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arcanum had this as a mechanic. It could be off set by a tomboy trait. Gender came up a lot in that game.

I mean personally this is just like how race/skin color and gender matters to a degree but mostly to stuff that's not a huge deal or really negative or positive. Even things which a sex generally seems more common in or better at doesn't mean the other sex couldn't do it better due to working hard.

If you go into different species however differences become more pronounced. Sure dogs and rats may have better hearing (possibly due to their ears) or have a wider range of hearing or can hear higher pitched noises but even a fairly unknowledgeable human could in general learn more. Humans have a greater capacity whereas on a very basic level of intelligence animals seem to be about as good as people and possibly more so when it comes to survival considering how we are now reliant on society for our needs. That said we have a higher capacity mentally for some of these things.

To say all people have the same abilities or every sex or species is equal would be ridiculous. You can't compare a man's strength with that of a bear, lion or gorilla and esp. not a whale. In the same sense we have use of our hands and thumbs where most species we know of don't. Life is an interesting thing even though i hate biology ;P.

I'm not saying one species is better or worse than any other but when you have a great society populated in the billions that spans the whole world and even has gotten into space when others have been met have not it does give a sense of superiority. I do not doubt this sense of superiority helps cause the worse treatment of other types of peoples as well as the supposedly inferior animals of the world.

Skin color doesn't matter. People are under the illusion that skin color matters because various racial groups (race is such an outdated term) have tendencies towards certain skeletal structures that are advantageous for various athletics. If you look at the top one hundred sprinters in the world, they all have a similar skeletal structure, it just so happens that those of West African descent appear predisposed to that build. Asians typically have a poor build for sprinting, but have an excellent build for Olympic Weightlifting which is big part of the reason they have been dominating the lighter weight classes in recent years.


There is really no reason to bring these differences up in video games though as it is a sore spot for many and often a limiting factor. Race and gender should not be rewarded or punished in video games, let the play decide, don't force xir into a predetermined path.

I think it's kind of silly, for the reasons pointed out - we're dealing with extraordinary people either way. And frankly, slightly better flexibility in general should not buff dexterity - of which flexibility is only part - to any mechanically relevant degree.
And then you bring up archery - which is horribly misused in games - Archery is very demanding in the physical strength department. You are basically lifting a weight in a linear fashion, from the shoulder, over and over again. The amount of weight you can lift- the draw strength of the bow you are using - effectively limits the range and speed of the projectile you are able to shoot.

Dexterity can arguably apply to gunslinging, but not to archery, I agree.

Hell, people using a longbow are really goddamned strong. It's one of the few things that DnD gets right, with their composite bows-- strength adds to damage witht hem, and IIRC you need to be strong enough to actually use them.

 Bromsy wrote:
I think it's kind of silly, for the reasons pointed out - we're dealing with extraordinary people either way. And frankly, slightly better flexibility in general should not buff dexterity - of which flexibility is only part - to any mechanically relevant degree.
And then you bring up archery - which is horribly misused in games - Archery is very demanding in the physical strength department. You are basically lifting a weight in a linear fashion, from the shoulder, over and over again. The amount of weight you can lift- the draw strength of the bow you are using - effectively limits the range and speed of the projectile you are able to shoot.

This doesn't sound accurate to me. IIRC, English Longbowmen were taught to put their body into the draw, just using the shoulder seems horribly off.

Edit: There is also a great deal of debate over the draw weight of a longbow.

Well having tried archery myself, I do know that it at the very least takes a lot of endurance to do for any extended period of time. Much more than most people have, even athletes.

The only thing I've done recently was a crossbow and I don't recall the draw weight.

Medieval English Longbows were anywhere from 40 to 140lbs more draw weight than modern ones. IIRC, it was enough to warp a longbowman's skeletal structure.


I often think that historic people's were much stronger than we give them credit for. If it truly took several years to train a proper longbowman, I have no doubt they were certainly strong. I know endurance played a big part in it and that they would pace themselves as it was easy to wear out loosing multiple arrows per minute.

Certainly they were. Most peasants-- both men and women-- worked all day in the field most days, and had a great deal of physical endurance despite the occasional malnutrition. And the idea of a person in full platemail being a slow, walking tank is inaccurate-- the knights in that armor were actually quite mobile, being strong enough for it and having enough articulation in the armor for it.

???

That has nothing to do with strength. The armor and weaponry were much lighter than is often claimed. The idea that claymores and bastard swords were forty pounds is ludicrous. ASFAIK no weapon was over ten pounds aside. I think armor was under sixty pounds, if even that, for full plate. The swords were beautifully balanced as well.

I was talking about the perception versus reality.

Oh.

And to prevent this being a waste of a post I will make an on topic comment.



While gender dimorphism is very significant in certain species, it is not extremely (IMO) in humans and as such can be troublesome if made so in fantasy humanoid species. I actually bothered to look at the stat differences between genders in the various TES races for Morrowind and Skyrim. Bethesda does a poor job handling this imo and gives females too many dumb points in things like personality in order to make up for reduced stats in key melee stats. This can however be a boon in that ASFAIK mages outscale warriors in most RPGs. Certainly seems to be the case for Blizzard, Bioware, and Bethesda in my experience. I don't really play enough games by other developers to say.

At least they're better than F.A.T.A.L.

And I regretted googling that as soon as the page loaded.

Good night internet you have poisoned my brain enough for today.

 Amaya wrote:
This can however be a boon in that ASFAIK mages outscale warriors in most RPGs. Certainly seems to be the case for ... Bethesda in my experience.

Not so much for Bethesda. In TES mages could do a handful of tricks, all of which involved kiting and all of which required largely static spells. In Morrowind a powerful mage could be absolutely awesome, particularly if you exploited alchemy, enchanting, and spells that buffed magicka then intelligence (which let you restore your magicka, to anyone who doesn't know the trick; basically you added a static number (N) to your magicka for one second, then immediately buff your intelligence which applies a modifier (M) to your magicka, then you subtract N followed by division by M: the result is your magcka pool being increased by the difference between N and N*M). Oblivion greatly nerfed full mages, making them much weaker than an equivalent melee or stealth oriented character. Skyrim buffed mages back up a bit, mostly as a matter of fixing the godawful balance issues Oblivion had, but straight up combat was still the most powerful build (in my experience), aside from the ridiculous 30x sneak attack mod you could get with a knife. Heavy armor and a warhammer, combined with a rabid frontal assault was the absolute easiest way of dealing with anything; the armor made you all but invincible once you got to a good armorer level, and the warhammer (with the "ignore 75% of the enemy's armor rating" perks) could one shot almost everything, sometimes multiple things at once. You could fight giants in melee and come out on top, provided you remembered to block their attacks.


So far as the thread goes: while there are differences in average characteristics between genders, averages are far too rough a number to add into base stats for a character in an RPG, and none are so pronounced as what +2 represents in a d20 system.

RPGs with a point-based stat system already tend to allow you to assign these points yourself - symbolizing the extent of training and experiences your character has accumulated before you begin playing him/her - so why add a modifier on top of this?
If people are really interested in realism, it would make far more sense to introduce gender-based stat caps, for it is the upper range where you will notice the differences.

Of course, by the same token you could do the same thing based on ethnicity. Some might argue that the Olympics should have a special discipline just for runners from Africa.

 Melissia wrote:
I was talking about the perception versus reality.

Mine is most accurate

 Grundz wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
I was talking about the perception versus reality.

Mine is most accurate

I reject your reality and substitute it with my Skyrim. It has higher resolution.

 Melissia wrote:
At least they're better than F.A.T.A.L.

I won't lie. Part of the reason i made this topic was because of that but i wanted to make it fair for both sexes whereas they have -4 strength for women and constant r*pe. Yeah i'm surprised other nerds told me about it. I'm glad that game died. Faith in people is somewhat above absolute zero now.

Roll for anal circumference!

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
At least they're better than F.A.T.A.L.

I won't lie. Part of the reason i made this topic was because of that but i wanted to make it fair for both sexes whereas they have -4 strength for women and constant r*pe. Yeah i'm surprised other nerds told me about it. I'm glad that game died. Faith in people is somewhat above absolute zero now.

For FATAL to die it would have to have been alive to start with. It's been a derided joke since before day one.

And its modifier was something like -20, -4 STR is faulty reference to something that tried to reference D&D, but confused it with a different system wherein females got -5% on some specific check. Some old edition of D&D had -1 to -3 modifiers, depending on race (human females got -2, halflings -3, dwarves -1). According to 1d4chan's page on -4 STR, at least.

Yeah, older editions of DnD were kind of stupid at times. I know a lot of people liked them, but they were incredibly restrictive in terms of character creation and development and I just can't stand them. I similar complaints about the constraints of DnD 4th edition, mind you, but then again it's basically an MMO made in to pen and paper form.

Gygax wanted humans to be the dominant race in D&D and restricted the abilities of other races significantly. ASFAIK humans are still the best race for min/maxing purposes.

The extra bonus feat (which I know was in 3.5, I forgot about 4th-- been a while) is huge.

 Melissia wrote:
Dexterity can arguably apply to gunslinging, but not to archery, I agree.

Hell, people using a longbow are really goddamned strong. It's one of the few things that DnD gets right, with their composite bows-- strength adds to damage witht hem, and IIRC you need to be strong enough to actually use them.

You have no idea how much this annoys me in fiction. Introduce a frail non-combat type of character (often, but not necessarily, a woman) who can't even wield a sword...then inevitably the go-to solution is always to hand them a bow, give them a couple lessons, and suddenly they're Legolas. ...apparently these people never read Homer's Odyssey...

To be fair i love how our heroes start out as noobs and manage to get good within a space of no time at all whereas people have trained for years and are mere fodder in comparison to you. Gotta love rpg's.

 Melissia wrote:
Yeah, older editions of DnD were kind of stupid at times. I know a lot of people liked them, but they were incredibly restrictive in terms of character creation and development and I just can't stand them. I similar complaints about the constraints of DnD 4th edition, mind you, but then again it's basically an MMO made in to pen and paper form.

DnD 4e has so much more depth than a MMO.

Yes, it's a PnP roleplaying game, it does have more depth. But it also has its problems.

Of course, so do older editions.

 Melissia wrote:
Yes, it's a PnP roleplaying game, it does have more depth. But it also has its problems.

Of course, so do older editions.

It's fine for me but then again I'm of the opinion that 3.5 skills are too bloated and it's combat options aren't as plentiful as 4e.

Meanwhile, I feel that non-combat options are neglected by 4e. Especially non-combat spells. Every wizard in 4e is just another battlemage, and nothing more.