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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6835328" data-attributes="member: 42582">A giant lizard has DEX 12. Does that mean that my 12 DEX fighter can't pick locks or use chopsticks? (A giant lizard isn't dexterous enough to do either).An eagle has a STR 6. A giant rat has a STR 7. Does this mean that my STR 5 wizard has not better prospect than one of those animals when it comes to lifting, pushing, breaking etc? Can eagles in the D&D world carry 90 lb (which is about 4 times the weight of even the largest eagle)?You can't have it both ways. If you think that a STR 6 eagle can carry 4 to 10 times its own weight (depending on species and individual variation), then clearly eagles in D&D are very different from eagles in the real world. And then there is no reason to think that frogs and baboons mightn't be different too. (Animals in fairy stories, after all, can often talk and reason.)For my part, though, I think it's always been obvious that when it comes to non-human creatures, the translation of ability scores is a rough-and-ready exercise at best. (Runequest, one of the earliest games to rate all creatures in ability scores, tackled this with its contrast between Fixed and non-Fixed INT.)</blockquote>