Women

You're wrong. They do have physical penalties. Trouble wielding certain objects, movement speed, and more.

That's my whole point. Size and physiology do matter, but women are somehow off limits.

That's about the best explanation I could come up with too. But the strongest woman still isn't nearly as strong as the strongest man, and there's no accounting for it in the system.

Personally I think women should have other benefits, but some stats reduced.

>help help I'm being oppressed

Sexual dimorphism is so important to you that you really want another layer of mechanical complexity and potential balance snafus for what's essentially two letters on the character sheet? That's a lot of work for no benefit.

Because the majority of the playerbase wants it to be that way. It sells better. QED, that's how it is.

Capitalism 101: The market is never wrong.

Check my 5

Even a token acknowledgment, a small reduction in the STR attribute bonus, combined with some minor perk like "female intuition" for Perception checks, or healing bonus or something, would be fantastic.

I feel like the mindless demonization of real female differences from men sends a negative message: "in a fantasy world, you would exactly the same as a man!!"

>mindless demonization
>not including -4 Str
>demonization
>ignoring the already shotty math and explanations for how all the stats work out across multiple creatures and uses

> "in a fantasy world, you would exactly the same as a man!!"
> in a fantasy world, you can be whatever you want to be!!
> this is a negative message
> fantasy escapism is a negative message

You got me you troll. You got me good. Truly only the greatest leave /pol/

Generally speaking this is because most systems are intentionally abstract. The math behind many RPGs is intended to reflect a statistical set of assumptions about how particular attempts should pan out in the genre it attempts to emulate - some games attempt a bell curved result while other games prefer linear distributions.

If we go by the big game, D&D, it assumes that a certain range of attributes is functionally identical in terms of providing small +/-5 increments (the ranges for this differ between editions, but even OSR games have stat bonuses even if the range is larger).

Secondly, that +/-5% bonus is applied to various different measures across different timescales (again dependent on edition) - for something like strength, this measures the ability to "hit" (which is itself an abstraction representing a strike that directly leads to the loss of an arbitrary sum of survivability points), bashing doors, carrying equipment, and so forth.

A flat ability adjustment for female characters would not significantly improve the "realism" of the simulation - in order to make the simulation more accurate you would have to change the math to try and map it to real-world results, and that gets into thorny questions about results vs. process-based simulation and so forth.

That being said it's still completely your prerogative if you're running a game to adjust female ability scores; just keep in mind that doing it for the sake of "realism" is chasing a false hope.

tl;dr it's just a game

Do note that various earlier editions of D&D have also done exactly as you requested. Early editions of AD&D capped female strength at 18/50, for example, and official options have come up in various supplements.

>since the size of gnomes and dwarves is taken into account

It's not though. Realistically they should get a STR demodifier, which I assume you want for women, as being that size will always effect your overall strength and ability to apply that strength.

>the age of elves

D&D is notorious for not taking this into account.

PC characters in these games are assumed to be exceptional people that are beyond the norm. In a realistic setting no man could do what a 5th level human fighter does in D&D. Additionally, dimorphism rules would mean and additional layer of clunk in the system, as you'd have to take into account that not all races are even going to have these demodifiers. In fact, humans are the only ones it would have to apply to. There's nothing saying a female elf is weaker than a male elf, after all.

Same reason races get flat stat bonuses instead of starting stats being generated by generations of hereditary traits, upbringing, climate, culture, etc.

In AD&D, halflings, who are approximately the size of 6 year olds, have a -1 penalty to strength. Granted, it's twice that in 3.x, which is a bit more significant (though you have to figure that some of it comes down to mass and leverage, or lack thereof). More modern editions do not provide any sort of penalty to strength at all. So let's take -1 strength as our average across the editions. If halflings get -1, what should women get? -1/4? A 1 in 4 chance to get -1?

In any case, it's not like it really matters with NPCs. You can set them to whatever you want. But PCs do not represent a statistical average for their genders. Few people want to play a gimp character, so it just makes sense to start them on equal footing. And if that means you're being more selective with female PCs than male PCs (both because fewer women become adventurers and those that do are farther above the mean for their gender, and because female PCs represent a more elite subset of female adventurers -- maybe putting them in the top 1% as compared to the top 10% for male PCs), so be it.

1. We get upset because idiots like you only want to use it as an excuse to outcast certain people and to justify your rampant sexism, racism, and other unacceptable public behaviors.

2. It's okay to differentiate the physical dimorphism of a fantasy race because ultimately they don't exist and therefore can't really offend someone. Don't bother with the "But fantasy race X is totally real life race Z!" bullshit, cause that's a 100% baseless and groundless argument that depends on the DM.

3. Just fucking play 1e you scrub.

They have physical penalties due to being SMALL, not to being weak, dumbass.

-STRENGTH
-INTELLIGENCE
+WISDOM (Female Intuition, it seems to be a real thing.)
+CHARISMA

Flip around WIS and INT if you so wish.

>1. We get upset because idiots like you only want to use it as an excuse to outcast certain people and to justify your rampant sexism, racism, and other unacceptable public behaviors.

You should probably do some stretching exercises before you try such a massive reach you self righteous dipshit.

>Realistically they should get a STR demodifier, which I assume you want for women, as being that size will always effect your overall strength and ability to apply that strength.

Not necessarily. The average chimpanzee is roughly twice as strong as the average human, despite weighing less (~100 lbs. verses average human weight of ~130 lbs.) and standing only 4 feet tall on average (compared to humans' 5' 6'').

So prove me wrong then.

>Give me one good reason why your characters don't work in an office
>how are they supposed to eat with no money? pay rent?
>post systems that use realistic stats for debt and wages

you should go see a doctor OP, you might have brain damage :^)

Simple game balance. Nothing should be incorporated into a game that doesn't serve a meaningful mechanical purpose. Realism is not sufficient justification as no one actually has a clear picture of what is real due to the limited nature of human knowledge.

I just did, kiddo

They also live a lifestyle where they pull their body weight everywhere.

The average human has to pull their ass out of bed at worse.

You only proved you think you're different.

It's nice to think things.

Ironically enough, some people want realism in their fantasy games.
It doesn't have to be x-ism.
It simply makes sense that women are weaker than men and have a lower capacity for strength, albeit they have other advantages one may want to include.
It works as a two way street as well. Naturally, men have lower charisma in a sense since, biologically, humans trust feminine faces more than masculine faces (when talking about interaction with total strangers.)

To be honest, the OP is kind of dumb, but I can see where he's coming from.
But really, OP, just do it if you ever run a game.
I doubt anyone besides tumblrtards will care.
And you don't have to worry about those if you don't live on the east or west coast.

You have people able to punch a hole trough a steel wall.
I think that a bit less of strenght is irrelevant if you still punch through a steel wall.

I said average human, not average First Worlder. The great majority of people in the world are involved in some kind of manual labor activity.

Even without that, chimpanzees don't even intentionally lift or work out. If the everyday activity of a chimpanzee can result in such immense strength as compared to a human, imagine a chimpanzee with a regular exercise regimen intentionally trying to get buff.

Wow, really? So we've actually been moving backwards this whole time...

In D&D I completely dislike their terminology for Intelligence (which should probably called "Education"), Wisdom (should be "Intuition"), and Charisma (the whole stat is stupid), but this is the right spirit.

Advantages and penalties, not just a negative thing.

In all my fantasy settings ancient crossbreeding with orcs resulted in human females having stronger but slimmer muscles that are roughly equivalent to a man's ability. And crossbreeding with elves fixed menstruation.

Alternatively, you could throw a feminist minded diety in to make tweaks.

>humans trust feminine faces more than masculine faces

You've just demonstrated you have no fucking idea what Charisma actually represents. Congratulations.

Charisma does not have anything to do with appearance. It is personality, eloquence, and force of personality. At its most fundamental, Charisma represents the ability of a creature to tell itself apart from things that are not itself. It is your sense of self, your personhood, and your ability to project that personhood. A low Charisma represents someone who is meek, shy, or otherwise has a hard time getting noticed, regardless of what their physical appearance is.

Women should not get a particular bonus to Charisma based on that. Indeed if we're going to give them a modifier to Charisma it should arguably be a *penalty*.

Have you considered a different game than the current edition of D&D you're playing, perhaps? It sounds your problems with D&D run a whole lot deeper than just gender/sex representation.

>In D&D I completely dislike their terminology for Intelligence (which should probably called "Education"), Wisdom (should be "Intuition"), and Charisma (the whole stat is stupid)
>Going for a simulationist angle and focusing on specific definitions
>not looking at things as general expressions of stuff for the sake of creating a character

O-oh, you just have no idea how roleplaying or the systems work.

Hey, how about you go out and create your perfect game then? You clearly believe you know how things should be done.

To spite you.
Specifically you.

Fuck me, didn't notice this.

>In D&D I completely dislike their terminology for Intelligence (which should probably called "Education")

Intelligence is not your education, it is your reasoning ability, pattern recognition, and problem-solving ability. It is your ability to think and plan. A person could have no education but still have a high Intelligence simply due to a natural ability at deductive reasoning and logical extrapolation. A person with a low Intelligence might be highly educated and able to recite dates and events from memory, but still unable to string together logical patterns or conclusions from those memories (i.e., they tend to make the same mistakes over and over even though they haven't forgotten them)

I'm still callin apples and oranges unless chimps have proven more dense muscles than humans like on a biological level or some shit

Give us one good reason why we should not call you a retarded faggot op.

Oh wait you can't.

Man, you are just horseshit at these troll threads aren't you?
I mean a halfway decent troll could have used one image and a paragraph less of text to assemble a troll thread, but you just struggled with this didn't you?

Saging, not because I care if you troll of not but because as a fellow troll I think you need to get better at this since you clearly have the ability to do so.

That is, in fact, exactly what they have, but note that the musculature is not so dense as to make them looked swole by human standards.

Which means that a halfling, for example, might only stand 3' 6'' tall and look fairly lanky, but could still easily be at or around as strong as an adult human twice his height.

Because of fun.

If you want realism, stat adjustment for women can be +1 dex +1 con +1 cha -1 str

I apologize, user.
I playhomebrewpleasedontbullyme so I suppose I've changed lots of the stats meanings.
To me, charisma always meant how influential you were to other people, both on a physical and psychological level.

It's your campaign, you do you.

Because you're limiting options to roleplay for no other reason than being childish.

Eh, women having less strength in a fantastical setting still makes no sense.

thats balanced,not realistic.

-1 all physical stats
+1 to cha.

because it limits roleplaying with literally no upside, it'd be giving hair colours disadvantages, there's literally nothing to gain apart from pissing off your players.

>Give me one good reason why their stats should be equal to men's
Because it pisses off /pol/.

I think it can make sense, I also just think it's fundamentally unfun, particularly if you want to roll up a female character like Valeria of the Red Brotherhood.

No. Women have better pain resistance than men and are more agile.

>realistic
>fantasy roleplaying
>realistic

To piss up /pol/esuckers

easier

>hello i would like to make a female paladin
>okay u get -1 str women suck fuk u
>okay i would like to make a cleric with ginger hair
>hahah fagit u get -3 wis "people" with ginger hair have no souls
If you can't see what's wrong with this then you're retarded.

No I mean why you would want to do it makes no sense.

Like maybe if you want to create a super hardcore "live life in another's shoes" or some shit?

But men tend to have better manual dexterity. Which means that the whole thing evens out for the purposes of D&D - it simply isn't granular enough - and therefore men and women have a +0 to Dexterity.

>Women have better pain resistance

But men have better endurance when performing physical tasks such as running. Which, again, due to the fact that D&D isn't granular enough, nets a +0.

So we now have women at -1 Strength, +1 Charisma. That is not balanced in the slightest - a -1 penalty to Strength is not nearly equal to a +1 bonus to Charisma given that Charisma is a casting stat and therefore innately better than Strength or Dexterity (but not Constitution).

So, it makes to just drop it altogether.

Why don't you go back to /pol/, where you righfully belong?

Did someone say sexual dimorphism?

The problem with this explanation is that even exceptional women are sup bar compared to an average male. As soon as puberty hits it's just fucking over for women. There is no point in any adult males life where he is weaker than a woman is at any point in her life.

You give them a higher charisma bonus. Female intuition is a bullshit concept that just tries to put bitches above men when they aren't more predictive. On the other hand we know 100% that women get social perks that men don't and have done through most recorded civilizations.

...

Because I get enough flack for being female and playing RPGs that I don't need to play a gimped character just because you "want realism" in a fantasy or science fiction game where realism is already out the fucking window and fluttering off to Neverland and Narnia.

Since men are clearly socially inept compared to women (we train for social combat from age 10 on - and we're fuckloads more cruel about it than boy ever are or ever will be), don't actually remember anything other than the last couple of days (women remember conversations and things you said for YEARS after you've forgotten them, you can't claim you have better memories), and are inherently more vicious than men (you complain about how crazy and evil we are constantly yourself, you can't have it both ways), why should we settle for penalties in the mental stats? We have manipulated men into being our slaves and toys for centuries - hell, the entire justice system revolves around giving women lesser sentences for worse crimes than males commit, so obviously we're better at social engineering than men ever were - looks at how hard you have to work to prove women are 'less powerful' nowadays. Sexual dimorphism applies to the brain too. Women are just so much better at social engineering than men that anything less than an intelligence and charisma bonus is giving men too much credit.

And the fact that OP doesn't notice it just shows how much better we are at it.

OP here, I take offense at your insults towards homosexuals and the mentally handicapped.

So you don't play D&D? The rules clearly state that "10" is "average", and the DC rating is supposed to reflect this.

But you're just making that up. The official description isn't like that.
Arcana?
History?
Religion?
Hell no. This is about the nerds who designed the game conflating education with intelligence, plain and simple. They thought they were smart because they read books and knew math. As a writer I take offense at such bad, misleading terminology.

You're right, he is wrong. The official description of "force of personality", not all that other shit.

Again, nerds who thought that they were unpopular with girls because they lacked a magical attribute where you force people to like you by being loud and imposing, unlike their restrained genius(!)

If someone brings up the strength thing I just say "Serena Williams-looking chicks aren't exceptional in this universe."

You are a insult towards homosexuals and the mentally handicapped.

>There is no point in any adult males life where he is weaker than a woman is at any point in her life
>Male who never lifts is stronger than female olympic weightlifter

/pol/ plz leave

> put bitches above men

.../r9k/ plz leave?

Did you see the women heavyweight judo competition yesterday.

All of the entrants could snap OP supremes gentleman's ass in half.

>Realism outcasts people
>We must deny reality so inferior people don't feel bad about themselves.

I'm a goddamn cripple. If you put a cripple in a fantasy world and don't make him fucked up in some way that he can't just ignore (think Yoda in the prequels) then you're going to annoy the fuck out of me. People being inferior and learning to deal with it is a damn good story to tell and if that drives you off then you're a faggot who shouldn't be in this hobby any way.

>People are actually responding to this
>They don't even sage

>Pointing out scientific fact makes Veeky Forums call you /pol/ and demand you leave when discussing a topic.

Hello Atheism+ How is that social justice angel working for you?

To mess with you specifically.

That's stupid. If you want a real bonus, give them better con to match the better str you're giving the men, you misogynistic ass-hats. Women can take more pain than men. SCIENCE cock-heads.

>The problem with this explanation is that even exceptional women are sup bar compared to an average male. As soon as puberty hits it's just fucking over for women. There is no point in any adult males life where he is weaker than a woman is at any point in her life.

Except that's wrong? I'm currently in an apartment with a girl who is about 6 inches shorter than me, works as a waitress, and is just a bit stronger than me. If I use the extra leverage my height gives me, I have about a 50/50 shot of overpowering her. She's not even an exercise nut either, just a waitress. Admittedly I've lived an extremely sedentary life except for that year I tried running at the gym and - well - my current job at said restaurant, but still. I'm 25, she's 23.

>user says "because fun"
>responds with random shit about averages wtf?
>Doesn't play with flexible stat/skill association rules
>justifies not ignoring or changing the stuff he doesn't like because of some kind of "profession" or some shit
>perhaps thinks that major leaders got to their position because they looked hawt or some shit

Well since you're a writer you can make the next thing that will outsell D&D! I hope those dang SJWs don't shut you down.

>doesn't correct statement
>literally believes male who doesn't lift is physically stronger than female that does?????

Yeah, a lot of lady wrestlers (Olympic wrestlers) and chicks who do high level strength sports like shot put and weightlifting have big physiques too. It's one of the reasons why it's weird to put a cap on lady strength or whatever, because you're kinda supposed to be these exceptional heroes anyway. Point buy and arrays that limit skills are just there to encourage specialization so you can work as a team. If you're a chick doing the 100 meter dash in a World Championship then you're probably faster than 99% of men. There's only a second difference in the WRs, and only like 100 men have broken 10 seconds.

He said male, not nu-male.

>-INTELLIGENCE
But women have about the same average IQ as men (though they aren't as variable) and tend to do a bit better scholastically.

>+CHARISMA
Charisma is mainly a leadership stat. I really don't see women inspiring the troops better than men.

>I'm a manlet who spends all day jerking off and has let my body decay to a skeleton so I have no body mass.

Here's a chart for you all.

>Combined grip strength by age and sex. Combined grip strength is the sum of the largest isometric grip strength readings from each hand, measured using a handgrip dynamometer. Grip strength is an index of upper body strength. Each point is one person. Sample size = 7064.

>Data are from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2011-2012:

Except it's mostly right, and your anecdote indicates you to be one of the 1% weakest outlier men.

See
You know. SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.

Female and male IQ curves are very different and most of the studies done focus around puberty which give men a disadvantage compared to women as they take longer to fully mature. But it's really hard to get funding for it to do proper studies these days since academia is marxism land.

That's not Constitution, that's resistance to penalties from shit like Symbol of Pain.

THANK YOU GODAMMIT. OP HERE, I KNEW THERE WAS SANITY IN THE WORLD.

Adversity is THE PILLAR of heroism. Shitty "fantasy" ignores struggle in favor of idealism, but idealism is not only boring and predictable, but insulting to the potential for humans to overcome. Great stories are born out of inequality, suffering, and struggle.

I applaud your confidence, but go look up the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism first, then come back and talk about how women are responsible for social engineering.

You do know that women get out of more heinous crimes with lesser penalties than men do all the time? How is that not charisma based?

To be completely fair she could be freakishly strong.

Dear -4 strength shitposters, dear muh equality shitposters, can we come together and compromise on women having -2 strength?

When we're looking at female PCs, it matters more what the stats are relative to each other rather than how they compare to males. Remember, PCs are not representative of the overall population, and female PCs might be more exceptional for their gender than male PCs. If you're going to apply stat adjustments, I think +1 dex, -1 str works pretty well, because women are going to have a higher dexterity to strength ratio overall than men.

Also, charisma is a leadership stat, and I really don't think we see evidence that women are more inspiring leaders than men.

-2str +2cha +1con is acceptable.

>As a writer I take offense at such bad, misleading terminology.

As a likely more successful writer I believe you are being an idiot.

Intelligence as an existence in and of itself is not easy to quantify. There is still a huge amount of argument as to how intelligence is defined in academic circles. However, it is true that being able to excel in fields like history, math, etc, is a sign of intelligence (not the only form of intelligence, but intelligence nonetheless). Simply knowing things does not make you smart, but being smarter will often lead to a great understanding and application of these fields.

Sure.

Except the proof that women get away with a lot more shit because they're women which means that either a) men are dumb, or b) women get away with shit because of their charisma.

Statistics proves it constantly. Since we know you aren't going to want to penalize men, you have to give women a benefit, or you're just being a hypocrite about the statistical data presented to you.

You either obediently adhere to the statistics you're using to prove women are weaker AND that they are either more charismatic/intelligent than men, or admit you just don't like women to be better at something than men.

>Also, charisma is a leadership stat
Not really in d&d

That's more down to gender roles.

>random chart with no source
>STILL UNCOMFIRMED IF BELIEVES MALE WHO DOESN'T LIFT IS STRONGER THAN FEMALE OLYMPIC WEIGHTLIFTER! I'M WORRIED /POL/FAG VERY WORRIED! WHAT DID YOUR MOM DO TO YOU? ARE YOU GOING THROUGH A BREAK-UP? DID SHE CHEAT ON YOU WITH ANOTHER WOMAN THAT HAD A BIGGER DICK?
>thinks finding IQ is ez pz instead of a horrible clusterfuck of bullshit

sure is /pol/

That's like, 90% social construct... Sorry. The only thing I can see giving chicks over guys is the con boost. Most of the rest of that is societal bias and just basic vindictiveness. We don't forget stuff because our memory's worse. We forget that stuff because we have better things to remember and haven't been trained by our society to be petty and vindictive.