Quote from: StormBringer;568836Even then, according to the PHB (1st Ed), Strength roughly translates to 10lbs per point for a standing military press.  So 18 Strength isn't even near human capacity.  Quick internet searches show that to be in the 450-500lb range for men, but little information for women.  The best information I could find put them in the 250-300lb range.

Olympic weightlifting doesn't include standing press or bench press, but presumably those events are still useful for general comparison.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_Olympic_weightlifting  

For snatch and clean & jerk, current women's records are about 75-80% of men's records within a weight class, and about 65-70% of men's records for the very top.  Two potential biases in this are (1) doping may have a greater effect for women than for men, but conversely (2) weightlifting is vastly less popular among women than among men, severely reducing the talent pool.  I'd note that women's records have come up closer to men's since the 1973-1992 records.  

Quote from: StormBringer;568836Even further along the path, I found Powers and Perils recently on the interwebs*.  Being from the early 80s, I expected there to be the penalty to strength for human females, but what kind of struck me is that females of all races have a penalty to Strength.  Dwarf Females have a de facto penalty, in that males have a +1 adjustment, while females have a 0 adjustment.  Even if there is a proven significant dimorphism in non-world-class-athlete humans, that is pretty slim evidence that fantasy races would follow.

Absolutely.  Nothing wrong with dimorphism, but there's no reason it should be the same as humans.  As I mentioned, HarnMaster has that elves and dwarves have no stat differences from sex.  On the other hand, orcs in Harn (Gargun) have large sexual dimorphism modeled on insects.  There is one bloated queen who lays all the eggs for a tribe.  There are also currently infertile females who are if anything more powerful fighters than the males, but are only 1% of the population.

Quote from: Premier;568576True, but having said that, there's a difference between "You want to play an anachronistic feminist (/racial equality adherent/whatever)? Cool, you get to do that. You'll be going uphill in a world where nobody shares your ideals, but if you persevere, you might even make a difference." and "You want to play an anachronistic feminist? Cool, you get to do that, and in order to make sure you're playing in an emotional safe environment, the entire world will also share your anachronistic views. You'll be completely accepted as a feminist, no struggle there."

Well absolutely, yes.

RPGPundit

Quote from: CRKrueger;568645Ok we're doing a pretty good job of staying civil and on-topic, so lets leap onto a landmine - different traits based on Gender.

Before we fill this thread with pictures of bodybuilders, lets just toss out some facts.  Homo Sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species.  World Record weightlifting numbers show men outperform women of higher weight classes.  So lets not pretend that all things being equal, the strongest woman in the world could be stronger then the strongest man, it's silly.

But, the obvious counter would be, yeah so who gives a shit?  If you're not going to quantify differences in Con or Dex, then why Str?  Are we going to get into an even bigger landmine with Int vs. Wis and Chr?  Even if it would be technically correct, is it even worth it?  Even if Humans are sexually dimorphic, are Halflings, Dwarves, and Elves?  Maybe so, maybe not.

Is this one step on a slippery slope to Stormfront-like racial modifiers and we don't just want to ever go there?

Anyone use gender mods at your table or in the game you've made or are making?

What do you gain, what do you lose, what do you think?

Absolutely pointless. Except in the absolutely utmost extremes and in fractions so small that a 3-18 scale isn't made to handle it, you could find any single woman who could easily be stronger than any single man.

So again, we enter into the standard of "playability should be the first consideration". But beyond that, its just a stupid idea to think that women need penalizers or men need bonuses, or different maximum attributes or whatever.

RPGPundit

Quote from: The Traveller;568823Your problem here is a shitty collection of rulesets that don't account for skill. Was Arnie in his prime faster than a five hundred pound tiger, or stronger? Strength doesn't matter, only skill. Children in Africa kill lions with spears as a test of manhood, but of course some people just don't get that.

One such was a player of mine, hell bent for leather on boosting his stats. This went on for some time until I ran a minigame for him, called The Arena. He faced a sequence of increasingly powerful animals, and beat every single one.

Then I put him up against a one-eyed knight. Before he could even draw his sword that knight had twirled his morningstar twice round his shoulder and planted it in the character's eye from fifteen paces away. It was merely an example to illustrate the point, he was up right as rain for the next game, but he stopped trying to pump his STR up that extra notch thereafter.

All stuff about women and men aside, this is really a pretty asinine comment. Of course skill matters, but there is a good reason why we have different weight classes in boxing, judo, tae kwon doe, etc. It's because if you are big and strong and skilful you can do a shit load of damage to somebody who is just small and skilful, and it isn't a remotely fair match up.

Quote from: noisms;568950All stuff about women and men aside, this is really a pretty asinine comment. Of course skill matters, but there is a good reason why we have different weight classes in boxing, judo, tae kwon doe, etc. It's because if you are big and strong and skilful you can do a shit load of damage to somebody who is just small and skilful, and it isn't a remotely fair match up.

You can make "context" your next word for the day, whenever you're done with asinine.

Quote from: The Traveller;568956You can make "context" your next word for the day, whenever you're done with asinine.

Oh yeah, you were talking in the context of bullshit, I was forgetting.

Quote from: noisms;568957context

See? One day at a time, thats how we learn. I love it when those who consider themselves wits find out they are but half right.

Quote from: The Traveller;568958See? One day at a time, thats how we learn. I love it when those who consider themselves wits find out they are but half right.

So when are you going to learn how to use the apostrophe?

I love how you're a moron.

Quote from: noisms;568961So when are you going to learn how to use the apostrophe?

I love how you're a moron.

Its like watching a chicken with something to prove spread its wings to assert its territory. I guess thats the pricetag attached to the liberal moderation in these parts, any handbag with a mean drunk on can and will come along and start arguing.

Quote from: The Traveller;568963Its like watching a chicken with something to prove spread its wings to assert its territory. I guess thats the pricetag attached to the liberal moderation in these parts, any handbag with a mean drunk on can and will come along and start arguing.

Well, there's no need to cry about it.

You know we're not against the use of "colourful terms of endearment" on this forum, but I would like it if alongside these there was also CONTENT and not just sniping back and forth with nothing related to the OP to be found anymore.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;569386You know we're not against the use of "colourful terms of endearment" on this forum, but I would like it if alongside these there was also CONTENT and not just sniping back and forth with nothing related to the OP to be found anymore.

RPGPundit

Fair enough.

I agree with two really solid points I've seen thus far in the thread:

A) PCs do not have to represent society - they're exceptional
and
B) Unless your game requires/supports that level of detail, you're just wasting your time.

While I can see support for the typical female having lower physical stats than the typical male, there's not any good reason to enforce that on the player characters.

As to the issue of player character choices influencing the setting, e.g. the feminist PC example, that problem doesn't change and the solutions are pretty well known by now.  Playing a feminist in a historically accurate ancient setting would be the same as if you wanted to play a Paladin in a pirate campaign.

Quote from: mcbobbo;569536Playing a feminist in a historically accurate ancient setting would be the same as if you wanted to play a Paladin in a pirate campaign.

Or for that matter, playing a Paladin anywhere outside of an analogue of the early Carolingian Empire.

Special dispensation may be made for campaigns based on Le Morte d'Arthur.