[Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defenders?

[Willie the Duck]

All of these examples are saying nothing about D&D in general and everything about how the 5e devs can't do math and wouldn't know verisimilitude if it slapped them upside the head with haddock.

Or, you know, they knew exactly what they were doing and simply didn't have the same priorities as the 'but realism...' crowd. I've never understood this notion that the devs don't know something (especially something as obvious as '5e healing rates are unrealistic') rather than the more realistic (hah!) idea that they know and simply don't care.

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.

I don't think a lot of us who started within that early time period ever bought the realism idea anyways. Women characters (as a mechanically different thing at least) were introduced to the game with alternate rules, alternate level titles, and special abilities like "Charm men, Seduction and Charm Humanoid Monster." This speaks to genre-emulation more than anything else, not realism. D&D has always tried to have it both ways (with varying emphasis on each side) as to whether it was trying to be realistic or genre-emulative. Which is fine. However, from the jump the differing rules based on gender appeared to more say, 'female characters are supposed to represent Conan's plucky female sidekick of the given short story or the femme fatale,' not 'it's only realistic that the female character wouldn't be as strong.' That smells wholly of a retro-justification.

I can't believe it. They actually did it! The impossible!
They removed outdated and problematic kludge from Forgotten Realms!

They are occasionally capable of listening. I can't decide if this surprises me or not. Mind you, I suspect forums like this aren't exactly representative, and most gamers just plain didn't care one way or the other. So it is somewhat surprising to me that they finally decided that this was important. However, I also guess this wasn't a huge hurdle anyways (and they were updating SCAG for the Tasha's release anyways). I guess mildly surprised is where I land.

1e and AD&D had ridiculous kitchen sink dungeons whose purpose and function fell apart the moment one applied critical thinking to them.

I think you mean 0e and AD&D or 1e and oD&D, but either way, I agree. They weren't intended to be realistic at that point because it hadn't been communicated to the company (although, let's be clear, TSR never once was good at communication with their fanbase) that that was something people cared about. One of the early DMs at the tables at which Gary/Dave played (It was someone like Mike Mornard or Rob Kuntz) was asked what the monsters in the dungeon ate, and thus put in a food court.