Variant rule: bringing back biodiversity (simulationism)

[MaxWilson]

Here's a rule variant for simulationist DMs that could be interesting:

If you play a male, you may opt in to taking Str +1 Wis -1 due to your larger frame, worse night vision, aggressiveness, etc. Or you can stick with regular rolled stats + racial mods alone.

If you play a female, you may opt in to Con +1 Str -1 OR Wis +1 Str -1 due to a smaller frame, heightened emotional awareness, generally better health, etc.

You could extend this opt in model to model races like orcs and goliaths which ought to be more different from humanity than they are, e.g. orcs can opt for Str +3 Dex -1 Int -2 Cha -2 (based loosely on MM stat tends), halflings could opt for additional Str -3 Con +1 on top of PHB mods, and Athasian half-giants can opt for Str +7 Con +2 Dex -3 Wis -2 Cha -4 due to their wishy washy nature and huge physical frame.

Because it's opt in you can still play against type if you want to be a Str 18 halfling who arm wrestles ogres, but unless no one at all takes the option, PCs and NPCs will have an overall stat distribution more similar to reality.

Also because it's opt in there is less need to give equal numbers of positive and negative modifiers. Just try to make sure it's not attractive to munchkins, i.e. avoid having more positive than negative mods for PC races. Other than that, just do what's realistic.

You might or might not want to combine this with a rule variant that allows stats to exceed 20 when they are initially rolled (no ASIs allowed after that). Then you'd see e.g. the rare big dumb brick Str 26 Int 9 Wis 8 Cha 6 male Athasian half-giant, which seems like a fun possibility for PC and NPC potential alike.

[Lalliman]

That half-giant is very attractive to munchkins. Just because they have an equal amount of positives and negatives doesn't mean they're balanced. Because attack stats increase both accuracy and damage, they increase in power exponentially the higher they are. So a +4 to your attack stat is almost always better than a +2 to two stats. And that's not to mention that Int and Cha are mostly irrelevant for classes that don't need them, so penalising those doesn't do that much for balance.

As for the rest, sure. I personally don't really care - I find the racial traits more interesting than the stats - but I can see why you would.

[MaxWilson]

That half-giant is very attractive to munchkins. Just because they have an equal amount of positives and negatives doesn't mean they're balanced.

Because attack stats increase both accuracy and damage, they increase in power exponentially the higher they are. So a +4 to your attack stat is almost always better than a +2 to two stats.

You're right that I probably should have chosen a different example for the sake of clarity, although the increase in power is quadratic, not exponential. To explain my thinking about half-giants:

In that particular case it's not just about the number of positives and negatives--it's also about the weaknesses of melee specialization given the 5E ruleset and the downsides of Large size. (There's a reason Mounted Combatant isn't that popular despite the offensive and mobility advantages it grants, and it has a lot to do with people being wary of squeezing Large creatures into interior spaces.) There are definitely upsides too, like potentially getting to use greatswords one-handed, etc., but letting a half-giant max out at Str 22-24 (and rarely 26) instead of 20 just means the half-giant is being channeled right into the half-giant stereotype: big dumb bruiser who puts on heavy armor and hits things really hard if they get close enough. There is after all a reason why Strength is the only attribute which has magic items (Girdle of XYZ Giant strength) in the DMG for boosting all the way to Strength 29: boosting Strength to extreme levels tends to be less game-breaking than boosting other attributes, and besides it has a long history in D&D.

If it were Dex +8 he could abuse Sharpshooter all day and have a stellar AC, and if it were Cha +8 he could abuse Agonizing Repelling Eldritch Blast and/or Sharpshooter + Hexblade all day AND +4 to his spell save DCs. But with just Strength all he can do is grapple/prone really effectively and kill things in melee (and with darts), which has built-in weaknesses.

Also, in an Athasian context having a lower Dex is a larger handicap than it would be in a more industrial setting, because especially at low levels he is unlikely to be able to afford heavy armor (it's metal and therefore crazy-expensive) and the half-giant will take AC penalties unless he can find a patron (like a Sorcerer King) to give him heavy armor, and patrons come with their own (interesting!) downsides.

In other words, a munchkin who was attracted to a half-giant just so he could get Str 22-24 would still not overshadow other PCs, especially given his other weaknesses like being less able to multiclass effectively and having weaker saving throws. He would be a disappointed munchkin; though a non-munchkin in his place would still have plenty of fun.


And that's not to mention that Int and Cha are mostly irrelevant for classes that don't need them, so penalising those doesn't do that much for balance.

As for the rest, sure. I personally don't really care - I find the racial traits more interesting than the stats - but I can see why you would.

Thanks for commenting.

[8wGremlin]

This is an incredible sexist thing to post and wrong on so many scientific levels.

[Nidgit]

There's no real reason to make a distinction between sexes in 5e. The PHB goes out of its way to avoid making anything sex or gender dependent and offers exceptions to traditional gender norms in several places. At best, making male and female phenotypes distinct is dangerous ground.

Even if you were to, you would definitely want to steer clear of any changes to mental stats and make changes optional in the first place. Applying human standards to other races would be a mistake too: some species of birds have females being significantly larger than males, for instance, and this could potentially translate to Aarakocra.

[the_brazenburn]

This is an incredible sexist thing to post and wrong on so many scientific levels.

Sort of true. On the one hand, male and female humans developed on different lines due to their biological differences. Females, being saddled with fetuses (while pregnant) weren't as reliable hunters (not being able to get food for nine months at a stretch is tough), so males developed better vision for movement and more muscular frames. Women, since they carried children while pregnant and were likely the first person a baby imprinted on (as well as being the only ones capable of feeding them), developed skills to help with children (better colorvision to distinguish between safe and unsafe food, less muscle on the arms and legs and more in the abdomen to aid with childbirth). So, yes, a Strength increase for human males and a Wisdom increase for females is plausible (if a bit insensitive).

[MaxWilson]

This is an incredible sexist thing to post and wrong on so many scientific levels.

Not to mention racist against half-giants. How dare the OP impugn their wisdom and charisma!

;-)

[Ganymede]

Based on what I know from Wesley Snipes' and Woody Harrelson's films, Tethyrian men should get a penalty athletics checks made to jump.

[Kadesh]

Up next in MaxWilson's simulationism series, mechanics for menstrual cycles.

[BurgerBeast]

Well, first of all it's a poorly titled thread. Biodiversity usually refers to the number of independent species in an ecosystem. This seems more akin to sex differences within a species.

Second, it's not sexist. Not in the least.

Unfortunately, many people have been taught that this sort of thing is sexist. There are gender differences. Men are physically stronger than women, on average. That is to say, across random samples within humans, the average strength of the men is higher than the average strength of the women. If that upsets you, that's your problem. Facts are facts.

If it is the modelling of these differences in the system that bothers you, well then that's also your problem. The method suggested to model the differences is perfectly fine, as is evidenced by the fact that it is the exact same method of adjusting averages between races in the game. Orcs have to be systematically stronger than kobolds by some mechanism.

Whether these things need to modelled in the game is an entirely different question. The designers of AD&D / D&D have abandoned this practice since second edition, and they have never returned to it. I think it's fair to say they've acted on the matter.

Also, in reference to the OP's suggestions: making it opt-in still prevents females from being as strong as the strongest males (again, no problem there in terms of reality). And, using your examples, prevents males from being as wise as the wisest females (this one is probably more disputable, not because of the physiological differences, but because of issues with quantifying wisdom). I couldn't care less, but for the people out there who are sensitive to this sort of thing, I'm not sure that reducing the degree of the crime (so to speak) is going to make them feel better. I think they are worried about the crime itself, in whatever degree.

[LudicSavant]

In addition to points that others have raised...

I remember a post from years ago on a related topic which I think summed up the reason broad demographic averages don't and shouldn't matter in RPGs (and aren't even simulationist to boot) fairly well:

For this discussion we will keep the game being referred to entirely to a single example that is immediately comprehensible and not subject to shifting goalposts: Space Jam. See, the baskets in basketball are fixed, and while characters in Space Jam can do things like set the ball on fire or divide the ball into separate balls to slam dunk more than one basket at a time for huge point gains - the fact is that we do know what goes into a Space Jam character. Intuitively and viscerally.

So now let's bring in our centerpiece discussion character: Yao Ming. See as it happens, Chinese People are short as a rule of thumb. Hell, demographically the Chinese are just short all around. The average adult height of men over the age of 30 is less than 165 cm (that's like 5'5" in stupid measurements). And Yao Ming is tall. He's like Long Cat tall. Yao Ming is 2.29m tall (7'6") and is visible from space. As it happens, he's the tallest person in the NBA. And since height is such an important stat in the Space Jam game, Yao Ming is a pretty powerful character.

The important thing to realize that Yao Ming is tall for any group of people. He's a very tall person all around. And the fact that he's from a group of people that is demographically short makes him even taller relatively to the average. But the average doesn't actually matter when you make a space jam character because each character is one of a dozen champions chosen to defend the Earth in combat basketball. So how far out of demographic average each individual is makes no difference to anyone. Indeed, the only actual demographic that makes any sense is the demographic of "NBA Superstars" of which Yao Ming is of course the tallest.

Yao Ming gets on the Space Jam team because he is crazy good at defending and rebounds, in part due to his enormous height. He does not have the crazy moves of LeBron James, but that's because his player spent his points in other areas. Being Chinese has real effects on Yao Ming, it means that he makes less money than other NBA Superstars and has more fans. But it doesn't make Yao Ming any shorter.

There is a reason that lots of big MMORPGs and the like don't use racial modifiers, and why D&D has sort of been toning them down each edition. Think about it, how much value do you actually get from the strength differences between an orc and human? If you're using point buy, you can bet an orc barbarian and a human barbarian are going to both have 16 Str, unless they plan to take a half-feat later, in which case they have 17 (the human took another half feat at level 1 to get 17). The only real difference comes when the orc tries to be a race he's "not supposed to be." At which point, you can bet the orc Wizard is still going to raise their Int to 20 eventually, it's just going to cost them more to get there and make them weaker in other stats compared to the 20 Int human. The 20 int orc is just as smart as the 20 int human, but underpowered because they had less points to spend elsewhere. That's not simulationist so much as it's just kinda punitive for playing against stereotype.

Even with your +3 Str orcs and the like, all you've done is emphasize that issue further. They're still going to max out at 20 strength, they're just going to be stronger in other stats because they had to spend less to reach that cap.

In short, the end result of this is probably going to just invite offense, narrow the range of "optimal" race/class combos, and also not really make things any more simulationist.

[Eric Diaz]

Here's a rule variant for simulationist DMs that could be interesting:

If you play a male...

Please don't...

EDIT: also, if you want DIVERSITY (as mentioned in the title), why not allow some men (or orcs) to have Str-1 and Wis+1? Surely SOME men are built like that! Why not have someone like Chiron, "wisest and justest of all the centaurs", being as wise as any human even if being from a race "as wild as untamed horses" (wikipedia)?

Now THAT is biodiversity!

[Eric Diaz]

Second, it's not sexist. Not in the least.

Unfortunately, many people have been taught that this sort of thing is sexist. There are gender differences. Men are physically stronger than women, on average. That is to say, across random samples within humans, the average strength of the men is higher than the average strength of the women. If that upsets you, that's your problem. Facts are facts.


Look, I'm not really into virtue signaling, so I won't discuss if this is sexist or not. I agree there are gender differences even if saying that is construed as a crime in some circles.

However, saying "Facts are facts" when creating rules that apply not only to humans but also orcs, goliaths and halflings (mentioned in the OP) is incredibly misguided. Are orc males bigger than orc females? Only if you purposely make it so.

Also, PCs are not averages. It is perfectly fine for Brienne of Tarth to be the strongest PC in any given party.

[LudicSavant]

Also, PCs are not averages. It is perfectly fine for Brienne of Tarth to be the strongest PC in any given party.

+1 to this. The strength of the average woman doesn't and shouldn't affect Brienne of Tarth. The cost of her Strength stat should make her a balanced character against other Westerosi knights of equal character level, not represent her rarity amongst some relatively arbitrary demographic.

[CantigThimble]

Hmm, the issue I have with applying simulationism to sex in RPGs is that if you try to take it seriously, bringing in biology and evolutionary history, then you end up with females being totally noncompetitive for combat or relegated to caster classes. Half-measures like this just end up feeling like bundles of vague stereotypes and aren't really good for much.

I think it's typically a lot better to drop the rules simulationism in this area and just roll with it. Sex differences (or lack therof) are better off being roleplayed or put into worldbuilding rather than the rules.

[MaxWilson]

Also, PCs are not averages. It is perfectly fine for Brienne of Tarth to be the strongest PC in any given party.

PCs are generated from distributions though, and those distributions have averages. On a hand with rolled stats, it's perfectly acceptable and meaningful to talk about e.g. the distribution of Orcish strength vs. human, although deriving that distribution is not guaranteed to be straightforward or even tractable.

[LudicSavant]

PCs are generated from distributions though, and those distributions have averages. On a hand with rolled stats, it's perfectly acceptable and meaningful to talk about e.g. the distribution of Orcish strength vs. human, although deriving that distribution is not guaranteed to be straightforward or even tractable.

Except we're not playing "statistical average human simulator." See the Space Jam example above. You might be surprised to learn, for example, that Asian NBA players are on average taller than NBA players of other ethnicities. It would not be "more simulationist" to try and make Asian players shorter on average in a Space Jam RPG. In fact, it would be the opposite. By the same note, it would not be "more simulationist" to make female Westerosi knights weaker on average than male Westerosi knights in a Game of Thrones RPG.

[MaxWilson]

Hmm, the issue I have with applying simulationism to sex in RPGs is that if you try to take it seriously, bringing in biology and evolutionary history, then you end up with females being totally noncompetitive for combat or relegated to caster classes.

I think this is overstating the case.

This would be true in AD&D but it's not true in the 5E rule set, because numerous aspects of 5E (Dex, finesse, ranged attacks, Sharpshooter, mounted combat rules, etc.) all combine to make Strength a distinctly niche combat specialization in the first place. Sure, the strongest female Barbarian hits her peak strength one half-ASI later than the strongest male Barbarian, but will that in any way deter female PCs from pursuing careers as Shadow Monk ninjas, Swashbucklers, Arcane Archers, etc.? Not really.

In fact they'd make marginally BETTER monks/archers/etc. than males would, because trading Strength for Constitution is a win for an monk. (Con bonus reflects things like the decreased strain on metabolism from a smaller body, and whatever else contributes to American women generally outliving American men by about five years on average.)

[MaxWilson]

Except we're not playing "statistical average human simulator." See the Space Jam example above. You might be surprised to learn, for example, that Asian NBA players are on average taller than NBA players of other ethnicities. It would not be "more simulationist" to try and make Asians shorter on average in Space Jam. In fact, it would be the opposite.

I saw the Space Jam example but it seems to reflect a point buy game, not rolled stats, hence Frank's mention of how players "spend their points." Much as I love and appreciate Frank's insights into game design, merely citing Frank as sharing your opinion does not make it the only opinion.

[Eric Diaz]

PCs are generated from distributions though, and those distributions have averages. On a hand with rolled stats, it's perfectly acceptable and meaningful to talk about e.g. the distribution of Orcish strength vs. human, although deriving that distribution is not guaranteed to be straightforward or even tractable.

I must confess I've read these two sentences three times and couldn't understand what you're saying.

If I were to mess with orc/human distributions, I'd do something like 4d6 for human strength 5d6 for orcs etc - or even giving some races, say, 6d4 or 3d10, to really spice things up (lizard people in my setting can be sizes from goblin to goliath).

However I'd say this: if your group thinks is a good idea (I obviously do not), I see no problem in using this in your tables. The only caveats is that you'll nudge some classes to some genders/races. Want lots of women druids? Well, whatever rocks your boat.

Also, IIRC some elves can change genders (Mordenkainen's) so I guess they might get some extra Str/Wis if needed.

[LudicSavant]

I saw the Space Jam example but it seems to reflect a point buy game, not rolled stats, hence Frank's mention of how players "spend their points."

The argument applies just as well to rolled stats.


Much as I love and appreciate Frank's insights into game design, merely citing Frank as sharing your opinion does not make it the only opinion.

Well that's a heck of a straw man. :smallconfused:

[MaxWilson]

I must confess I've read these two sentences three times and couldn't understand what you're saying.


It's straightforward if you roll 3d6 in order, plus racial mods, or even 4d6k3 in order; but allowing stat swapping per the default PHB method confounds the analysis. Hence, modeling the distribution with precision may not be tractable.

[MaxWilson]

The argument applies just as well to rolled stats.

I don't see anything persuasive about it. All you're doing is sharing Frank's assumptions, which lead directly to Frank's conclusions. So what? Persuade me that I should share Frank's assumptions, or the Space Jam quote is irrelevant.

Note further that Frank's argument is fundamentally gamist (which is not atypical for Frank, see e.g. his reactions to nation balance in recent versions of Dominions), and this isn't a thread about gamist campaigns.

[LudicSavant]

I must confess I've read these two sentences three times and couldn't understand what you're saying.

Don't worry, it's not just you. It's really garbled.

[MaxWilson]

Don't worry, it's not just you. It's really garbled.

If you spend thirty seconds thinking seriously about what it would take to actually model Orcish strength distributions in 5E under PHB start generation rules, it will all become clear.

In short, it was a caveat aimed at anyone who would otherwise have pointed out that modeling the distribution is hard. If you don't understand the remark, ignore it, it wasn't meant for you.

Maybe I should have put it in a footnote instead of the main text.

[LudicSavant]

If you signs thirty seconds thinking about what it would take to actually model Orcish strength distributions it will all become clear.

I think you mean "spend" instead of "signs."

The reason your posts are unclear are because of issues like that, not the amount of time anyone is spending thinking about distributions.

Edit: I see that you edited to correct your error, and added in new errors when you did so. Like "start" instead of "stat."


Persuade me

I already added quite a few points of my own in addition to Frank's, such as why your rules don't actually create more biodiversity or why mapping broad demographics onto narrower ones actually gets you less realistic results. You appear to have ignored all of them in favor of a straw man argument. I don't think I have anything more to add here.

[MaxWilson]

I think you mean "spend" instead of "signs." The problem isn't the amount of time everyone else in the thread is spending thinking, it's that you speak in broken English from time to time.

Sorry. You know how phone autocorrect is. I fixed it, but apparently not before you were confused by the original.



I already added quite a few points of my own in addition to Frank's, such as why your rules don't actually create more biodiversity or why mapping broad demographics onto narrower ones actually gets you less realistic results. You appear to have ignored all of them in favor of a straw man argument. I don't think I have anything more to add here.

I'll have to review your post and see if your arguments strike me as more cogent the second time around. IIRC I ignored your post entirely until you brought it up in a subsequent post demanding a response to the Space Jam point; it didn't seem necessary to respond to your other points then. Is there any point of your first post you particularly want a response on?

Edit: party => post. Phone again.

[Greywander]

Normally I'm big on simulation in RPGs, but this just adds an additional layer of complexity to character creation. The only time this would matter is if you were generating thousands of NPCs where those small adjustments would shift the averages to make men stronger and women more intuitive. And by all means, feel free to use this while randomly generating NPCs. But there's not really a reason to bog down PC character creation with this, firstly because you're only going to generate a few PCs at a time; it's too small of a sample size to expect it to reflect the average. Second, PCs are not average, they are exceptional.

It's much easier to just let players decide how to distribute their points (and in fact I've seen many people make similar arguments that racial ability scores should be removed for the same reason). If someone wants to play to type and roll up a buff dude or a social vixen, that's fine. But if someone wants to roll up a buff amazon warrior, why make it difficult for them? It's kind of silly to expect PCs to be completely average, as the average person would not become an adventurer. PCs are already a rare breed, they are a deviation from the average into the exceptional.

The Space Jam example is good. While Asians tend to be shorter on average, any Asian that is able to be a pro basketball player is necessarily going to be tall. If you're rolling up basketball players, it doesn't make sense to give Asians a height penalty, since only those who are already tall would even consider becoming a basketball player in the first place. Sure, you might not see as many Asian players, but as I said previously this would only matter if you were randomly generating thousands of basketball players. If you're only make a few, you can't expect them to be representative of the average.

Where I think this would work best is for NPC generation. One thing to consider is if non-human races would have the same or similar sexual dimorphism.

If you want to go down this path (and again, I'd reccommend only doing this for NPCs, not PCs), then you might consider not just averages, but also distributions. On some traits, men or women (which could be extended to different fantasy races as well) tend to cluster closer to the average, while in other traits they are distributed further out to the extremes. One way to simulate this is by using different types of dice to roll up ability scores. 1d20, 2d10, 3d6, and 4d4 all produce similar averages as well as similar minimums and maximums, but 1d20 is much more likely to give a high or low value than 4d4.

EDIT/ADDENDUM to the Space Jam example: there shouldn't be anything stopping you from rolling up a Jamaican bobsled team if you really want to, just so long as you understand that most of the NPC bobsledders you encounter aren't going to be Jamaican.

[LudicSavant]

IIRC I ignored your post entirely

>Says they didn't find anything persuasive about my post.
>Then says that they had not actually read my post.

Well. :smallsigh:

[MaxWilson]

Hi Greywander. Thanks for the post. I appreciate your remarks and wanted to respond to a couple.


But if someone wants to roll up a buff amazon warrior, why make it difficult for them?

I am sensible to this concern, and I was hoping the opt-in nature of the rule would alleviate it, for those who want to play strong halflings that can armwrestle ogres, buff Amazon's, genius orcs, etc. Apparently not entirely.



It's kind of silly to expect PCs to be completely average, as the average person would not become an adventurer. PCs are already a rare breed, they are a deviation from the average into the exceptional.
If you want to go down this path (and again, I'd reccommend only doing this for NPCs, not PCs), then you might consider not just averages, but also distributions. On some traits, men or women (which could be extended to different fantasy races as well) tend to cluster closer to the average, while in other traits they are distributed further out to the extremes. One way to simulate this is by using different types of dice to roll up ability scores. 1d20, 2d10, 3d6, and 4d4 all produce similar averages as well as similar minimums and maximums, but 1d20 is much more likely to give a high or low value than 4d4.

An interesting justification and a good point. D&D Giants, for example, have always had a curiously uniform strength distribution compared to humans. (Yes, I know that some giants have always varied slightly. Again, those who are confused by this caveat can ignore it--it's not aimed at you.)

I agree that it would be mostly for NPCs and that you'd want to always give PCs access to simple PHB stat generation for gamist reasons, but it might be an interesting alternate method to allow--kind of like methods for generating stats based on your parents' stats. Niche but sometimes fun to play with.

I should mention that NPC start distributions are still very important because they set context for player expectations. One of the best ways I've found to keep players happy with rolled stats is to give them the option of discarding a PC after generation (it becomes an NPC) and then rolling up five NPCs on 3d6th in order, also donated to the DM, before rolling up a new 4d6k3 PC. It seems to prevent desires for stat inflation and to make players really aware that even a 14 is a pretty remarkable outlier. NPC stat distributions matter.

[MaxWilson]

>Says they didn't find anything persuasive about my post.
>Then says that they had not actually read my post.

Well. :smallsigh:

Willful misreading. Did not respond to, not didn't read.

I mean, how did you think I knew what you quoted Frank as saying about Space Jam? Telepathy?

Sheesh.

[MaxWilson]

EDIT/ADDENDUM to the Space Jam example: there shouldn't be anything stopping you from rolling up a Jamaican bobsled team if you really want to, just so long as you understand that most of the NPC bobsledders you encounter aren't going to be Jamaican.

Agreed. Some gamism for the sake of the players is fine.

[LudicSavant]

The Space Jam example is good. While Asians tend to be shorter on average, any Asian that is able to be a pro basketball player is necessarily going to be tall. If you're rolling up basketball players, it doesn't make sense to give Asians a height penalty, since only those who are already tall would even consider becoming a basketball player in the first place. Sure, you might not see as many Asian players, but as I said previously this would only matter if you were randomly generating thousands of basketball players. If you're only make a few, you can't expect them to be representative of the average.

Yeah. It actually goes even further than that. Even if you were randomly generating thousands of basketball players, Asian basketball players are taller on average than other NBA players, not the other way around. Also, the shortest NBA player ever is African American (Muggsy Bogues).

In other words, applying Max Wilson's distributions to the Space Jam RPG would make things more unrealistic, not the other way around.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Setting aside the arguments over "does this actually model reality" and "is this sexist?" for a moment, there's a more fundamental question here: why? Just...why? What could the male/female rule possibly bring to the table, other than arguments and additional min-maxing opportunities? It certainly doesn't help with roleplaying in any way-- it's no harder to make an exceptionally weak male or strong female than it was before, even if the rule wasn't optional, and it's not like you'd really notice the +- 1 adjustment when all's said and done.

In fact...stat changes are, generally speaking, the least useful way to distinguish races. They're entirely passive, and they quickly fade into the general noise of rolling/point-buy. It doesn't matter too much if you have a +2 Dex or a +4, you're still nimble. They don't say anything. An Orc getting +2 Str doesn't say "strong," an Orc having the racial ability to heft twice as much weight as a human says "strong." The ability of a Lightfoot Halfling to hide behind other people in the party does far more to paint them as sneaky than +2 Dex.

To paraphrase someone else on this forum, "active abilities are always better than passive. I'm not just a dwarf, I'm actively dwarfing my way past obstacles."

[Ganymede]

Second, it's not sexist. Not in the least.

Unfortunately, many people have been taught that this sort of thing is sexist. There are gender differences. Men are physically stronger than women, on average.

As a former personal trainer, this comparison is meaningless garbage. The OP is talking about biological differences, but a huge component of the difference in average strength is not biological: it is social. Women are conditioned from a very young age in our society that strength, size, and bulkiness is a bad thing. All too often I've seen women seeking training that were afraid to "get big," and neglected engaging in any sort of resistance training.

The OP can spend all day long musing about the vague and unquantifiable ways gender differences can be statted (+1 Con to women for being more resistant to pain, but -1 Con because of their harder-to-notice heart attacks!?), but statting up a millennia-old tradition of telling strong women that they are ugly is beyond disgusting.

[CantigThimble]

As a former personal trainer, this comparison is meaningless garbage. The OP is talking about biological differences, but a huge component of the difference in average strength is not biological: it is social. Women are conditioned from a very young age in our society that strength, size, and bulkiness is a bad thing. All too often I've seen women seeking training that were afraid to "get big," and neglected engaging in any sort of resistance training.

The OP can spend all day long musing about the vague and unquantifiable ways gender differences can be statted (+1 Con to women for being more resistant to pain, but -1 Con because of their harder-to-notice heart attacks!?), but statting up a millennia-old tradition of telling strong women that they are ugly is beyond disgusting.

So, do you think that testosterone levels are unrelated to growth of muscle and development of bone density?

[Ganymede]

So, do you think that testosterone levels are unrelated to growth of muscle and development of bone density?

Sure, feel free to muse endlessly on translating the effects of hormones alongside a thousand other intangible factors on an 18 point strength scale in an RPG. If that sounds fun to you, have a blast.


That's not what I was talking about, tho.

[CantigThimble]

Sure, feel free to muse endlessly on translating the effects of hormones alongside a thousand other intangible factors on an 18 point strength scale in an RPG. If that sounds fun to you, have a blast.


That's not what I was talking about, tho.

Well, if you look at what I said in this thread I'm also in favor of dropping it because I think it makes for better gameplay.

I just don't think it's fair to call someone disgusting for thinking that there are biological differences between men and women's physical capabilities.

[Ganymede]

I just don't think it's fair to call someone disgusting for thinking that there are biological differences between men and women's physical capabilities.

Dude, I don't care what you think is fair.

When someone says "men are stronger than women on average" and pretend that it is some sort of biological fact and that centuries of treating women like dirt for being strong doesn't factor in, they are being disgusting.

This is not up for debate. Feel free to press the issue if you want to get put on ignore, tho.

[CantigThimble]

Dude, I don't care what you think is fair.

When someone says "men are stronger than women on average" and pretend that it is some sort of biological fact and that centuries of treating women like dirt for being strong doesn't factor in, they are being disgusting.

This is not up for debate. Feel free to press the issue if you want to get put on ignore, tho.

Look, I'm not trying to start a fight or anything. It's just that there are a lot of people who believe things that I think are wrong or immoral and in my experience starting with the assumption that they are well intentioned but just think differently than I do helps me make a lot more progress than calling them bad people and hoping they decide to listen. That's why I don't think it's fair.

[Unoriginal]

None of the NPCs or PCs in the game have any negative or positive modifiers based on their genders. In particular, combatants of all power level, from the mook to the legendary villains, are presented as containing both men and women, with a few exceptions like the Orc Claws of Luthic, which are an exclusively female elite defense group, because their goddess only pick women.

Introducing a sex-based distinction in a game is sexist, by definition. You're creating a sex-based difference in a fiction where this difference doesn't exist.

If MaxWilson decided that for the sake of "realism", black-skinned humans had a bonus to jumping, it would be racist. Because you're introducing a race-based distinction where it didn't exist.

[Knaight]

Well, first of all it's a poorly titled thread. Biodiversity usually refers to the number of independent species in an ecosystem. This seems more akin to sex differences within a species.

Number of independent species is a bit of a simplification - adding one member of a species doesn't increase biodiversity nearly the way that a proper breeding population does, to use an extreme example, and the same applies to small but more reasonable populations as well. It's also used to a certain extent for genetic diversity within species in the context of larger ecosystem analysis.

[Ganymede]

Look, I'm not trying to start a fight or anything. It's just that there are a lot of people who believe things that I think are wrong or immoral and in my experience starting with the assumption that they are well intentioned but just think differently than I do helps me make a lot more progress than calling them bad people and hoping they decide to listen. That's why I don't think it's fair.

Yeah, I assumed they were well-intentioned. I called them out for doing something disgusting and explained why it was disgusting.

If I thought their intentions were less than well-intentioned, I would have put them on ignore.

[BurgerBeast]

Think about it, how much value do you actually get from the strength differences between an orc and human? If you're using point buy, you can bet an orc barbarian and a human barbarian are going to both have 16 Str, unless they plan to take a half-feat later, in which case they have 17 (the human took another half feat at level 1 to get 17). The only real difference comes when the orc tries to be a race he's "not supposed to be."

If your point is that with bounded accuracy, everyone can hit the same ceiling anyway, so it doesn’t matter, then that’s a fair point. But it’s probably also why the OP suggested raising caps by the same amount as the racial or gender modifier.

If your point is that racial modifiers are insignificant, well… sorry, but they’re significant. See every guide to X ever made for the relevance.

Also, the problem with considering NBA players is that (1) it’s not a random sample, and (2) the variables in question (ethnicity and height) are arguably linked to performance in ways that are complicated and unclear. You can’t say much about it.

Additionally, when you point out that the average chinese NBA player is taller than the average X-ethnicity NBA player, there are a number of ways to explain this that are fairly simple. If you take any sport, and divide the participants into two groups, and find out that one group is overrepresented… it seems totally possible that the overrepresentation has something to do with performance in the sport. Once you have the possibility that better performance in the sport is related to membership in the over-represented group, it then makes sense that those individuals in the under-represented group must get an edge somewhere in order to be elected into the league. If a metric such as height or weight is also related to performance (such as a defensive lineman in American football), then it could very likely be that in order to overcome other differences, the selected individuals would score higher in the related physical metric. This isn’t particularly surpriseing. It’s not necessarily true, but it’s still something to consider.


At which point, you can bet the orc Wizard is still going to raise their Int to 20 eventually, it's just going to cost them more to get there and make them weaker in other stats compared to the 20 Int human. The 20 int orc is just as smart as the 20 int human, but underpowered because they had less points to spend elsewhere. That's not simulationist so much as it's just kinda punitive for playing against stereotype.

It’s only punitive if you enter with the assumption that the smartest orc can be as smart as the smartest human. If you take the view that the smartest orc cannot be that smart (i.e. the premise of this thread), then the very fact that the orc can reach 20 intellignece at all is overly generous.


However, saying "Facts are facts" when creating rules that apply not only to humans but also orcs, goliaths and halflings (mentioned in the OP) is incredibly misguided. Are orc males bigger than orc females? Only if you purposely make it so.

I was talking about humans. So there’s that.

But it’s totally reasonable to invent facts about the orcs in your fantasy world. And it may be the case that orc males are bigger and stronger than orc females. It may alternatively be the case that orc females are bigger and stronger than orc males. Or that they’re equal. But there can be a difference.

The thing about humans is that they are based on humans on earth. I mean, why have humans in your fantasy world at all? The answer has to do with our ability to relate to something, to assist in relating to the fantasy. If you’re going to bother to include humans, then it makes sense to have them as similar to real, earthbound humans as possible, otherwise what’s the point?

If you want to make a fantasy race of humans in which the women are bigger and stronger, go for it. I won’t complain.


Also, PCs are not averages.

This is totally oblique to the point. I never said that human beings are averages.

There is an important thing to note about averages, though. It’s because, like it or not, human beings can be measred and graphed and over large samples, they tend toward normal curves for most metrics. What’s interesting about normal curves is that they produce their greatest differentials at the tails – not in the centres. So if the average man is 2-3 inches taller on average than the average woman, you’ll end up with men being thousands of times more likely to occupy the uppermost heights of the race.

That’s why, for example, in humans on earth, the strongest thousand people on the planet are almost certainly all males. The likelihood of one woman being able to reach that level of strength is practically zero.


It is perfectly fine for Brienne of Tarth to be the strongest PC in any given party.

Sure. But it’s not reasonable for her to be the strongest knight in Westeros. Or equally strong to the strongest knights in Westeros.

It was a complete hack move to make Brienne beat the Hound in the TV series. Given the characters and their representations in the books, she’d never win that tilt.


+1 to this. The strength of the average woman doesn't and shouldn't affect Brienne of Tarth. The cost of her Strength stat should make her a balanced character against other Westerosi knights of equal character level, not represent her rarity amongst some relatively arbitrary demographic.

Sure. But Brienne of Tarth should not be Gregor Clegane’s equal in strength, either, should she? What are you playing at?


Hmm, the issue I have with applying simulationism to sex in RPGs is that if you try to take it seriously, bringing in biology and evolutionary history, then you end up with females being totally noncompetitive for combat or relegated to caster classes. Half-measures like this just end up feeling like bundles of vague stereotypes and aren't really good for much.

I think it's typically a lot better to drop the rules simulationism in this area and just roll with it. Sex differences (or lack therof) are better off being roleplayed or put into worldbuilding rather than the rules.

This is exactly it. This is all that has to be said. Admit that men are, on average, stronger than women. Admit that the thousand strongest humans are almost certainly men. And then say: But I don’t like that in my game, so I choose to make it unrealistic for the pusposes of inclusion. No problem.

But don’t try on alternate facts. Don’t try the old: “but some women are stronger than most men!” card. Of course they are. And still: the average man is stronger than the average woman, and the strongest humans are predominantly men.


Except we're not playing "statistical average human simulator." See the Space Jam example above.

I think the whole point of this thread is actually that you can make it more simulationist, if you prefer that kind of game, and this is one way to do that.

And what’s all this about Space Jam? Are you talking about NBA Jam? Or the movie with Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny?


You might be surprised to learn, for example, that Asian NBA players are on average taller than NBA players of other ethnicities. It would not be "more simulationist" to try and make Asian players shorter on average in a Space Jam RPG. In fact, it would be the opposite. By the same note, it would not be "more simulationist" to make female Westerosi knights weaker on average than male Westerosi knights in a Game of Thrones RPG.

Holy smokes you like to compare apples and oranges.

First of all, based on what you’ve presented, the opposite would be true. It would, based on what you’ve said, be more simulationist to make the average Asian NBA player taller than the average player. But this is assuming that you are making a player. You’ve already biased the selection by declaring that this person is a player, so they must be of a certain height.

D&D character generation doesn’t quite work like that. This is bound to get weird because of the way in which characters are generated in 5e, which is as far from simulationist as you can get. Ability arrays, the same for everyone, and you pick where they go? Not simulationist at all. 3d6 in order. That’s simulationist.

What happens now is that there is a barrier to entry. It’s a totally different can of worms. So, since the average orc might be able to pull a 12 strength score and has a bunch of racial traits that lend themselves to fighter, the average kobold might have a strength of 6 and none of the racial traits. So, even though a kobold with 12 strength can become a fighter if he wants to, he’s probably still not as good as an orc with 12 strength. In order to compensate for other racial differences, the kobold may need a 14 strength just to be on par with the orc.

See how this is analogous to the Space Jam example?


Well that's a heck of a straw man. :smallconfused:

That’s not what a straw man is.


Normally I'm big on simulation in RPGs, but this just adds an additional layer of complexity to character creation. The only time this would matter is if you were generating thousands of NPCs where those small adjustments would shift the averages to make men stronger and women more intuitive. And by all means, feel free to use this while randomly generating NPCs. But there's not really a reason to bog down PC character creation with this, firstly because you're only going to generate a few PCs at a time; it's too small of a sample size to expect it to reflect the average. Second, PCs are not average, they are exceptional.

It's precisely because you are not generating average people that the modifiers matter more. As I mentioned earlier in this post, a small difference in the mean can translate into massive differences at the tails of the normal distribution.

If you are generating average citizens, then there's less need for racial modifiers. But if you're generating above-average individuals, it becomes more significant.

Again, if you don't like using the simulationist method in this particular case, don't use it. But don't try selling the nonsense that simulations would produce the opposite effect.


But if someone wants to roll up a buff amazon warrior, why make it difficult for them?

Wel the devil is in the details, isn’t it? You can make a buff Amazon warrior. But if you want her to be a halfling Amazon and expect her to have the same strength as a buff orcish Amazon, then there’s a problem.

Again, this is a problem if you care about the simulation. If you don’t – that’s fine. Just play as though they can have the same strength. But that’s not simulationist.


It's kind of silly to expect PCs to be completely average, as the average person would not become an adventurer.

This is a total mischaracterization of the argument.


In other words, applying Max Wilson's distributions to the Space Jam RPG would make things more unrealistic, not the other way around.

No. This is what a real straw man is.

See above for why this is actually a reasonable thing to expect.

It’s the same reason why, even though orcs are stronger than half-elves, you might expect the average half-elf fighter to be stronger than the average orc fighter. That’s because orcs can be very good fighters even when they’re not very strong. Likewise, with the other options available to half-elves, they’d have to be very strong to consider a career as a fighter.


As a former personal trainer, this comparison is meaningless garbage.

1. The fact that you’re a personal trainer doesn’t make you any more qualified to address the question. If anything, it works against you. You can become a certified personal trainer in a weekend.

2. “This is meaningless garbage” is not an argument.


The OP is talking about biological differences, but a huge component of the difference in average strength is not biological: it is social.

Source?


Women are conditioned from a very young age in our society that strength, size, and bulkiness is a bad thing.

Those are three things. And this is a separate point.


All too often I've seen women seeking training that were afraid to "get big," and neglected engaging in any sort of resistance training.

I am familiar with this. It’s pretty funny that women have this concern. All you have to do is take a look at all the guys in the gym who are pinners to realize that bulking up is extremely hard, so there’s no real fear that it’s going to happen after a couple of years of lifting weights.


The OP can spend all day long musing about the vague and unquantifiable ways gender differences can be statted (+1 Con to women for being more resistant to pain, but -1 Con because of their harder-to-notice heart attacks!?), but statting up a millennia-old tradition of telling strong women that they are ugly is beyond disgusting.

What is disgusting is you misrepresenting the OP and accusing of him saying something that he never said.

If you are mad at people for calling other people ugly, then go take it up with the people who are doing it. Nobody here has done any such thing.


Dude, I don't care what you think is fair.

When someone says "men are stronger than women on average" and pretend that it is some sort of biological fact and that centuries of treating women like dirt for being strong doesn't factor in, they are being disgusting.

This is not up for debate. Feel free to press the issue if you want to get put on ignore, tho.

Men are physically stronger than women, on average. That is a fact.

I never said anything about my opinion on strong women. I certainly never said anyone was disgusting. Those are your words. You are way out of line. You should take this up with the person you’re really mad at.


Number of independent species is a bit of a simplification - adding one member of a species doesn't increase biodiversity nearly the way that a proper breeding population does, to use an extreme example, and the same applies to small but more reasonable populations as well. It's also used to a certain extent for genetic diversity within species in the context of larger ecosystem analysis.

Adding one member of a species doesn’t increase the number of independent species at all. The number of species would stay the same.

[CantigThimble]

Yeah, I assumed they were well-intentioned. I called them out for doing something disgusting and explained why it was disgusting.

If I thought their intentions were less than well-intentioned, I would have put them on ignore.

Well, I try not to insult people I want to listen to me, but we differ on that point.

[Unoriginal]

The average orc combatant has 16 in STR, be they male or female. 16 in STR is enough to kill the average human combatant, the 8 HPs Guard NPC, with two punches.

The human Veteran NPC has 16 in STR, too. They too are capable to kill a regular human mook with two punches.

According to MaxWilson, though, a female human Veteran should have 15 in STR. Which means she will automatically be worse at fighting than a male Veteran in general, and in the case presented above she'd need three punches to down one guard.

Do you really gain anything by making female Veteran NPCs weaker than their male counterparts and unable to keep up with them if they fight in the same conditions? If you put two Veterans, one man and one woman, in the same prison, and they have to escape from guards while weaponless, then applies the modifications MaxWilson proposed, the male Veteran will automatically have a big advantage, and the female Veteran will need to roll much better than the man just to keep up with him.

Again, do you gain anything from that?

[Kadesh]

We are not playing Averages you utter potato. We are playing exceptional characters, characters who are going to grow in level and ability until they slay Demon Princes.

Women might tend to be weaker, but we're not playng Shanine the Bartender who needs a man to lift a barrel on to the still.

[Unoriginal]

We are not playing Averages you utter potato. We are playing exceptional characters, characters who are going to grow in level and ability until they slay Demon Princes.

Women might tend to be weaker, but we're not playng Shanine the Bartender who needs a man to lift a barrel on to the still.

Who are you responding to?

[ad_hoc]

If you play a female

http://m.memegen.com/3tygig.jpg

[BurgerBeast]

Just in case it's not clear, I'm using blue to denote sarcasm.


The average orc combatant has 16 in STR, be they male or female. 16 in STR is enough to kill the average human combatant, the 8 HPs Guard NPC, with two punches.

The human Veteran NPC has 16 in STR, too. They too are capable to kill a regular human mook with two punches.

According to MaxWilson, though, a female human Veteran should have 15 in STR. Which means she will automatically be worse at fighting than a male Veteran in general, and in the case presented above she'd need three punches to down one guard.

Do you really gain anything by making female Veteran NPCs weaker than their male counterparts and unable to keep up with them if they fight in the same conditions? If you put two Veterans, one man and one woman, in the same prison, and they have to escape from guards while weaponless, then applies the modifications MaxWilson proposed, the male Veteran will automatically have a big advantage, and the female Veteran will need to roll much better than the man just to keep up with him.

Again, do you gain anything from that?

Well, that's the question. I don't personally think you gain anything from it, so I don't do it.

But that is not the same as saying that men and women have the same strength distributions. Nor that they should. Nor that introducing modifiers for physiological sex is automatically a terrible idea.

If I thought there was something to gain from modelling differences that are real between men and women (or between the imaginary men and women, of any race, in my fictional world), then what? I say: why not? Go for it.

But you've still mischaracterized his argument, entirely. He never once said his goal was to "make women weaker." You could accomplish the same goal by raising the men's scores by one (and why did you assume the stat block was for a man, speaking of sexism?). Also, who's to say that the average woman wouldn't have a higher dexterity and therefore AC, or as he explicitly suggested, a higher wisdom score for better resistance to spell effects, or a higher constituiton for more hit points? How dare he say that women are tougher than men?

It's interesting (predictable?) that everyone who has hinted at the offensiveness of this thread takes issue with making men stronger (i.e. higher strength score, not better overall) than women. But nobody has raised concerns that the OP suggested than women are more wise, or tough, than men.


We are not playing Averages you utter potato. We are playing exceptional characters, characters who are going to grow in level and ability until they slay Demon Princes.

Women might tend to be weaker, but we're not playng Shanine the Bartender who needs a man to lift a barrel on to the still.

Shanine doesn't need a man to lift a barrel! How dare you?!

As I said above, this only defeats your point. It doesn't help it... you... you... radish?

If you re playing the most exceptional female warrior in the land and someone else is playing the most exceptional male warrior in the land, then who ought to be stronger?

You can go with fairness and say they're equal.

You can go with simulationsism, and say the strongest man is probably stronger than the strongest woman.

You can go with fear (that some nitwit is going to claim offence and accuse you of horrible things if you say what you really think), and say they're equal.

But you can't say: I'm going with simulationism, which is why I say they're equal. That's nonsense.

---

At any rate, the way that bounded accuracy is used in the game only complicates all of this, by setting up the absurd cap of 20 for all characters regardless of race. It is bizarre to think that the strongest halfling, orc, and elf are exactly the same strength. If that's the default that people are going to start from when approaching the OP's points, well... you're starting from entirely different assumptions, so there's not a lot of opportunity to meet.

[Unoriginal]

But you've still mischaracterized his argument, entirely. He never once said his goal was to "make women weaker."

It might not be the goal, but it's the result.



(and why did you assume the stat block was for a man, speaking of sexism?).

That's not sarcasm. I clearly stated than 5e assume the statblocks are the same no matter the sex.



Also, who's to say that the average woman wouldn't have a higher dexterity and therefore AC, or as he explicitly suggested, a higher wisdom score for better resistance to spell effects, or a higher constituiton for more hit points?

5e is to say that.



It's interesting (predictable?) that everyone who has hinted at the offensiveness of this thread takes issue with making men stronger (i.e. higher strength score, not better overall) than women. But nobody has raised concerns that the OP suggested than women are more wise, or tough, than men.

It's equally absurd and, in my opinion, equally unwelcome, but I thought my Veteran example was enough without me going in detail about how MaxWilson's system would require female enemies to be beaten longer before their death.



At any rate, the way that bounded accuracy is used in the game only complicates all of this, by setting up the absurd cap of 20 for all characters regardless of race. It is bizarre to think that the strongest halfling, orc, and elf are exactly the same strength. If that's the default that people are going to start from when approaching the OP's points, well... you're starting from entirely different assumptions, so there's not a lot of opportunity to meet.

There is nothing absurd about that. 20 is the maximum for humanoids, it's "hero of legends" category. Why should the strongest halfling be weaker than the strongest orc? Both of them are equally exceptional. The important thing is that your typical halfling has 10 in STR and your typical orc has 16.


Also, on a related subject:

In Tomb of Annihilation (spoilers ahead), one of the NPCs is an old merchant woman who is participating in some secret societies business. Another of the NPCs in this module is a military commander in his prime, despite clearly not being the best combatant around, being overwhelmed by the way the expedition went and having the jungle wearing him down.

Both NPC use the same statblock.

I suppose the "simulationist" thing to do would be to make the old lady merchant much weaker than the military man, but that's not how 5e does things. They both fit the same "not-entirely-helpless-in-a-fight-but-not-great leader with a brain" archetype, so they both have the same statblock.

[AureusFulgens]

If you re playing the most exceptional female warrior in the land and someone else is playing the most exceptional male warrior in the land, then who ought to be stronger?

You can go with fairness and say they're equal.

You can go with simulationsism, and say the strongest man is probably stronger than the strongest woman.

You can go with fear (that some nitwit is going to claim offence and accuse you of horrible things if you say what you really think), and say they're equal.

But you can't say: I'm going with simulationism, which is why I say they're equal. That's nonsense.


To address the central problem:

BurgerBeast, I think you've wound up on a fundamentally different page from Ludic and Eric and the others. Pretty much nobody is arguing that an accurate random sample of humans would yield the results "a man is strongest" and "a woman is strongest" with equal probability. They are arguing that it shouldn't matter to players. You are choosing, not a random person, but some archetype in conceptual space which is interesting to the player. Which is pretty much the opposite of random. A woman who can match any man in the kingdom in a fight? Sounds cool. Do it. The rest of the kingdom can be accurately distributed as much as you want, for the sake of an accurate simulation, but players can and should fall outside of it. (A point that Max's last post conceded in part.)

In that sense, you are facing an argument that this kind of simulationism is, in fact, not a good idea, on account of enforcing real-world norms that don't really need enforcement. So, I'd recommend trying to answer that objection.

Now, to address a couple of particular quibbles.



That’s not what a straw man is.

Okay, your fallacies are a bit confused. The situation was: Ludic was accused by Max of an committing an appeal-to-authority fallacy by quoting Frank's post. Such an appeal ("you should just believe whatever Frank says") was not made at any time, therefore, Ludic called Max out for straw-manning him. Is this a typical example of a straw-man argument, no. It is a mischaracterization of the other speaker's argument, however, which I think falls within the definition.

This more highlights the bigger problem that all y'all need to chill the flip out.



If your point is that racial modifiers are insignificant, well… sorry, but they’re significant. See every guide to X ever made for the relevance.

... not the point being made. The point being made is that racial modifiers may be an unhelpful way to try to address racial differences; they are definitely significant.

Now, you do make an interesting point that:


At any rate, the way that bounded accuracy is used in the game only complicates all of this, by setting up the absurd cap of 20 for all characters regardless of race. It is bizarre to think that the strongest halfling, orc, and elf are exactly the same strength. If that's the default that people are going to start from when approaching the OP's points, well... you're starting from entirely different assumptions, so there's not a lot of opportunity to meet.

Yes, there's a fundamental mismatch between the fact that we have racial bonuses and that the modifiers are all the same. I think a lot of people (e.g. Ludic) were making arguments about whether racial bonuses/gender bonuses/etc. are productive from the perspective that the max is still in place, in which case you aren't actually enforcing that "the strongest guy should be a man/orc/whatever", just that you're leaving the concept open and imposing unnecessary conditions on people who try to reach them. Now that is actually an interesting game-theoretic discussion, which I think is getting lost in the smoke here. Maybe worth setting up a separate thread to clear the air.

My point being, can everyone listen a little better and maybe drink some tea? It's frankly frustrating trying to participate in a conversation that's actually five different conversations coming from five different premises among people who don't realize that's what happening and are all angry.

[Kadesh]

Who are you responding to?

The people who believe that averages should be used to refer to Demon Prince Slaying individuals.

[LudicSavant]

Aureus seems to have largely nailed it on the head, but I will elaborate with a few more quibbles.


It’s only punitive if you enter with the assumption that the smartest orc can be as smart as the smartest human.

That is not an assumption. The smartest orc can reach 20 Int. The smartest human can reach 20 Int. 20=20.

Racial modifiers in the rules as written do not reflect differences in the maximum intelligence of humans and orcs. Incidentally, they still don't with the OP's suggested houserules.


Sure. But Brienne of Tarth should not be Gregor Clegane’s equal in strength, either, should she? What are you playing at?

With the OP's suggested rules (including the "break cap" rules), a female human and a male human would still both max out at a +5 modifier to strength.

What the OP's suggested houserules will actually do is make Brienne of Tarth worse than the average Westerosi knight overall. What it won't do is make Clegane's max strength modifier different from Brienne's max strength modifier. They'll both max out at +5. Brienne will just reach +5 later, and Clegane will have extra ASIs to spend on non-Strength things, making him a more optimal character, but not one with a higher Strength modifier in the mid and late game.

In other words, the system the OP is arguing for does not add the alleged simulationism of Brienne never being able to match Clegane's strength. It just makes her character less powerful overall than other Westerosi Knights in the party.


If your point is that racial modifiers are insignificant, well… sorry, but they’re significant.

...As Aureus pointed out, that was not my point. In fact I said pretty much the exact opposite.


It would, based on what you’ve said, be more simulationist to make the average Asian NBA player taller than the average player. But this is assuming that you are making a player. You’ve already biased the selection by declaring that this person is a player, so they must be of a certain height.

Of course it's assuming you are making a player. Everyone in the Space Jam RPG is a basketball player. The absolutely entirety of the character creation rules exist for the sake of modeling basketball players. It's basketball players all the way down.

That's like claiming it's a "bias" if you say that Dungeons and Dragons PCs are generally adventurers.

And with that, I'm going to sleep. :mitd:

[Dr. Cliché]

Well, first of all it's a poorly titled thread. Biodiversity usually refers to the number of independent species in an ecosystem. This seems more akin to sex differences within a species.

Second, it's not sexist. Not in the least.

Unfortunately, many people have been taught that this sort of thing is sexist. There are gender differences. Men are physically stronger than women, on average. That is to say, across random samples within humans, the average strength of the men is higher than the average strength of the women. If that upsets you, that's your problem. Facts are facts.

If it is the modelling of these differences in the system that bothers you, well then that's also your problem. The method suggested to model the differences is perfectly fine, as is evidenced by the fact that it is the exact same method of adjusting averages between races in the game. Orcs have to be systematically stronger than kobolds by some mechanism.

So much this.


The thing is, though, this just seems unnecessary. To my mind, this is the sort of thing that will be included in a player's rolled stats or point-bought stats. e.g. If you want to play a big, strong man, put your highest score in strength. If you want to be a big, dumb man, put your lowest score in Int. :smalltongue:

I mean, you could even do this via the variant human rules, using the two +1s to modify your key 'gender stats' (probably strength and con for the aforementioned big, strong man). You also have a feat to work with if you so choose (Man Powers: Activate!).

As I said, I really don't think gender differences are worth having rules for in D&D, as few players are going to be playing 'average' men or women. And, if you really want that sort of thing, it seems like there are already tools available (might be a little more tricky for the non-human races but I honestly have no clue as to how much variation there is between males and females in other races).

[Anymage]

How often do we see rules about adding realism through wound infections, or how certain iconic fantasy beasts would collapse under their own weight? If we're going to talk realism, why is this one corner case so overwhelmingly popular.

Also, every player happens to be a real-world human who comes in with real world human experiences and biases. While a totally "realistic" game would have more than 1 or 2 points of strength difference between men and women (compare real world weight lifting records to the 3.5 carrying capacity chart for the closest you'll see to an objective value), you already see men overrepresented in strength based bruiser characters. Brawny female characters require either going against type hard, or settings where everybody has super stats because everybody is super. The average female character will already have a lower strength than the average male character, just because certain archetypes are coded as male or female in the average player's head. So you get the same net effect without having to muck about with all the issues that stat bonuses/penalties raise.

[CantigThimble]

I mean, I think the argument for including it from a simulationist perspective basically comes down to this: If you think that the differences between a man's and a woman's physical capabilities are are anything close to the difference in physical capabilities between a half-orc male and a human male then it would be more accurate to include them than not to include them.

Would it ALSO be more simulationist to say that the strongest half-orc is stronger than the strongest human and include mechanics for that? I mean, probably, but again I think this is an area where making the game more simulationist is more trouble than it's worth.

[MaxWilson]

for the sake of an accurate simulation, but players can and should fall outside of it. (A point that Max's last post conceded in part.)

Not to mention the first post, and probably some in between. That's the whole motivation behind making it opt-in.

Considering the points Greywander and Burgerbeast have made (since they are some of the few people who actually are discussing the isolationism and how well the rule variant implements it, whereas everybody else is discussing why they don't like simulationism or find normal distributions offensive): I'm now leaning towards making the additional racial modifiers an option only for those who have already opted in to in-order stat rolling. That preserves the bell curve for e.g. half giant strength, and gives additional reasons for munchkins to avoid it (less ability to optimize your stat layout) while simultaneously increasing simulationism.

You wind up in a place where you could generate half giants using 4d6k3, arrange to taste, add +2 to Strength (giving you a bunch of exceptionally runty half-giants, which ought to please the Space Jam fans), OR you can choose half giant/female in advance, roll 4d6k3, or 3d6 if you're hardcore, and add Str +6 Con +3 Dex -3 Wis -2 Cha -4 to the results.

To those who like racial traits more than raw stat mods, I sort of agree, but it depends on the race. The key thing is to make it feel like PCs and MM monsters are playing by the same rules, and especially for very large or small races that requires more than just a +2 or -2 to Str. Vanilla goliaths are garbage in large part because they don't FEEL strong. I'd like to fix that.

[daemonaetea]

The last few posters have largely said what I was hoping to add, but I'd like to state it slightly differently - if you want to add this aspect to your world, it is much easier to instead alter NPC stat distribution on creation, rather than overlaying modifiers on top. This has the dual values of being less heavy handed, and not impacting your player's characters, so that they can play those exceptional characters the game's character creation rules are meant to model.

Tell me, what value does it add to your world to say a woman player can't play a warrior as strong as any man? To take someone who wants to play a power fantasy where she's the strongest in the land, able to go up against any warrior who wishes to face her? That's what your modification loses. That player can no longer make that. NPC distribution isn't changed - again, that's very simply modeled by where you put stats for your NPCs. But when you use the stat adjustment, what you've done is denied them this very possibility.

I'm very partial to the simulationist side as well, but to me the goal for such things should be the pursuit of a world that seems cohesive and whole, not one that models the real world. You will still have dragons and magic, and so if you have no problem allowing a dragonborn into the party, it's just as reasonable to have a woman as strong as any man. If you have to consider that a fantasy element, I believe that's an acceptable fantasy element to have.

And that brings me to the negative reaction so many people on here are having on this - that for many of us, it's utterly frustrating that you can set aside things like magic and dragons and extraplanar beings as just trappings of fantasy, but the one place so many demand a fealty to realism is in sexual differences. It feels incredibly limiting to most of us. It tells us that, even though the rules have specifically been setup so that you can play this exceptional hero in this band of brothers, the brothers still have to make sure you know you're not as strong. Oh, more Constitution is nice, and a couple classes like their Wisdom, but for most players that won't have the raw punch of actually being able to hit more and harder. Certain stat bumps are more significant than others. And having to decide if you want to play a woman, or play the optimal character, is not a choice I feel any character should have to make. Note this is not the same as making that same distinction between, say, a halfling and a half-orc. I feel there is a very strong and valid reason, for many reasons in fact, that the male/female choice (and yeah, we're just kinda skipping over any other option for now for the sake of this discussion) is a lot more fundamental to many players.

Which comes back to the whole discussion on averages and exceptions. We're always assured that people are only talking about "averages" when it comes to the differences, but somehow this also very definitively comes back to the max as well. If it was just the average that's different, then a rule wouldn't be necessary to enforce this on the PCs, as they are explicitly not the average. That's the entire reason they exist. But it also seems very important, for this mindset, that the max is rigidly enforced as well. And the entire point of the basketball discussion is that the max is hard to map. Exceptions can be so far outside the normal range as to make a simple change to reflect the average counter-productive on that end. Thus, even if you truly believe this, it still would seem to be a bad idea to change the max, as it has outsize influence on conditions. In other words, for that example, if you wanted the stat block to note the average height of an Asian man is 5'5, I still think it would make sense to do nothing to enforce this within the rules themselves. The rules are for generating heroes, which are explicitly not average. The note of the height makes clear for those making the character what the common is. So a person (including the DM making NPCs) trying to make someone overcoming their normality would stick closer to that average number, and make one type of character. While the person who wants to be unusual, to stand out, would make the tall person. And that, I think, reflects how this should actually be done, in a way that ensures the most fun for all, while still reflecting reality. And that's how D&D 5E handles this sort of thing. It mentions "this race is often X", but then it allows the person to generate what they want to play.

Sorry, I know that last paragraph was rambly, but couldn't find a precise way to put my thoughts together.

[MaxWilson]

Okay, your fallacies are a bit confused. The situation was: Ludic was accused by Max of an committing an appeal-to-authority fallacy by quoting Frank's post. Such an appeal ("you should just believe whatever Frank says") was not made at any time, therefore, Ludic called Max out for straw-manning him.

That is itself a straw man. What I pointed out was that repeatedly citing Frank's Space Jam post (LudicSavant referenced it in three different posts before I finally addressed it) doesn't make it any more applicable and didn't bring anything interesting to the table. It's fundamentally just Frank saying he likes a gamist, nonsimulationist approach to character generation, because exceptional PCs are more fun (in his opinion) to play. LudicSavant repeatedly citing it as if it were relevant was irksome.

I wish all those who do not approve of simulationism would just get off this thread. This thread was not addressed to you.

[MaxWilson]

The last few posters have largely said what I was hoping to add, but I'd like to state it slightly differently - if you want to add this aspect to your world, it is much easier to instead alter NPC stat distribution on creation, rather than overlaying modifiers on top. This has the dual values of being less heavy handed, and not impacting your player's characters, so that they can play those exceptional characters the game's character creation rules are meant to model...

And that brings me to the negative reaction so many people on here are having on this - that for many of us, it's utterly frustrating that you can set aside things like magic and dragons and extraplanar beings as just trappings of fantasy, but the one place so many demand a fealty to realism is in sexual differences. It feels incredibly limiting to most of us. It tells us that, even though the rules have specifically been setup so that you can play this exceptional hero in this band of brothers, the brothers still have to make sure you know you're not as strong.

You misunderstand.

Simulationism is often, though not exclusively, about trying to take the game world seriously on its own terms. Having one set of rules for PCs and a completely different set of rules for NPCs and monsters... that is what the OP attempts to address.

Should players be able to opt back in to Call at stat generation for the sake of fun? Sure, that's pragmatic. I said explicitly in the OP that someone who wants to be able to play a halfling who can arm wrestle ogres should be able to do so.

But you should understand that the desire is not necessarily to unify game world physiology with real world physiology. If you want a "human" species in your game where humans are NOT sexually dimorphic, you can have it. But having sexual dimorphism and then forbidding players from experiencing it in play is as wrong as letting players play githyanki but not giving them the usual githyanki psionic abilities. You're not giving them the genuine githyanki experience.

In other words, make up your mind about what's "realistic" in your game world and then stick to it.

[Kadesh]

That is itself a straw man. What I pointed out was that repeatedly citing Frank's Space Jam post (LudicSavant referenced it in three different posts before I finally addressed it) doesn't make it any more applicable and didn't bring anything interesting to the table. It's fundamentally just Frank saying he likes a gamist, nonsimulationist approach to character generation, because exceptional PCs are more fun (in his opinion) to play. LudicSavant repeatedly citing it as if it were relevant was irksome.

I wish all those who do not approve of simulationism would just get off this thread. This thread was not addressed to you.

Take it to private message if you want to speak to the few people who actually want this.

[daemonaetea]

You misunderstand.

Simulationism is often, though not exclusively, about trying to take the game world seriously on its own terms. Having one set of rules for PCs and a completely different set of rules for NPCs and monsters... that is what the OP attempts to address.

Should players be able to opt back in to Call at stat generation for the sake of fun? Sure, that's pragmatic. I said explicitly in the OP that someone who wants to be able to play a halfling who can arm wrestle ogres should be able to do so.

But you should understand that the desire is not necessarily to unify game world physiology with real world physiology. If you want a "human" species in your game where humans are NOT sexually dimorphic, you can have it. But having sexual dimorphism and then forbidding players from experiencing it in play is as wrong as letting players play githyanki but not giving them the usual githyanki psionic abilities. You're not giving them the genuine githyanki experience.

In other words, make up your mind about what's "realistic" in your game world and then stick to it.

I will admit that your idea of simulationism is different than mine, so we are at a bit of crossroads when it comes to discussing how your variant accomplishes that purpose. But I would like to point out that allowing the choice of where to put the stats to reflect this reality still accomplishes what you cite above.

You are the DM. You are generating all the NPC stats. Heck, I rarely even bother to use the stat creation rules for that, as the point buy to reflect a standard person as opposed to a hero is so small that just giving them a 12 or two, and an 8 or two, accomplishes the same thing. And I'd argue that also emphasizes the racial stat adjustment much more, and accounts for how they impact the "average" member of the race - they don't have the stat points to just overcome their natural abilities, so the smartest normal Orc citizen couldn't rise above a 13 or so.

Again, I think the character creation rules are rather explicitly intended for PCs, not NPCs, and so trying to adjust that layer has an outsize influence on things. By accepting that PC stat distribution is meant to be exceptional, and just modifying how you populate the world, you are doing what you intend in a much more natural way. You are not "forbidding" your characters from experiencing sexual dimorphism. They will pick that up naturally through play in your world, when more soldiers are men then women, and more druids and clerics are women then men. That's how they experience it.

And again, this is an element you are specifically importing into the setting. Something you feel it is important to be present. I would examine why that is, what you feel it adds, what impact that makes on your world, and what that tells your players. That's the point I'm trying to make with the comparison to fantasy elements. Everything you choose about your world says something, and if this is not just for the sake of "realism", what is the point of it? What is the intention this is meant to represent? And is it worth it?

[Dr. Cliché]

And that brings me to the negative reaction so many people on here are having on this - that for many of us, it's utterly frustrating that you can set aside things like magic and dragons and extraplanar beings as just trappings of fantasy, but the one place so many demand a fealty to realism is in sexual differences.

The key word here is verisimilitude.

Suspension of disbelief allows me to accept the existence of magic and dragons in this world. It doesn't allow people to just ignore every law of physics even for basic tasks which involve no magic or dragons whatsoever.

That said, it's probably more of an issue in visual media. No one minds Brienne of Tarth being as strong as a man because, not to put too fine a point on it, she's built like a man. She's a big, hulking woman whose strength is on full display.

Compare that to a woman who looks like a fashion model. A woman who's built like a twig and yet can still arm-wrestle men three times her size to the ground because GIRL POWER!!!

(This is assuming that magic is not being used to enhance strength.)

You might have no issue with the second example 'because fantasy', but understand at least that it will break the experience for many others. It causes the world loses all grounding. We know what a human is capable of, which gives us a bar with which to measure other creatures and powers. However, if humans can do anything the writer wants even without magic, then the world simply has no grounding and the creatures called 'humans' are clearly humans only in name only.


Now, just to be clear, I don't think gender differences are a huge issue for D&D - certainly not one which really need to be represented in stats.

I mention it simply because I hate seeing stuff like 'if you're okay with dragons, why aren't you okay with breaks in logic elsewhere?' Just something that bugs me.

[daemonaetea]

The key word here is verisimilitude.

Suspension of disbelief allows me to accept the existence of magic and dragons in this world. It doesn't allow people to just ignore every law of physics even for basic tasks which involve no magic or dragons whatsoever.

That said, it's probably more of an issue in visual media. No one minds Brienne of Tarth being as strong as a man because, not to put too fine a point on it, she's built like a man. She's a big, hulking woman whose strength is on full display.

Compare that to a woman who looks like a fashion model. A woman who's built like a twig and yet can still arm-wrestle men three times her size to the ground because GIRL POWER!!!

(This is assuming that magic is not being used to enhance strength.)

You might have no issue with the second example 'because fantasy', but understand at least that it will break the experience for many others. It causes the world loses all grounding. We know what a human is capable of, which gives us a bar with which to measure other creatures and powers. However, if humans can do anything the writer wants even without magic, then the world simply has no grounding and the creatures called 'humans' are clearly humans only in name only.


Now, just to be clear, I don't think gender differences are a huge issue for D&D - certainly not one which really need to be represented in stats.

I mention it simply because I hate seeing stuff like 'if you're okay with dragons, why aren't you okay with breaks in logic elsewhere?' Just something that bugs me.

No, that's fair enough. I understand that, and your examples are reasonable, but I will admit the place some people draw the lines can be frustrating. Had a DM once who ruled a character couldn't use two bastard swords in a generic fantasy setting because it just didn't make sense to him someone could use two big swords like that, even though the rules allowed it. But my bard could literally sing people full. The barbarian using two relatively large sticks of metal, though, was a step over the line. Verisimilitude is a thing, but I think some people have it drawn much too tightly.

And I think that's the problem with a rule such as this - it's not objecting to a single weird example of this done badly, it's objecting to the possibility at all, no matter the implementation. So the thing that breaks the view of the world as being within an acceptable bound of realism is that a specific woman, no matter the circumstances, might be equal to a man in strength. I think that's a very specific line to draw.

EDIT: To clarify, I understand that verisimilitude is a thing, but the idea that a woman built to be a strong warrior being the equal to a man breaks it is... Odd to me. Especially given that playing a hero is so much a wish fulfillment. So even if you consider such a thing to be a "fantastic" element, treating it like someone wanting to be an elf or a dragon seems to be a reasonable comparison. It may be "unrealistic", but it is the specific fantastic hero they wish to play.

[Dr. Cliché]

No, that's fair enough. I understand that, and your examples are reasonable, but I will admit the place some people draw the lines can be frustrating. Had a DM once who ruled a character couldn't use two bastard swords in a generic fantasy setting because it just didn't make sense to him someone could use two big swords like that, even though the rules allowed it. But my bard could literally sing people full. The barbarian using two relatively large sticks of metal, though, was a step over the line. Verisimilitude is a thing, but I think some people have it drawn much too tightly.

Yeah, one can definitely go too far. Especially in the case of games where a lot of players will probably lean more towards the Rule of Cool.




And I think that's the problem with a rule such as this - it's not objecting to a single weird example of this done badly, it's objecting to the possibility at all, no matter the implementation. So the thing that breaks the view of the world as being within an acceptable bound of realism is that a specific woman, no matter the circumstances, might be equal to a man in strength. I think that's a very specific line to draw.

I don't disagree. As I said, i really don't think this adds anything to the game (maybe if a GM wants to try and encourage gender-roles for the classes in his world for some reason?).

Another aspect is that lineages in D&D aren't as straightforward as they are in the real world (or even most other fantasy worlds). You've got people with dragon ancestry, people with demonic ancestry, people with elven ancestry etc., to say nothing of all those born with magic or power. Really, the gender of the individual seems pretty minor in comparison. :smallwink:

[MaxWilson]

And I think that's the problem with a rule such as this - it's not objecting to a single weird example of this done badly, it's objecting to the possibility at all, no matter the implementation. So the thing that breaks the view of the world as being within an acceptable bound of realism is that a specific woman, no matter the circumstances, might be equal to a man in strength. I think that's a very specific line to draw.

EDIT: To clarify, I understand that verisimilitude is a thing, but the idea that a woman built to be a strong warrior being the equal to a man breaks it is... Odd to me.

But that's clearly not what this rule variant is about. You're reading things that are not there. In what way does the proposed variant in the OP preclude the possibility of building strong human women who are equal to men?

In no way. Both of them will max out at Str 20. Men will do so slightly more often if they opt in to taking the mods, and women who opt in will do so less frequently than men and women who don't opt in, but even if everyone opts in, ASIs put them all at Str 20 eventually if they choose to focus on that.

Nevertheless a strong half-giant is stronger than any of them.

Edit: I understand how using PHB rules only for PCs influences your position, but hopefully you realize that that's not "explicit" in 5E. In fact 5E is explicit that PHB rules may be used for both PCs and NPCs. See DMG page 92, top of the second column. "You can create an NPC just as you would a player character, using the rules in the Player's Handbook."

The other two options are to use a monster stat block, or to give the NPC only the few statistics that it needs (e.g. name, appearance, and wealth in its pockets). But 5E is explicit that the PHB is not just for PCs.



And again, this is an element you are specifically importing into the setting. Something you feel it is important to be present. I would examine why that is, what you feel it adds, what impact that makes on your world, and what that tells your players. That's the point I'm trying to make with the comparison to fantasy elements. Everything you choose about your world says something, and if this is not just for the sake of "realism", what is the point of it? What is the intention this is meant to represent? And is it worth it?

I've mentioned it previously, but it has a lot to do with the helping players understand what stats mean in something other than have mechanical terms. Even if they opt to always roll 4d6k3 arrange to taste, having some experience with what 3d6 in order yields tends to combat desires for stat inflation: Str 14 still feels impressive, like being the big bouncer in a club, even if you're not Str 16 Arnold Schwarzenegger like your previous PC. Similarly, I want the odd monstrously strong halfling's player to really feel how much stronger he is than the other halflings, and if there's a PC Mind Flayer some day I want him to have a gut feel for what other Mind Flayers are like relative to him and to humans, to inform his roleplaying. Not everybody intuitively groks probability distributions--some people need hands on experience first rolling up some (N)PCs.

[daemonaetea]

But that's clearly not what this rule variant is about. You're reading things that are not there. In what way does the proposed variant in the OP preclude the possibility of building strong human women who are equal to men?

In no way. Both of them will max out at Str 20. Men will do so slightly more often if they opt in to taking the mods, and women who opt in will do so less frequently than men and women who don't opt in, but even if everyone opts in, ASIs put them all at Str 20 eventually if they choose to focus on that.

Nevertheless a strong half-giant is stronger than any of them.

Edit: I understand how using PHB rules only for PCs influences your position, but hopefully you realize that that's not "explicit" in 5E. In fact 5E is explicit that PHB rules may be used for both PCs and NPCs. See DMG page 92, top of the second column. "You can create an NPC just as you would a player character, using the rules in the Player's Handbook."

The other two options are to use a monster stat block, or to give the NPC only the few statistics that it needs (e.g. name, appearance, and wealth in its pockets). But 5E is explicit that the PHB is not just for PCs.

I'm sorry, I thought the discussion was on changing the max along with the values. That may have been a later addition to the discussion, and it's that I object to most strongly. The rule without that I consider less useful but also less objectionable, since it won't subtract from character concepts and mostly seems like it'd help optimizers out.

As far as NPC creation... that's very specifically for NPCs with class levels, which seems like it'd be the minority of NPCs met in the game. For more "common" NPCs, I think the stat blocks from the MM are much more indicative of what the game expects. Heck, the standard commoner template on MM pg 345 is straight 10s across the board. So the game seems to assume the standard person you encounter is actually built upon more like a point buy of 6, maybe rising to 12-15 for things liked trained guards or priests.

[MaxWilson]

I'm sorry, I thought the discussion was on changing the max along with the values. That may have been a later addition to the discussion, and it's that I object to most strongly.

In the OP, the proposed rule is to allow exceeding 20 only on initial character generation, but then ASIs can't raise it further. That can only affect nonhumans. Humans still max out at Str 20 even if you roll a natural 18, take a racial +1 Str, and opt in to male mods.

Note that you could still start off at Str 20 as a female by rolling an 18, taking a racial +1, and taking a racial feat like Heavy Armor Master (Str +1 with a max of 20).

Give me some credit here. I thought this through when crafting the rule.

[LudicSavant]

It's fundamentally just Frank saying he likes a gamist, nonsimulationist approach to character generation, because exceptional PCs are more fun (in his opinion) to play. LudicSavant repeatedly citing it as if it were relevant was irksome.

I wish all those who do not approve of simulationism would just get off this thread. This thread was not addressed to you.

Not only the people agreeing with me, but even the guy defending you and disagreeing with me, acknowledged that I was in fact addressing simulationism.

If you want to disagree with me, that's fine, but it would be nice if you would at least have the courtesy to disagree with the point I am actually making. Numerous people have been able to accurately point out what I was getting at and why it's relevant, so I think that it was reasonably clear.

It seems like that's not in the cards, though, so I bid you good day.

[Ganymede]

Again, I think the character creation rules are rather explicitly intended for PCs, not NPCs,

This is a very important point.

The character creation rules are merely a conceit designed to allow players to have adventures with their friends and tell stories through their PCs.

The use of the character creation rules as a way to simulate the social-political reality of the game world hasn't been used since AD&D First Edition. They used things like stat caps and level caps in order to justify why human men dominated the world even though they were competing with those on equal or better footing to rule. Using character creation rules like these was dumped 30 years ago, and for good reason.

[Pronounceable]

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hZGYNAhwMcQ/Vt3eRYAB4KI/AAAAAAAASHU/WHSd-HFO0j8/s1600/J-Jonah-Jameson-laughing.jpg
Wait, you're serious?
https://i.imgflip.com/11v2yt.jpg


...
At first I thought this post would be rude. Then I decided it was nevertheless appropriate.

[MaxWilson]

Willful misreading. Did not respond to, not didn't read.

I mean, how did you think I knew what you quoted Frank as saying about Space Jam? Telepathy?

Sheesh.

Public notice:

LudicSavant reached out to me in a PM to clarify that he/she/g'ya genuinely misunderstood, not willfully, and to request that I make that fact publicly known. I told him/her/g'ya that


I'll respond to my post and clarify that you reached out to me in a PM and confirmed that you genuinely misunderstood me and wanted it to be clear that you weren't arguing in bad faith.

It is done.

[BurgerBeast]

The summary of my two issues is this:

(1) As has already been pointed out by the OP, and as he made explicit in the topic, this suggestion is based on a particualr form of simulationism. Nobody needs to like the particular form of simulationsim being proposed, nor do they have to think it’s implementation is particularly well thought out.

But arguments which essentially boil down to: Your form of simulationism is wrong/bad/sexist/evil/stupid fail to address the point.

If you think that a fair and fun game is more important than a realistic game, for any reason whatsoever, then that’s grand. Play a fair and fun game. If you prefer a game that has a degree of simulationism, then you’ll have to make some fairness concessions. And whatever degree of simulationsim you prefer, or the particualr aspects for which you think simultionism matters or doesn’t matter, are a matter of taste. Don’t try to force your taste on other people.

(2) Many of the arguments that have been put forward to rebut the OP’s suggestions are so obviously inconsistent that it is egregious. If you want to say that game-mechanical sexual dimorphism is bad because of X, then you should not advocate for other forms of polymorphism because of X. X is either a reason in support of polymorphism or it is a reason in opposition to polymorphism. You can’t pick and choose when it’s in support and when it’s in opposition to satisfy some political view, unless there are reasons behind the difference.

First of all I can only figure from what you’re writing is that you’re just willfulling closing your mind to the actual point of view being expressed. It’s bizarre that you just keep making claims without actually meeting the claims for what they really are.

Second of all, if you think it makes perfect sense to cap the Strength of every humanoid at 20, then I disagree. The only way it can make sense to cap the strength scores of, let’s say, halflings and bugbears, at the same value, is if you are ignoring realism.

If you prefer the game that way, that’s fine. I don't.


It might not be the goal, but it's the result.

This is pretty bloody significant, if you ask me.


That's not sarcasm. I clearly stated than 5e assume the statblocks are the same no matter the sex.

No, it was sarcasm, it just flew over your head. You said:


According to MaxWilson, though, a female human Veteran should have 15 in STR.

And my reply was meant to point out that, perhaps MaxWilson thinks the female Veteran should have a strenght of 16, and the male Veteran should have a strength of 17. The difference is which gender you attribute to the template. You assumed the template was a male, which is why you subtracted to find the female’s score. There is irony in that. And it just got doubled.


5e is to say that.

Maybe you’re not aware of what is being discussed. The OP is proposing an optional change to the 5e rules. So if your answer is always, “5e says differently” well… yeah? We know that. That’s whay it’s called a change.


They are arguing that it shouldn't matter to players.

This point is not lost on me, but the OP is explicitly using a simulationist perspective, which is defined by such things mattering. That’s the disconnect. It does matter to a simulationist.

What I am saying is, stop trying to dictate taste. Some people prefer simulationism, and some people prefer gamism. I’m not sitting over here, telling them to stop caring about stat caps and gender equality. That would be stupid, because caring about those things is built into their position.

If your criticism of an attempt at simulationism amounts to: “simulationism is bad,” then you’re really just choosing to not engage.


You are choosing, not a random person, but some archetype in conceptual space which is interesting to the player. Which is pretty much the opposite of random.

This again is based on their fundamental assumptions, but flies in the face of simulationism. Both sides may agree that, in the real world, people do not choose their attributes because they are born into them… but the simulationist persepective is that this lack of choice should be represented mechanically in the game.


A woman who can match any man in the kingdom in a fight? Sounds cool. Do it. The rest of the kingdom can be accurately distributed as much as you want, for the sake of an accurate simulation, but players can and should fall outside of it. (A point that Max's last post conceded in part.)(emphasis added)
Well, I’m not going to speak for MaxWilson, but for me, it’s precisely the bolded part that is a causing the problem. I can easily concede that player characters should be exceptional, but then the question is “how exceptional?” The answer to this is where questions of simulationism are going to come in.

Letting PCs roll 4d6p3, in order, is one way to make them more exceptional. And it still lives up to my conception of simulationism. But the idea that a person can choose how strong they are flies in the face of reason for me.

I want to emphasize here, that I let my PCs use point buy and build their characters however they see fit within the rules - but I admit that it is not simulationist. That’s really what I am trying to drive at here. You do not have to like any particular form of simulationism. But then when the poster is trying to approach something in a simulationist way, I don’t say “Shut up, you’re a sexist. Use point buy like everyone else.” I say: “Well, yeah, since you’re trying to approach this as a simulationist, point buy doesn’t make any sense. I don’t approach the game that way though.”


In that sense, you are facing an argument that this kind of simulationism is, in fact, not a good idea, on account of enforcing real-world norms that don't really need enforcement. So, I'd recommend trying to answer that objection.

I am not going to answer that objection, because I support people who make it, and their right do so. It’s not my f@#king business what other players like or don’t like. I believe people have the right to like what they like and dislike what they dislike.

The point that (I think the OP - I hope I’m not misrepresenting him - and) I am (are) making is that we are okay with including real-world norms in the mechanics. We don’t share the opinion expressed above.

But if anyone wants to make a post on how to make a more free and fun and fantastic way to play, I am not going to pollute that thread with stupidity such as “this is a terible way to play, because it is completely devoid of realism.” I’m going to engage properly or I’ll f@#k off. I am not going to tell others how to play, or what to like.


Okay, your fallacies are a bit confused. The situation was: Ludic was accused by Max of an committing an appeal-to-authority fallacy by quoting Frank's post.

No, that is not the situation. This is the situation:


Much as I love and appreciate Frank's insights into game design, merely citing Frank as sharing your opinion does not make it the only opinion.


Well that's a heck of a straw man. :smallconfused:

I am not being **** here and presuming that either you, or LudicSavant, do not understand what a straw man fallacy is, but I want to make this clear for the sake of being thorough. Maybe we disagree on the particulars but all have a generally correct notion of what it is.

A straw man (or scarecrow, if we use the American term) is a fake man made of straw and used to represent a real man.

The straw man fallacy goes (basically) like this:

1. build a straw man
2. kill the straw man
3. claim that you killed the man, citing the killing of the scarecrow as evidence

Now if you look back at what MaxWilson did, he did not actually build a straw man at all, because he did not refute Ludic’s argument. He rejected the argument. So a straw man is not even possible in this circumstance.

If you say: “I do not accept your argument because it is only one opinion,” you can’t commit a straw man fallacy. It’s not possible. Max did not give an explanation of Ludic’s argument at all, which means he couldn’t have given a false explanation.


... not the point being made. The point being made is that racial modifiers may be an unhelpful way to try to address racial differences; they are definitely significant.

I got that. I wasn’t actually accusing anyone, I was being hypothetical. The problem is, if you are going to disagree with sexual modifiers in D&D while simultaneously defending racial modifiers in D&D, then why? What’s the difference that allows racial differentiation to provide added fun and simultaneously prevent sexual differences from providing more fun? - This is the inconsistency I was trying to point out.


Yes, there's a fundamental mismatch between the fact that we have racial bonuses and that the modifiers are all the same. I think a lot of people (e.g. Ludic) were making arguments about whether racial bonuses/gender bonuses/etc. are productive from the perspective that the max is still in place, in which case you aren't actually enforcing that "the strongest guy should be a man/orc/whatever", just that you're leaving the concept open and imposing unnecessary conditions on people who try to reach them. Now that is actually an interesting game-theoretic discussion, which I think is getting lost in the smoke here. Maybe worth setting up a separate thread to clear the air.

First of all, in the initial post, last paragraph, the OP did raise the question of different caps. So there’s that.

Second of all, this is the point I made above all over again. What’s the difference between the unacceptability of starting a man 2 points ahead of a woman (or a woman 2 points ahead of man) and the unacceptability of starting a mountain dwarf 2 points ahead of a halfling in strength? If (and I repeat, if) you are okay with the mountain dwarf being 2 points ahead of a halfling, then how is that fundamentally different than a woman starting 2 points ahead of a man? This appears to be an inconsistency in reasoning.


My point being, can everyone listen a little better and maybe drink some tea? It's frankly frustrating trying to participate in a conversation that's actually five different conversations coming from five different premises among people who don't realize that's what happening and are all angry.

I don’t think you’re giving me enough credit, here. I may be wrong about what I am saying, but I am not misunderstanding anyone else.


That is not an assumption. The smartest orc can reach 20 Int. The smartest human can reach 20 Int. 20=20.

Yes, and this thread is designed to challenge the assumptions of the game. That’s what suggesting new rules is, in principle. So if you are of the opinion that the smartest orc and the smartest human ought to be equally smart, then this rule is not a problem for you.

However, if you do not start from the 5e rules (i.e. of you don’t assume that they are true), you may find that you have a different opinion on how the smartest orc compares to the smartest human. Maybe that’s clearer, now?


Racial modifiers in the rules as written do not reflect differences in the maximum intelligence of humans and orcs. Incidentally, they still don't with the OP's suggested houserules.

From the first post in this thread:


You could extend this opt in model to model races like orcs and goliaths which ought to be more different from humanity than they are, e.g. orcs can opt for Str +3 Dex -1 Int -2 Cha -2 (based loosely on MM stat tends), halflings could opt for additional Str -3 Con +1 on top of PHB mods, and Athasian half-giants can opt for Str +7 Con +2 Dex -3 Wis -2 Cha -4 due to their wishy washy nature and huge physical frame.

…

You might or might not want to combine this with a rule variant that allows stats to exceed 20 when they are initially rolled (no ASIs allowed after that).

So, at least some of the OP’s initial suggestions allow for cap-breaking. Specifically an orc male could start with 21 strength if he opted-in and rolled an 18. A female could never exceed 20 witout magical aid (or by being a barbarian, in which her 24 would still lose to the comparable male barbarian’s 25).


With the OP's suggested rules (including the "break cap" rules), a female human and a male human would still both max out at a +5 modifier to strength.

What does this have to do with what I said? I said that, assumptions aside, should Brienne of Tarth (or the strongest woman in the world) be capable of matching Gregor “the Mountain” Clegane (or the strongest man in the world) in strength?

Because that’s my point. It was made in response to the “but PCs are exceptional argument.” You might remember that my response was: “Differences in populations are more significant in the case of exceptional people – not less.” If you take the average strength man, you may find that the ratio of men to women who have that amount of strength is something like 10:7. But then you take the strength of the average NFL lineman, and you might find the ratio is something like 100:1. And when get to the international male weight lifters, you may find it’s something like 10,000:1 or more. That’s just how normal distributions work. The differences are exagerrated at the edges.


What the OP's suggested houserules will actually do is make Brienne of Tarth worse than the average Westerosi knight overall. What it won't do is make Clegane's max strength modifier different from Brienne's max strength modifier. They'll both max out at +5. Brienne will just reach +5 later, and Clegane will have extra ASIs to spend on non-Strength things, making him a more optimal character, but not one with a higher Strength modifier in the mid and late game.

In other words, the system the OP is arguing for does not add the alleged simulationism of Brienne never being able to match Clegane's strength. It just makes her character less powerful overall than other Westerosi Knights in the party.


This strikes me as a irrelevant. The result is the same. The reason Clegane is better is ultimately traceable back to his initial strength advantage. In the presence of a cap, he gets extra feats. In the absence of a cap, he gets higher strength. From a simulationist perspective the cap is stupid, but the fact that Clegane comes out ahead only makes it easier for the simulationist to accept the cap.


...As Aureus pointed out, that was not my point. In fact I said pretty much the exact opposite.

Did I say it was your point?


Of course it's assuming you are making a player. Everyone in the Space Jam RPG is a basketball player. The absolutely entirety of the character creation rules exist for the sake of modeling basketball players. It's basketball players all the way down.

That's like claiming it's a "bias" if you say that Dungeons and Dragons PCs are generally adventurers. (emphasis added)

That’s my point. In the SpaceJam RPG, you already know that you’re making a basketbal player, so you build your character to be good at basketball. Asians who are good at basketball are taller (not shorter) than the average player. So, assuming you are generating a person who is a basketball player and is Asian, he should get a bonus to his height.

If however, in the SpaceJam RPG, you just generated an Asian man, and then it had to be determined whether he’d qualify as a basketball player, you would give a penalty to height. The result would be (assuming that the mechanics modelled other attributes well) that Asians with the same stats as members of other races would end up slightly worse at basketball because of their height. The only way make the NBA would be to either have the same stats but above average height, or the same height but above average height. It would play out as it should.

If you play 5e D&D as it is now, which is not simulationist, you decide your class and race (this would be analagous to already knowing that you’re building a basketball player), and then you build the stats as you like.

If you play 5e in a modified, simulationist way, you would roll stats before deciding on a race or class (this would be analagous to not knowing you’re making a basketball player), and there may be qualification requirements.

It follows the same trend. A 14 strength orc generally makes a better fighter than a 14 strength half-elf, and a 14 charisma half-elf generally makes a better bard than a 14 charisma orc. If you roll first, and then determine whether you qualify for a class, you’ll end up similar types of situations as your Space Jam example.


How often do we see rules about adding realism through wound infections, or how certain iconic fantasy beasts would collapse under their own weight? If we're going to talk realism, why is this one corner case so overwhelmingly popular.

To my knowledge, it’s not popular at all. Judging by this thread, I’d say it’s the opposite. This particular form of realism appears to be decidedly unpopular.


Also, every player happens to be a real-world human who comes in with real world human experiences and biases. While a totally "realistic" game would have more than 1 or 2 points of strength difference between men and women (compare real world weight lifting records to the 3.5 carrying capacity chart for the closest you'll see to an objective value), you already see men overrepresented in strength based bruiser characters. Brawny female characters require either going against type hard, or settings where everybody has super stats because everybody is super. The average female character will already have a lower strength than the average male character, just because certain archetypes are coded as male or female in the average player's head. So you get the same net effect without having to muck about with all the issues that stat bonuses/penalties raise.

Well, you appear to be saying: you don’t need simulationism for the distributions to fall roughly as they would if you bothered with all of that, so just skip the simulationism and you’ll get the distributions anyway, with less work.

Well, I don’t know that we have evidence of that either way. But it seems to be the exact opposite of what the others are saying. Where you are saying something like: “don’t worry, you won’t be seeing a lot of 20 strength female humans anyway,” the other side seems to be saying “if we want to make 100 human women all with 20 strength, than we bloody well can.”


Tell me, what value does it add to your world to say a woman player can't play a warrior as strong as any man? To take someone who wants to play a power fantasy where she's the strongest in the land, able to go up against any warrior who wishes to face her? That's what your modification loses. That player can no longer make that.

This is only true if you start from the assumption that the 5e rules are the rules. The OP is suggesting that we re-think those rules.

So, if human females are capped at 19 strength and males are capped at 20, for example, then the females will have lost something. But the they always had a limit, it’s just that the limit has changed.

The example was floated around here about the halfling who is as strong as an ogre. “I should be able to make that character if I want to!”

To which I say: “Why? I want to make a halfling who is as strong as a hill giant.” But I can’t (unless I make a barbarian). Am I crying that “I should be able to make a halfling as strong as a hill giant if I want to!”

There will be limits. They are more or less arbitrary. “I want to be as strong as the tarrasque” is not very different than “I want to be as strong as a hill giant,” which is not very different than “I want to be as strong as an ogre,” which is not very different than “I want to be as strong as the strongest man in the world.”

There’s a line. There’s something that you can’t match in strength. Presumably you already accept this, because you’re not complaining about the current 5e ruleset. But if the bar moves, then it’s suddenly a big problem?


I'm very partial to the simulationist side as well, but to me the goal for such things should be the pursuit of a world that seems cohesive and whole, not one that models the real world.

This strikes me as a false dichotomy. A certain amount of real world modelling is required, and everyone wants cohesion.


You will still have dragons and magic, and so if you have no problem allowing a dragonborn into the party, it's just as reasonable to have a woman as strong as any man.

No. This is a non sequitur.


And that brings me to the negative reaction so many people on here are having on this - that for many of us, it's utterly frustrating that you can set aside things like magic and dragons and extraplanar beings as just trappings of fantasy, but the one place so many demand a fealty to realism is in sexual differences.

But it’s not the only place, and it’s not being demanded. This is a total misrepresentation.


It feels incredibly limiting to most of us. It tells us that, even though the rules have specifically been setup so that you can play this exceptional hero in this band of brothers, the brothers still have to make sure you know you're not as strong. Oh, more Constitution is nice, and a couple classes like their Wisdom, but for most players that won't have the raw punch of actually being able to hit more and harder.

But your character already has limits. You cannot be as strong as a hill giant. There is a limit to every aspect of your character, on the basis of class, of background, of race. So it seems to me that you’ve gotten this entirely backward. It seems to me that are perfectly willing to accept limitation in you fantasy on the basis of many things. But physiological sex is the one place you will not accept it.


Certain stat bumps are more significant than others. And having to decide if you want to play a woman, or play the optimal character, is not a choice I feel any character should have to make.

Again, you’re mischaracterizing the argument. It may turn out, for particular simulationists, that women are less than optimal fighters. But then whatever stat bonus the woman gets (say to Wisdom) will result in other people having to choose between playing a man or playing an optimal cleric (or whatever).

And, even though I know you make the distinction, currenty players who really like to play tielfings have to make a decision between playing a tiefling and playing an optimal barbarian. To me that’s not so different that it warrants a different response.


Note this is not the same as making that same distinction between, say, a halfling and a half-orc. I feel there is a very strong and valid reason, for many reasons in fact, that the male/female choice (and yeah, we're just kinda skipping over any other option for now for the sake of this discussion) is a lot more fundamental to many players.

This goes back to acknowledging the idea of simulationism. The idea of simulationism is that you lose some freedom in the interest of some form of realism. So to the simulationist, the idea that it’s “more fundamental” to many players is not a good reason to abandon the idea. I’m not sure why people can’t get passed the arbitrariness of this. What if the idea that rangers ought to be able to cast fireball was “more fundamental” to most players? Should you then change the rules and allow rangers to cast fireball? My point is that there are already arbitrary limits, everywhere, for multiple reasons that ultimately boil to some form of simulationism in some degree.


Which comes back to the whole discussion on averages and exceptions. We're always assured that people are only talking about "averages" when it comes to the differences, but somehow this also very definitively comes back to the max as well.

I’ve been pretty assertive about the maximums, actually. The idea that men and women could be modelled as having the same average strength is barely significant. The idea that the strongest woman can match the strongest man – that’s absolute nonsense. But I’m coming form the assumption that stats are generated using 3d6+X or 4d6b3+X. so moving the maximum also moves the average, and vice-versa.


If it was just the average that's different, then a rule wouldn't be necessary to enforce this on the PCs, as they are explicitly not the average. That's the entire reason they exist.

To the simulationist, the fact that PCs are not average does not just magically absolve them of all limitations. PCs are still based on a normal distribution around 4d6b3 and the simulationist would impose more limitations, generally, than the 5e rules do.


But it also seems very important, for this mindset, that the max is rigidly enforced as well. And the entire point of the basketball discussion is that the max is hard to map.

I don’t know what you’re talking about. The max is much easier to determine than the average. There’s only one number to consider.


…So a person (including the DM making NPCs) trying to make someone overcoming their normality would stick closer to that average number, and make one type of character. While the person who wants to be unusual, to stand out, would make the tall person.

Sure, but even the people who are repulsed by the idea of limits on women are still willing to accept limits on human height, I would presume. I mean, if I really, really wanted to play a 10 foot tall man, would that be a simple “yes”? No problem. This is fantasy afterall, so you should be able to make a 10 foot tall human if you want to?

At my table the answer is “no.” Well, fine. Then what about 9 feet? Or 8 feet? Or if 10 feet seemed reasonable to you, then what about 20 feet?

My point, again, is that you are accepting limits. Currently. Many of them. So you don’t seem to have a problem with limits. Limits based on background? No problem. Limits based on class? No problem? Race? No problem. Gender? ABSOLUTELY NOT. NEVER. HOW DARE YOU? EVIL. DEMON. MONSTER…


Take it to private message if you want to speak to the few people who actually want this.

What a stupid thing to demand.

The thread has a topic. It is fair for the OP to request that people address it.

[Kadesh]

What a stupid thing to demand.

The thread has a topic. It is fair for the OP to request that people address it.

Equally fair for people to tell him to shove it, then, given he has made a proposition in a public place.

If you think that Biodiversity doesn't exist, then you are flat out objectively wrong. Andro and Gyno sphinxes have different stats, as does a Female and Male Steeder. There is a difference between a Favoured Consort and a Matriach from the Drow.

Biodiversity exists where it is relevant. where it has been deemed irrelevant (a weak female human might have 8 Str, and not invest further, a strong female human might have 16 Str and invest further). The system has a 30pt scale to tell the difference between a demon prince and a mouse.

Idiotic topic, and idiotic thing to say we are not allowed to criticise. If OP wants to have a circle jerk sounding board, then he should go to PM and discuss it that way.

[Sception]

If I were to show up to a game with a new group, and off the bat the DM started proposing house rules applying stat mods to character's sexes, I would probably not stick around for the rest of the game. Such things may not be intended badly, but going there in the first place is not a great sign and I've had enough bad experiences in the hobby gaming community that I don't wait around for second signs.

[MaxWilson]

Hi BurgerBeast,

Thanks for engaging. I appreciate your thoughts, but it is a lot of text, mostly addressed to people who are missing the point of the thread, so I haven't read the whole post yet (it's 5am and I should be getting ready for work) so I'm only responding to one thing right now that caught my attention because it's rule-based:


So, at least some of the OP’s initial suggestions allow for cap-breaking. Specifically an orc male could start with 21 strength if he opted-in and rolled an 18. A female could never exceed 20 witout magical aid (or by being a barbarian, in which her 24 would still lose to the comparable male barbarian’s 25).

Nitpick: an orc male who rolled an 18 and opted into male stat mods would have Str +3 (orc) plus other stat mods and Str +1 (male) for Str 22, not 21. A female would have Str 21, or 20 if opting into female stat mods. Therefore female orcs could exceed 20, although the difference between 21 and 20 is only important because of my house rule that odd ability scores give an extra +1 to ability checks (NOT attack rolls or saves or anything else) in order to differentiate them.

=====================================

Further noodling:

If you want to go full simulationist here you could make degree of sexual dimorphism random instead of metagamed, i.e. make applying the sexual stat mods random. E.g. if you apply male/female stat mods 40% of the time, that is sort of like a statement that the Str distributions mostly overlap and that the mean difference is less than one point.

Note further that +3 may or may not be the right number for orcs--that was chosen for example, not actual play. Considering that dwarves get +2 Str for free and orcs in the OP get a bunch of penalties, and considering GreyWander's suggestion, I think I'd ultimately give orcish PCs two options: either roll 4d6k3 and take +2 Str/etc. using Volo's rules, or go hardcore full-on orc and use the standard orc rules for 4d4+6 Strength (no sexual dimorphism mods, based on my impression of the lore in Volo's), 4d4+2 Dex, 4d4+6 Con, 2d6 Int, 3d6 Wis, 3d6 Cha plus Aggressive and free martial weapons proficiency. Would need to playtest and tweak before finalizing.

Here are some typical rolls from that distribution:

Str 17 Dex 15 Con 12 Int 11 Wis 8 Cha 7 [strong but lean and nimble for an orc]
Str 19 Dex 13 Con 14 Int 8 Wis 11 Cha 11 [probably the squad leader]
Str 12 Dex 14 Con 17 Int 8 Wis 18 Cha 12 [the scout?]
Str 18 Dex 11 Con 19 Int 4 Wis 7 Cha 11 [the heavy]
Str 17 Dex 12 Con 14 Int 5 Wis 9 Cha 14 [loveable dimwit?]

A player could have plenty of fun as an orc from that distribution.

-Max

[KorvinStarmast]

This is an incredible sexist thing to post and wrong on so many scientific levels. Mother nature is sexist: only women can bare children. :smallyuk:

[PhantomSoul]

If going for sexual dimorphism (and really any other source for stats!), a "nice" case might be if stats are rolled straight down (instead of assigned post-rolling), in which case you could effectively assign distributions to stats.

Perhaps Drow males have 3d6 for strength whereas Drow females have 4d6-drop-lowest, or 3d6-rerolling-1s, or 2d6+1d8. Perhaps the sex differences between Drow aren't that big, but maybe there's a more noticeable difference for Orcs that get a (probabilistically) better formula for their strength.

Of course, that also ends up being more complicated and you end up having to pick character information in specific orders (since you need to pick your race before knowing your stats). For point buy, maybe you tweak the costs of stat increases, that way it replicates better and you can reliably reconstruct whether a starting stat spread is ok.

[KorvinStarmast]

The average orc combatant has 16 in STR, be they male or female. 16 in STR is enough to kill the average human combatant, the 8 HPs Guard NPC, with two punches. The human Veteran NPC has 16 in STR, too. They too are capable to kill a regular human mook with two punches.
Do you really gain anything by making female Veteran NPCs weaker than their male counterparts and unable to keep up with them if they fight in the same conditions? Nope, nothing gained, particularly when you look at the huge number of stories, TV shows, and movies that have physically superb female fighters and heroes/protagonists. See also comic books. The 5e design model tried not to add fiddly bits where they weren't going to matter. They also want to appeal to as large a player base as they can. AD&D did its gender differences thing based on the real world "averages" and eventually people realized that in an escapist game that was based on fantasy, that particular detail wasn't necessary for a game to be fun. That amount of versmiilitude wasn't required to get people to play and immerse themselves into a story or adventure.


Simulationism is often, though not exclusively, about trying to take the game world seriously on its own terms. Having one set of rules for PCs and a completely different set of rules for NPCs and monsters... that is what the OP attempts to address.
(1) Primary world/secondary world mis-match. Only make changes were it matters for the story, or for game play.
(2) It's less work for the DM to be able to cut and paste NPCs without having to go through char creation for NPC's. The point is to make it less work for the DM, and to avoid having NPC's that have 1 HP. That minion feature worked in a different edition. It's not part of this edition's framework.

[MaxWilson]

If going for sexual dimorphism (and really any other source for stats!), a "nice" case might be if stats are rolled straight down (instead of assigned post-rolling), in which case you could effectively assign distributions to stats.

Perhaps Drow males have 3d6 for strength whereas Drow females have 4d6-drop-lowest, or 3d6-rerolling-1s, or 2d6+1d8. Perhaps the sex differences between Drow aren't that big, but maybe there's a more noticeable difference for Orcs that get a (probabilistically) better formula for their strength.

Of course, that also ends up being more complicated and you end up having to pick character information in specific orders (since you need to pick your race before knowing your stats). For point buy, maybe you tweak the costs of stat increases, that way it replicates better and you can reliably reconstruct whether a starting stat spread is ok.

Good points. Discussion in this thread has definitely gotten me leaning in this direction. This feedback was valuable, thanks.


(2) It's less work for the DM to be able to cut and paste NPCs without having to go through char creation for NPC's. The point is to make it less work for the DM, and to avoid having NPC's that have 1 HP. That minion feature worked in a different edition. It's not part of this edition's framework.

This is true, but irrelevant. You can always take shortcuts and use approximations, for anything in the game.

Plenty of NPCs at my table don't have stats, only a name and appearance; and even plenty of PCs are lacking skill proficiencies, languages, or even a complete spell list, because it's simpler to just get on with the game and fill those things out when they actually matter. (E.g. last session I told the player of Merlin, the land druid, to write down any spells he wanted prepared but to leave three "wildcard" slots that he could fill in on-demand. It turned out that the only spells he cast that game were Earthbind and Grasping Vine, so spending a bunch of time deciding a complete spell list would have been a waste of time. Note that this player was completely new to druids so learning the spell list would have taken a long time.)

The same game featured a diversionary fight between between hobgoblin guards and the Greek giant whom the PCs had beat in a riddle game and then persuaded to help on their mission (in exchange for promises of citizenship, in order to gain access to a wider audience for riddle games) while the PCs sneaked into the tower where the princess was imprisoned. Did the existence of combat rules obligate me to roll a bunch of attacks and damage rolls against myself (as hobgoblins and giant) while the players stood around doing nothing? It did not. I just said, "Okay, Diabolein is fighting and throwing rocks and they're shooting back and he's lying prone to avoid counterfire and stuff. For now let's just say they're keeping each other busy while you deal with the fire creature," and I later resolved the giant's fate by rolling two dice (d20 for how many hobgoblins died, d20 * 10% for how much of the giant's HP was depleted--as it turned out he killed 3 hobgoblins and was himself wounded to about half health but not killed, which seemed plausible for a fight between a smart giant with Giant Ape stats and IIRC 10-12 hobgoblins).

Some simulations are finer-grained than others, and that is fine. Nobody ever said you can't simplify where appropriate, and that isn't a reason to figure out what the base reality before simplifications is going to be.

[BurgerBeast]

Equally fair for people to tell him to shove it, then, given he has made a proposition in a public place.

If you think that Biodiversity doesn't exist, then you are flat out objectively wrong. Andro and Gyno sphinxes have different stats, as does a Female and Male Steeder. There is a difference between a Favoured Consort and a Matriach from the Drow.

Biodiversity exists where it is relevant. where it has been deemed irrelevant (a weak female human might have 8 Str, and not invest further, a strong female human might have 16 Str and invest further). The system has a 30pt scale to tell the difference between a demon prince and a mouse.

Idiotic topic, and idiotic thing to say we are not allowed to criticise. If OP wants to have a circle jerk sounding board, then he should go to PM and discuss it that way.

You can yell and cry and make various other noises (“idiotic! Not allowed to criticize! Circle jerk sounding board!”), sure. But you can also put your big boy pants on, and offer reasons.

Nobody is saying you can’t criticize, champ. But “you’re an idiot” is not a criticism, it’s a slur. So you’re using this public space to slur. Good for you. That’s the entirety of your contribution this far.

Feel free to tell us why sexual dimorphism is an idiotic thing to model without reference to personal taste. Then you’ll be part of an adult conversation, instead of slinging insults from the peanut gallery.


If I were to show up to a game with a new group, and off the bat the DM started proposing house rules applying stat mods to character's sexes, I would probably not stick around for the rest of the game. Such things may not be intended badly, but going there in the first place is not a great sign and I've had enough bad experiences in the hobby gaming community that I don't wait around for second signs.

And I would back you up on that. You have every right to choose which games you want to play. (But you do not have the right , as I’m sure you’d agree, to show up at a game and demand that it be played the way you want, nor to abuse people for playing in a way you don’t like.)

Also, if you are going to decide, on the basis of modifiers based on sex, that the game is crap... well that’s known as prejudice. You’re literally judging the quality of an entire game on the basis of a single detail, before you’ve witnessed the game being played. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I do it, too, in restricted contexts. I just want to clarify what we’re talking about.

The argument you’ve presented, with a few direct substitutions (but not a single change to the logical structure), is an argument in support of more or less any form of bigotry. “I’ve been to enough dinner parties where the hosts said grace before we started eating to know that I would be entirely uninterested in dinner conversation with these people. I wouldn’t need to wait around for a second sign.”


If going for sexual dimorphism (and really any other source for stats!), a "nice" case might be if stats are rolled straight down (instead of assigned post-rolling), in which case you could effectively assign distributions to stats.

Perhaps Drow males have 3d6 for strength whereas Drow females have 4d6-drop-lowest, or 3d6-rerolling-1s, or 2d6+1d8. Perhaps the sex differences between Drow aren't that big, but maybe there's a more noticeable difference for Orcs that get a (probabilistically) better formula for their strength.

Of course, that also ends up being more complicated and you end up having to pick character information in specific orders (since you need to pick your race before knowing your stats). For point buy, maybe you tweak the costs of stat increases, that way it replicates better and you can reliably reconstruct whether a starting stat spread is ok.

Yeah, these will produce different and potentially more accurate, curves, for sure. But unless you’re trying to model something like a fractional bonus, as MaxWilson discussed, it’s introducing too much variation (in rolling methods, not in scores) for my taste.

You could, if you wanted to, derive or invent the mean values and standard deviations of every racial ability that you wished, and pick the most appropriate dice pool +/- static bonus combination to achieve it. I’ve done this before, as an exercise or experiment in rule design, using size categories as a base.

But I personally prefer to keep 3d6 +/- modifier for PC races, because that’s where my personal tolerance for the simulation/balance trade-off runs out.* It’s not necessarily easier to balance using this way, it’s easier to match the methodology of balancing to the current rule set. But I’m fairly concerned with balance, which is less of a concern when I’m going for simulationism.

*actually, that’s not true. I think I prefer to keep the same dice pools for size-categories when it comes to physical stats. And perhaps I’m overly systematic in that regard. But something like 4d6 (or 3d8) plus modifier for the Str/Con of a large creature, but 2d6 (or 3d4) plus modifier for the Dex, seems okay to me (these are just examples).

[Kadesh]

Feel free to tell us why sexual dimorphism is an idiotic thing to model without reference to personal taste. Then you’ll be part of an adult conversation, instead of slinging insults from the peanut gallery.

It already IS modelled. Its just that its not relevant enough for 5e to model the minor differences between the average male and female outside of a creature with a low stat. All this 'versimilitude' does is provide anotherblayer of CharOping. Rather than creating versimiltude, all it does is enforce a gender role on a character trope. Which, yay, congratulations, the 1960's are applauding you.

And in the immortal words of the playground, you started it. :) Glass houses, and all that. Have a nice day.

It is also unnesecsary. If i'm playing a weak person, they will have 8 str with no investment. If i'm playing a strong one, they will have 15 str with more investment.

Also, what next for verisimilitude? Black people have lower intelligence?

[BurgerBeast]

It already IS modelled. Its just that its relevant enough.

“Relevant enough” is a matter of taste.


And in the immortal words of the playground, you started it. :) Glass houses, and all that. Have a nice day.

I told you that you said something stupid. Then I explained why it is stupid.

You only offered an insult (multiple insults, actually). No explanation(s).

The post to which I am currently replying is your first attempt to explain yourself. The explanation is a reference to your personal taste. Your argument (if it can be called that) is essentially: “I think it’s relevant enough. If you think it’s not relevant enough, then you’re an idiot.”

Maybe you have a point. I can’t tell, because your explanation thus far is that your taste is superior.

“I like tomatoes, therefore anyone who doesn’t like tomatoes is an idiot.” Yeah... okay, champ.

[Kadesh]

“Relevant enough” is a matter of taste.



I told you that you said something stupid. Then I explained why it is stupid.

You only offered an insult (multiple insults, actually). No explanation(s).

The post to which I am currently replying is your first attempt to explain yourself. The explanation is a reference to your personal taste. Your argument (if it can be called that) is essentially: “I think it’s relevant enough. If you think it’s not relevant enough, then you’re an idiot.”

Maybe you have a point. I can’t tell, because your explanation thus far is that your taste is superior.

“I like tomatoes, therefore anyone who doesn’t like tomatoes is an idiot.” Yeah... okay, champ.

I'm lost. Not gonna lie. I've not mentioned tomatoes at all, so no idea why you're bringing those into it, 'bucko'.

I said that Biodiviersity exist, and gave examples of written examples. You know where there isn't biodiversity? Between genders of PCs. Because its not relevant. It's not relevant on a 30pt scale decided by the Writers of the game. The difference between the average NPC who has Schrodingers stats is not relevant to the intentionally atypical adventurer. The difference is not relevant enough for the PHB to go and say men are 1pt Stronger than women, and women are 1pt more Charismatic or whatever. Nor is there mention that Black People are 1pt less intelligent, have advantage on jumping athletics, and disadvantage on swimming athletics.

What is relevant however is the comlarative difference between the races. The comparative difference between D&D humans (and largely in life, also) as written by 5E creators is that there is no appreciable difference between the average male and female that warrants a fixed amendnent to stats.

Nowhere is this more obvious than the drow, whose entire society is matriarchal, and the peak of whose males can aspire to being a 'trophy penis' to bounce on by a Matron, yet having no aplreciabke minimum in stats. The entire biodiversity led by social examples lf otherwise equal people is that the Matron Mother is the most powerful Drow written in 5e. The biodiversity led by difference of size can be represented by Steeders who have different stats.

In Afghanistan, I met a lot more women who were stronger than afghan males, due to working out in the fields, being active, working tools, whole the males sat around drinking tea and running off for bum love wednesdays. They conform more to the typical example of females in D&d peasant women than a western office bound secretary in comparison to their labourer husband.

And with that, I'm done with you, MaxWilson, and this utter devils sphincter of a thread. I'm sorry I wasted so much time on it.

[GorogIrongut]

I have no issue with the topic of this thread. In most of my games I almost always side with verisimilitude. And were we playing Shadowrun, I'd raise my hands and say, 'Heck yeah!'. But Shadowrun is a different system where you have ridiculous levels of more control over how your character is created. 5e is a much more of a fly by the seat of your pants system and while I wouldn't say no to this variant rule... it doesn't feel in the spirit of the rules of 5e game's system.

Perhaps the biggest reason I wouldn't be for this variant rule is simple. I find Dnd to be a game where people will go to ridiculous lengths to get a minimal benefit, to eek out that last little bit of game mechanics goodness. I personally wouldn't want to feel constrained to play a female just to run a ridiculously wise, Odin-like character. Nor vice versa.

5e is too far away from real life (physics/mechanics/biology/etc.) for me to want to go to the effort for this. That said, if a player came to me in my group and out of the blue wanted to use this mechanic, I wouldn't say no.

[MilkmanDanimal]

So, let me get this straight . . . you are perfectly fine inhabiting a fictional world that includes giant, fire-breathing intelligent flying lizards, a wide variety of fictional characters drawn from myth, actual, literal Gods of unspeakable power, the existence of distinct and separate planes filled with whole diverse universes of creatures, and individuals with magic ability so powerful they can rewrite the fabric of reality with a thought, and the part where verisimilitude falls down is there's no inherent difference between the strength scores of men and women?

[MaxWilson]

Hi Gorog,

Thanks for responding. I wanted to ask something:


Perhaps the biggest reason I wouldn't be for this variant rule is simple. I find Dnd to be a game where people will go to ridiculous lengths to get a minimal benefit, to eek out that last little bit of game mechanics goodness. I personally wouldn't want to feel constrained to play a female just to run a ridiculously wise, Odin-like character. Nor vice versa.

Are you imagining a scenario where you roll an 18 and you're torn between e.g. playing a regular Firbolg for +2 to Wisdom for Wis 20, or a female Firbolg opting in for +3 to Wisdom and Wis 21, which is higher than the male could ever have? Or is this also about more usual scenarios like human Wis 16 vs. human female Wis 17 where the female will start off slightly higher, sooner, but all options cap at 20?

I.e. I'm curious how much tension this sets up between your optimization instincts and your desire for freedom, because I was hoping the tension would be minimal.

-Max

[daemonaetea]

Also, if you are going to decide, on the basis of modifiers based on sex, that the game is crap... well that’s known as prejudice. You’re literally judging the quality of an entire game on the basis of a single detail, before you’ve witnessed the game being played. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I do it, too, in restricted contexts. I just want to clarify what we’re talking about.


Putting this one first because it's the one that I feel most strongly about.

If you truly hate, say, MCU movies but love the DCEU, and you show up at a game and people are immediately making MCU and trashing the DCEU, you might decide the game's not for you and just leave. It's not that the game won't be fun, but the tastes and opinions of the people there seem wildly divergent from yourself, so it's probably fair to guess that the game they all play in and enjoy is unlikely to fall within your tastes. That's not prejudice, except in some pedantic way which is not how the term is taken, that's making a rational decisions based on evidence for what the experience is likely to be like.

And to be completely honest with you, if I showed up at a game and these house rules were the first thing I saw, knowing nothing else about the game, I'd be likely to leave to. Why? Because the priorities made known by knowing this was the very first thing you wanted me to see, the most important house rule you had at the top of your list, would make clear that I'd almost certainly have very little in common with your set of tastes.

Because - and I made this point poorly, but will try to articulate it better now - this is the priority you've set for bringing more realism into your world. Not the political situation. Not the impact of fantastical biology on world development, or the impact of a verifiable afterlife. The first thing you've presented to me, to make this world feel more "real" to you, are gender differences. That's what I was trying to bring up by asking if this is the best priority, or where you want to spend your time. If you're aiming for simulationist in the sense of bringing the fantasy world more in line with ours, then making sure the gender differences are present would be so far down on any list I would possibly make that it would never in fact even be written down at all.

And I would argue that your idea of simulationism is still bound to an idea of fun. There's a reason your players are not playing a Beggar, or a Farmer, or an Accountant - well, unless they really want to. They're still making heroes, and I doubt you're asking them if their background is realistic enough. There have to be limits to "realism", or no one can ever be anything other than the ordinary, which I don't think is your intent. You don't have them roll to get to see who gets to have swords, and who's just left playing their group of squires and horsemen. So everyone has some line when "realism" is sacrificed on the alter of "fun". It's all about where your limit is - where the realism is no longer generating an interesting result, and can be safely ignored. And since this is being asked on the 5E board I can only assume that's a reasonably high standard for this person, as otherwise 5E is a terrible system to use for this project. It's design is shot through with sacrifices of "realism" to "fun", so trying to drag it too far back to the realism side is going to be a struggle.

So, again, what is important? What do you feel has to be present, to make it acceptably real? Dragons don't hurt that feeling. You can account for that within your bound of realism, it doesn't hurt that sense of verisimilitude. In bringing in realism, you didn't decide there's no evolutionary niche for dragons, or flight at their weight and wingspan is impossible, or anything else like that. You haven't talked about removing half the monster manual because they make no ecological sense. But a woman with a STR of 20 does. The fact that the line is drawn there speaks very strongly of priorities, and where the groups lines lay. I would personally hate playing in a game where dragons and magic exist, but a woman can't be as strong as a man, because that was the line where reality and fun clashed, and reality won.

That's why so many of us are focusing on the fun and enjoyment scale. We're rejecting even the idea that you can't discuss that in regards to simulationism, because the line of what you consider important to simulate is very much in question. You cannot make a fantasy setting that's as kitchen sink as D&D realistic. There's too much just thrown in. So all attempts to do so are at least partly arbitrary, and speak to what's important to the person in question.

I am not asking for you to agree with me. I am asking for you to understand that it's not "realistic" to just apply arbitrary aspects of physical reality to D&D. You are leaving so many other gross violations of natural law that all you've really done is show which parts you found exceeded your ability to accept.





This is only true if you start from the assumption that the 5e rules are the rules. The OP is suggesting that we re-think those rules.

So, if human females are capped at 19 strength and males are capped at 20, for example, then the females will have lost something. But the they always had a limit, it’s just that the limit has changed.

The example was floated around here about the halfling who is as strong as an ogre. “I should be able to make that character if I want to!”

To which I say: “Why? I want to make a halfling who is as strong as a hill giant.” But I can’t (unless I make a barbarian). Am I crying that “I should be able to make a halfling as strong as a hill giant if I want to!”

There will be limits. They are more or less arbitrary. “I want to be as strong as the tarrasque” is not very different than “I want to be as strong as a hill giant,” which is not very different than “I want to be as strong as an ogre,” which is not very different than “I want to be as strong as the strongest man in the world.”

There’s a line. There’s something that you can’t match in strength. Presumably you already accept this, because you’re not complaining about the current 5e ruleset. But if the bar moves, then it’s suddenly a big problem?



This strikes me as a false dichotomy. A certain amount of real world modelling is required, and everyone wants cohesion.



No. This is a non sequitur.



But it’s not the only place, and it’s not being demanded. This is a total misrepresentation.



But your character already has limits. You cannot be as strong as a hill giant. There is a limit to every aspect of your character, on the basis of class, of background, of race. So it seems to me that you’ve gotten this entirely backward. It seems to me that are perfectly willing to accept limitation in you fantasy on the basis of many things. But physiological sex is the one place you will not accept it.



Again, you’re mischaracterizing the argument. It may turn out, for particular simulationists, that women are less than optimal fighters. But then whatever stat bonus the woman gets (say to Wisdom) will result in other people having to choose between playing a man or playing an optimal cleric (or whatever).

And, even though I know you make the distinction, currenty players who really like to play tielfings have to make a decision between playing a tiefling and playing an optimal barbarian. To me that’s not so different that it warrants a different response.



This goes back to acknowledging the idea of simulationism. The idea of simulationism is that you lose some freedom in the interest of some form of realism. So to the simulationist, the idea that it’s “more fundamental” to many players is not a good reason to abandon the idea. I’m not sure why people can’t get passed the arbitrariness of this. What if the idea that rangers ought to be able to cast fireball was “more fundamental” to most players? Should you then change the rules and allow rangers to cast fireball? My point is that there are already arbitrary limits, everywhere, for multiple reasons that ultimately boil to some form of simulationism in some degree.



I’ve been pretty assertive about the maximums, actually. The idea that men and women could be modelled as having the same average strength is barely significant. The idea that the strongest woman can match the strongest man – that’s absolute nonsense. But I’m coming form the assumption that stats are generated using 3d6+X or 4d6b3+X. so moving the maximum also moves the average, and vice-versa.



To the simulationist, the fact that PCs are not average does not just magically absolve them of all limitations. PCs are still based on a normal distribution around 4d6b3 and the simulationist would impose more limitations, generally, than the 5e rules do.



I don’t know what you’re talking about. The max is much easier to determine than the average. There’s only one number to consider.



Sure, but even the people who are repulsed by the idea of limits on women are still willing to accept limits on human height, I would presume. I mean, if I really, really wanted to play a 10 foot tall man, would that be a simple “yes”? No problem. This is fantasy afterall, so you should be able to make a 10 foot tall human if you want to?

At my table the answer is “no.” Well, fine. Then what about 9 feet? Or 8 feet? Or if 10 feet seemed reasonable to you, then what about 20 feet?

My point, again, is that you are accepting limits. Currently. Many of them. So you don’t seem to have a problem with limits. Limits based on background? No problem. Limits based on class? No problem? Race? No problem. Gender? ABSOLUTELY NOT. NEVER. HOW DARE YOU? EVIL. DEMON. MONSTER…


So I'll preface my entire reply by stating the last exchange I had with the OP - namely, my most stringent objections are tied into the increased maximum. I think you'll find you're better able to follow my argument - even if you disagree with it - when viewed from that point. Also, I'm sorry, but I don't have the time to break up your quote to put next to the piece replying. I sincerely apologize for that, so this will be a bit rambly. So.

I view all role playing as a way to have fun, full stop. It doesn't have to be escapism, it doesn't have to be a power fantasy, but nearly all role playing is ultimately about sending around a table with a bunch of friends and having fun. When you choose a fantasy race - from the same list as everyone else - you are picking something that appeals to you, either from a characteristic standpoint, or from a stat standpoint. While some choices are more optimal than others, everyone can then take that character and eventually make it the equal to any other player at that table. And while most people have no strong connection to the idea of dwarf or elf, they have a strong connection to a gender. Many men just want to play men. Many women just want to play women. While they may be disappointed that their idea for being a devil person won't be optimal for their cool new idea, they have no strong connection to playing a devil person. They most likely, however, have a strong connection to playing a man or a woman. Having a woman that really wants to play a woman, but doesn't want to spend the entire game knowing their friend Fred is not just better at it, but can never be equaled by themselves, is not fun. It does not add to the game. It does not make it "realistic" to remind her that, even in her dreams, she cannot be as strong as Fred. Especially if she works out, but Fred is a 100 pounds soaking wet. You have not made the game more realistic. You've just lessened her fun.

Most of the examples you cite have little to do with this. A halfling cannot be as strong as an ogre, but an ogre is not a playable race. No one else at the table can choose an ogre. A human cannot be 10 ft tall because they are a Medium creature, so I'd say no to anything over 8. But heck, you know what, if you really wanted to play it I'd probably say sure! You have some Fae in your bloodline, and it gives you a strange and disjointed figure, but why not? Because if you want to have fun in that way, and I can make it work in my world, why not? Just don't expect any stat changes from it.

No one at your table is a Guild Artisan. They are not a Halfling, or a Cleric, or any of those things. And if they want to play any of those things, they absolutely can, in the sure knowledge that they will be the equal of anyone else at the table. That their choice is valid, and the game assures them that they will be the equivalent of any of their fellow heroes. Heck, if this topic was about having half-orcs have +4 and start with a max of 24, I'd think it was bad game design but I wouldn't say anything. But the one single choice that is likely to be most integral to the players self image, and their ideas, and what they'd like to represent themselves as, is the one you'd like to put in a "I'm sorry, you're just not as good" option.

You keep bringing up how the adventurers are not special, but they literally, truly are! Again, if you were in the PF or 3.5 boards I'd be less inclined to continue this argument, but the very bones of 5E declare they are! The majority of the population have a tiny point buy and no class levels. There are no NPC classes, only templates for basic groups. They literally use different rules. The system does not support what you are trying to do at the most basic level.


If I argue strongly here, it's because I'm so disappointed by the idea given here. When I saw the title - more biodiversity with regards to simulationism - I was excited! I imagined systems for determining ecology, or ways to implement additional creatures to pad out an area, or basically just anything to increase the biodiversity of a game world and make it feel more natural, more like a real place and less like a staging grounds for monster fights. And I got... sex based character differences. I was trying to encourage the OP to move on because I honestly consider it such a limited, waste of an idea! They could be doing so much more to truly make their world more real, to make it pop, to make it more in line with reality. And instead, they just had something which is quite likely to just make it clear to the optimizer in the group how they can grab a bit more for their barbarian, and to make clear to the girls which options they shouldn't play if they don't want a grinning person nearby to watch every time they swing that axe - because either they're not as good, or they're having to play a man so they can really feel strong. And I just don't consider that real, just limiting.

[Unoriginal]

No, it was sarcasm, it just flew over your head. You said:



And my reply was meant to point out that, perhaps MaxWilson thinks the female Veteran should have a strenght of 16, and the male Veteran should have a strength of 17. The difference is which gender you attribute to the template. You assumed the template was a male, which is why you subtracted to find the female’s score. There is irony in that. And it just got doubled.


You're the only one assuming that I though that. What happened is that I misread the part of the OP where says that the male humans would have +1 AND the female human -1 in STR with this houserule (something you apparently misread too). So the male Veteran would have 17 vs the female Veteran's 15.





If I argue strongly here, it's because I'm so disappointed by the idea given here. When I saw the title - more biodiversity with regards to simulationism - I was excited! I imagined systems for determining ecology, or ways to implement additional creatures to pad out an area, or basically just anything to increase the biodiversity of a game world and make it feel more natural, more like a real place and less like a staging grounds for monster fights. And I got... sex based character differences. I was trying to encourage the OP to move on because I honestly consider it such a limited, waste of an idea! They could be doing so much more to truly make their world more real, to make it pop, to make it more in line with reality. And instead, they just had something which is quite likely to just make it clear to the optimizer in the group how they can grab a bit more for their barbarian, and to make clear to the girls which options they shouldn't play if they don't want a grinning person nearby to watch every time they swing that axe - because either they're not as good, or they're having to play a man so they can really feel strong. And I just don't consider that real, just limiting.

Amen.

[MaxWilson]

When I saw the title - more biodiversity with regards to simulationism - I was excited! I imagined systems for determining ecology, or ways to implement additional creatures to pad out an area, or basically just anything to increase the biodiversity of a game world and make it feel more natural, more like a real place and less like a staging grounds for monster fights. And I got... sex based character differences. I was trying to encourage the OP to move on because I honestly consider it such a limited, waste of an idea! They could be doing so much more to truly make their world more real, to make it pop, to make it more in line with reality. And instead, they just had something which is quite likely to just make it clear to the optimizer in the group how they can grab a bit more for their barbarian, and to make clear to the girls which options they shouldn't play if they don't want a grinning person nearby to watch every time they swing that axe - because either they're not as good, or they're having to play a man so they can really feel strong. And I just don't consider that real, just limiting.

While the OP was not about any of these things in bold, I'm interested in all of these ideas and happy to discuss them. In the past I've considered everything from higher-dimensional gameworlds geometries (to make reachable area scale faster with walking speed, and thus help explain how all of these various large predators are able to maintain viable breeding populations) to unifying dragons into a single species (again largely to rationalize reproduction) to adding fantastically fast-growing prey animals to the base of the food pyramid to adding mana as a nutritional dependency for large predators (in order to allow monster-infested "dungeons" and peaceful civilizations to co-exist in relatively close proximity). I don't give players the data dump on how everything works but knowing how your fantasy ecology actually works does make it easier to adjudicate a rational fantasy world.

It's a different kind of biodiversity than intra- and inter-species PC diversity, but it's an interesting kind of diversity nonetheless.

In passing I'll note that I'm also quite interested in modelling what fraction of a given population has sufficient magical talent (independent of stat mods) for spellcasting. It has large worldbuilding implications, even if you handwave it for PCs and let any and all of them opt for magical talent if they wish. (Also it's interesting to consider whether there are any external markers for magical talent, e.g. if PCs with a "witch lock" of white hair indicating magical talent get treated any differently than purely nonmagical fighters.)

There's a lot to say about fantasy simulationism in D&D. Feel free to say what you have to say on the topic.

[BurgerBeast]

Okay, you edited the post. Thank you. So:


Its just that its not relevant enough for 5e to model the minor differences between the average male and female outside of a creature with a low stat.

Well, that’s a mathematical question. I confess to not knowing for a certainty whether sexual differences in strength would be represented on a 3d6 curve, but I suspect that they would.

If the designers used a scale for strength in which humans had a score of 2, on average, then there’s probably not enough variation in the species for anyone to necessarily reach a score of 3. But if the average is 10.5 and the range is 3 to 18... well that’s a lot more room for sexual dimorphism to be represented.

Likewise, if scores were percentages, I would definitely expect the differences to be noticeable.


All this 'versimilitude' does is provide anotherblayer of CharOping.

First of all, this is false. That’s not all it does.

Second of all, what is wrong with one more layer of CharOping? That’s a matter of taste. Maybe someone else thinks 5e currently has too many layers of CharOping, so they want to abandon all racial differences. Not a problem. But wanting racial differences isn’t necessarily a crime.


Rather than creating versimiltude, all it does is enforce a gender role on a character trope.

What is the difference between enforcing sexual differences and enforcing racial differences? Why do you think it’s okay to enforce racial differences?


It is also unnesecsary.

Many of the rules are unnecessary.


If i'm playing a weak person, they will have 8 str with no investment. If i'm playing a strong one, they will have 15 str with more investment.

Unless this person is a mountain dwarf, for example. Then the numbers are 10 and 17. But I don’t see you denouncing 5e as racist.


Also, what next for verisimilitude? Black people have lower intelligence?

Okay, look. I’m not one to shy away from the truth in the interest of political correctness, so I’m willing to have that conversation. But I’m not particularly interested in dicussing racial differences in IQ in a space where the participants have disproportionate emotional reactions to physiological sex differences. Not to mention, it’s probably against the forum rules, or at least likely to cause serious discomfort for the moderators.

But without going there, there are a number of distinctions to be made between the two cases.

(1) To start with, the concept of “race” in the real world is not something that can be easily defined, and the idea that the classic division of the species into whites, blacks, and Asians has any real significance is not at all clear. Just taking so-called whites as an example, there is no good reason to lump Lithuanians and Spaniards into the same group and consider them more or less similar than any other ethnic group just because someone arbitrarily decided to use white as an identifier.

(2) Also, when a child is born unto a male and female parent, the child generally is identifiable as a male or a female. But when a child is born unto Korean and Welsh parents, it’s not exactly clear whether the baby has Korean or Welsh characteristics or how they come together (if they can be classified at all). People can argue about whether gender is truly discrete and/or binary if they want to, but race is definitely less discrete and definitely non-binary. It much more easily becomes a can of worms when you tell someone of mixed ethnicity that people like him or her do not belong in the game. I don’t think anyone is interested in that.

(3) Strength, in D&D, is more or less the same thing as Strength in real life. Intelligence, however, is not. There’s no reason, for example, to think that the same form of cognition that fuels mundane intelligence on earth should also improve one’s grasp of magic. A point though that can be made about this is that if Strength was abandoned for “Battle Prowess” and Inteligence for “Sorcery” or some such, the equality of the genders would be much easier to rationalize. Intelligence as represented in the game is closer to this type of concept because of its necessary disconnect from real word intelligence.

[GorogIrongut]

Hi Gorog,

Thanks for responding. I wanted to ask something:
Are you imagining a scenario where you roll an 18 and you're torn between e.g. playing a regular Firbolg for +2 to Wisdom for Wis 20, or a female Firbolg opting in for +3 to Wisdom and Wis 21, which is higher than the male could ever have? Or is this also about more usual scenarios like human Wis 16 vs. human female Wis 17 where the female will start off slightly higher, sooner, but all options cap at 20?

I.e. I'm curious how much tension this sets up between your optimization instincts and your desire for freedom, because I was hoping the tension would be minimal.

-Max

Neither. While I personally err on the side of realism (i.e. as strong as a female weightlifter may be they will never match the level of a male weightlifter which means that the cap would be higher than the base ceiling of 20... that's also because I'm not a fan of the capped ceiling of 20). What I'm saying is that when I start a character, I have a beginning, middle and end view of how their hero's journey will proceed. While they may start off as a bumbling nincompoop, despite whatever the DM may throw at them, by the end of their journey they should end up at their end goal.

So lets take the Odin-like character example. I roll an 18 for wisdom. Now personally, I ALWAYS prefer dwarven characters to every other race. That's not to say that I won't play a half elf... but I have to give myself a good talking to and a harshly anti elf backstory to permit myself it. So we go Hill Dwarf which brings our Wis to 19. I've got a lot of stats needing to go all over the place and so stat allocation's tight. I find myself in a situation where, if I want to have the wisdom levels of an Odin All-Father, I could theoretically opt to be female. That would start me off with a +5 without having to worry about ASI's, feats or other general shenanigans (regardless of whether or not I'm playing in a game where the stat cap ceiling is 20). But it's not the character that I envisaged. But it would still be tempting... whether or not the situation netted me a 20 or an even 16.

Maybe I want to play a serving wench turned Joan of Arc. I've got mad Charisma... but after total stat allocation I've only got a 12 to go in my strength. Joan of Arc would be great as a paladin'esque character. But I'm missing the requisite 13 strength. Do I cast aside my desire to play a female character to get the +1 boost from being a man...? Even if it would led me be a paladin?

I personally would argue that for verisimilitude, you're going about it wrong. Neither males nor females should get a stat bonus. They should get an extended stat cap. A man gets to choose to extend his cap in a single physical attribute by +2. A woman gets to choose to extend her cap in a single mental attribute by +2.

It still doesn't really fit within the 5e 'ethos', but it's less prone to min maxing. It's more of a reward for having played your character to fruition.

p.s. For those who want to maintain the integrity of the cap, I would handle this thusly. If you choose to add +2 to your strength cap, then you lower your Intelligence cap by the same amount. Dex for Wisdom. Constitution for Charisma. and vice versa. If you boost your Wisdom Cap to 22, then you lower the ceiling on your Dexterity to 18.

[GorogIrongut]

In passing I'll note that I'm also quite interested in modelling what fraction of a given population has sufficient magical talent (independent of stat mods) for spellcasting. It has large worldbuilding implications, even if you handwave it for PCs and let any and all of them opt for magical talent if they wish. (Also it's interesting to consider whether there are any external markers for magical talent, e.g. if PCs with a "witch lock" of white hair indicating magical talent get treated any differently than purely nonmagical fighters.)

There's a lot to say about fantasy simulationism in D&D. Feel free to say what you have to say on the topic.

Check out Shadowrun. Their system is much more balanced and much more realistic despite it being set in a speculative fiction environment. The problem with Shadowrun is that while it covers every detail of character creation, it's very easy to get bogged down. In earlier editions, as GM, you would normally handwave 'running the net' unless you had a whole party of hackers.

[ZorroGames]

This is an incredible sexist thing to post and wrong on so many scientific levels.

Provide the “science” please.

[ZorroGames]

Here's a rule variant for simulationist DMs that could be interesting:

If you play a male, you may opt in to taking Str +1 Wis -1 due to your larger frame, worse night vision, aggressiveness, etc. Or you can stick with regular rolled stats + racial mods alone.

If you play a female, you may opt in to Con +1 Str -1 OR Wis +1 Str -1 due to a smaller frame, heightened emotional awareness, generally better health, etc.

You could extend this opt in model to model races like orcs and goliaths which ought to be more different from humanity than they are, e.g. orcs can opt for Str +3 Dex -1 Int -2 Cha -2 (based loosely on MM stat tends), halflings could opt for additional Str -3 Con +1 on top of PHB mods, and Athasian half-giants can opt for Str +7 Con +2 Dex -3 Wis -2 Cha -4 due to their wishy washy nature and huge physical frame.

Because it's opt in you can still play against type if you want to be a Str 18 halfling who arm wrestles ogres, but unless no one at all takes the option, PCs and NPCs will have an overall stat distribution more similar to reality.

Also because it's opt in there is less need to give equal numbers of positive and negative modifiers. Just try to make sure it's not attractive to munchkins, i.e. avoid having more positive than negative mods for PC races. Other than that, just do what's realistic.

You might or might not want to combine this with a rule variant that allows stats to exceed 20 when they are initially rolled (no ASIs allowed after that). Then you'd see e.g. the rare big dumb brick Str 26 Int 9 Wis 8 Cha 6 male Athasian half-giant, which seems like a fun possibility for PC and NPC potential alike.

Well, seems like a lot of trouble for a little game gain myself, but if it floats your groups boat go for it.

[MaxWilson]

If the designers used a scale for strength in which humans had a score of 2, on average, then there’s probably not enough variation in the species for anyone to necessarily reach a score of 3. But if the average is 10.5 and the range is 3 to 18... well that’s a lot more room for sexual dimorphism to be represented.

Not to mention the room for expressing average strength differences between a 30 lb. Halfling and a 170+ lb human. Mean Str 10 vs. 11 doesn't even begin to adequately distinguish their racial Str distributions. Or if you take PHB rules seriously and decide that it does, it means there is something really freaky about halfling physiology.

I'd rather just fix the stat mods instead of explaining freaky halfling physiology.

[ZorroGames]

Not to mention racist against half-giants. How dare the OP impugn their wisdom and charisma!

;-)

Indeed! Next you will say halflings need to be fatter because of Fredegar Bolger! Fat shaming all hobbits because of one!

[KorvinStarmast]

Amen. If I may follow up on that, the highest I ever got on the HC ladder in Diablo III with a Barbarian was with a lady barbarian; I just happened to choose female rather than male for that season. My little toon was a real hoot to run through various rifts. Fun.

[BurgerBeast]

If you truly hate, say, MCU movies but love the DCEU, and you show up at a game and people are immediately making MCU and trashing the DCEU, you might decide the game's not for you and just leave. It's not that the game won't be fun, but the tastes and opinions of the people there seem wildly divergent from yourself, so it's probably fair to guess that the game they all play in and enjoy is unlikely to fall within your tastes. That's not prejudice, except in some pedantic way which is not how the term is taken, that's making a rational decisions based on evidence for what the experience is likely to be like.

And to be completely honest with you, if I showed up at a game and these house rules were the first thing I saw, knowing nothing else about the game, I'd be likely to leave to. Why? Because the priorities made known by knowing this was the very first thing you wanted me to see, the most important house rule you had at the top of your list, would make clear that I'd almost certainly have very little in common with your set of tastes.

Yes, and again: This is exactly what prejudism is. You have decided that you don’t want to play D&D with these people because they have different tastes in movies than you. You’re making this decision before you’ve played D&D with them. I guess we have different ideas about what if means to pre-judge.


Because - and I made this point poorly, but will try to articulate it better now – this is the priority you've set for bringing more realism into your world. Not the political situation. Not the impact of fantastical biology on world development, or the impact of a verifiable afterlife. The first thing you've presented to me, to make this world feel more "real" to you, are gender differences. That's what I was trying to bring up by asking if this is the best priority, or where you want to spend your time. If you're aiming for simulationist in the sense of bringing the fantasy world more in line with ours, then making sure the gender differences are present would be so far down on any list I would possibly make that it would never in fact even be written down at all. (emphasis added)

{scrubbed}


So, again, what is important? What do you feel has to be present, to make it acceptably real? Dragons don't hurt that feeling. You can account for that within your bound of realism, it doesn't hurt that sense of verisimilitude. In bringing in realism, you didn't decide there's no evolutionary niche for dragons, or flight at their weight and wingspan is impossible, or anything else like that. You haven't talked about removing half the monster manual because they make no ecological sense. But a woman with a STR of 20 does. The fact that the line is drawn there speaks very strongly of priorities, and where the groups lines lay. I would personally hate playing in a game where dragons and magic exist, but a woman can't be as strong as a man, because that was the line where reality and fun clashed, and reality won.

{scrubbed}


That's why so many of us are focusing on the fun and enjoyment scale. We're rejecting even the idea that you can't discuss that in regards to simulationism, because the line of what you consider important to simulate is very much in question. You cannot make a fantasy setting that's as kitchen sink as D&D realistic. There's too much just thrown in. So all attempts to do so are at least partly arbitrary, and speak to what's important to the person in question.

Right. And I’m asking for consistency. The only reason I’ve heard for the millions of limtations that you do accept is that they are the rules that were somewhat arbitrarily decided upon by the creators of 5e. So when you say something like: “players sould be able to make a halfling who can match an ogre in strength if they want to.” I ask why? Why an ogre? And why not a hill giant?

Because when I get excited about this ridiculous idea and the “creative freedom it gives to live out my fantasy” I say: “Hell yeah! I want to make a halfling that can match a hill giant in strength!”

And then you say: “No, that’s not possible.”

So you’re guilty of your own crime. What is the bloody difference? Why do you – you specifically - why do you say yes to halfing that are as strong as ogres but no to halflings that are as strong as hill giants?


I am not asking for you to agree with me. I am asking for you to understand that it's not "realistic" to just apply arbitrary aspects of physical reality to D&D. You are leaving so many other gross violations of natural law that all you've really done is show which parts you found exceeded your ability to accept.

{scrubbed}


I view all role playing as a way to have fun, full stop. It doesn't have to be escapism, it doesn't have to be a power fantasy, but nearly all role playing is ultimately about sending around a table with a bunch of friends and having fun. When you choose a fantasy race - from the same list as everyone else - you are picking something that appeals to you, either from a characteristic standpoint, or from a stat standpoint. While some choices are more optimal than others, everyone can then take that character and eventually make it the equal to any other player at that table. And while most people have no strong connection to the idea of dwarf or elf, they have a strong connection to a gender.

What I am saying is this: imagine that you are someone for whom increased simulationism increases the fun.

Seriously. Do it. If you are not willing to do it, then you’re not actually considering the OP’s point. This is not an option that is designed to force people to play in a way they don’t like. This is an option that is designed to increase the fun for people who find this style of game more enjoyable.

{scrubbed}


Many men just want to play men. Many women just want to play women. While they may be disappointed that their idea for being a devil person won't be optimal for their cool new idea, they have no strong connection to playing a devil person. They most likely, however, have a strong connection to playing a man or a woman. Having a woman that really wants to play a woman, but doesn't want to spend the entire game knowing their friend Fred is not just better at it, but can never be equaled by themselves, is not fun.

Your whole argument is that some people feel really strongly about this. {scrubbed}Some people feel really strongly that tieflings should be able to be barbarians that are equal to half-orc barbarians. They feel really strongly about it. Hell, you can probably even find someone who identifies as a tiefling. So what should we do? Jump on our high horse and declare the current 5e rules to be oppressive?

Who the hell are you to tell someone what they can and can’t feel strongly about? Or that this person feels more strongly about X than this other person feels about Y? Who are you, and where did you get the magical ability to be the arbiter of whose hurt feelings are most legitimate?

You can’t. You just accept the rules if you want to, and don’t if you don’t. This is true in all cases. Some rules hurt peoples' feelings. That doesn't mean they were designed with an agenda to oppress particular groups. It doesn't mean they're oppressive and need to be eradicated.


It does not add to the game. It does not make it "realistic" to remind her that, even in her dreams, she cannot be as strong as Fred. Especially if she works out, but Fred is a 100 pounds soaking wet. You have not made the game more realistic. You've just lessened her fun.

{scrubbed}

1. She can be stronger than Fred, who is 100 pounds soaking wet. She just can’t be stronger than the strongest man in the world.

2. She can be as strong as she wants in her dreams. She can be the strongest being in the multiverse in her dreams. But her character can’t be that strong in this particular game of D&D.


Most of the examples you cite have little to do with this. A halfling cannot be as strong as an ogre, but an ogre is not a playable race. No one else at the table can choose an ogre. A human cannot be 10 ft tall because they are a Medium creature, so I'd say no to anything over 8. But heck, you know what, if you really wanted to play it I'd probably say sure! You have some Fae in your bloodline, and it gives you a strange and disjointed figure, but why not? Because if you want to have fun in that way, and I can make it work in my world, why not? Just don't expect any stat changes from it.

{scrubbed}

{scrubbed}



You're the only one assuming that I though that. What happened is that I misread the part of the OP where says that the male humans would have +1 AND the female human -1 in STR with this houserule (something you apparently misread too). So the male Veteran would have 17 vs the female Veteran's 15.

{scrubbed}

[Unoriginal]

{scrubbed}

NPC stablocks don't have stat adjustment based on sex. MaxWilson proposes a houserule to change stats based on sex.

Why is it outlandish to think that someone who propose to modify the stats of humans according to their sex would modify the stats of humans according to their sex?


{scrubbed}

MaxWilson is a believer of "rules for PCs = rules for NPCs". He defended that standpoint in this very thread.

Of course you could argue that in that case he wouldn't use Veterans statblocks, which is possible, but there isn't much difference between that and, say, lvl 5 fighters.


{scrubbed}

It's been my argument all along that 5e uses the same NPC stablocks for a variety of characters.

You trying to use an argument that I advanced in this very thread to imply that a) I didn't think of it and b) I'm trying to make MaxWilson look stupid by not pointing it out is the only ridiculous grasping that is happening here.

Not to mention that, the whole point of this discussion, as you pointed out earlier, is about a change to 5e's rules to modify people's stats for the sake of simulationism, and the "many DMs" who "use that same Veteran stat block, without any modifications, to represent a dwarven veteran, elven veteran, halfling veteran, etc" are probably not concerned by simulationism. Since MaxWilson's concern was to increase the simulationism by applying more modifications to make the different beings more biodiverse, which those many DMs are not doing.

[Boci]

Dude, I don't care what you think is fair.

When someone says "men are stronger than women on average" and pretend that it is some sort of biological fact and that centuries of treating women like dirt for being strong doesn't factor in, they are being disgusting.

So why do men have better times/records at the Olympics than women? Are the women athletes holding themselves back because of what society says about their gender? That sounds pretty condescending to women athletes who train incredably hard to be the best.

I get that there are socialogical factors at play, but that doesn't mean there are no biological factors.

[Beechgnome]

It seems to me that the only people who want this kind of realism are men. Unless I've missed a post by a female player who is really really hoping to have better wisdom or constitution. But I doubt it. When people imagine themselves as a fantasy character, they want to be able to hit harder, not be better at taking a hit.

Whatever the rationale, whatever the science, in actual gameplay it boils down to this: if you were to adopt this house rule, you and your friends may derive more pleasure from it, but it may turn off many new players (including, but not limited to, women) and lessen their fun. I don't think that's the intention, but it would be the effect. Clearly - if nothing else comes from the thread - you should see that now.

[Boci]

Whatever the rationale, whatever the science, in actual gameplay it boils down to this: if you were to adopt this house rule, you and your friends may derive more pleasure from it, but it may turn off many new players (including, but not limited to, women) and lessen their fun. I don't think that's the intention, but it would be the effect. Clearly - if nothing else comes from the thread - you should see that now.

You really can't use a thread to aproximate the RL reception to this houserule. The thread opened with this houserule and no other context, but for a RL gaming group, there will be other contextual stuff established first, which will effect how a new player responds to a group using this varient rule, unless you just shout "Join our gaming group, oh we have a varient rule that makes women weaker but wiser and the reverse for men", which, yeah, probably won't work.

[MaxWilson]

Hi BurgerBeast,

I appreciate that you get what I'm actually saying and are willing to discuss it on its own merits as well as alternate ways to scratch that same itch. If I could make one request though...



{scrubbed}

Given the choice between being misunderstood and being the reason someone else gets verbally abused, I would reluctantly pick "misunderstood." I'd rather be understood, especially by those like yourself who are equipped to actually engage in the topic, but please don't feel obligated to defend the truth so... vehemently that it puts you or anyone else in a bad mood.

And I will try to take my own advice there. :) As a friend recently observed, "If [person] is such a moron, why are you talking to him? You don't have to, and it just puts you in a bad mood." I'd rather talk to smart people.

Again, thanks for engaging. Hope we can have an productive conservation is this thread.

[MaxWilson]

It seems to me that the only people who want this kind of realism are men. Unless I've missed a post by a female player who is really really hoping to have better wisdom or constitution. But I doubt it. When people imagine themselves as a fantasy character, they want to be able to hit harder, not be better at taking a hit.

FWIW I've never played a 5E PC whose first priority was Str (a few Str 16ish for heavy armor and a lot of tanked Str because it doesn't matter very much in 5E) and although I am male my powergamer side sees more advantages in the female option for Str -1 Con +1 for better Concentration saves, although not enough advantage to really tempt me either way.

In short, the motivation behind this has nothing to do with escapism or wanting to imagine myself as a particular kind of character.

[MaxWilson]

You really can't use a thread to aproximate the RL reception to this houserule. The thread opened with this houserule and no other context, but for a RL gaming group, there will be other contextual stuff established first, which will effect how a new player responds to a group using this varient rule, unless you just shout "Join our gaming group, oh we have a varient rule that makes women weaker but wiser and the reverse for men", which, yeah, probably won't work.

Yeah. Honestly I don't expect it ever to become a issue. I've found players to be quite receptive to any extra freedoms/options I allow them even if they wind up ultimately not using them, and furthermore female players have no discernible hesitation about opting into playing e.g. the Sir Lancelot pregen even if Morgan le Fey and a female Scythian warrior pregen are also available.

I think driving away players is not a genuine problem that would happen at the table, it's just Internet people reacting emotionally to what's placed in front of them.

[Unoriginal]

Given the choice between being misunderstood and being the reason someone else gets verbally abused, I would reluctantly pick "misunderstood." I'd rather be understood, especially by those like yourself who are equipped to actually engage in the topic, but please don't feel obligated to defend the truth so... vehemently that it puts you or anyone else in a bad mood.

And I will try to take my own advice there. :) As a friend recently observed, "If [person] is such a moron, why are you talking to him? You don't have to, and it just puts you in a bad mood." I'd rather talk to smart people.


No offense, but it's pretty funny you tell BurgerBeast to not verbally abuse their interlocutors, but you're still implying that said interlocutors are not equipped to engage the topic/that it's valid to think they're morons.


Not that you're reading this, anyhow.

[MilkmanDanimal]

So why do men have better times/records at the Olympics than women? Are the women athletes holding themselves back because of what society says about their gender? That sounds pretty condescending to women athletes who train incredably hard to be the best.

I get that there are socialogical factors at play, but that doesn't mean there are no biological factors.

"Wow, that Gnomish Druid just turned into a dinosaur and ate the flying, spiked tail lion whole, and then the Elven Wizard called down a storm of meteors from the sky before wishing his dead friends back to life."

"Well, yeah, BUT THAT WOMAN BARBARIAN IS TOO STRONG."

If you can accept magic but can't accept that fact that men and women in a fantasy game can have an equal theoretical strength score, I think that probably says a hell of a lot about your attitude towards women once you walk away from the table.

[MaxWilson]

"Wow, that Gnomish Druid just turned into a dinosaur and ate the flying, spiked tail lion whole, and then the Elven Wizard called down a storm of meteors from the sky before wishing his dead friends back to life."

"Well, yeah, BUT THAT WOMAN BARBARIAN IS TOO STRONG."

Nobody on this thread has said anything like this. "Strong barbarian women are improbably common compared to the way other women in the game world are portrayed" would be closer, but still not something anyone has said or would bother defending.

If you don't follow the distinction between what you said and what I just said, you do not understand the OP.

[Scripten]

And here I thought this thread was going to be about a variant rule regarding biodiversity/ecology and was excited. Guess you guys showed me.

Love the casual sexism, flaming, and personal attacks, though. It's a great look.

[Shining Wrath]

I told my players that the PHB does not model sexual dimorphism and therefore in my world men and women of the playable races were the same size on average, and that they should not expect stereotypes of gender roles to hold. For any NPC of any profession, the sex of the person is a coin flip. Blacksmiths and barkeeps and tailors and sailors - coin flip.

[Unoriginal]

I told my players that the PHB does not model sexual dimorphism and therefore in my world men and women of the playable races were the same size on average, and that they should not expect stereotypes of gender roles to hold. For any NPC of any profession, the sex of the person is a coin flip. Blacksmiths and barkeeps and tailors and sailors - coin flip.

Basically the approach WotC went for in its modules.

[MaxWilson]

I told my players that the PHB does not model sexual dimorphism and therefore in my world men and women of the playable races were the same size on average, and that they should not expect stereotypes of gender roles to hold. For any NPC of any profession, the sex of the person is a coin flip. Blacksmiths and barkeeps and tailors and sailors - coin flip.

Seems like a valid approach.

Did you make men shorter or women taller or both?

[Shining Wrath]

Seems like a valid approach.

Did you make men shorter or women taller or both?

Per the tables, humans average 5' 7" height, and 165 pounds weight. 4' 8" + 2d10 inches so from 56" to 76"; weight 110 + (2d10)*(2d4).

Per the CDC charts for American adults, that's about 20th percentile height and 75th percentile weight for males (https://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/data/set1clinical/cj41c021.pdf), and about 85th percentile height and about 90th percentile weight for females (https://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/data/set2clinical/cj41c072.pdf). Presumably this is muscle mass, not fat, pushing up the weights.

Men are smaller than 20th century Americans, women larger.

Now, there is historical data on the intake heights of soldiers joining European armies from about the 18th century on; Piketty cites it in Capital as a proxy for the nutritional quality of the diets available to the peasants. I don't have that book at hand, but in nations where poverty was widespread I recall the height of the typical soldier as being about 5' 3". If your simulation is of a medieval world, the numbers generated by the table would likely tower over the population as a whole. A 6' 4" person would be akin to a near 7-footer in 20th Century America.

Of course, different nations have different nominal heights and weights, and I believe sexual dimorphism is less pronounced in some nations, more pronounced in others.

Your simulation, then, is of a particular set of humans not necessarily representative of all Earth people, let alone a fantasy world.

I'd tend to run it a different way - that you get a +1 to one stat based on race, maybe a couple of racial features like dragonborn resistance to damage or halfling luck, but most of your starting ability scores and skills come from your background. That is, a dwarf who worked in the mines as soon as they could swing a pick is likely far stronger than an orc who lived a warrior's life - yes, warriors need to be strong, but the dwarf has done nothing but hard manual labor for 12 hours a day.

[Boci]

If you can accept magic but can't accept that fact that men and women in a fantasy game can have an equal theoretical strength score, I think that probably says a hell of a lot about your attitude towards women once you walk away from the table.

I mean, on this forum I annoyed people in a 40k thread by insisting that Games Workshop treatment of the sisters of battle was a little sexist due to the high heels incorporated into the power armour and their identity as brides of the ERmpire (i.e. belonging to him) and assign genders to NPCs by coin flip, but yeah, you totally know my attitudes towards women based on the fact that I pointed out there's a disparity in the Olympics and the implications of that.

[MaxWilson]

Per the tables, humans average 5' 7" height, and 165 pounds weight. 4' 8" + 2d10 inches so from 56" to 76"; weight 110 + (2d10)*(2d4).

Per the CDC charts for American adults, that's about 20th percentile height and 75th percentile weight for males (https://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/data/set1clinical/cj41c021.pdf), and about 85th percentile height and about 90th percentile weight for females (https://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/data/set2clinical/cj41c072.pdf). Presumably this is muscle mass, not fat, pushing up the weights.

Men are smaller than 20th century Americans, women larger.

Got it.


Of course, different nations have different nominal heights and weights, and I believe sexual dimorphism is less pronounced in some nations, more pronounced in others.

Sure. Baka pygmies (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525207/) past age 25 appear to have only about a 15% weight difference between males and females, and identical BMIs. I'm not sure if a 12-14% weight difference (50 kg. vs 43-44 kg. if I'm reading the graph right) justifies a +/- 1 modifier to strength, but it almost certainly doesn't justify a net +2 from both males and females taking the mods in the OP.


Your simulation, then, is of a particular set of humans not necessarily representative of all Earth people, let alone a fantasy world.

A truism. No simulation represents all possible people in all possible universes.


I'd tend to run it a different way - that you get a +1 to one stat based on race, maybe a couple of racial features like dragonborn resistance to damage or halfling luck, but most of your starting ability scores and skills come from your background. That is, a dwarf who worked in the mines as soon as they could swing a pick is likely far stronger than an orc who lived a warrior's life - yes, warriors need to be strong, but the dwarf has done nothing but hard manual labor for 12 hours a day.

That's an interesting idea too.

[Dr.Samurai]

{scrubbed}

[Aridon]

We are not playing Averages you utter potato. We are playing exceptional characters, characters who are going to grow in level and ability until they slay Demon Princes.

Women might tend to be weaker, but we're not playng Shanine the Bartender who needs a man to lift a barrel on to the still.

I agree. Men are on average stronger than women, and women are, in D&D terms, more charismatic than men, but playing D&D is an escapist activity. The rule of fun should be paramount. If adding in the old 2e gender differences is fun for your group, do it. If not, then play RAW. There is no need to argue about it, do what is fun for you.

[daemonaetea]

{scrubbed}

Well, this is an easy one to start with while I ponder a larger response to someone else.

I think you'll find no one in this thread disputing that the strongest men are stronger than the strongest women. The objections largely come in two categories:
1. It's possible to reflect this using stat allocation, rather than adjustment. This has sub arguments about the desirability of representing an average over a max, and possible unintended consequences from such an approach - that sometimes, an attempt to solve one side of the equation can actually make the other side less realistic.
2. Reflecting this reality limits common character archetypes for little gain. That is, how one chooses what elements of reality to include within your world, and when it might be more useful to maintain acceptable breaks from reality.

And it's not about delicate sensibilities, but about our ideals of what gaming represents, how to handle design decisions, what the rules should be trying to accomplish. And passion, I think, is very natural when you're talking about things like that. You, and others, disagree. And that's fine! It's what a forum is for. If we couldn't disagree, there'd be very little reason for all of us to talk about things together. After all, if I didn't think some kind of dialogue was possible, I'd have stopped posting by now.

[Ganymede]

My favorite part of the thread was when some guy said of the topic, "It's not that serious," then proceeded to lace his post with multiple insults, including censored curse words, incredulity, and multiple exclamation points.

[Scripten]

My favorite part of the thread was when some guy said of the topic, "It's not that serious," then proceeded to lace his post with multiple insults, including censored curse words, incredulity, and multiple exclamation points.

Fun. Considering he is one of very few on my ignore list, I can't say I'm surprised.

[Boci]

I think you'll find no one in this thread disputing that the strongest men are stronger than the strongest womem.

By my count 2 people have disputed, or strongly implied to dispute, that. On the first page the one who claimed it was scientifically wrong and the personal trainer who claimed there was no biological aspect to the difference in strength between the genders.

I think its important to remember there are different kinds of game design, one for companies and one for groups. Should WotC make rules for mechanical effects of PH races? Absolutly not, I think Max would agree with this. Does that mean no group should? No, that's one of the advantage of RPGs, groups can make custom house rules the comapny won;t, and in some cases shouldn't. "All arcane mages roll for wild mages when casting a spell of 1st level or higher" is a terrible rule for the PHB to have, but will suit a group very well as a house rule. Why couldn't gender mechanics be the same?

[BurgerBeast]

A thought came up in another thread (Is D&D a role-playing game?) that I hope will shed some light on this tangential topic of whether simulationism (or simulationism to an unnecessary degree) is a legitimate concern.

I want to draw an analogy to the video game series by EA Sports called NHL. It's the hockey game that comes out every year (NHL 2017, NHL 2018, NHL 2019…).

In this game, you can play individual games for fun. But at some point in the development of the game, they introduced a “Season Mode”/“Manager Mode.”

In that mode, you could play an entire season (or, later, multiple seasons) as one team. You could play season attempting to win the league and/or qualify for playoffs, then play the playoffs in pursuit of the Stanley Cup.

Now, we’re talking about a hockey game. The point of the game is to play hockey. There is not necessarily any implied need to have a season mode… some people might even say “who the hell wants to play a whole season of hockey? I bought the game so I could play against my friends every once in a while.”

That’s legitimate. But guess what? The people who like season mode don’t care. They want to play seasons, and they want to see more of what they like.

It gets more interesting…

Recognizing that seasons take a long time to play, the creators of the game allowed players to simulate some gmes instead of playing them. You could pick, game-by-game, whether you wanted to play it out, or whether you wanted to skip it and have the computer work out the result.

Well, some people started to play multiple seasons of NHL without ever actually playing the hockey games. Instead, they simulated every single game, and still found it fun. They focussed on managing the team, making player trades, handling the business side of the team management such as ticket and concession prices, etc. some of these managerial-types would even go so far as to watch the entire game on screen but not actually play it. And they liked it.

And some people might say: “What the hell is the point of that? The game is a hockey game! You’re supposed to play the hockey part.”

Also legitimate. But guess what? The players who played the managerial side of the game didn’t care.

It gets more interesting…

The designers recognized that there are many simulationists out there who don’t enjoy managing – they enjoy playing. They realized that they could bring increased simulationism to the player part of the game.

They created a whole new mode of play: Player Career mode (as opposed to Manager career mode). In this mode, you would role-play one hockey player throughout his career. During games, you would play as one player. Considering that in hockey a team dresses 18 skaters but only 5 are on the ice at once, this means you might only play roughly 28% of the actual game time (and roughly 20% of that time you’d actually have the puck). The other 72% of the time, your player would sit on the bench and you would watch the game. You could turn your head with the controller to follow the action.

Some people said “that’s f@#king ridiculous. Who would want that? The whole point of the game is the hockey.” And they’d have a point – after all, the original design was based on the recognition that the fun is where the puck is, so hockey games traditionally always pass control of the puck-carrier to the player automatically.

Also a legitimate point. Biut guess what? The playes who like Player Career mode don’t care. They like it, and they want to see improvements to it.

---

So, when someone who plays NHL because they like Player Career mode makes a suggestion to improve it… and then another person, who prefers playing single games against his friends says “that’s stupid because Player Career mode is not the point of the game.” This other player is offering nothing to the discussion.

Example: Maybe the player who likes Player Career mode wants to be able to have conversations with the coach or other players while on the bench, or to wave at his family or wife in the crowd while on the bench. Well, from the point of view of the other guy, this is legitimately stupid. But from the view of the player making the siuggestion, it’s not stupid, because he spends 72% of the game not simulating, and simulating is what he likes about the game.

You have to entertain the context in order to be a part of the conversation.

I hope this helps.


NPC stablocks don't have stat adjustment based on sex. MaxWilson proposes a houserule to change stats based on sex.

Why is it outlandish to think that someone who propose to modify the stats of humans according to their sex would modify the stats of humans according to their sex?

Because he prposed them as (1) an option (2) for PCs.


MaxWilson is a believer of "rules for PCs = rules for NPCs". He defended that standpoint in this very thread.

He defended it. He didn’t advocate for it. There’s a difference.


Of course you could argue that in that case he wouldn't use Veterans statblocks, which is possible, but there isn't much difference between that and, say, lvl 5 fighters.

I don’t care, because I made no such argument.

You made an accusation. You made up a story about MaxWilson. In your story, MaxWilson changes the stat blocks of veterans. He never suggested it. You made it up. Your attempts to justify this fail (see reasons 1 and 2 above).

But none of that was my point.

My point was that, in creating this made-up story about MaxWilson changing stat blocks, you had to invent the changes he would make. So you did. Those changes were interesting, because the way you went about betrayed what some people would consider either unfair, stupid, or sexist.

Unfair – because (1) there’s no legitimate reaosn to assume that any DM goes through NPC statblocks and adjusts them for each individual. And Max did not ever suggest this. And becaue (2) you intentionally only mentioned the change that would penalize females without adequate reference to the adjustment that would benefit females.

Stupid – because, even if some hypothetical DM was so meticulous that he adjusted every Veteran for race and background, for example - in which case it would actually make sense that this DM would also adjust for physiological sex – you assumed this hypothetical meticulous DM would then be too stupid to consider the stat block to already be a male or female. Then he could just adjust the blocks once, for the unrepresented sex. But you assumed he would stupidly do twice the work.

Sexist – because, in the mids of the idiots who throw these accusations around, the fact that you would default to male (i.e. not female) as the represented sex would be interpreted as sexist. I understand that you are saying this is not what you did, and I believe you, but it did appear that way, and that’s all my sarcastic comment required. It was meant to be sarcastic, after all.


It's been my argument all along that 5e uses the same NPC stablocks for a variety of characters.

Great. That’s reaosnable. Now extend the courtesy of assuming the same degree of reason. Don’t make up stories without justification that portray them as stupid.


You trying to use an argument that I advanced in this very thread to imply that a) I didn't think of it and b) I'm trying to make MaxWilson look stupid by not pointing it out is the only ridiculous grasping that is happening here.

Well, I didn’t imply that you were trying. I think you did all of this, but weren’t trying to. I’m trying to point it out to you to help you notice.


Not to mention that, the whole point of this discussion, as you pointed out earlier, is about a change to 5e's rules to modify people's stats for the sake of simulationism, and the "many DMs" who "use that same Veteran stat block, without any modifications, to represent a dwarven veteran, elven veteran, halfling veteran, etc" are probably not concerned by simulationism. Since MaxWilson's concern was to increase the simulationism by applying more modifications to make the different beings more biodiverse, which those many DMs are not doing.

And I have been saying repeatedly in this thread: everyone has some amount of concern for simulationism, and some limit of tolerance after which simulationism is sacrificed for the sake of the game. You do not need to portray Max as someone who is as pathetic as you painted him. It’s beneath you.


Boci really addressed this quite well, but here are my two cents.


It seems to me that the only people who want this kind of realism are men.

So what? Are they wrong because they are men? If you think so, you’re a sexist jerk. If not, then let’s discuss the reasons why they’re wrong instead of playing identity politics.


Unless I've missed a post by a female player who is really really hoping to have better wisdom or constitution. But I doubt it.

First of all, female players can play whatever gender of character they want. Second of all, who ever said that men are really, really hoping to play strong characters? That’s a weird assumption. I’m a relatively strong man in real life (6’2”, 250 pounds, and used to be top three in my province as a highschool wrestler) and I don’t care how strong my character is. I do like to try to achieve a =5 to hit, but I almost never use strength as my attack stat. In my groups, almost every player (and they’re almost all men) dumps strength. Third of all, it seems reasonable to me that many characters would prefer better constitution (almost always) or wisdom (in particular cases), especially if they like to play characters that require wisdom.

By way of anecdote: I am a man. My favourite class is cleric. I tend to build dwarven clerics. I also prefer to play male characters, because I don’t think I’m very good at portraying female characters. I would play a male dwarf, despite receiving less benefit. And I wouldn’t complain. I tend to aim for 10-14 strength. When someone (man or woman) plays a female character in our games, I am happy to have them along and in the role of the strongest character.


When people imagine themselves as a fantasy character, they want to be able to hit harder, not be better at taking a hit.

(1) This is an assumption.
(2) Hitting harder doesn’t necessarily mean stronger. There are plenty of ways to hit just as hard as someone with 20 strength using a different ablity. (Aren’t there? I’m not one of these DPR analaysis people.)


Whatever the rationale, whatever the science, in actual gameplay it boils down to this: if you were to adopt this house rule, you and your friends may derive more pleasure from it, but it may turn off many new players (including, but not limited to, women) and lessen their fun. I don't think that's the intention, but it would be the effect. Clearly - if nothing else comes from the thread - you should see that now.

(1) This doesn’t make this houserule particularly unique. That’s what happens when you change the rules.
(2) I consider this a feature, not a bug. Except I’m not driving them away, I’m inviting them to join. They are fleeing. And good riddance. I spend most of life avoiding this type of person.


Hi BurgerBeast,

I appreciate that you get what I'm actually saying and are willing to discuss it on its own merits as well as alternate ways to scratch that same itch. If I could make one request though...

Given the choice between being misunderstood and being the reason someone else gets verbally abused, I would reluctantly pick "misunderstood." I'd rather be understood, especially by those like yourself who are equipped to actually engage in the topic, but please don't feel obligated to defend the truth so... vehemently that it puts you or anyone else in a bad mood.

And I will try to take my own advice there. :) As a friend recently observed, "If [person] is such a moron, why are you talking to him? You don't have to, and it just puts you in a bad mood." I'd rather talk to smart people.

Again, thanks for engaging. Hope we can have an productive conservation is this thread.

Ha! Thanks for the concern. I’m a firm believer that the amount of cognitive dissonance required for people to voluntarily change their minds often requires a willingness to have one’s mood worsened. It wouldn’t be worth it if was comfortable.

I try to keep my level of “intensity” matched to the person I’m engaging.


No offense, but it's pretty funny you tell BurgerBeast to not verbally abuse their interlocutors, but you're still implying that said interlocutors are not equipped to engage the topic/that it's valid to think they're morons.

No offense, but the evidence is on his side.


"Wow, that Gnomish Druid just turned into a dinosaur and ate the flying, spiked tail lion whole, and then the Elven Wizard called down a storm of meteors from the sky before wishing his dead friends back to life."

"Well, yeah, BUT THAT WOMAN BARBARIAN IS TOO STRONG."

If you can accept magic but can't accept that fact that men and women in a fantasy game can have an equal theoretical strength score, I think that probably says a hell of a lot about your attitude towards women once you walk away from the table.

It’s been mentioned more than once in this thread that this is a stupid thing to say. Feel free to read the reasons above.

Here’s one: Is it okay to complain if the DM rules that a flea killed your PC, who was shapechanged into a Dinosaur, by farting?

Not by your logic. By your logic, you can’t complain. Because it’s a fantasy world, so anything goes.


I told my players that the PHB does not model sexual dimorphism and therefore in my world men and women of the playable races were the same size on average, and that they should not expect stereotypes of gender roles to hold. For any NPC of any profession, the sex of the person is a coin flip. Blacksmiths and barkeeps and tailors and sailors - coin flip.

Totally legitimate. I just don’t like it, personally. Many of the differences in job selection, particularly in the real world, are psychological, not physical. Women actually do prefer some jobs and men actually do prefer some jobs for reasons that are apparently psychological. Also, do men in your setting give birth, then? And do both genders have child-bearing hips and breasts? (I’m assuming the answer is yes, because, if not, then there actually is sexual dimorphism in your world. Also, how does reproduction occur? Is it just anyone with anyone or does it need to be a male and a female. And how would you know if someone was a man or woman anyway, since with no sexual dimorphism they would look identical, right down to the private bits.) Are there no stereotypical gender-roles? (i.e. if someone says “that woman is very feminine,” nobody knows what that means?) Do both men and women enter the workforce or stay at home based on a coin-flip, or does it come down to whichever one had the child stays home?

[Shining Wrath]

A thought came up in another thread (Is D&D a role-playing game?) that I hope will shed some light on this tangential topic of whether simulationism (or simulationism to an unnecessary degree) is a legitimate concern.

I want to draw an analogy to the video game series by EA Sports called NHL. It's the hockey game that comes out every year (NHL 2017, NHL 2018, NHL 2019…).

In this game, you can play individual games for fun. But at some point in the development of the game, they introduced a “Season Mode”/“Manager Mode.”

In that mode, you could play an entire season (or, later, multiple seasons) as one team. You could play season attempting to win the league and/or qualify for playoffs, then play the playoffs in pursuit of the Stanley Cup.

Now, we’re talking about a hockey game. The point of the game is to play hockey. There is not necessarily any implied need to have a season mode… some people might even say “who the hell wants to play a whole season of hockey? I bought the game so I could play against my friends every once in a while.”

That’s legitimate. But guess what? The people who like season mode don’t care. They want to play seasons, and they want to see more of what they like.

It gets more interesting…

Recognizing that seasons take a long time to play, the creators of the game allowed players to simulate some gmes instead of playing them. You could pick, game-by-game, whether you wanted to play it out, or whether you wanted to skip it and have the computer work out the result.

Well, some people started to play multiple seasons of NHL without ever actually playing the hockey games. Instead, they simulated every single game, and still found it fun. They focussed on managing the team, making player trades, handling the business side of the team management such as ticket and concession prices, etc. some of these managerial-types would even go so far as to watch the entire game on screen but not actually play it. And they liked it.

And some people might say: “What the hell is the point of that? The game is a hockey game! You’re supposed to play the hockey part.”

Also legitimate. But guess what? The players who played the managerial side of the game didn’t care.

It gets more interesting…

The designers recognized that there are many simulationists out there who don’t enjoy managing – they enjoy playing. They realized that they could bring increased simulationism to the player part of the game.

They created a whole new mode of play: Player Career mode (as opposed to Manager career mode). In this mode, you would role-play one hockey player throughout his career. During games, you would play as one player. Considering that in hockey a team dresses 18 skaters but only 5 are on the ice at once, this means you might only play roughly 28% of the actual game time (and roughly 20% of that time you’d actually have the puck). The other 72% of the time, your player would sit on the bench and you would watch the game. You could turn your head with the controller to follow the action.

Some people said “that’s f@#king ridiculous. Who would want that? The whole point of the game is the hockey.” And they’d have a point – after all, the original design was based on the recognition that the fun is where the puck is, so hockey games traditionally always pass control of the puck-carrier to the player automatically.

Also a legitimate point. Biut guess what? The playes who like Player Career mode don’t care. They like it, and they want to see improvements to it.

---

So, when someone who plays NHL because they like Player Career mode makes a suggestion to improve it… and then another person, who prefers playing single games against his friends says “that’s stupid because Player Career mode is not the point of the game.” This other player is offering nothing to the discussion.

Example: Maybe the player who likes Player Career mode wants to be able to have conversations with the coach or other players while on the bench, or to wave at his family or wife in the crowd while on the bench. Well, from the point of view of the other guy, this is legitimately stupid. But from the view of the player making the siuggestion, it’s not stupid, because he spends 72% of the game not simulating, and simulating is what he likes about the game.

You have to entertain the context in order to be a part of the conversation.

I hope this helps.



Because he prposed them as (1) an option (2) for PCs.



He defended it. He didn’t advocate for it. There’s a difference.



I don’t care, because I made no such argument.

You made an accusation. You made up a story about MaxWilson. In your story, MaxWilson changes the stat blocks of veterans. He never suggested it. You made it up. Your attempts to justify this fail (see reasons 1 and 2 above).

But none of that was my point.

My point was that, in creating this made-up story about MaxWilson changing stat blocks, you had to invent the changes he would make. So you did. Those changes were interesting, because the way you went about betrayed what some people would consider either unfair, stupid, or sexist.

Unfair – because (1) there’s no legitimate reaosn to assume that any DM goes through NPC statblocks and adjusts them for each individual. And Max did not ever suggest this. And becaue (2) you intentionally only mentioned the change that would penalize females without adequate reference to the adjustment that would benefit females.

Stupid – because, even if some hypothetical DM was so meticulous that he adjusted every Veteran for race and background, for example - in which case it would actually make sense that this DM would also adjust for physiological sex – you assumed this hypothetical meticulous DM would then be too stupid to consider the stat block to already be a male or female. Then he could just adjust the blocks once, for the unrepresented sex. But you assumed he would stupidly do twice the work.

Sexist – because, in the mids of the idiots who throw these accusations around, the fact that you would default to male (i.e. not female) as the represented sex would be interpreted as sexist. I understand that you are saying this is not what you did, and I believe you, but it did appear that way, and that’s all my sarcastic comment required. It was meant to be sarcastic, after all.



Great. That’s reaosnable. Now extend the courtesy of assuming the same degree of reason. Don’t make up stories without justification that portray them as stupid.



Well, I didn’t imply that you were trying. I think you did all of this, but weren’t trying to. I’m trying to point it out to you to help you notice.



And I have been saying repeatedly in this thread: everyone has some amount of concern for simulationism, and some limit of tolerance after which simulationism is sacrificed for the sake of the game. You do not need to portray Max as someone who is as pathetic as you painted him. It’s beneath you.


Boci really addressed this quite well, but here are my two cents.



So what? Are they wrong because they are men? If you think so, you’re a sexist jerk. If not, then let’s discuss the reasons why they’re wrong instead of playing identity politics.



First of all, female players can play whatever gender of character they want. Second of all, who ever said that men are really, really hoping to play strong characters? That’s a weird assumption. I’m a relatively strong man in real life (6’2”, 250 pounds, and used to be top three in my province as a highschool wrestler) and I don’t care how strong my character is. I do like to try to achieve a =5 to hit, but I almost never use strength as my attack stat. In my groups, almost every player (and they’re almost all men) dumps strength. Third of all, it seems reasonable to me that many characters would prefer better constitution (almost always) or wisdom (in particular cases), especially if they like to play characters that require wisdom.

By way of anecdote: I am a man. My favourite class is cleric. I tend to build dwarven clerics. I also prefer to play male characters, because I don’t think I’m very good at portraying female characters. I would play a male dwarf, despite receiving less benefit. And I wouldn’t complain. I tend to aim for 10-14 strength. When someone (man or woman) plays a female character in our games, I am happy to have them along and in the role of the strongest character.



(1) This is an assumption.
(2) Hitting harder doesn’t necessarily mean stronger. There are plenty of ways to hit just as hard as someone with 20 strength using a different ablity. (Aren’t there? I’m not one of these DPR analaysis people.)



(1) This doesn’t make this houserule particularly unique. That’s what happens when you change the rules.
(2) I consider this a feature, not a bug. Except I’m not driving them away, I’m inviting them to join. They are fleeing. And good riddance. I spend most of life avoiding this type of person.



Ha! Thanks for the concern. I’m a firm believer that the amount of cognitive dissonance required for people to voluntarily change their minds often requires a willingness to have one’s mood worsened. It wouldn’t be worth it if was comfortable.

I try to keep my level of “intensity” matched to the person I’m engaging.



No offense, but the evidence is on his side.



It’s been mentioned more than once in this thread that this is a stupid thing to say. Feel free to read the reasons above.

Here’s one: Is it okay to complain if the DM rules that a flea killed your PC, who was shapechanged into a Dinosaur, by farting?

Not by your logic. By your logic, you can’t complain. Because it’s a fantasy world, so anything goes.



Totally legitimate. I just don’t like it, personally. Many of the differences in job selection, particularly in the real world, are psychological, not physical. Women actually do prefer some jobs and men actually do prefer some jobs for reasons that are apparently psychological. Also, do men in your setting give birth, then? And do both genders have child-bearing hips and breasts? (I’m assuming the answer is yes, because, if not, then there actually is sexual dimorphism in your world. Also, how does reproduction occur? Is it just anyone with anyone or does it need to be a male and a female. And how would you know if someone was a man or woman anyway, since with no sexual dimorphism they would look identical, right down to the private bits.) Are there no stereotypical gender-roles? (i.e. if someone says “that woman is very feminine,” nobody knows what that means?) Do both men and women enter the workforce or stay at home based on a coin-flip, or does it come down to whichever one had the child stays home?

There are many species with males and females that do not have sexual dimorphism. Dimorphism refers to differences in size, not in genitalia and secondary sexual characteristics. For example, my dwarf women can have beards, but not as long as the mens.

[Unoriginal]

For the last time, I never assumed that the Veteran statblock was male.

ALL the NPC statblocks are non-gendered/have no defined sex. Because 5e does not consider humanoids' sexes affect their stats.

IF you were going to apply an houserule to make humanoids' sexes affect their stats for "simulationism", then "deciding one of the sex is the default and then apply the modifier to the other" makes no sense.

But you know what? Fine. Maybe I shouldn't have utilized such an example. Maybe I should have used something different, like a PC example.

I'm going to stop posting in this thread, in any case. I think it's clear no one gained anything from my posts.

[Boci]

For the last time, I never assumed that the Veteran statblock was male.

Actually you did, because you said the houserule would mean a female veterran only had 15 strength, which has to mean you were assuming the state block was male.

[Unoriginal]

Actually you did, because you said the houserule would mean a female veterran only had 15 strength, which has to mean you were assuming the state block was male.

No, I assumed the statblock was HUMAN, which meant the female would get 15 and the male 17.

[Boci]

No, I assumed the statblock was HUMAN, which meant the female would get 15 and the male 17.

Okay fair, I didn't consider that. But it still makes no sense because the houserule was called out as being optional, so presumably woman veterran and other strength based warriors would not be using the houserule, in which case they would have 16 strength and men using the houserule would have 17.

[MaxWilson]

There are many species with males and females that do not have sexual dimorphism. Dimorphism refers to differences in size, not in genitalia and secondary sexual characteristics. For example, my dwarf women can have beards, but not as long as the mens.

Well, technically that's wrong--secondary sexual characteristics (heavier brow ridges for one sex, deeper voices, rougher skin, etc.) are by definition a manifestation of sexual dimorphism.

But in context it's clear what you originally meant: you just meant that your men and women are not distinct in ways that would affect game stats.

[daemonaetea]

Hoo boy. Ok. Let's give this a shot.


Yes, and again: This is exactly what prejudism is. You have decided that you don’t want to play D&D with these people because they have different tastes in movies than you. You’re making this decision before you’ve played D&D with them. I guess we have different ideas about what if means to pre-judge.

As my original statement said - words have meaning beyond the simple dictionary definition, picked up through common usage. You are correct that this is prejudice by the strict definition, but you'll find many people reject that usage of the word if applied to them in the regular course of their actions. As such, using it is more confrontational than is usually necessary, and other words will serve you better in discussion, and cause less negative reaction.


No. Nobody, except you, has suggested that these changes are a priority. Get real. That’s one hell of a misreading of essentially everything that is written in this thread. Even in a simulationist game, they would be a minor mechanical consideration. I have already said that I wouldn’t use them in my games.

You need to calm down and read what is written.

I'll accept partial responsibility here for the lack of clarity in my words. I was largely speaking of a hypothetical here, a pushback on whether it'd be acceptable to leave just because of a houserule before the game started. So the response was aimed more at that than Max.

However, he has chosen these rules to discuss online and, upon receive some push back, has cared about them enough to continue the discussion. They clearly mean something to him, and he finds value within them. So they are not a passing fancy, though how much weight they carry for him is hard to know outside his own clarification.


Again, I never said it was important, genius. You’re making this s@#t up. I said that if anyone thinks it’s important, that’s okay with me, and this is a legitimate way to do it that is decidedly not sexist. Read what is written. Stop erecting scarecrows.

“I would personaly hate X” is not worth my consideration. You have the right to your taste. Stop trying to force it on others.

Again, I'll take partial credit here, but not a lot. The generalized "you" I'm employing here is sloppy, but I feel it's a perfectly routine English usage. If you took this as a personal attack, I am sorry. I did not mean to do so. Again, this was within the confines of justifying why a reaction to a houserule could be perfectly acceptable, and was outside the context of a quote block, and thus not targeted at any given person. It was intended to be a rhetorical argument, not an attack.


Right. And I’m asking for consistency. The only reason I’ve heard for the millions of limtations that you do accept is that they are the rules that were somewhat arbitrarily decided upon by the creators of 5e. So when you say something like: “players sould be able to make a halfling who can match an ogre in strength if they want to.” I ask why? Why an ogre? And why not a hill giant?

Because when I get excited about this ridiculous idea and the “creative freedom it gives to live out my fantasy” I say: “Hell yeah! I want to make a halfling that can match a hill giant in strength!”

And then you say: “No, that’s not possible.”

So you’re guilty of your own crime. What is the bloody difference? Why do you – you specifically - why do you say yes to halfing that are as strong as ogres but no to halflings that are as strong as hill giants?

I mean, that's actually really simple to answer. Because the game as designed has no problem with a halfling as strong as an ogre, and doesn't allow a halfling as strong as a hill giant. (Well, kinda. A hill giant as a STR of 21, so the halfling can be effectively as strong as the giant, given enough levels). And you can say this is arbitrary, but there is a very apparent design and logic to the number behind 5E. That's not to say they're sacrosanct or anything, but to call them arbitrary is a bit much.

My own rules are that players at the table all follow the rules, but are largely free to describe their characters and their relation to the world as they wish. They are free to be exceptions, but they are notified ahead of time in the specific way they're an exception, and how this might relate to the world. For instance, if I did run a world with women generally being less strong, and they made a STR 20 warrior, their strength would definitely attract them a lot of attention. But I like to run worlds where the players are exceptional, even as the worlds are highly defined, because I like for the game to function like that. Which isn't the right way, but that is my own perspective, and it colors my arguments.


This is a logical fallacy. And you know it, too. At least I hope you do. Why do you include gravity in your games? That’s arbitrary, man. Why do humans in your games have eyes? Seriously, man… that’s so arbitrary. Why can’t a flea kill a dragon by farting, man? Seriously… that’s so arbitrary. There are dragons and demons, man... but you think fleas farting dragons to death is silly... oh man... you're so out of touch...

You can accept fantasy without having to accept anything that is offered. Everyone knows this. Stop with the idiocy, please.

Well, not quite. I'm not quite sure how you'd build a recognizable world without gravity, or vision. I'm not sure of the narrative weight, or how the world would possibly be structured, if a flea was capable of killing a dragon. It'd certainly require, on the mechanical end, a massive overhaul of the rules to make any of that work. And I think you're aware of it.

If a player wants to play someone as strong, instead, as a Storm Giant, that'd require a rather large breach to the rules. It requires you to figure out how to balance that out, or whether you want someone in the party that will almost certainly outclass every other hero when it comes to martial combat. It's a rather big change, and so it's very appropriate to let them know the rules simply don't support their vision. And that's a very specific vision, because it's a vision that requires them to be superior. Not just to play someone strong, but to play someone stronger than anyone else in the group. You can't refluff that, you can't support it minimally. I can understand an argument against this approach on the basis of a specific idea of simulationism, but not from an argument that the idea is equally as absurd as a halfling as strong as a Storm Giant.

But a woman being as strong as a man is exactly as strong as letting them play a dragon - both are easily supported in the rules, and are balanced against each other. She can play a dragonborn, or a human. It is not asking for something infeasible. And I think it's trivial to justify within a fantasy setting. I've said it many times, and I'll keep reiterating it in different ways - ad hoc adjustments to the rules represent specifically chosen alterations to bring the setting more into a notion of reality. The setting is by default unrealistic. Every choice you make to bring it more in alignment with reality is a choice. Choices are voluntary and driven by personal ideas.


What I am saying is this: imagine that you are someone for whom increased simulationism increases the fun.

Seriously. Do it. If you are not willing to do it, then you’re not actually considering the OP’s point. This is not an option that is designed to force people to play in a way they don’t like. This is an option that is designed to increase the fun for people who find this style of game more enjoyable.

Nobody is saying you have to enjoy this style. But if you’re just going to stand outside of the example and say it’s stupid because you don’t think that way (or because you don't like it, or because you don;t see the point) – then you’re not actually considering the f@#king point.

But my initial arguments were exactly within that wheelhouse. That's why I'm advocating strongly for achieving this aim through NPC stat allocation rather than stat adjustment. I can perfectly well imagine how this would be, and even imagine extra fun within that paradigm. I imagine playing a female warrior, as strong as any man, such that she causes a sensation wherever she goes. The women are amazed, the men split between amazement and anger at a woman their equal. It'd bring up an immense amount of crazy fun roleplaying. And the ways it impacts the setting, and the cultures that would develop, what they look like and how they adapted - I get it, I do. I just think stat adjustments are a heavy handed way to accomplish it which are not necessary.

You might counter the other way has fun stuff too - a woman who, despite her lack of strength, comes to overcome men in her own way. But that story is equally supportable with stat allocation as stat adjustment. Only one of these methods locks out possibilities. That's why I find it lacking.


Your whole argument is that some people feel really strongly about this. Who f@#king cares? Some people feel really strongly that tieflings should be able to be barbarians that are equal to half-orc barbarians. They feel really strongly about it. Hell, you can probably even find someone who identifies as a tiefling. So what should we do? Jump on our high horse and declare the current 5e rules to be oppressive?

Who the hell are you to tell someone what they can and can’t feel strongly about? Or that this person feels more strongly about X than this other person feels about Y? Who are you, and where did you get the magical ability to be the arbiter of whose hurt feelings are most legitimate?

You can’t. You just accept the rules if you want to, and don’t if you don’t. This is true in all cases. Some rules hurt peoples' feelings. That doesn't mean they were designed with an agenda to oppress particular groups. It doesn't mean they're oppressive and need to be eradicated.

I don't drink soda. Just don't much care for it. But I know that most of the people that play at my home do enjoy it, and that while they would not be rude enough to complain about its lack, that doesn't mean I should just declare that only water is necessary and they can do without.

And people feel much, much more attached to their gender than their drink preference. And while some of them may feel, very strongly, that only a specific and expensive soda from France is the only good one, I'm still being a good host if I only have Coke and Mountain Dew.

I wouldn't force my players - or make them feel pressured, for optimization reasons - to make a choice they feel uncomfortable playing. And I don't think it's a stretch to see why this might matter to more people than, say, the attributes of a tiefling. Again - things people share with their actual selves are likely to have more impact than a fantasy construct which very few people feel connected to.


Can you stop it with the straw men, please?

1. She can be stronger than Fred, who is 100 pounds soaking wet. She just can’t be stronger than the strongest man in the world.

2. She can be as strong as she wants in her dreams. She can be the strongest being in the multiverse in her dreams. But her character can’t be that strong in this particular game of D&D.

I don't think she's likely to have met the strongest man in the world. But she's pretty likely to have met a lot of Freds. And having it be made clear that, no matter what she does, in this context Fred will be allowed to be better than her because that's realistic is probably not a great feeling. It is, in fact, the opposite of the feeling most people play D&D to experience. And again, this is likely to be personal in a way that other choices are not.


It’s arbitrary, genius.

Maybe I feel really strongly that my male fighter should be able to be as strong as a female barbarian (that’s a PC). I feel really strongly about it. So f@#king what? The rules say I can’t, so I can’t.

Am I supposed to start whining about how oppressive 5e is? “But I really want to be as strong as that barbarian woman. It’s my dream.”

The rest of what you wrote is just more of you not getting it. If every female gets the same stat adjustments and every male gets the same stat adjustments, then every player is still being treated the same.

“But in my dreams I can be a woman who is as strong as the strongest man,” is not different than “but in my dreams I can play a fighter who is as strong as the strongest barbarian. It's my dream. The creators of 5e and this DM are ruining my dream out of some arbitrary prejudism against fighters.”

Why do you accept the one complaint but not the other?

And “people feel really strongly about gender” is not a better answer than “people really really strongly about class."

A rich man and a poor man being charged a thousand dollars are only being treated the same in a technical sense. If I place a gun to your head and order you to give me ten dollars, or I'll shoot you, you are not freely choosing to give me ten dollars. To be clear, I am not comparing those scenarios to this, but I am trying to demonstrate that equal opportunities to choose from a set of options does not necessarily represent "fairness" perfectly.

And I'd say that, if your idea is to play something representing strength, you have a great option to do so in 5E. It's called the barbarian. That's what it represents. I'm all for empowering players, but often what that means is not giving them special powers, or house rules, but to find what option is already in the game.

And again, all this talk of the game design breaks down when the discussion is about an adjustment to those rules rather than the rules themselves. You are discussing removing opportunity, not adding it, and thus the specific need for the adjustment seems a reasonable discussion.


Hah! Yeah… right. So in your twisted representation of Max's view, every human stat block in the MM would be assumed to be intersex. And then Max would go through and adjust every stat block twice.

You’re funny.

And this is all notwithstanding that Max never said he would opt NPCs in to "the program," anyway. So the whole thing was your invention from the start.

It's also notwithstanding the fact that you're probably capable of realizing that many DMs use that same Veteran stat block, without any modifications, to represent a dwarven veteran, elven veteran, halfling veteran, etc... so you are well aware that all of this is just your ridiculous grasping for a way to make Max look stupid.

How'd that work out for you?

So this bit isn't actually responding to me, but since it's here...

Honestly, if he doesn't subject the Veteran stat block to the adjustment, what's the point? How simulationist is it if every single Veteran has that stat block? He seems to have made it very clear that the way this impacts the population at large, not just the PCs, was a consideration. And if he doesn't apply stat alteration to the NPC stats, I'm not sure how well the adjustments would actually reflect his society, given they should actually be pretty representative of an average.


Ok, that took a long time! If I missed anything, I'll try to give this a once over later.

[Dr.Samurai]

And it's not about delicate sensibilities, but about our ideals of what gaming represents, how to handle design decisions, what the rules should be trying to accomplish. And passion, I think, is very natural when you're talking about things like that. You, and others, disagree. And that's fine! It's what a forum is for. If we couldn't disagree, there'd be very little reason for all of us to talk about things together. After all, if I didn't think some kind of dialogue was possible, I'd have stopped posting by now.
I get the strong impression by the responses in this thread that many of you are not opposing the OP's idea based on any gaming reason, but rather because you take issue with the idea of expressing differences between men and women in general. And that's for reasons that BurgerBeast elaborated on much more succinctly in his excellent last post than I ever could. Many of the replies here are simply *not helpful or appropriate*. They do not speak to the intent of the OP. It's just complaining for sake of complaining, because they don't like the idea of sex-based differences being delineated in the game mechanics. If you're not one of those people, then I applaud you. But most of the respondents here are.

My favorite part of the thread was when some guy said of the topic, "It's not that serious," then proceeded to lace his post with multiple insults, including censored curse words, incredulity, and multiple exclamation points.

{scrubbed}

[Boci]

Honestly, if he doesn't subject the Veteran stat block to the adjustment, what's the point?

So if the OP doesn't implement their houserules, which you have no interest in using yourself, in the way you decide is proper, there's no point in them using said houserules at all? I know the Playground means well, but sometimes they can just be so terrible when it comes to a house rule they dislike. Once you've explained why you think its not worth it or even outright bad, and the OP makes it clear they don't share your concerns, that's kinda your cue to walk away. And I say this as someone who wouldn't use these gender mechanics in my own game, becaise I don't think they're worth oit. But sheesh, I'm not going to explain to the OP why they'd be having badwrongfun using them.

If they use this house rule but not for the veterran state block, its presumable because they enjoy using the houserule, but do not feel it neccissary to extend it to the veterran block (to say nothing of ther argument that since its an opt in mechanic female NPC veterrans can assume to have not opted in).

[MaxWilson]

I'll accept partial responsibility here for the lack of clarity in my words. I was largely speaking of a hypothetical here, a pushback on whether it'd be acceptable to leave just because of a houserule before the game started. So the response was aimed more at that than Max.

However, he has chosen these rules to discuss online and, upon receive some push back, has cared about them enough to continue the discussion. They clearly mean something to him, and he finds value within them. So they are not a passing fancy, though how much weight they carry for him is hard to know outside his own clarification.

Well, there's a reason I'm ignoring most of the pushback, in the sense of not responding to it. (C.f. earlier contretemps over "ignore".)

My main interest in starting this thread was to examine whether or not making stat modifiers outside the mold of PHB modifiers (too big, too negative, or for the "wrong" traits like gender) explicitly opt-in was a nice compromise that would satisfy those who normally object to them. At this point it seems likely that it isn't, and I appreciate the feedback of people like @GorogIrongut among others in providing that data.

It's possible that this opt-in-to-stat-variants houserule will see playtesting at some point, especially the racial stat distributions for races like half-giants, orcs and thri-kreen, but at this point it's really low-pri for me, especially considering everything else I've got going on like automating the spatial display log for the Frost Giant + Giant Saber-tooth cats vs. PCs fight that I owe the forum and have been working on for two weeks now (currently more than half done but deep in yak-shaving territory w/ react-pixi-fiber/Fable integration).

So no, it doesn't carry that much weight for me, but it's still enjoyable to talk design with other people who have insightful comments. Shining Wrath's post about deriving stats from backgrounds was enjoyable to read, for example, and reminded me of Traveller chargen.

[daemonaetea]

So if the OP doesn't implement their houserules, which you have no interest in using yourself, in the way you decide is proper, there's no point in them using said houserules at all? I know the Playground means well, but sometimes they can just be so terrible when it comes to a house rule they dislike. Once you've explained why you think its not worth it or even outright bad, and the OP makes it clear they don't share your concerns, that's kinda your cue to walk away. And I say this as someone who wouldn't use these gender mechanics in my own game, becaise I don't think they're worth oit. But sheesh, I'm not going to explain to the OP why they'd be having badwrongfun using them.

If they use this house rule but not for the veterran state block, its presumable because they enjoy using the houserule, but do not feel it neccissary to extend it to the veterran block (to say nothing of ther argument that since its an opt in mechanic female NPC veterrans can assume to have not opted in).

The thread was specifically created to discuss a rule meant to emphasize sexual dimorphism in a simulationist context. If the rule doesn't have impact in game, I think it fails at that goal. If you don't begin to notice the female guards hit less hard, but seem to see through your lies more often, I'm not sure what it actually adds to the game. That's the entire point of altering the rules to make that aspect of reality more emphasized in their campaign world. The opt-in nature of the rule seems like it was intended to minimize the degree to which the rule impacted character ideas, which is very much a point of discussion.

And if you just make a single statement and walk away, I see that as much more... I hesitate to say rude, but I almost feel like that's right. You don't feel strongly enough to try to convince someone, just to make an offhand comment and leave. And since I'm mostly a lurker, the only times I post are when I feel strongly about something. If the OP asks me to leave, I will do so without hesitation, because I am not trying to force myself upon the discussion. But I enjoy discussing things, and while I'm still getting replies I'm assuming others are still getting something out of the interaction as well.

[MaxWilson]

If they use this house rule but not for the veterran state block, its presumable because they enjoy using the houserule, but do not feel it neccissary to extend it to the veterran block (to say nothing of ther argument that since its an opt in mechanic female NPC veterrans can assume to have not opted in).

If anything, the houserule would probably make me more likely to use female Veterans (or genuine 5th level Fighters, which is more my speed) by quantifying the differences and making it clear that in this world, they're not that much weaker than the men.

Military forces in a world using the OP rules could look quite a lot like the Dragaeran military forces from Steve Brust's books: very sexually egalitarian.

But at this point, playtesting the houserule is not looking like a high priority. It's about on par with developing a simpler Fighter with no Action Surge/Second Wind.

RE: "if they", for the record, I hereby give blanket permission to anyone who wants to use the male pronoun "he" to refer to MaxWilson instead of hedging w/ "he/she/they/g'ya", since I am male.

[MaxWilson]

The thread was specifically created to discuss a rule meant to emphasize sexual dimorphism in a simulationist context. If the rule doesn't have impact in game, I think it fails at that goal. If you don't begin to notice the female guards hit less hard, but seem to see through your lies more often, I'm not sure what it actually adds to the game.

I think I outlined this early on in the thread, but even though +/-1 is not a large stat modifier from a mechanical perspective and probably won't noticeably impact the game one way or another (especially a hypothetical Str 16 female Veteran vs. Str 17 male Veteran, which are only mechanically distinguished from each other by another houserule that gives odd ability scores an extra +1 to ability checks)...

...and despite that mechanical near-irrelevance, they still shape player perceptions of what stat scores really mean. What does it mean during character generation for Bob to consider placing his 9 in Str or his 11? Well, if he knows that women average Str 9-10 and men average 10-11 in this world, that gives him a sense of scale for Str means which may inform his choice even if mechanically it doesn't matter much. (Say for example that he's got the stats to be a Dex 18 Sharpshooter Fighter and is just deciding where to place his tertiary stats.) In the absence of roleplaying guidance, people seem to default to drawing guidance from mechanical task resolution like "Str 9 gives you -1 to grapple checks" and "Int 6 isn't a big deal--you'll still pass a DC 10 History check 64% as often as the Int 18 genius." Ideally, I don't want that to happen at my table.

In contrast, I like my game to be a little bit more conceptual, and giving examples for "typical" exemplars of a stat is one way to do this. "Int 6 = as smart as a gorilla." "Str 16 = as strong as Arnold Schwarzenegger." Etc. Instead of thinking of 9 vs. 11 as "-1 to grapple checks", I'd like Bob to have some context for his choice that's rooted in real-world intuitions like "about as strong as the average woman" vs. "about as strong as the average man". This approach seems to be beneficial for anchoring players' expectations in reality, and may be one reason why my players are willing to do conventionally-"suboptimal" things like not dump Int, although initiative houserules are probably also a factor there too, or spend ASIs on unconventional stats for their character class.

In short, it adds to the game, but not by noticeably altering NPC success rates. The magnitude of the effect is too small for that. It's more about providing baselines.