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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5563688" data-attributes="member: 4937">Suggest a better word for what prompts a person to post that people are ignoring his post?  Concern?  Wry amusement?  I don't really care what you want to call it, the point was that the whole halfling comparison was your thing.  You were the one who thought it was some sort of strong argument.  If it now seems really silly, well, I always thought bring up halflings as a counter example to reality was silly.I haven't a clue what you are talking about.  Pointing out the fact that someone else is acting in a totally irrational manner doesn't constitute me claiming to be persecuted.  Yes, yes, yes.  I got that.  I've addressed it in detail several times now.  But I guess you can't use logic to argue people out of positions that they didn't reach on the basis of logic.1) Yes, but Halflings are made up.  As made up creatures they can have pretty much any strength that the creator wants to assign them.   As I have already stated, I also have problems with Halfling and Gnome realism (neither are allowed races in my campaign) particularly given that the two races ignore D&D's usual guidelines on stating out small sized creatures.   Size has a much bigger effect in my house rules than in stock D&D.  But in stock D&D small creatures normally have a -4 penalty to both STR and CON compared to medium-sized creatures (which is fairly realistic as far as it goes).  Since Halflings do not, we can only assume that in proportion to their size, they are much stronger and healthier than humans.   If this difference is not due to magic, then it would have to be due to a body build similar to the chimpanzee which allows is stronger and more durable than humans in proportion to its size.  Not that this idea makes halflings realistic, but it at least is somewhat explanatory.2) This is the strangest assertion in your whole point because its devoid of logic.  The problem is that statement 2 doesn't connect to statement 3 in any fashion.  It's not a logical bridge from point 1 to point 2.  A wrymling black dragon about the size of a house cat has a strength equivalent to an average human man.  Ergo what?   Halflings and dragons, being made up creatures, may have any sort of attributes we desire.   But even if we were making a comparison to a real creature here, still so what?  A 40lb caracal can jump 15' straight up from a crouch.  Why do humans not get a +20 racial jump bonus given that they are larger than a caracal?  Obviously, because being larger than a caracal doesn't necessarily make you either a better jumper or even absolutely stronger than a caracal.   I mean I feel like I'm talking with people who say, "Apples aren't oranges, ergo you can't build a doghouse out of pancakes."  How can you argue with that?3) First, halflings don't exist, so a comparison of halflings to women is a comparison of fantasy to reality.  When comparing fantasy to reality, who knows.  With fantasy we can have anything we want.  But when you move into reality, and compare things we can compare in reality, and you ask something like "Why do women have only about 25% of the upper body strength of men", I can only answer something like 'evolution'.  When you ask, "If we tried to translate the lower strength of women into D20 terms, what would be the result?", the answer is, "A larger penalty to strength than that applied to halflings."  Asking 'why' doesn't change the facts.Maybe.  Or maybe they are magical.  Once again, it's hard to know given that elves don't exist.   Had I been making the game, I probably wouldn't have treated size as an arbitrary descriptor.  However, if I was to justify elven attributes, I would say that elves +2 Dex is probably most due to the fact that they have higher strength to weight ratios, and that is actually a realistic basis for dexterity.   Likewise, -2 to Con is perhaps a fairly realistic accounting for being a smaller size (but not a whole category smaller) than humans.Once again, I don't do this at my table.  I don't find a particularly good reason to force mechanical differences in strength on characters of different genders, if only because I don't have a mechanic that works with point buy as well as I would like (if using some other chargen method, probably a random one, it would be easier to come up with a workable system).  A lot of the reason I'm having a hard time staying out of this thread is the bizarre claim that not only should a fantasy world work in a particular manner, but that the real world works like their fantasy world.  In other words, not content with wanting to claim that for various mechanical limitations, social issues, and reasons of gameability, different genders are or ought to be built by the same rules, quite a few people are trying to assert that this actually reflects reality.  So for example, they'll claim that since the in game made up 'halfling' race only has a strength penalty of -2, that in reality women are nearly as strong as men and therefore in the game they shouldn't suffer a penalty.    If I had a sense of humor, I'd definately be laughing.</blockquote>

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