Indeed, lets just have sports completely integrated and may the best person win! Actually didn't a woman win the that sled-dog race, the Idinarod(sp) more than once?
D&D 5E Do you miss attribute minimums/maximums?
Major speed differences, too. These are also a function of muscle strength, of course. The fastest female 100m time ever is routinely beaten by hundreds of highschool boys every year.
Venus Williams, the greatest female tennis player ever and quite strong, has admitted she'd be beaten 6-0 6-0 by the then best man in a matter of minutes.
However, D&D isn't really capable of showing just how much faster and more performance the top physical performers are than the rest of us. Even rolling 3d6 would mean about .5% of people were maximum score. And there is probably as much distance between the .5% person and the .05% person as there is between the .5% person and the 5% person. I don't think it'd be impossible or even hard to find a women who was in the top .5% of physical ability.
And I don't think it's worth actually modeling distributional differences between the strength of men and women in game. What would you do? Give them a lower starting score of a 6 or 7 but the same top end? I think it (the distribution) gets modeled anyway by players of female characters tending towards lower strength PCs, anyway.
That's because the Huskies' muscles won it, being guided by a light, smart tactician.
Put in a sport with strength and power, and it doesn't work.
Hell, even MtF trans athletes are controversial, and that's after their testosterone levels have been low for a long enough time that their muscle density has dropped to that of a biological woman. A few sports - running, MMA - have been dominated lately by trans athletes to such an extent that it's really causing controversy.
Sadras
Legend
Okay so how would it work mechanically?
Male PCs gain a +1 in strength (ability cap 20), female PCs gain an additional proficiency slot (ability cap 18)?
The female PC would get the proficiency benefit up front, meanwhile the male PC would still need to spend ability points to get the 20 score in strength.
As a non min/maxer the additional proficiency is much more appealing to me.
Male PCs gain a +1 in strength (ability cap 20), female PCs gain an additional proficiency slot (ability cap 18)?
The female PC would get the proficiency benefit up front, meanwhile the male PC would still need to spend ability points to get the 20 score in strength.
As a non min/maxer the additional proficiency is much more appealing to me.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
One way around the racial minimum-maximum stat issue is this, which we've been doing since about the age of steam:
Assume the normal range for Humans for each stat is a 3-18 bell curve, as in what you get from rolling 3d6. (thus Human stats are never affected by any of what follows as they are the standard against which all others are compared)
Then, look at each other race and assign stat ranges to suit, for each stat. Thus, Elf strength might be 3-17 while their dex might be 6-19 and their con 3-16, etc.; Dwarf strength might be 6-18 while their dex could be 3-17 and their con be 7-18, and so on.
Then, once you've rolled/chosen/bought your stats and chosen your race you put each of your stats into the new bell curve. So, your Elf with strength 13 sees it go down to 12, its 12 dex goes up to 14, its 15 con goes down to 13, etc. based on how the bell curves line up. It's a bit complicated to do this at first sight, but it works.
As for gender differences - long ago dropped for base stats but kept for things like height and weight; and tweaked for other races.
Level limits: slowly relaxed over the years to the point where I've got rid of most of them now, but some class-race combinations are still banned outright (no Dwarf Wizards here, thank you very much).
Class minimum stat requirements I very much like, and would add them in to 5e were I to run it.
Lanefan
Assume the normal range for Humans for each stat is a 3-18 bell curve, as in what you get from rolling 3d6. (thus Human stats are never affected by any of what follows as they are the standard against which all others are compared)
Then, look at each other race and assign stat ranges to suit, for each stat. Thus, Elf strength might be 3-17 while their dex might be 6-19 and their con 3-16, etc.; Dwarf strength might be 6-18 while their dex could be 3-17 and their con be 7-18, and so on.
Then, once you've rolled/chosen/bought your stats and chosen your race you put each of your stats into the new bell curve. So, your Elf with strength 13 sees it go down to 12, its 12 dex goes up to 14, its 15 con goes down to 13, etc. based on how the bell curves line up. It's a bit complicated to do this at first sight, but it works.
As for gender differences - long ago dropped for base stats but kept for things like height and weight; and tweaked for other races.
Level limits: slowly relaxed over the years to the point where I've got rid of most of them now, but some class-race combinations are still banned outright (no Dwarf Wizards here, thank you very much).
Class minimum stat requirements I very much like, and would add them in to 5e were I to run it.
Lanefan
Pixies are not as tiny as you might think. Okay, they are tiny in some editions, but even then they are only a bit smaller and lighter than a halfling. Not like the diminuitive Tinkerbell one might imagine. And they get a good STR penalty in these editions. 5e doesn't even have a PC pixie race and the sprite (which is tiny) has a STR of 3.
PC races are close enough to each other that a ridiculously high STR halfling or CHA half-orc or DEX dwarf can work without looking too strange. I've played in PF groups where our high level human fighter had a STR high enough to let him lift an elephant. I've had players doing WuXia like jumps on roofs (6m high balcony? No prob for a speedy monk). So a super strong halfling in 5e doesn't really break *my* immersion. Even without magic, I can simply let my imagined physics or biology work a different way in my game world. This isn't earth
Also, Ant-Man. And similar superheroes which can be quite lean, but super-super strong. And to be honest, D&D and its derivatives are in many cases a crossover between fantasy and superheroics. If you want a more LOTR style game (which is great!), you'd actually have to adjust your D&D. And other systems are better in portraying of low power or mundane fantasy.
Besides, I don't get how people are so picky about realism when it comes to racial (or gender) attributes when they happily accept fantasy material like Adamant which can mysteriously ignore all hardness without being magical or lightweight but durable Mithril. Or ironwood. Or a Tarrasque that survives more than a few hours. Or magically increasing a person's size by a huge margin without said person quickly succumbing to overheating. Or using mundane (non-magical) alchemy to emulate magical effects.
BTW the Warcraft movie had mainly Orcs and Humans. Big, oversized weapons are a common trope in videogames though and I know a lot of people who love their weapons that way. Although even I don't know how a 3m long Masamune can be handled with one hand. But I'd rather have a halfling weapons master wield a weapon that's a bit smaller than a human's.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
PC races are close enough to each other that a ridiculously high STR halfling or CHA half-orc or DEX dwarf can work without looking too strange. I've played in PF groups where our high level human fighter had a STR high enough to let him lift an elephant. I've had players doing WuXia like jumps on roofs (6m high balcony? No prob for a speedy monk). So a super strong halfling in 5e doesn't really break *my* immersion. Even without magic, I can simply let my imagined physics or biology work a different way in my game world. This isn't earth
Also, Ant-Man. And similar superheroes which can be quite lean, but super-super strong. And to be honest, D&D and its derivatives are in many cases a crossover between fantasy and superheroics. If you want a more LOTR style game (which is great!), you'd actually have to adjust your D&D. And other systems are better in portraying of low power or mundane fantasy.
That barbarian didn't get to be strong enough to lift an elephant without magic. Monks use ki power(magic) to move that quickly, and Ant Man used super powers(magic) to do what he does. That's the issue here. The halfling doens't have magic to allow him to be as strong as the half-orc, so it reasonably bothers a lot of people that a halfling and half-orc are equally strong.
This is a False Equivalence. The game has different levels of realism, and to equate all levels as being the same is where you go wrong and enter into a False Equivalence. Magic allows the bending of "reality", and the fantasy "reality" has created these metals you refer to, so they are very realistic in a fantasy setting. The same goes with many monsters, the Tarrasque being one of the magical monsters.
What is not explained away as being different than our reality is a halfling vs. half-orc. The game gives very mundane descriptions of the halfling which in no way explain how a halfling can be as strong as the strongest half-orc. That's why the halfling/half-orc situation bothers some people, but the above does not.
in 5e, yes, maybe. In earlier editions, no. For example, fast movement is an extraordinary (read: non-magical) ability. And mighty rage gives a whopping +8 Str/con as Ex as well... Just because you *could* explain something extraordinary with magic, this doesn't mean that RAW call such effects magical at all.
No, it is not. You can easily say that the same fantasy "reality" which has created materials like Adamant (and by the way, we don't know the origins of these metals... RL metals come from stellar processes. I don't think this is true in the typical D&D world
) also gave halflings or other seemingly impossibly strong small races extra efficient or dense muscle tissue and ultra-flexible-still-durable bones. This can be purely biological and natural. Nowhere does the description of a halfling say "this humanoid is from head to toe the VERY SAME as a human, just 1/2 the size". Halflings don't exist in our world, same as Adamant, Giant Eagles (which are not magical and shouldn't be able to fly, either) or Myconids. So why apply RL assumptions to the one, but not the others?Similar Threads
