Quote Originally Posted by Jason View Post
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.
I am saying that the artificial limit on women's strength fails, because there are women who can exceed it; one might argue that this would also mean that humans should be able to exceed that, but I have less of a problem with an artificial cap on all human ability that is lower than absolute human maximum... everyone is subject to the same cap, and any cap is going to be artificial.

Basically, the women's strength cap fails the realism test; an absolute limit on strength likewise does, but it has less impact on the fun of the game.