Mod Note:And to think all this time I've believed I've been having fun playing D&D. Now that I know that the attribute system is not realistic, I realize that fun must have been an illusion.
A Grizzly Bear has a strength of 19. Those athletes are not that strong. No Human naturally can be.
I dunno... Hafthor is probably stronger than a grizzly bear. They don't even lift!
But it would be hard to test, what with all the claws.
How about we consider a more obvious real-world analog: the amount of weight a person can lift. According to the Player's Handbook:
Your Strength score determines the amount of weight you can bear. You can push, drag, or lift a weight in pounds up to twice your carrying capacity, or 30 times your Strength score.
The world record for deadlift is 501kg, or 1104.5 lbs., set by Hafthor Bjornsson (1104.5/30=36.8) So here's what a Strength of 37 looks like in real life:
The strength of animals is vastly underrated in D&D. Many animals are far stronger than most people imagine, far beyond max human or even low-level superhero strength such as Captain America potential. It's applied differently, a grizzly bear doesn't need to show off to his weight lifter bros. On the other hand they can rip your car door off if there's something tasty inside. Of course I also think that grizzly bears' CR is also too low, but that's a different issue.For an animal a bit closer to a Human, and one of our nearest cousins, a Silverback gorilla is around 5-9 times stronger than a Human, and can lift 4,000 lb (1,810 kg) on a bench press, while a well-trained man can only lift up to 885 lb (401.5 kg).
Apes have a Strength of 16 (size Medium) and Giant Apes 23 (size Huge) so you'd likely have a Silverback Gorilla somewhere in the middle of those two game stats, with 'Apes' likely representing something like an Adult Chimpanzee (also a crazy strong animal).
Just curious where you are getting these numbers. Also, are talking absolute or pound for pound?For an animal a bit closer to a Human, and one of our nearest cousins, a Silverback gorilla is around 5-9 times stronger than a Human, and can lift 4,000 lb (1,810 kg) on a bench press, while a well-trained man can only lift up to 885 lb (401.5 kg).
Conversely, we also like to exaggerate the strength of animals too. Like chimps being 8x as strong as a person, etc.The strength of animals is vastly underrated in D&D. Many animals are far stronger than most people imagine, far beyond max human or even low-level superhero strength such as Captain America potential. It's applied differently, a grizzly bear doesn't need to show off to his weight lifter bros. On the other hand they can rip your car door off if there's something tasty inside. Of course I also think that grizzly bears' CR is also too low, but that's a different issue.
But people want to maintain the Tarzan fiction that a human could wrestle a gorilla and win. That, and the simplified math and calculations start to fall apart at higher levels of strength. So actual strength is far higher, applied strength in terms of what the game cares about is far lower.
Just curious where you are getting these numbers. Also, are talking absolute or pound for pound?
I did a bit of research on this topic during the pandemic, though on chimps. You will see wild claims that a male chimp is 8x as strong as a person pound for pound. However, when people actually studied it, they found this wasn't even close to true. A male chimp is like 1.8-2x as strong as a human is pound for pound. Someone like Hathor would be stronger than the a chimp actually because he is so much bigger.
Of course I also think that grizzly bears' CR is also too low, but that's a different issue.
Hathor weighs 140kgs, around double that of an Adult male Chimpanzee which weighs 70 kilos.
Chimps being roughly twice as strong as humans pound for pound puts them close to even there.
Hathor has a Strength of 18 (peak human strength). The Chimp (being a 5E Ape) has a Strength of 16.
It's likely Hathor has talked his DM into allowing him to swap his starting feat (as a Human) to this custom feat instead:
Big Unit
- You gain +1 to your Strength score, to a maximum score of 20
- Powerful Build: You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.