strength isn’t even what a real world champion male weightlifter could pull off (it’s lift and hold 600 lb. above your head); the current male record holder would have around a Strength score of 23 (about 1100 lb.; which a PC who started with an 18 and put every stat bump into Strength could reach around level 16) and the world record female weightlifter would have about a 19 Strength (about 750 lb.) using 3e’s metrics.

So, a -X Strength isn’t really going to cut it.

There’s also an issue of distributions. For example, in terms of mathematical ability, women tend to cluster a bit above average while men have far more absolute geniuses and utter dunces. Basically, if Math ability were a stat and the man’s roll was 3d6, then a woman’s should be 1d6+8 on average, slightly better than men, but the men who are best at math blow them out of the water.

Basically, the default stats are generally too broad, the numbers not granular enough on extremes (Str 15 is 200 lb., 18 is 300 lb., 20 is 400 lb.) and PCs in general tend to be exceptional rather than Joe or Jane Average that it’s probably better to just “wing it” in terms of adjustments for sex (i.e. I mostly use systems with point buy or arrays and if I’m building a female NPC or pregen I probably won’t put the maximum score into Strength and I’d be far more likely to make a female adventurer a spellcaster of some kind vs. a warrior).

One thing to consider with systems with rolled stats, but the ability to trade points from one stat to another (ex. Drop a stat by 2 to add 1 to another), is have a better ratio for trading those scores based on sex. So females could get a straight 1:1 trade for points cut from Strength if they’re adding them to say, Wisdom or Charisma, while males could get a 1:1 trade if they’re pulling from a mental stat and adding it to Strength (perhaps with a limit of, say, 3 points). Other scores (and those beyond the 3 points) would still be the usual 2:1 trade.

If you Really wanted to push it, it could even be a positive ratio (say the first two points yield 2 for one... so female PCs could get a +4 split between Wis and Cha for a -2 to Strength or a male could get +4 Strength for just -1 to Int and Wis.

Basically, a carrot rather than a stick.

Wrath of God

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #36 on: August 04, 2021, 04:09:06 PM »
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Second observation; the 18/50 Strength limit in 1e for human females is pretty close to what champion female weightlifters can achieve. So a flat -X to Strength in the OSR will actually produce inaccurate results since even a -1 that would drop their top end to just a fraction of what real women have achieved.

Because, and this is actually really important, the attributes in D&D aren’t a linear value, but exponential. 18/00 was twice as strong as 18/75, which was twice that of a straight 18, which was twice a 16.

That 18/50 Strength is about a third of the maximum male human strength in 1e. A -2 Strength mod means the best possible strength for the strongest woman in the world is 1/16 that of a man.

Similarly, in 3e, a 20 Strength was not twice as strong as a 10 Strength; it was FOUR times stronger (the formula in 3e was that carry capacity doubled for every +5 Strength... so 25 Strength is 8x stronger than a 10).

Heck, in 3e an 18 Strength isn’t even what a real world champion male weightlifter could pull off (it’s lift and hold 600 lb. above your head); the current male record holder would have around a Strength score of 23 (about 1100 lb.; which a PC who started with an 18 and put every stat bump into Strength could reach around level 16) and the world record female weightlifter would have about a 19 Strength (about 750 lb.) using 3e’s metrics.

So, a -X Strength isn’t really going to cut it.

If you take carrying weights then yes (though I'd say using actual lifting records as equivalent of lbs in D&D is flawed - D&D encumberance is way lower, it's what you can carry on more regular way - not your total max. And Strenght it's not just lifting also other elements. Like punching where men are wayyyyy stronger.
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Steven Mitchell

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #37 on: August 04, 2021, 04:14:19 PM »
If you take carrying weights then yes (though I'd say using actual lifting records as equivalent of lbs in D&D is flawed - D&D encumberance is way lower, it's what you can carry on more regular way - not your total max. And Strength it's not just lifting also other elements. Like punching where men are wayyyyy stronger.

Not to mention that "stronger" in that punch is a function of mass, leverage, and ... speed.  Speed due to muscle development.  Muscle development that peaks about age 25 for males and then declines, inevitably and then rapidly.  So again full circle to way outside of what is being even attempted to be rolled up into one of six abilities as a single number.

SHARK

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #38 on: August 06, 2021, 03:47:18 AM »
While I obviously find the subject interesting from an intellectual design perspective, I admit that the main reason I don't include such rules anymore is that I don't find them to be a good use of time or space in the game rules relative to what they bring to the game.  They are a little like having involved rules for shopping.

Note that you can get such rules down to a small word count, but they can still cause handling time issues.  For example, I sometimes do pregen characters with all the mechanics but no name or gender, leaving that for the player to supply as part of the personality that will emerge in play.  If the gender causes a changes to mechanics, then you need to pick it fairly early in the process.

Greetings!

*Laughing* Yep, Steven! ;D That's the same kind of internal argument I have with myself! Intellectually, I think there is some strong merit to such considerations--but then I think about time, character generation, all of that--for embracing such rules adjustment does or assuredly would add an additional layer of complication to the game. Then I think, "Well, is that extra dimension of verisimilitude worth the extra effort?" Admittedly, oftentimes it is just easier and more convenient to just go by the rules laid out in the book. Less time, less explanations involved, less hassles with whatever.

I still like to chew on it though as a possible rules adjustment. ;D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
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ShieldWife

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #39 on: August 06, 2021, 05:48:50 AM »
I’m generally against attribute modifications based on gender. Not because it’s unrealistic, it certainly could be, but since RPGs are games, I see playability and fun as a more desirable goal than enforcing realism. If someone wants to play a female character that is stereotypically female, then they are free (well, at least in systems where there is some ability to deliberately determine attributes) put lower values into Strength and higher values into what ever attributes they think are more appropriately feminine.

If, on the other hand, somebody wants to play an unrealistically strong woman, why rain on that person’s parade? Why not let them play a female with an 18 Strength regardless of realism? Player characters are rare heroic individuals, maybe one of her ancestors was a great champion of legend and she can be stronger than what her appearance would suggest.

I don’t have any ideological feminism based objections to such modifications though, just pragmatic objections based on fun.

These particular set of gender based attribute modifications are particularly problematic. I’m assuming that male attributes are unmodified.

Human Female Attribute Table

Strength: Capped at 14.
Dexterity: +2
Constitution: Capped at 16
Intelligence: --
Wisdom: +1
Charisma: +2

Strength and Constitution are capped, meaning that if those attributes are already below 15 or 17 respectively, that there is no penalty. This makes female characters a min-maxer’s dream for just about any character that doesn’t rely on high strength. If we’re player in 3.X D&D then you can play a female bard or sorceress with +2 Dex and Cha and no attribute penalty since you’re unlikely to have unusually high Str or Con. Females would be better for almost any class except maybe fighters or barbarians. If you’re okay with a 14 Str, then the +2 to Dex and Cha might be worth it since there would be no attribute penalties.

Also, in the pursuit of realism, caps aren’t that realistic. A 14 Strength cap means that men and women have the same strength except that there are some unusually strong men that don’t exist among women. That isn’t realistic at all. Take two average inactive couch potatoes, a male and a female, and the male will almost certainly be much stronger than the female. Take an old man and an old lady, the man will likely be far stronger. Strength falls along a bell curve and the male curve is shifted to the right of the female one. A far more realistic way to represent this would be to give men a Strength bonus, give women a Strength penalty, or both. This would not only be more realistic but a Strength modifier would be far more balanced if you are giving females bonuses to other attributes.

Don’t combine modifier benefits with cap drawbacks, use either one or the other for the sake of game balance if nothing else.

Big bonuses to female Dex and Cha are also pretty questionable from a realism perspective. Men are better at many activities which involve dexterity, speed, and agility including fencing, tennis, running, and certain forms of acrobatic or gymnastics. Of course, because of physiology, females are better at certain kinds of gymnastics and worse at others, but I don’t see any solid basis for a female Dex bonus. Charisma is also questionable. One could argue that girls are hotter, they also are more talkative on average, but alternatively more men are great leaders, con men, politicians, and so on. I would probably say that male and female Dex and Cha are more or less the same or that the differences can’t adequately represent the subtle differences between male and female ways of interacting socially to be able to say that one has a higher Charisma than the other.

Maybe an argument can be made for females having a higher Wisdom value, but that may only because Wisdom is a rather nebulous concept as are the abilities that females excel at which might be grouped in under Wisdom.

Really, the only attribute that we can confidently say are different between the genders is Strength. The others are questionable. Maybe just give men +2 Strength and have no other attribute modifiers. It’s unbalanced in the favor of men, but it’s actually more balanced than the above attribute modifiers and also more realistic. Or, maybe give men a penalty to resist seduction or women a bonus to resist seduction. That’s kind of questionable too but maybe better than an across the board Charisma modifier.

I honestly just don’t see the worth of making such distinctions for player characters, especially when you factor in the complexities of realism, balance, and game play fun.

Steven Mitchell

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #40 on: August 06, 2021, 08:29:33 AM »
Big bonuses to female Dex and Cha are also pretty questionable from a realism perspective. Men are better at many activities which involve dexterity, speed, and agility including fencing, tennis, running, and certain forms of acrobatic or gymnastics. Of course, because of physiology, females are better at certain kinds of gymnastics and worse at others, but I don’t see any solid basis for a female Dex bonus.

There is some evidence that women may skew higher on the curve for "manual dexterity" than men in real life.  I haven't the foggiest idea how reliable that evidence is, but that's the thought behind a female Dex bonus.  For all I know, it might be another one of those things where women skew to a higher average with men having many more outliers. 

Of course, in D&D that completely ignores that Dexterity isn't just "manual dexterity", but also agility, hand eye coordination, etc.  It also ignores how the things tied to "speed" in D&D are all fudged across Dex and Str when you start mapping them.  (Most of the speed in fencing is Str in D&D, not Dex, though WotC D&D confuses this even more.  "Speed" in fencing is primarily a case of muscle twitch allowing the strike to happen faster once it is initiated, not the reflexes to kick it off. ) 

Not that any of that changes your larger point.  Just the pedantic explanation of where the idea arises. :D

HappyDaze

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #41 on: August 06, 2021, 08:40:17 AM »
I find it weird that people take this stance based on realism when it is widely known that females in magic-rich environments develop strength disproportionate to their build and--purely by coincidence--fall into the same range of strength as males. This is irrefutable.

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #42 on: August 06, 2021, 09:10:39 AM »
I think that in the real world there is a measurable difference between the average physical attributes of males and females. That said, I see no benefit in trying to model this in the game, so I don't. I think those kind of limits are an annoyance to many players, and not worthwhile in a fantasy game. And I like to place more emphasis on class + level and less emphasis on stats, anyway.
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Pat
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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #43 on: August 06, 2021, 09:19:51 AM »
I find it weird that people take this stance based on realism when it is widely known that females in magic-rich environments develop strength disproportionate to their build and--purely by coincidence--fall into the same range of strength as males. This is irrefutable.
That's just not true. Women in magic-rich settings gain strength in inverse proportion to their size. That's why tiny little girls can wield boat anchors, and giant hulking women can only handle spears or broadswords.

HappyDaze

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Re: Attributes for Female Characters in a Campaign
« Reply #44 on: August 06, 2021, 09:22:16 AM »
I find it weird that people take this stance based on realism when it is widely known that females in magic-rich environments develop strength disproportionate to their build and--purely by coincidence--fall into the same range of strength as males. This is irrefutable.
That's just not true. Women in magic-rich settings gain strength in inverse proportion to their size. That's why tiny little girls can wield boat anchors, and giant hulking women can only handle spears or broadswords.
That depends almost entirely on the quirkium content of their diet, particularly during their formative years.