Gender in Mechanics

[rounser]

The Hathran of Rashemen are commonly referred to as witches, from what I gather. It makes about as much sense to be a male witch as it does to be a male sorceress (unless you're a "Witch-King", like Venghi or whatever the late Vaasa guy's name was) so that's a bit of an open-and-shut case IMO.

 

[Sejs]

But what is the "civilian sense" in a game that assumes physiologically equal men and women living in societies that do not discriminate in terms of occupations, etc.?

Non-combatants. Those unable to defend themselves in a physical conflict with even a modicum of ability. Typically the young, the elderly, the infirm, and anyone else who would fall into the category for whatever individual reasons.

 

[fusangite]

Non-combatants. Those unable to defend themselves in a physical conflict with even a modicum of ability. Typically the young, the elderly, the infirm, and anyone else who would fall into the category for whatever individual reasons.

Women who have given birth are no more or less capable of self-defense than women who have not. With the abolition of zero-level characters, there is no mechanical reason that the female bugbears looking after their young are going to be one iota less capable of inflicting and suffering damage either than non-parenting female bugbears, or male bugbears for that matter.

Now if one were talking about late-term pregnant monsters that would be one thing. But that's not what we are talking about. What I want to know is how people reach the conclusion that females are more likely to be non-combattants than males when there is no indication of such in the rules.

There are all kinds of jobs amongst monstrous humanoids; the male smiths and fletchers are not singled-out as non-combatants because they are not full-time warriors or raiders so what is so special about the mother job that it would be?

Finally, amongst evil or non-mammalian creatures, why would we assume that females are more likely to consider it their job to raise the young than males would? Wouldn't this job just automatically fall to those of the lowest social standing, regardless of who they might be?

 

[Thanee]

Sword Dancer PrC has requirement: female IIRC.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Warden]

i appreciate the differences that gender can inject into a campaign. part of the fun of d&d is the variability and the differences that it offers to gamers who enjoy the RP aspects of gaming. if a writer were to base mechanics on gender (e.g., males receive a +2 racial bonus to Strength), the yawps of "Sexist!" would echo throughout the d20 world. i think the issues we touch with kid gloves in the real world - racism, sexism, etc. - can make for extremely potent and interesting factors of gameplay. with the right (read: mature) group, of course.
W.P.

So what would be the harm in creating a supplement that actually create different stats for male and female characters of various races? Is it safe and politically correct to say that men are more commonly found to have a higher Strength score while women are more common to have a higher Wisdom or Dexterity score? So long as these balance off with each other, what's the harm for those who want to use it?

I've been trying to gauge support for this idea for a while, so this seems to be the post to try it out on.

 

[fusangite]

im all for a gender-equal society, but gods forbid a gender-less one.

I essentially agree with this comment but such a thing, if it did exist, would be impossible to measure. One would be comparing the "value" of complex dissimilar things and judging them equal or unequal.

i think D&D does itself and its players a disservice by becoming so politically correct that it ignores certain aspects of "reality". yes, yes - i know this is a fantasy game, but verissimilitude results from parallels between earth as we know it and our fantasy campaigns. gravity works, the sun rises and sets, and man and woman are two different creatures. not only is this a good thing, it's a wonderful thing.

I agree with the point you are making but hopefully I can rephrase it to sound less conservative and deterministic: I think it is tough for GMs to run things that are wholly alien and utterly beyond their experience. Geography, society, physics, etc. all come from recognizeable models that we have grown accustomed to as they have permeated out culture over many centuries.

Even as we attempt to erase legal and economic differences between the sexes/genders, we continue to entrench gender difference all the time as we encounter new ideas. For instance, even as legal gender equality and legitimation of homosexuality have proceeded, mainstream society has decided that homosexuality amongst women arises from choice and amongst men from genetics. So, even when we attempt to come to terms with highly modern/postmodern egalitarian ideas, we use traditional concepts of gender to make sense of them.

So I think the problem is that when running a genderless/gender-equal game like D&D, the idea of eliminating perceived intrinsic differences on the basis of sex and gender and then running it consistently every session is simply beyond the capacity of most GMs. We refer too often to our shared folklore, history, values, etc. so often to create templates or models for our worlds that as Turjan suggests, things like this just slip in.

i appreciate the differences that gender can inject into a campaign. part of the fun of d&d is the variability and the differences that it offers to gamers who enjoy the RP aspects of gaming.

I agree. It think it is both more fun and more easy to change how gender/sex works than it is to eliminate its operation.

if a writer were to base mechanics on gender (e.g., males receive a +2 racial bonus to Strength), the yawps of "Sexist!" would echo throughout the d20 world.

Agreed, even when a compensatory +2 to Cha or Wis was offered to female characters in compensation.

i think the issues we touch with kid gloves in the real world - racism, sexism, etc. - can make for extremely potent and interesting factors of gameplay.

D&D doesn't touch racism with kid gloves at all. It assumes that differences of race amongst ensouled humanoids are a way bigger deal than in the real world. Furthermore, races are often predisposed to be evil or good. It assumes that racial discrimination is a perfectly legitimate way to make decisions. It is no stretch to imagine that if a series of nighttime robberies took place in a wealthy neighbourhood in a human city and the PCs were investigating, the investigation would end the moment they found the goblins living in the sewers. It would be just a matter of beating up the obvious culprits and perhaps killing them. Map that onto concepts of race in our world.

as an aside, i found it a bit awkward while reading the phb when 3E first came out to see so many interspersed "he" and "she" pronouns. it seems wotc in particular doles out iconics in equal amounts of gender.

You've lost me here. I liked the innovative language. I do something similar when I write, except I just use female pronouns exclusively. If it's no big deal that we men get all the generic pronouns, it should be no big deal if we don't.

so back to the first question - i have no problems with "killing women and children" being more "evil" than killing (able-bodied) men.

But the rules say that females are going to be equally able-bodied.

 

[fusangite]

So what would be the harm in creating a supplement that actually create different stats for male and female characters of various races? Is it safe and politically correct to say that men are more commonly found to have a higher Strength score while women are more common to have a higher Wisdom or Dexterity score? So long as these balance off with each other, what's the harm for those who want to use it?

I've been trying to gauge support for this idea for a while, so this seems to be the post to try it out on.

I support it. I've even proposed it on ENWorld. If this thread takes off, get ready for vehement opposition, an inability to distinguish between individuals and collectives, and long pointless digressions into how much individual posters can bench-press.

 

[Turjan]

Women who have given birth are no more or less capable of self-defense than women who have not. With the abolition of zero-level characters, there is no mechanical reason that the female bugbears looking after their young are going to be one iota less capable of inflicting and suffering damage either than non-parenting female bugbears, or male bugbears for that matter.

You are completely right in this matter, there is no mechanical reason for such a ruling. Anyway, this is lastly one of this dreaded alignment discussions, again . I'd say, just ignore D&D's alignment rulings, because they are too strict to cover all cases well, and as a DM I ignore these pitfalls some published adventures have, where you are supposed to punish your players on how they treat some monsters during combat (of course, I make rulings appropriate to the situation). IMHO, the best thing is to get completely rid of alignment as written.

Finally, amongst evil or non-mammalian creatures, why would we assume that females are more likely to consider it their job to raise the young than males would? Wouldn't this job just automatically fall to those of the lowest social standing, regardless of who they might be?

I don't agree with your last sentence. I don't see any automatism that educating the offspring is automatically connected with the lowest social standing. Regarding your first notion, I think that the concept, as seen from the standpoint of modern ethics, goes something like 'patriarchal society = primitive'. This means, it's easy to attribute a patriarchal organisation to 'monstrous' societies. That this is not a general rule in D&D can be seen at the example of Drow society. Another example in the fantasy genre are the trolls (Uz) of Glorantha, who have also a matriarchal organisation with females in the superior positions (Short remark: Gloranthan trolls are not evil, but just very different).

 

[NewJeffCT]

I think apart from special organizations (that probably are religion-based anyway), priest classes and, to a lesser extent, arcane spellcasters are the most likely candidates for a gender restriction.

Even so... Gender limitations for priests seem pretty damn rare in D&D 3.5 so there've been few, if any, such classes so far.
Lolth could have one, I guess.
Kiaransalee, even more likely - AFAIK, her 2e priests all were female.

I have no problem with certain gender or race specific prestige classes, but a few I've seen mentioned in this thread so far seem to be based on traditional icons - the witch (female, from Western European/US history) or the Eunuch (male, from Chinese history). I can certainly see some gaming worlds having male only or female only clerics, a la the Catholic Church in the real world with males or Lloth, the Drow Goddess from D&D for female drow.

The question you have to ask is - if you create a male only or female only prestige class, why can't the opposite sex be a part of this class? Is there a legitimate in-game reason for it? I think most non-religious reasons would fail that simple test. Can you come up with good in-game reasons, sure. But, most of the prestige classes I have seen in the various 3E and 3.5 books would not unless you took them further on your own.

The same for race-specific classes. Is there a reason a white-skinned human cannot be the D&D equivalent Shaolin monk or a samurai? Or, is there a reason a black or brown skinned human could not enter a certain kingdom's famed college of magic? Xenophobia should be played realistically & maturely, as it has played a huge role in real world history.

 

[Turjan]

So what would be the harm in creating a supplement that actually create different stats for male and female characters of various races? Is it safe and politically correct to say that men are more commonly found to have a higher Strength score while women are more common to have a higher Wisdom or Dexterity score? So long as these balance off with each other, what's the harm for those who want to use it?

I've been trying to gauge support for this idea for a while, so this seems to be the post to try it out on.

I think the point is how you want to balance the strength penalty. STR is the most important D&D score, so you have to shell out a good bit of advantages in compensation. If you balance the -2 STR with +2 INT and +2 CHA, you will get protests of the other kind: are women more intelligent than men ? +2 WIS and +2 CHA might be more acceptable, also from a mechanics point of view.

Btw, it's not a general rule that male of the species are the stronger subjects compared to females. There are countless examples of the opposite. So, any ruling like that would not be general, but different from species to species (or race to race).