Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
What's wrong with an elf having 20 strength? Even in Tolkien, just because they weren't walking around looking like Charles Atlas on creatine powder, they were still smithing plate and going toe-to-toe with things like trolls. Finrod literally wrestled a werewolf with his bare hands and won. The notion that X race should always cap your capabilities below Y race is silly, and doubly so when we're talking about PC adventurers/heroes from those races.
You'll notice when people get all up on "certain lineages should just have higher stats than others!" it's always Strength they fall back on. I think this is due to a massive fundamental misunderstanding of the Strength stat, how it's used, and what it means.

People like to whine that a Gnome and a Goliath can both get a 20 in their Strength stat as though that makes them identical, when it absolutely does not. Goliaths, Firbolgs, Orcs, etc. all have Powerful Build. Almost anything you can think of that is a display of raw strength, lifting an iron gate, pushing a boulder aside, carrying the unconscious bodies of all of your allies back to town, are affected by this ability, and they are much better at it than lineages without. On the other hand, Small creatures have reduced capacity in these exact same areas as well as an inability to use the biggest, most damaging weapons.

The STR stat is a measure of application, how good you are at applying your physical strength to achieve an end. Any martial artist will tell you breaking boards/rocks/whatever with a chop is far more about technique than raw muscle power, this is why a lot more of them are built like Jackie Chan than Arnold Schwarzenegger. And the same goes for swinging swords effectively (I've seen a lot of good arguments that if we wanted realism, all weapon attacks should be made with Dexterity).