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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 5551539" data-attributes="member: 15538">What is your reason for that belief?I incorrectly stated +2 in one place, where the difference was clearly +3. The whole point of the exercise was to determine the number of points different you need to get that percentage. The answer is 3. 11.5 - 8.5 = 3.You're going to have to explain that one. I said in the beginning that there would be a 3 point difference (+1 Strengh, +2 more for lifting capacity) and that is accurate.Wow, let of insinuations there. No, I am just using the math I was provided to prove the point I said in the first place. Now, if you want to object to my argument that males get a lifting capacity bonus rather than a relative +3 Strength bonus, you are welcome to make that argument. But you're going to have to back it up. I happen to know that female kickboxers can generate a similar amount of force as a male one, which would imply no Strength difference at all. I also don't see much evidence that men are more effective at attacking with melee weapons and dealing palpable hits; in SCA armored combat, women are overrepresented as Marshals compared to their level of participation in combat as a whole. +2 Strength is a pretty heavy difference, mathematically. Watch this clip:[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg-_hiFKdsU]YouTube - BBQ Beatdown 6 - Claire Haights beats male opponent - MMA in Thailand[/ame]Does that look like the equivalent of a racial difference in Strength to you? The dude is bigger, possibly even to the extent suggested before. He definitely has a more powerful chest. But is he stronger? Better at melee? Better at bull rushes?So that is my counter-argument based on realism. Basing gender differences on Strength on weight lifting is a little like basing gender differences in Constitution based on surviving a famine. But even in such an unfair contest, you still only get +3 relative difference.Now, here's my counter-argument based on fiction. Whatever differences may or may not exist in the real world, they should apply, at best, to NPCs. PCs, by definition, are neither ordinary folks, nor are they statistically representative of the general population in the slightest. Whatever differences you assign become, effectively, the price of admission. Want to be a strong female warrior? In some games, it sucks to be you. At a minimum, female characters should be provided a relatively as useful benefit.But ideally, they should be given the option of purchasing the male equivalency. You could call it balance. You could call it fairness. I would call it simply freedom. Unless the concept is literally impossible, you are simply charging a tax on the concept. That is one of the reasons why, in the Pathfinder RPG, a human gets a +2 to the ability score of their choice, so humans aren't taxed relative to an exceptional member of each of the other races. Because a human fighter is intended to be as viable a concept as a half-orc one.Now, a halfing fighter, or a dward bard... you expect such a character to have stark differences from the norm. It could still be annoying, but the concept itself is probably congruent with the choices you make. What exactly is the point of taxing female (Class_X)? Should female adventurers of that class be less common for some reason? Even to the level of possibly surpassing real-world differences?A d20, or 3d6-based game, is a pretty blunt instrument for trying to distinguish between two sorts of beings who can reproduce together, who can work virtually all the same professions, and have overlapping levels of ability at just about everything. Even a +1 modifier on a d20 is 5% of the base value, and on 3d6, it ranges from more than 10% and downwards.</blockquote>

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