Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
So, the weight limits on strength already show this to be a bad rule, just from a realism standpoint;
Just to be clear, you are saying the overall lifting limits in AD&D fail the realism test because real world people have lifted more than the upper limits given, and some of them were also women, correct?
Because overall limits that are too low is a different issue than whether the strongest men can in fact lift more than the strongest women, which is what the upper limits on female strength were supposed to reflect.

Looking at the same source you use, it is obvious that the male records are higher than the female records, even when the weight classes are close or overlap. Example: men's 62kg record is 590kg, while the women's 64kg record is 460kg. Men's 69kg record is 651kg while women's 75kg is 500kg, etc. So having the very strongest males be stronger than the very strongest females seems to be realistic, at least for humans.
These people are really, really strong - the highest men's record is 1042kg, more than a ton! The women max out at 598kg. That's a pretty extreme difference between the very strongest men and the very strongest women, more than 400kg difference.

but what about a gameplay standpoint? Is it FUN for female characters to have a lower maximum strength than male characters?
That would be why it was taken out for 2nd edition. Gender-specific caps on strength were perhaps more realistic, but not more fun, and this is a fantasy game after all.

Now, the fact that human male fighters have a higher strength limit than half-orcs, who have a +1 strength racial adjustment, would be a better case for designer bias. Obviously Gygax just wanted human fighters to be better than half-orcs, as there doesn't seem to be any other explanation for the limit. Half-orc fighters are limited to level 10 as well. That's higher than the other non-human fighters, but humans have unlimited advancement in all clases. Half-orcs only have unlimited advancement in the Assassin class.