Quote Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost View Post
D&D leaves realism in the dust at high levels, which is an important caveat. One of the key aspects of heroic fantasy in general and the whole zero-to-hero thing in particular is that most of the world is quite realistic most of the time, including heroes when they're starting out, with the major protagonists and antagonists, legendary monsters, etc. being increasingly unrealistic the further they fall from the baseline.

Where a more pure swords-and-sorcery game like Burning Wheel or Riddle of Steel expects characters to start as basically normal people and never really leave those bounds aside from perhaps a few concessions to cinematic tropes, and a more pure high-fantasy game like Ars Magic or Exalted lets characters tell the laws of physics to sit down and shut up right out of the gate, D&D lies in a middle ground where keeping things verisimilar at 1st level where one might struggle in a fight against a band of goblins is important but limiting things based on verisimilitude at 20th level where one might have already killed a demon prince or two (or even at 10th level where one has likely already taken on physically-impossible monsters and survived) is actively undesirable.

So while the specific case of gendered carrying capacity isn't a good thing (for reasons statistical to practical to narrative), the general drive for verisimilitude in the appropriate level range most certainly is.
Even from first level in D&D, at least in 5e. Sure, you're only shooting one heavy crossbow bolt every 6 seconds (2 about 3x/day), but you're still doing everything else exactly the same.

Because really, D&D isn't based on reality. It's based on epic fantasy, which shares much more root and aesthetic with action hero and superhero shows/movies. Even at 1st level you're pushing the bounds of plausibility (not in individual capabilities but in the collective set). By 5th level you're standing toe to toe with monsters that should obliterate you. And recovering from near-death completely by the next day.

Realism isn't in the picture. Instead, D&D obeys to its own particular logic, subservient to the needs of the genre and to the aesthetics being developed