Strenght 10 means "average trained" or "average untrained"?

[Conradine]

When I was 18 I could hardly bench press 70 pounds. Several years of irregular but sometimes intense weightlifting later, I reached a record of 253 lbs. Without steroids or extreme training.

There is quite a difference between a person who does reguilar exercise and one who's for the most sedentary.

So, in your games, what is a strenght 10 average joe? It's an average office worker or an average farm laborer?

[Kelb_Panthera]

It's a pseudo-medieval world.

10 is much closer to the average farm hand than it is to the average office worker but probably still a little below that.

Look at the load capacities. A str 10 character can carry 100 pounds of gear, albeit somewhat uncomfortably, without being staggered by the sheer weight of it. Carrying less than 33 isn't enough to slow him significantly. That's the ballpark you're in.

The kind of exercise these people usually get isn't what you could call muscle training per se but it's a -lot- more physically demanding than office work and their lives are anything but sedentary. A -lot- of the stuff we take for granted, that makes life much easier and less physical simply doesn't exist in their world.

[noce]

Common "unnamed" NPCs have stats between 10 and 11 when young adult.
So I'd say 10 for a merchant or librarian, 11 for a farmer or blacksmith.
Then you start losing physical stats, so a middle aged blacksmith would have 10, too.

[Illidatch]

I second Kelb's opinion, and the load rules (while not perfect) are a great example. Additionaly, let's think Skills.
An average person with 10 str and no ranks in the relevant skills can somewhat reliably:

- Climb a rough wall
- Jump 10ft in length
- Swim at 15ft/round in calm water for a [very long] amount of time

While not exceptional feats, to be able to reliably perform them is indicative of a somewhat physically trained body. (especially the swimming part, for whoever knows or does water sports)

[hamishspence]

Common "unnamed" NPCs have stats between 10 and 11 when young adult.
So I'd say 10 for a merchant or librarian, 11 for a farmer or blacksmith.

I would speculate that the nonelite array: (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8) is somewhat more common than 10s and 11s across the board.

As such, most "low level" people who have Str as their best stat, are likely to have 13, not 11.

As I recall, Arms & Equipment Guide always applies the nonelite array to sample NPCs.

[Firechanter]

Take care not to fall into the fallacy of thinking "average" to mean "everybody has the same stats". If 10 is "average", that just means the gauss curve peaks there. If we assume a normal distribution and accept 3d6 as face value, only 25% of humans will have a 10-11 in any given ability.

Now add to that that IRL, humans have a relatively pronounced sexual dimorphism: men typically are taller and stronger than women; the distribution curves for these stats are uniformly shifted to the left and right respectively, like so:
https://i.imgur.com/tuHPpv4.jpg

Strength will be distributed similarly. So IRL, the average Str scores would probably be more like 12-13 for men and 8-9 for women. (We don't simulate that in games for good reason, though.) And again, that still means that only 25% of people will have exactly these values, and the rest will be higher or lower than that.

FWIW, I once had a roommate who was really strong, despite not working out significantly. Going from what he could carry without breaking a sweat, I'd attest him a Str 16+ easily. OTOH, one of my exes was (and probably still is) so flimsy that she could barely carry a six-pack. Probably a Str 6 if you ask me. Or another example, when I was in the army we had to cover 30km with full gear in under 5 hours; I'd say anybody who manages that has Str and Con scores of at least 13.

[nedz]

Yes — it can mean either.

[HouseRules]

Elite Array: 15 14 13 12 10 8
Standard Array: 13 12 11 10 9 8
Average Array: 11 11 11 10 10 10

Elite Array -> Has PC Class
Standard Array -> Has NPC Class
Average Array -> Has Racial Hit Dice