I'm not talking about D&D with that. He absolutely is conflating Bruce Lee's skill with martial arts with strength when he implies that Bruce Lee is Stronger than Arnold. Bruce Lee was muscled, but it was wiry muscle. He probably had a 14 or 15 at most for strength. Arnold at his peak was in the 18-20 range.
Looking at muscle only, Arnold whips Bruce's rear. When you add in martial arts, Bruce's monk levels make it so that Arnold is likely to lose. Bruce knows how to leverage his lesser strength to do as much or more damage. That's skill.
Bruce Lee's muscles are different than Arnolds. Bruce trained for short, powerful bursts of energy, while Arnorld for Physique and lifting. Ask anyone familiar with physical fitness, and they will argue the two have very different types of strength. Of course, D&D is nowhere granular enough to account for a wiry lean muscle and a hulking, carved muscle, so it all gets lumped in. But if you were to measure all the different measurements that are attributed to D&D strength scores (striking, athletics, lifting, carrying, etc) and objectively measure Bruce and Arnold's records, I think their strength scores would be more evenly matched in the average. (Bruce would probably have greater athleticism, Arnold greater weightlifting capacity). However, since D&D is too simple to reflect that, you end up with what you just said: assuming equal proficiency bonus, Arnold is a better athlete than Bruce because he has a higher perceived Strength Score.
I'm suggesting that Strength scores should be divorced from the notion of muscle mass or weightlifting. Those can be influenced by strength, but they should not be based on it. That way, you get a lanky but wiry Bruce with a 16 strength and a muscular Arnold at a 17 or 18 and you don't have to let your head explode how a 5′ 8″, 141 lbs, guy could almost match a 6' 2",: 235 lb guy.
Take a look at Goliaths, Firbolgs and Loxodons and see if you can find the common denominator for the Powerful Build ability. See also POWERFUL BUILD. It's in the name.
The common denominator is that it is a species trait, not a function of actual height and weight. Put another way, Halflings get a trait where they can hide behind a creature of one size larger and move freely in their space; this is not a feature of being 3ft or else gnomes and goblins would be able to do the same.
Yes it is, but the game isn't supposed to mirror real life exactly. That said, throwing any semblance of sense out the window and not giving the orcs a strength bonus is very bad.
Citation needed.
As I said to @Remathilis, if going by raw strength only, Arnold twists Bruce into a pretzel. Remalathis is conflating skill with strength. Bruce Lee has tremendous skill at leveraging his raw strength into lots of damage. In D&D terms he's a monk and does increased unarmed damage over Arnold. Arnold is still tons stronger than Bruce, but he does less damage because 1-2+5 is less than 1d8+2 x 4(flurry of blows).
Of course, D&D math makes that an issue by, as you said, making Proficiency bonus (+2 +6) as important as ability mod (-5 to +5, but realistically -1 to +5). Thus, even if AArnoldhas no martial training, his raw strength ability mod can equal out a large amount of Bruce's proficiency bonus. (and I was not trying to get into class functions, I just assume both have the Actor class).
