D&D 5E Do you miss attribute minimums/maximums?

[Celebrim]

But I want to play Xena Warrior Princess. Are you saying I can't because women aren't actually that strong?

The strongest real world women have something 23 strength in 3.X terms. That's much higher than the normal PC caps. Add to that that in fantasy game you are quite capable of assuming that any particular character does not have merely mortal heritage (Heracles for example is stronger than any mortal man, because he's not a mere mortal man), and I see no reason why you can't play Xena Warrior Princess.

What I am saying is the non-existence of Xena Warrior Princess in the real world doesn't make women in the real world inferior.

 

[Celebrim]

Celebrim, are you actually advocating for sex specific modifiers, or just arguing that if they were implemented they wouldn't be sexist?

I'm not actually interested in either question. What I'm actually arguing is that sex specific modifiers exist in the real world, and yet that doesn't make women (or men, since some argue that as well) inferior.

 

[neobolts]

I do not miss attribute minimums/maximums at all. The current system of racial modifiers works fine. It's far more intuitive to reflect racial differences with baselines, rather than ultimate potential.

 

[Maxperson]

But I want to play Xena Warrior Princess. Are you saying I can't because women aren't actually that strong?

Xena's strength had to be supernatural. It never got explained, but from her appearance(Lucy Lawless) it wasn't any higher than say 12 or 14.

 

[Sadras]

I think however we are mostly in agreement.

Pretty much this

I'm not going to make a big assumption about what appeals to male and female gamers, nor am I going to assume that either male or female gamers will play characters with the same gender that they identify as.

We can, though assume powergamers and min/maxers exist amongst female roleplayers.
We can, also assume that some female players will play female characters.

Nor do I necessary believe it to be one of the goals of the game that they should want to do so.

Just for clarity, you don't believe they should make the option to select a female character attractive (interesting), meaningful or all of the above?

 

[jasper]

But I want to play Xena Warrior Princess. Are you saying I can't because women aren't actually that strong?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using EN World mobile app

No we saying your costume is ugly and need some nickels glued on it. Plus shave your pits deary.

 

[Celebrim]

Just for clarity, you don't believe they should make the option to select a female character attractive (interesting), meaningful or all of the above?

I don't think that attractive and meaningful are easy to define, and will depend very much on context. However, I do believe the assertion that 'female characters have to be allowed to be just strong as men, otherwise they are meaningless and unattractive as choices' is inherently sexist and more importantly, inherently subversive and dangerous in a way that a claim like 'women aren't as good as men' would not be, since the former claim seems to have some superficial merit that the later does not. In fact though, I think they are exactly the same claim, just using different words.

 

[Celebrim]

Xena's strength had to be supernatural. It never got explained, but from her appearance(Lucy Lawless) it wasn't any higher than say 12 or 14.

There was a remarkable young lady not that long ago, not that far from where I live, who was her high school teams starting offensive tackle. But, her body didn't look much like that of Lucy Lawless or Gal Gadot.

 

[MoonSong]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] It isn't like that. The opposite, maybe you are not familiar with it, but feeling 'othered' is never a nice thing. Placing male as the default and female as the other with penalties -and only penalties- others women. It doesn't matter if most women will be playing rogues and spellcasters with low strength, having that -2 in the playbook sends the message -intended or not- "you are not welcome". If only male characters can be the best warriors, you are forcing women to play a male character if they want to be the best warriors, which is unfair -and at least to me offputting-. And while life is unfair, RPGs are games and games have to at least feel fair. More so, escapist fantasy has to be fair. I can only finish Oliver Twist knowing that there's got to be a happy ending, otherwise there's only relishing on human misery and there's plenty of that in the real world.

 

[Sadras]

Are we going to tackle the horribly racist D&D next? It's not as if there has ever been an edition where all racial abilities were equal.

Happened already (but it had nothing to do with racial abilities)...in the D&D movie thread regarding drow