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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 5561499" data-attributes="member: 15538">I call this the Wal-Mart problem.Imagine you want to buy canned peaches and toilet seat lids. If Wal-Mart charges more than Home Depot, you'll buy the toilet seat lid at Home Depot. If they charge less, you'll obviously buy it at Wal-Mart (all other things being equal, of course). But what if you want peaches, too? You can't buy peaches at Home Depot. So unless the price difference of the peaches at Wal-Mart exceeds the price difference of the toilet seat lids, you go to Wal-Mart and save yourself a trip to the grocery store. Not only are you shopping at Wal-Mart, but pretty soon, they are the only place in town selling peaches, and the price of peaches has gone up.So let's imagine you define sex-linked feats or options. If a male-specific feat is worse than feats in general, no one will take it. If it's better, you're going to see a lot more male (for instance) warriors, as you might expect. But let's imagine the male-specific feat is well-balanced against other feats, in general. So you have the choice of playing a male, with the choice of all feats in general, plus the sex-linked feat, or a female, who has only the choice of all feats in general, plus a different, unrelated female-linked feat. If you decide you want the male-linked feat, you will (all other things being equal) play the male.Assuming the intention is to give males options to be particularly strong, powerful, and intimidating, and for women to be, oh, alluring, high stamina, and smaller-but-nimble... the buying options for a warrior favor being male. You can get toilet seats AND peaches. It's likely, as well, that swashbucklers and face characters will skew female (which could be weird, if swashbuckling females are a social aberration in your setting). These options are better than flat-out modifiers simply because they are smaller. Opportunity costs are real costs, but the compensation is sufficient that other options are considerable. But, for instance, even a small cost can skew results such that (for instance) two-handed Power Attack fighters skew male, while dual-wielding tumbling fighters skew female. They are also better because someone can choose not to exercise their options, which means they are not forcibly pigeonholed into a stereotype. But the advantages and disadvantages will remain. Only character options which are favored by neither set of optional traits will be unaffected. And for the affected options, which will be many if not most, the options will only be optional if they are truly competitive with a different set of options which are favored by neither set of optional modifiers. And ultimately, if one option is simply better, the nerf hammer is not far behind, unless you simply choose to live with the bias.</blockquote>

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