Should girls be allowed to play fighter characters

[Celtavian]

re

Actually, real world experiences in long campaigns have suggested that height and weight don't figure into durability so much.

Not endurance, durability. The ability to withstand damage in physical combat. Too much body mass can seriously hurt endurance, too little body mass can hurt durability. Often the best guys have the right body mass to have good durability and endurance.

What asset women tend to lack in combat in real life, in my estimation, is the the same thing older men similarly lack... testosterone dementia. It's one of the same factors that cause men, mainly young men, to engage in ridiculously dangerous extreme sports. They are still charged with testosterone and that makes them less susceptible to self-preservation impulses. Older men, on the battlefield, tend to be more cautious than their younger compatriots. One would expect women would probably be the same. Both have lower levels of testosterone production. And being too cautious in an assault situation can be more dangerous in the grand scheme of things than being reckless.

Could be.

So, if I were in charge of modern armed forces, I'd put women everywhere except maybe in primary infantry assault forces. But that's just me. It may turn out they are quite effective at storming beaches but we won't know until we try, best we can do now is make inferences from experiences we do have.

What does this have to do with D&D and girls playing fighters or playing female fighter characters? Absolutely nothing. There's a big difference between drawing on national resources to build a grand assaulting army and making it as effective as it can be and playing an individual character in a fantasy role-playing game. There are usually exceptions to every trend and that can include highly effective female warriors and paladins.

I've debated this many times, often wondering why in the past military leaders chose to withhold women from combat while sending men, even weak men, in droves to die. I've come to the conclusion that women were not withheld from combat for physical reasons, but for for societal and biological reasons.

1. They form the foundation for the home, including child rearing, more specifically breast feeding and the like. Making a social standard where women go to war is asking to dismantle the fabric of the family and home, which is in essence the child rearing mechanism of society.

2. Population replenishment. If women were killed in significant numbers, that would mean the death of the society. Just as killing all the men and taking the women as the spoils of war is the ultimate conquering and assimilation of another society. Sending the women to war is like asking your society to be destroyed.

It's simple biological math. A woman can reproduce a child roughly every 9 months. A man can fertilize an egg in a few minutes. Ten women and one man can produce 10 children in 9 months Ten men and one woman can produce 1 child in 9 months. Women are more valuable to the propagation of society, and wasting them in war would be a greivous error on the part of any population that wanted to continue its existence. All the other population would need to do is withhold their women, replenish their population, then fight again to beat a society that willingly and wantonly sent their women to war. To answer a question posed in the movie G.I. Jane, is a woman's life more important than a man's life? The answer to that question for human society is a definitive and irrefutable yes for any society that wants a long term existence.

 

[evileeyore]

You spelled that wrong.

The Spectrum Rider

Ahem: Prig

WordNet Dictionary

Definition: [n] a person regarded as arrogant and annoying

Synonyms: snob, snot

See Also: disagreeable person, unpleasant person

My Favorites:

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Definition: \Prig\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. {Prigged}; p. pr. & vb. n.
{Prigging}.] [A modification of prick.]
To haggle about the price of a commodity; to bargain hard.
[Prov. Eng. & Scot.]


\Prig\, v. t.
1. To cheapen. [Scot.]

2. [Perhaps orig., to ride off with. See {Prick}, v. t.] To
filch or steal; as, to prig a handkerchief. [Cant]


\Prig\, n.
1. A pert, conceited, pragmatical fellow.

The queer prig of a doctor. --Macaulay.

2. A thief; a filcher. [Cant] --Shak.



Now back to the topic...

Really you should discuss with the DM the reasons for this ruling. Then decide for yourself how best to proceed.

Yes I am a Spelling Fascist and Grammar Commie--EvilE

 

[Zappo]

Ahem: Prig

WordNet Dictionary

You've missed the joke. There's another short word that begins with 'pri' and may apply to the situation.

 

[mythago]

Note that upper-body strength, durability, and so on vary by culture as well as biology. There's less of a gap in upper-body strength in Sweden than in the US, apparently.

That said--who cares unless you're running d20 Modern? Fercryingoutloud, how many DMs require the characters to be missing teeth or roll to see if they've contracted gout? Do DMs go out and observe sex differences between real elves? If you can buy fireballs and insects the size of small buildings, letting the elite class of "adventurers" ignore sex differences shouldn't be much of a stretch.

 

[Krieg]

You've missed the joke. There's another short word that begins with 'pri' and may apply to the situation.

Is it "prim" or "prissy"? I'm confused.

 

[Thotas]

Well, lil witch, if you play in my campaign, you can play a Paladin. Not one of Mithras, a deity that exists imc based on the Mithraic religion of the real world, and I did include the no-female-clergy rule from the real world for flavor. But he's not the only game in town, so you're still okay.

As far as any arguement that a female character can't be a fighter because of strength considerations, I agree with those making the point about real world women warriors and fantasy world women warriors existing and it not being a problem there. May I also point out things like the longbow and other ranged weapons, the Weapon Finesse feat as well as Combat Expertise, Improved Critical, Combat Reflexes, Spring Attack and the Feats in its chain, and probably a whole bunch of other things that don't require a Fighter character to base their combat style on Strength even if the DM does require a female character to adjust the stat.

 

[orsal]

Well, lil witch, if you play in my campaign, you can play a Paladin. Not one of Mithras, a deity that exists imc based on the Mithraic religion of the real world, and I did include the no-female-clergy rule from the real world for flavor. But he's not the only game in town, so you're still okay.

Whatttt???? There actually is someone posting to this thread who believes that, just because a female character can't be a certain thing, a female player is not allowed to play one?

Since you're posting here, would you care to defend this proposition? Note that several of us, including myself, have suggested that it is a legitimate application of Rule Zero to disallow female characters in certain classes -- that's a flavour issue. Some have gone so far as to claim the DM's right, under Rule Zero, to restrict players from certain classes based on whatever arbitrary criteria he wants -- but they have not gone so far as to defend his decision to use that rule in that particular way.

You are the first poster to reveal that you do something of that sort, although not with as broad a brush as our original poster's DM. So I'd be interested in hearing your rationale. It doesn't make any sense to me. There isn't generally a presumption that characters ought to reflect their player's attributes, after all.

 

[Contrabassoon]

My dm says that girls can only play wizards and clerics and classes like that. I want to play a paladin, but he says that only guys can be paladins. Help is that true?

Rah rah ralls, kick him in the...

 

[Eeralai]

Okay, I am ready to hear from Lil' Witch again. What are you going to tell the now infamous DM? And what will he say? This thread has become like an unfinished soap opera. I need to know the end!

 

[Thotas]

Sorry Orsal -- had a momentary lapse forgetting to distinguish between player gender and character gender. Should have said she can play a paladin, but if Mithras is her patron, the character has to be male. Total oops from me on that one.