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

[Libramarian]

As an aside, if you look at the world championship results for weightlifting, women today are lifting almost the same as men were doing when AD&D was written. Gotta love modern training, diet, and equipment. So...strike one against gender limitations.

That's not even close to true. The strongest male weightlifter at the 1980 World Weightlifting Championship totalled 440kg; the strongest female weightlifter at the 2015 World Weightlifting Championship totalled 333kg.

The difference between male and female athletes in the strength sports is bigger than in any other type of athletic competition. Physical strength is the biggest and most obvious physiological difference between men and women.

And when you consider the trade off for being that level of pedantic is a huge black mark against the game and the community, it's a no brainer to me.

I think that's all the justification necessary for dropping sex-based strength limits. It's just a game. We don't need to pretend that women actually are as strong as men IRL. That's absurd.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

What do you mean? NPCs have whatever stats the GM gives them.

If you're playing 5E, then the rules for generating NPC stats are the same as the rules for generating PC stats. Whether that's point-buy, roll, or whatever, the distribution of NPC scores is the same as the distribution of PC ability scores. We know this, because it says so in the DMG.

If you only care about the stats for one particular NPC at hand, then you can cut to the chase and declare it to have whatever stats you deem are appropriate (or borrow from the Monster Manual). Statistical distributions are only relevant for large sample sizes, but rest assured that NPCs exhibit the same range of stats as PCs. If the average halfling is as strong as the average elf or hill dwarf, because none of them get a racial bonus or penalty, then that relation is equally true among both PCs and NPCs.

 

[Morrus]

If you're playing 5E, then the rules for generating NPC stats are the same as the rules for generating PC stats. Whether that's point-buy, roll, or whatever, the distribution of NPC scores is the same as the distribution of PC ability scores. We know this, because it says so in the DMG.

If you only care about the stats for one particular NPC at hand, then you can cut to the chase and declare it to have whatever stats you deem are appropriate (or borrow from the Monster Manual). Statistical distributions are only relevant for large sample sizes, but rest assured that NPCs exhibit the same range of stats as PCs. If the average halfling is as strong as the average elf or hill dwarf, because none of them get a racial bonus or penalty, then that relation is equally true among both PCs and NPCs.

Statistical distributions? Sample sizes? These are part of your fantasy world?

Let’s not pretend “halfling” is not code for “girl” in this conversation. We’re talking about women, not halflings.

If population statistical distributions are that important to your fantasy game, feel free to assume there are a thousand puny NPC women to every heroically strong PC woman. If that makes you happy.

But let players play whatever PC they want, even if it’s a strong woman. Sorry, halfling.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Statistical distributions? Sample sizes? These are part of your fantasy world?

These are a part of every world. A major selling point of an RPG system, like D&D, is that it describes how a setting works in a quantifiable way. If the average halfling is as strong as the average dwarf or elf, but not as strong as the average human, then that describes a different setting than one where dwarves and elves are stronger than halflings, or one where halflings are stronger than humans. One of the major complaints which gives rise to this sort of thread is that it doesn't make much sense for the average three-foot-tall halfling to be as strong as the average six-foot-tall human, in general, as a rule for how the setting works.

Let’s not pretend “halfling” is not code for “girl” in this conversation. We’re talking about women, not halflings.

No. Just, no. This is a conversation about three-foot-tall halflings, and their ability to exert physical strength, relative to the abilities of six-foot-tall humans and nine-foot-tall ogres. If you want to talk about the merits of modeling various six-foot-tall humans differently based on their gender, then that's an entirely different conversation within this thread. We only have 18 degrees of variation possible between 3 and 20. Suggesting that three-foot-tall halflings be slid two points further toward the left, or that they not be permitted to rise above 13, is not synonymous with suggesting that any perceived difference between genders is worth modeling on that scale.

 

[Sacrosanct]

That's not even close to true. The strongest male weightlifter at the 1980 World Weightlifting Championship totalled 440kg; the strongest female weightlifter at the 2015 World Weightlifting Championship totalled 333kg.

The difference between male and female athletes in the strength sports is bigger than in any other type of athletic competition. Physical strength is the biggest and most obvious physiological difference between men and women.

I think that's all the justification necessary for dropping sex-based strength limits. It's just a game. We don't need to pretend that women actually are as strong as men IRL. That's absurd.

Not to be pedantic, but what the heck. I wasn't looking at the 1980 results because I said when the game was written, and the game wasn't written in 1980. Secondly, I was also looking at similar weight classes, not the strongest man vs the strongest women regardless of weight classes. And the clean and jerk results of a modern 75kg woman weren't that far behind the results of a 1976 75kg man. But either way, that's not really the point. It was only an interesting side observation that a modern day woman was much stronger than her 1975 counterparts, so if you time traveled such a woman to when the game was being written, she would blow them all away and Len would have to completely re-evaluate his premise of just how much more weaker women were, because pound for pound, there wasn't that great of a difference.

 

[Satyrn]

Stats reflect the world, but they don't define it. What a halfling's 20 Strength means is that it's exactly as strong as a human with 20 Strength, and stronger than an ogre, when it comes to those things that the Strength stat is supposed to reflect. Carrying capacity isn't just a matter of Strength, though; it's also a matter of weight ratios.

When a rock is flying toward you, it doesn't matter whether it was thrown by a halfling or an ogre. The only thing that matters is how fast it's going, which is a direct function of how much force was imparted by the thrower, and this statistical model - this reflection of the underlying reality - is saying that the halfling imparts more force than the ogre.

Every time you talk on this subject you write like you're proclaiming from the mountaintop.

 

[Caliban]

Every time you talk on this subject you write like you're proclaiming from the mountaintop.

In this instance Saelorn isn't wrong though. Halflings and gnomes are like ants - stronger than you would think they have any right to be.

I have a halfling wizard with a 10 strength. He weights 35 lbs, and carries 65 lbs of gear, just from starting gear. Nearly twice his own body weight and he's not encumbered. It gets even crazier for those 20 str halfing barbarians out there.

But then, D&D has never made more than vague concessions to real-world physics and biology.

 

[Satyrn]

In this instance Saelorn isn't wrong though. Halflings and gnomes are like ants - stronger than you would think they have any right to be.

I have a halfling wizard with a 10 strength. He weights 35 lbs, and carries 65 lbs of gear, just from starting gear. Nearly twice his own body weight and he's not encumbered. It gets even crazier for those 20 str halfing barbarians out there.

But then, D&D has never made more than vague concessions to real-world physics and biology.

No, he's not necessarily right. He's only right if you want to view the Strength score as measuring everything equally.

I don't, just as I don't see the Intelligence score measuring everything equally. I would consider A 5 int beast to be magnitudes less intelligent than a 5 int humanoid, for example.

 

[Satyrn]

Oh, but yeah.I find the weight and carrying capacity rules and the like to be kind of awkward.

But I can live with it since it means I'm not wasting my time halving the carrying capacity stats from their medium size baseline and then halving the weight of all my gnome's gear.

I can just pretend that's happening without bothering to change the numbers, and when I'm DMing I can just say to the players "nah, your hobbit isn't really carrying the same amount of weight, his suit of plate isn't actually the same weight as the goliath's suit of plate; we're just not dealing with the math which really just works out (like in 3e) to dividing everything by 2."

 

[JonnyP71]

No, he's not necessarily right. He's only right if you want to view the Strength score as measuring everything equally.

I don't, just as I don't see the Intelligence score measuring everything equally. I would consider A 5 int beast to be magnitudes less intelligent than a 5 int humanoid, for example.

I agree with you on that... the various scales are only equivalent in terms of affecting saving throws/skills. I see them as the ability to harness that natural strength/wisdom.

For instance, a Draft Horse has Strength 18, there's no human in existence that is physically stronger than a horse, but a human can have a higher strength stat - I reconcile that by imagining that the human knows how to use that strength more effectively than a horse does.