How would a modern-day female bodybuilder fare in a sword-and sorcery setting (assuming exotic diseases aren't an...

the average sword and sorcery barbarian manages to maintain a perfectly developed physique on a meager hunting-and-gathering diet, so that's not an issue

If you're just handwaving everything then there's no basis for discussion. You can just say whatever you like happens, because reasons.

Just gonna step in here for a second. The idea that the diet of a hunter gatherer is meager or that they live on the edge is actually bullshit in many cases. Anthropological studies have shown that hunter gatherer societies meet or exceed their calorie requirements, and still manage to have more free time than we do in modern society. Can's source that right at this second, but if you'd like i can go back and find it from my old anthropology text books.

With that being said it is no where near enough to sustain a bodybuilder. And fantasy aesthetics are there cause that's how we like it, not cause it makes sense. We are approaching this from a more logical point of view than just what are the paintings like.

In the context of a roleplaying game she'd just be a high-charisma character with above-average constitution and strength.
Her best bet is becoming a street performer, or maybe a dancer. And I'm sure there's plenty of bikini contests in Cimmeria.

not everything, just the inaccurate statements you make.
For example, saying that that it's hard to maintain a bodybuilder physique in a sword and sorcery setting is inaccurate. That's common knowledge.

Do they have nutritional supplements? Is food, namely lean meat, as readily available as it is today? Can they devote a large portion of their day to lifting? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then they probably can't maintain.

Bitch can lift, not hunter gather.

Unless someone takes her in shes fucked.

She'll probably be a fine warr/barb, maybe even a paladin?

probability is irrelevant in the face of raw facts.

>clit of frost slut strength +5
hnngghhhh

Is the bodybuilder built for strength or show? Show muscles don't impart a great deal of strength, male or female, but a strength bodybuilder builds for lifting and core.

If we're going the route of "fantasyland but traditional gender roles," why not go the route of her joining a travelling circus and being the strong woman, because nobody has ever seen a woman crush a watermelon between her thighs before?

Might as well drop them some place interesting, because generally a story of a guy getting dropped in a fantasy world and dying three days later from disease and exposure is typically boring. We're already injecting fantasy into this, or rather injecting this into fantasy, so we might as well go the route of fantasy narrative and explore the interesting stories rather than injecting the real world into fantasy and then just having fantasy act exactly like reality, making this question redundant, as we might as well have dropped our hypothetical subject in the middle of a Siberia or something.

...

Absolutely shit, same as male body builders, the standard body builder physique isn't good for anything that's not showing off and is often fairly unhealthy

They may look impressive but the muscles they've worked on USUALLY aren't any good for long term manual labor or combat, mind you they'd do better than your average basement dweller, but compaired to someone who's actually physically fit and/or does heavy lifting or fighting for a living? They'd be worth shit all

Nope.

She dont know which end of the pointy stick to point at an enemy.

Grand total of 0 combat skills, a bulky farm-boy could probably take her in a fight.

Meaning said bulky farmboy would make the better warr/barb.

I am a basement dweller who got fit a few years back at a shitty job lifting lots of boxes.

Fell back into the flab since then but when I was fit I still looked a bit chubby after 4-6 hours a day moving around 50 pound boxes for nearly a year.

Yeah, but in an adventuring party, she can strike awe into the hearts of the enemy and dazzle them with her glistening oiled-up abs and perfect hair.

Ok, I could maybe see her swinging some form of bardic performer doing a strongman act.

Would take a bit bit more than your average body builder but its not impossible.

Alright then how would she fare in a sex slave harem?

So she's the bard?

musclebard

Shes a performer of some sort that if she had the know how she could do a few feats of strength to demoralize the enemy and stir confidence in comrades.

I know there a number of tricks relying more on the know how of leverage than the raw strength.

But doesn't that mean she would constantly need a big strong man to protect her?

Slightly worse than an average in-shape male

Any bard is usually better off with a meatshield to pose dramatically behind.

She'd probably die.
But so would most of the morons in this thread.

Including me.

Shit that's actually a pretty good concept: she could pose as a Valkyrie or some similar warrior-angel thing and all the superstitious picts would be terrified.

Never said i had better odds than she would. You drop most humans into an environment they aren't used to with next to no resources and no support structure and they will die. We survive through group cooperation and learned/taught behaviors, not because we are paragons of physical ability.

>-4 strength

Please masturbate before you post.

>that goal of bodybuilding is primarily the muscular looks, not effective muscle strength.
Stop being stupid.

>Show muscles don't impart a great deal of strength
Fucking stop.

Lel it's actually true.

No gear, no combat training, no connections that would allow her to acquire either gear or combat training, no actual skills that would allow her to find work as anything more than a laborer which means she's never getting those connections. She's fucked.

Horrible, considering bodybuilders lift for looks and not for strength. They want to bloat their muscles as much as possible and even dehydrate themselves prior to competitions. A female bodybuilder would be stronger than your average woman, but weaker than either a female powerlifter or even an average man.

As for female powerlifters... they too would rank below average men. Especially average medieval men, who would mostly spend their time doing physical labor and would be in pretty decent shape assuming they're not (too) underfed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physiology#Muscle_mass_and_strength
Even when comparing entirely untrained men to professional female athletes, it's found that untrained men have higher gripping strength for example. The differences in male and female physiology are so overwhelmingly great that nothing can overcome it.

That's why it's called fantasy: realism is thrown out of the window and a borderline anorexic supermodel can utterly destroy a male musclehorse in a wrestling match.

Bodybuilders are stronger than your average motherfucker, but it's not functional strength. Compare powerlifters and bodybuilders, and you'll find that powerlifters look highly unimpressive and often on the fat side. Pic related is the strongest man in recorded history and he looks downright tubby.

Truth is that even strongmen competitors and power-lifters wouldn't be all that useful as adventurers/soldiers.
Adventuring requires lots of traveling and going into the wilds with limited supplies which would melt away all the fat and muscle pretty fast

Yeah, I overlooked that. When you're adventuring you're mostly trying to get from point A to point B and back (or to a later point C). Your supplies are as much of an enemy to you as the monsters you face.

>without resources or a support structure, even though she is fit she will probably live in squalor and die
This is patently untrue. How many sword-and-sorcery heroes have little resources and support? Pretty much all of them. How many die in squalor? None of them.
>She isn't trained in combat
doubt.jpg. Seriously, how many musclegirls have you seen in S&S that DIDN'T rek shit? None of them. It just doesn't make sense.
>Men would be stronger
doubt.jpg x10000. See above.

You guys are the faggots begging for ""realism"" in games which would clearly suffer for it, aren't you?
Yep. Alright.

>How many sword-and-sorcery heroes have little resources and support? Pretty much all of them. How many die in squalor? None of them.
Because, they are, you know, heroes. As in exceptionnal individuals.
You follow the history of Conan instead of a thousand other barbarians because he ws the only one that reached the top.

You miss two points:

The point is that Muh Realism does not apply here; her being "without support" is not a gotcha.

She is a musclegirl. She is a narratively important individual by default.

>She is a narratively important individual by default.
Huh? Why?
You're using circular logic:
>Female bodybuilders would fare well in a S&S setting because they're important
>Female bodybuilders are important because they fare well in the setting.

"I kick ass because I'm the protagonist" is a staple of bad isekai, not good stories.
If she wandered from place to place acquiring experience, was born in an amazonian society, got the blessing of a goddess, a magic sword, dragon blood, or a wise master to train her? Sure, any of those backgrounds would mean she could kick ass.
But simply because she has well-defined muscles? Meh. Any S&S peasant girl will have the same by simply working in the fields 8 hours a day. That doesn't make her remarkable in the slightest.

You got heroic peasant girls IRL, like Jeanne D'arc or Jeanne Hachette yeah, I like french medieval girls called Jeanne. But they're heroic because of their unusual deeds, not because of their upbringing.
Just because some nerd fought off a panther doesn't mean that nerds are the best hunters of big felines in the world.

>yeah, I like french medieval girls called Jeanne
That's simply a sign of good taste, mon nègre.

>>Female bodybuilders are important because they fare well in the setting.
You have bad reading capabilities.

They are important because they have big muscles.

>Any S&S peasant girl will have the same by simply working in the fields 8 hours a day.
This is retarded.

what are the stats of a high-cut spandex leotard or modeling bikini?

That's a kind of prostitution.

Best case scenario? She wipes out a few bands of kobolds and goblins for a local town and gets picked up by a passing party of adventurers as a martial.

>people answer the question seriously and reflectively
>OP gets assraped about it because he only wanted people to write musclegirl ERP shit
OP was an unusually heavy powerfaggot this time.

>OP gets assraped about it because he only wanted people to write musclegirl ERP shit
Uh, no.

I only made like two or three sporadic posts

You aren't OP.

The funny thing is she probably isn't even as strong as a totally average man in this pic, just cut. Pics like these trade on the lack of scale, stood next to a man she'd almost certainly look tiny.

I take it you've never done any serious manual labour in your entire life?

Motherfucker they call it body building for a reason. You need to build that shit, you don't just grow muscles that large.

Actual peasants get really lean; their muscles are super dense, not big. At absolute best they look kinda muscly, but never bodybuilder level.

And, of course, we're not talking about real life. This is pretty obvious. No peasant's going to be the muscly hero in a S&S story, not unless they're the burly blacksmith.

He doesn't even know anyone who has.

Most people nowadays don't really realize how weak and flabby their sedentary, non-physical jobs have made them, not just because they have one of those jobs, but because they literally don't know anyone who does.

For a nerd it was pretty shit in a lot of ways to grow up in rural nowhere, but one thing that was good about it was getting a sensible baseline for what a human being is supposed to be shaped like.

>their muscles are super dense, not big

I really don't get it. You know bodybuilder's big muscles are inefficient, yet you get angry when people point out that bodybuilder's big muscles are indeed inefficient and wouldn't provide any advantage in a sword and sorcery setting?

If you wish for a displaced modern-day musclegirl so much, give a musclegirl fetish to some god in the setting, so he takes an interest in Mrs. bodybuilder and gives her mythical powers.
But don't expect it powers to come naturally. A RL dwarf won't gain a beard, an axe and an absurd tolerance to booze just by being transported into a fantasy setting.

>implying she won't join a circus troupe and being in gold with feats of strength literally doing the exact same job.

>You know bodybuilder's big muscles are inefficient, yet you get angry when people point out that bodybuilder's big muscles are indeed inefficient
Here's the solution to your Big Problem: I never said the last thing. I DID say that she would obviously obey the laws of the setting, which run on narrative and not physics (as an autist might assume).

Have you never seen a sword and sorcery setting? Female body builder with floofy 80's hair is what your typical fem-barbarian looks like. Teach her to swing a two handed sword and swap the spandex for fur or chainmail and she's indistinguishable from an indigenous resident of the setting.

Bodybuilding is about muscles, not strength. She gon' die.

youtu.be/QfNHFv2slMY

This is what a modern combat athlete of comparable weight can do to a male bodybuilder using only unarmed martial arts. This chick would get murdered the first time she encountered any male with a weapon, especially if they were trained.

A real world bodybuilder *looks* like a fantasyland barbarian, but what she actually *is* is a real world bodybuilder. The question is not how someone who looks like a modern female bodybuilder but is actually native to the setting would fare. The question is how a modern female bodybuilder would fare.

muscle woman catches the eye of the local chieftain, she's not from arround.
gets challenged to strength test. non combat because you can't take a woman seriously, she owns at throwing rocks.
BB lady is submissive and can clean a kill and pick woos, brings back memories from Nana's in the old country when they were poor in the winter.
she picks too much wood, and the chieftain is pleased, she does laundry for 3 women half her size.
best chieftain slave wife, mothers a better race with superior genes and hgh milk.

>A real world bodybuilder *looks* like a fantasyland barbarian
Ergo in fantasyland she is one.

This really isn't difficult.

I'm saying that once she's in the setting, she follows the same rules. Which means aesthetic muscles = very strong. Training might still be an issue.

>Ergo in fantasyland she is one.

No. That's a total non-sequitir. The real world bodybuilder does not have the fantasyland barbarian's upbringing. She has no idea how to swing a sword. Lacking any of the barbarian's skills, her strength is useless.

Yeah, and give a human dwarf a beard and an axe and he's undistinguishable from Gimli; it still doesn't mean him a fantasy dwarf with darkvision.

>which run on narrative and not physics
Let's take Dark Sun, the Sword & Sorcery setting of DnD : Even the most rickety old man in there is supposed to be a complete beast compared to heroes in other settings (in fact there is an adventure where a minor Dark Sun beast wreaks havoc in the Forgotten Realms), because they have spend generations fighting against the harshest conditions and creatures known to man. Their apparence doesn't have a lot to do with their powerlevel, even if Darksun is full of bodybuilders in leather thongs.
So, on narrative alone, she still gets her ass kicked.

Sure, whatever. Doesn't fucking matter, she doesn't have any actual skills with which to use that strength.

>doesn't *makes* him
Dunno why it swap words like that when I write english, I don't have this problem with other languages.

some systems alligator grapple as a given also picking up heavy shit is a skill

A power lifter would be "stronger" when doing three things: deadlifting, squatting, and pressing. Volume training is a great way to get actually generally applicable strength, better than nervous system training. Because there's no form for real life.

She's gonna be way better off than an average powerlifter.

>their muscles are super dense, not big

Being this retarded.

>That's a total non-sequitir.
I do not think you know what a non-sequitur is.
>The real world bodybuilder does not have the fantasyland barbarian's upbringing. She has no idea how to swing a sword. Lacking any of the barbarian's skills, her strength is useless.
We've already established this is untrue.
See above.
Of course it does. Could you imagine a huge muscle-bound woman in a S&S setting NOT being a badass?

This is a Sherpa. You know who Sherpas are.

Does he seem particularly fuckhuge to you?

Muscles are about strength, too. There's a lot of strength you can get from training your nervous system to activate your muscle thoroughly and explosively for specific movements, but if you're a skinny pansy, you're gonna brick wall in your strength training.

Most bodybuilders are super fucking strong. Some squat ass to grass, all deadlift huge, all bench press huge. They don't sit around bicep curling all day because they know that won't get them any muscle growth.

I fucking hate this thread so much. Goddamn you all. I'm so fucking triggered. Fuck. You win OP you win. My autism has been beyond triggered it has ascended to its planer form.

Realistically no, she dies in the vast majority of cases. In S&S she has three options she either:

a dies

b gets abducted by a villain to then be rescued by the hero and become his slam piece or become trained by him, still possible becoming his slam piece.

or c gets found by a wise mentor and trains to become a badass barbarian woman.

In your muscle girl fetish world, she sucks your cock and has glistening abs and is the best thing ever and forever.

I'm not saying muscle size is directly proportional to strength. I'm saying there is no such thing as extra "dense" muscle. It's just make believe.

>Could you imagine
As a rule, yes, I can. That's why I play rpgs.

What you want is someone getting transformed into another archetype as a result of interdimensional travel. Basically Den.
What's the point of her being a female bodybuilder beforehand, if her role, skillset and personality aren't the same at all (Since I doubt a modern-day bodybuilder would do anything but shit her pants and run screaming when facing a dragon)? Why not go a step further and take a nerdy girl from our world and make her a badass barbarian woman in a SnS setting?

On a sidenote, I'm glad to know that I'll become a powerful wizard if I get transported to a fantasy setting, since I have a beard, glasses and a bathrobe on me presently. It could actually be a pretty fun setting, riot cops becoming knights, garbage collectors djinns due to their reflective clothing, and so on.

>Sure, whatever. Doesn't fucking matter, she doesn't have any actual skills with which to use that strength.

But this being fantasyland, all she needs is a montage.

Preferably after meeting a swarthy, rugged local who first mocks her for her womanly form shortly after her arrival in Ye Olde Fantasylande. Of course, she shows him up by being super-strong (even stronger than him!) but her lack of familiarity with anachronistic medieval-ish weapons is shown to be a dramatic shortfall after the pair are attacked by disgusting green mooks!

Having barely survived the fray thanks to their teamwork and BB Babe's impressive muscle-using skills, the man admits that perhaps she might not be completely useless... if only she knew how to swing a sword!

And the romance subplot basically writes itself.

>How would a modern-day female bodybuilder fare in a sword-and sorcery setting

I would just say a female who was born exceptionally large, or at least more proportionate to her average male counterparts. Humans are sexually dimorphic, but plenty of exceptions occur in both genders all the time.

How would she fare? I imagine the same as anyone else who can pick up and use a weapon.

Be careful, lads.

>Unless everyone is malnourished, many of the men in setting would be stronger than her anyway

It's not uncommon for guys to have genes that make them stand no taller than 5'6", and it's no less uncommon for them to have genes that make their arms have a less average circumference than their mothers'.

Sexual dimorphism is a general occurrence, not a rule of nature. It's not remotely realistic to say the strongest females are generally weaker than an average male. Are women smaller and weaker on average? Yes. But this is not a constant. Characters generated by players are made up of as many exceptions as the player wants, and these exceptions are within the realm of scientifically and genetically feasible possibilities, including females with 18 STR and CON.

>As a rule, yes, I can. That's why I play rpgs.
If you need to make up your own RPG to do something...then you can't. We're not talking about your personal magical realm here, we're talking about actual S&S.
Motherfucker are you seriously trying to tell me that people don't get more muscle from doing shit like hiking up mountains with massive bags?

Shit, you can see his calves in that picture. They're not fuckhuge, but you can see they're not the flabby slug-things normal people have (in the west anyway).

>we're talking about actual S&S.
For now I'm the only one that has cited actual S&S settings, like Conan, Dark Sun and Den.
The three of which actually also have both a handful of powerful people that dont look like roided bodybuilders and some musclebound women acting as potted plants or slaves on occasion.

Do you have any actual examples of musclegirls being just normal?

>detailed body
>smiley face
fuckig anime

Heh, good luck finding S&S art of almost anyone being normal. Family breakfasts aren't a staple of the genre.
Anyways, just google Frazetta. Half of his women are badass warriors, the other half is composed of sultry seductresses or damsels in distress, and he makes absolutely no difference of bodytype between the two kinds.

>and he makes absolutely no difference of bodytype between the two kinds.
This is largely true, however, it's also true that he doesn't draw musclegirls.

DnD 3rd edition player handbook, half-orc.
Idle, smiling, non-threatening (contrary to the male one that looks about to eat the gnome), dare I say seductive?

>We've already established this is untrue.

No. No we have not.

>But this being fantasyland, all she needs is a montage.

Pic is related. You don't get a montage just for showing up. Whoever's lucky enough to survive long enough to get the montage is the person whose story is told. The bones who litter the dragon's cave don't have their stories told, but they all would've seemed like the main character right up until they bit the dust in the finale. Most would-be heroes don't even make it that far.

>one stupid troll keeps the reasonable anons raging for hours.

Everybody done goofed and fell for the fetishist's b8. I call bullshit. Unless he is literally retarded no one is this dense. He has to be trolling. No way he doesn't realise his position is untenable.

I don't care, I like arguing, it helps me organizing my thoughts. And it's not like the debate has devolved to shit flinging.

True, my tae-bo instructor is built like the guy on the bottom, his main focus is karate (4th Dan) but he's as light on his feet as a dancer and he could snap me in two in a moment. Genuinely scary. Fucking great trainer.