Quote from: Wrath of God on March 30, 2024, 11:40:00 AM
Should they? I mean Strenght attribute is not the same thing as Strength as real thing I would say.
For instance in terms of D&D it usually influences precision of melee attacks.

Which in some cases - let's say axes have a lot of sense, but let's say with spear... bit less. (That's why spear is traditionally weapon for women - if they need to have one).
So while not as much as other attributes, if we look at what Strength influences in actual game, even it, simplest of attributes can be bitof hodgepodge.

Honestly, while I know why it was set up for Strength to improve melee attacks; I think overall making the to-hit modifier for weapon attacks exclusive to class and level would both reduce complexity and improve both balance and realism.

Give weapons Strength minimums and let Strength affect damage dealt and that should be sufficient to make it desirable for warriors to have a good strength, but not much so that a female warrior concept employing a polearm would be ridiculously underpowered.

Quote from: Wtrmute on March 20, 2023, 02:47:30 PM
Yes, when talking about IQ, women are on average ever-so-slightly more intelligent (although I don't think the difference could be captured on a 3d6 roll) than men, but also have a smaller standard deviation (that one definitely can't be captured with a 3d6 roll).

Sure it can. If we ignore the 'reeeeee' and take male humans as the 'default adventurer':

Male Strength: 3d6 - min 3, median 10.5, max 18
Female Strength: - 2d4+1d6 - min 3, median 8.5, max 14

Male Dexterity: 3d6 - min 3, median 10.5, max 18
Female Dexterity: 2d6+1d4+2 - min 5, median 11.5, max 18

Male Constitution: 3d6 - min 3, median 10.5, max 18
Female Constitution: 2d6+1d4+2 - min 5, median 11.5, max 18

Male Intelligence: 3d6 - min 3, median 10.5, max 18
Female Intelligence: 3d4+4 - min 7, median 11.5, max 16

Male Charisma: 3d6 - min 3, median 10.5, max 18
Female Charisma: 1d6+2d4+3 - min 6, median 11.5, max 17

Male Wisdom: 3d6 - min 3, median 10.5, max 18
Female Wisdom: 1d6+2d4+3 - min 6, median 11.5, max 17


As ppl said, "testosterone is a hell of a drug".

I wouldn't do this myself unless I wanted to make some kind of political point about human biodiversity, but I've got better hills to die on.

I've given the players the option of +1 to any one stat and -1 to any one stat to represent WHATEVER they want to represent for their character. AKA, they can represent age issues, injuries, training, biological differences, etc.

Thus the player who wants to give -1 STR and +1 CHA to their Elf Chick PC can do so without anyone else feeling that all women of the world have been offended by the game.

I'm not sure I'd put lower limits to female Cha and Wis, while giving them full scope of Dex and Con.

Oh what a slippery terrain...
Actually, the current D&D system is a bit weird (has always been ?)
A girl with 18 Strength and 18 Charisma ?
and what about younger selves ?

Chainmale and Chainfemale, duh

... oh, mechanics.

heh, someone had to.

I use no mods to stats based on gender.
The players handle it in role-play.
Commonsense rules.

Quote from: Dinopaw on March 17, 2023, 11:36:08 AMI think these two trends are related, and it creates a less authentic and less compelling vision for game worlds. This is also a big limitation in what types of "fantasy" is modeled by the game rules. Modern D&D where all sexes & races are basically interchangeable doesn't represent either the real world nor fantasy literature & film. Non-human characters can and should be taken to be distinctive, and works where alien races are not given unique traits are rightfully derided as non-authentic (Star Trek's human-with-rubber-prothesis). A book series like Wheel of Time is unthinkable unless there are real differences between men & women. Similarly, it makes no sense to have characters like Eowyn if men & women are simply interchangeable. Plotlines of fantasy films like Labyrinth or Legend emphasize different roles men & women have to play, rather than trying to map female roles directly onto men or vice-versa.

I love the Wheel of Time. When the Amazon series came out I was greatly disappointed. I still watched it, twice. But it also made me go back and re-read the first several books. Robert Jordan has a great sense of humor and places men and women in really funny situations against each other.

If you take the One Power as example, it is an imaginary construct so anything can be valid. Still, there are some classic thropes, like men excelling in Fire & Earth, women in Air & Water. Take Heroes of Might and Magic - those four elements are present, and neither is "stronger". So having a tiny +1 or +2 bonus to one or another school of magic, divine power etc. is a pretty easy thing to do.

You can then move to the mechanical side of magic. In WoT, men would get bonus to power, +1 or +2 on a scale of 10 perhaps, *however* they can't link, and linking (thaumaturgical circles) are the only way to greatly increase one's power. In game terms, a circle of 13 Aes Sedai can shield any one man, so if the smallest bonus is +1 a circle of 13 will have at least power 13. Which puts the maximum power of a single individual at 12.

Let's put this in numbers.
For the One Power, women roll 1d10. While this gives a stable linear progression, only women with certain power can become Aes Sedai so power of 1 can't make it to the Tower, and women with power of 2 rarely make it past Novice, meaning the weakest Aes Sedai will be 3 or more.

Men roll 3d6 and drop the highest number. That gives them a score of 2 - 12, with an average of 5.54, only slightly beating the average of 5.5 for women. However, they are far fewer in number plus only 1 in 216 will have a power of 12. Different sites suggest there were near 1000 Ashamen, so maybe 3-4 can rival the Dragon, if they ever reach their full potential.

For linking mechanics, a second person only adds half their power to the circle, then a third, then a quarter, until they reach a flat +1 regardless of strength. Obviously you would prefer the strongest one to lead the circle.

If you want to skew the mechanics even more, add one more die to each pool and remove the highest again.
Lowest 2 of 4d6 averages 4.66 and lower die of 2d10 averages 3.85 while keeping the min/max ranges the same and making the Dragon truly unique (1 in 1296).

I ran the numbers again, and I like the results.

Regarding Wheel of Time and the One Power, the formula is the following.

Women roll 2d10, drop the higher. This gives an average of 3.85. However, a result of 1 or 2 is not suitable for Aes Sedai, so if you are rolling a PC, you may discard such results and roll again.  This means PC Aes Sedai has an average of 5.1875 in the One Power.

Men roll 4d6, drop the highest two. This gives an average of 4.66. However, a result of 2 is not suitable for Ashaman, you may discard it. This means Pc Ashaman has an average of 5.0642 in the One Power.

You can then distribute talents. Men have 50% chance to have +1 in Fire and 50% chance to have +1 in Earth. Roll once for each talent.
Women have 50% chance to have +1 in Air and 50% chance to have +1 in Water. Roll once for each talent.

This gives you a very nice curve, average power of 5 for all playable characters, guarantees they are stronger than the average opposite sex in the typical talents and is conformant to the narrative of the book. NPC don't have minumum, so if you meet Wilders they can have lower scores.

Quote from: Skalme on December 20, 2024, 07:19:06 AMStill, there are some classic thropes, like men excelling in Fire & Earth, women in Air & Water. Take Heroes of Might and Magic - those four elements are present, and neither is "stronger". So having a tiny +1 or +2 bonus to one or another school of magic, divine power etc. is a pretty easy thing to do.

You can then move to the mechanical side of magic. In WoT, men would get bonus to power, +1 or +2 on a scale of 10 perhaps, *however* they can't link, and linking (thaumaturgical circles) are the only way to greatly increase one's power. In game terms, a circle of 13 Aes Sedai can shield any one man, so if the smallest bonus is +1 a circle of 13 will have at least power 13. Which puts the maximum power of a single individual at 12.

Let's put this in numbers.
For the One Power, women roll 1d10. While this gives a stable linear progression, only women with certain power can become Aes Sedai so power of 1 can't make it to the Tower, and women with power of 2 rarely make it past Novice, meaning the weakest Aes Sedai will be 3 or more.

Men roll 3d6 and drop the highest number. That gives them a score of 2 - 12, with an average of 5.54, only slightly beating the average of 5.5 for women. However, they are far fewer in number plus only 1 in 216 will have a power of 12. Different sites suggest there were near 1000 Ashamen, so maybe 3-4 can rival the Dragon, if they ever reach their full potential.

For linking mechanics, a second person only adds half their power to the circle, then a third, then a quarter, until they reach a flat +1 regardless of strength. Obviously you would prefer the strongest one to lead the circle.

If you want to skew the mechanics even more, add one more die to each pool and remove the highest again.
Lowest 2 of 4d6 averages 4.66 and lower die of 2d10 averages 3.85 while keeping the min/max ranges the same and making the Dragon truly unique (1 in 1296).

Very nice. There are some excellent abstractions here that could be applied to separating niches in game design in general, notably:

* Using qualitative differences.
* Using cooperative differences.
* Using mathematical differences. Particularly interesting is the way these examples leverage curve differences while maintaining close to the same overall range.

I wouldn't. Males on average are stronger than females, for example. But PCs (and NPCs) aren't representative of the average. They are unique. So you can have an insanely strong female. Maybe even at the max strength possible. There are so many richer problems to tackle.