Why the hell is this hobby so fucking retarded?

[Username17]

I think stats like Presence or Wits can be made to work. Most people can easily roleplay being a little slow and they can just get more leeway in how long they can think over decisions, so quickness of thought should be doable. Conversely intelligence is a horrible stat because no one can roleplay being smarter than they are. DnD of course has pretty much the worst setup ever, with not one but two "how smart am I?"-stats and an exceedingly badly defined charisma stat.

Wut? Are you high? If people can roleplay being a little slow, it should follow that they can also roleplay being a little stupid, and vice versa: being smarter than you are and being more quick-witted than you should be equally difficult to properly roleplay.

Well, no. The player always has more time to think about immediate problems than the character does, and always has less time to think about big problems than the character does. This means that roleplaying being "quick witted" is easy even for the dull, because the turn structure ensures that you have five minutes to think of something your character has 12 seconds or less to come up with. This also means that roleplaying intelligence of the long-term problem-solving ability is very hard even for the brilliant. Because the turn structure ensures that you have five minutes to ruminate on a problem that your character can be thinking about for three days or more.

Anyway, in D&D self-enforced suckage equals douchebaggery, because if you're not pulling your weight, the whole party suffers. Smarter than IRL can happen if you don't face time constraints (say, a forum game or a 1-on-1 between-session chat with the MC when you can take your sweet time ransacking the Den's treasure trove of Frank Trollman quotes).

It is true that in the play-by-mail format of forum posts, people have more time to think, and they can google information up. People have such a capacity to sound smarter in that format that there's an XKCD about it But it is also true that people are assholes, and this is exacerbated by the internet in all cases. This is called Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, and it holds up pretty well.

But the real important thing about "roleplaying stupid" is that I've seen people acting out Gully Dwarves. I have seen the authors of Dragonlance acting out Gully Dwarves. It is really painful to watch. People roleplaying stupid almost always involves them roleplaying out annoying, and it's annoying. I want it to stop. On the flip side, roleplaying "impulsive" or "confused" or "crazy" can potentially be OK ("crazy" is pretty dangerous though - see Fish Malks).

I guess the bottom line is that there are things we associate with smartness that we can represent in the game through roleplaying or mechanics, and things we can't. And that means that big umbrella stats like "Intelligence" are bad. But you could chop it up into smaller bits and have that be OK. A stat that described how good you were at MacGuyvering stuff would be fine, since that kind of thing is generally a die roll anyway. A stat that described how good you were at making good decisions would not be acceptable, for reasons too obvious to mention.

-Username17

[Prak]

I guess the bottom line is that there are things we associate with smartness that we can represent in the game through roleplaying or mechanics, and things we can't. And that means that big umbrella stats like "Intelligence" are bad. But you could chop it up into smaller bits and have that be OK. A stat that described how good you were at MacGuyvering stuff would be fine, since that kind of thing is generally a die roll anyway. A stat that described how good you were at making good decisions would not be acceptable, for reasons too obvious to mention.

-Username17

This makes me wonder, what are your thoughts on "Ask the GM?" things like the Common Sense merit of WoD, or Phylacteries of Faithfulness (ie, Phylacteries of "will the gm take my powers away for this")

[Gx1080]

If it bothers you guys too much, just change "Intelliegence" for "Magic Ability". And then Orcs don't have much Magic Ability, so they are bad Wizards. But then you could change "Charisma" for "Willpower" (and fuse it with will) and give Orcs a bonus on Willpower, so they make good Sorcerers, Warlocks and even good Paladins.

See? It works.

[K]

That being said, I agree with JE on the point that it's pretty racist to give non-physical stat mods. Some people being stronger or faster is fine, but once you start assigning mental stuff around it gets pretty dicey.

Regardless of racism, it also makes roleplaying more difficult -- how do you even figure out what a 30 INT wizard would do in a situation? How about a 30 WIS cleric? How about a 32 INT 33 WIS 32 CHA gold dragon?

Honestly, I RP what the stat actually does and not what people think they should do based on the meaning of the word in common parlance.

This means that Intelligence is just the ability to remember facts, Wisdom is the ability to pay attention to things you are trying to pay attention to, and Charisma is the ability to make people pay attention to you (probably through small unconscious actions you don't realize you are doing).

That being said, I'd RP your gold dragon as an attention-seeking guy who brings up old facts that are relevant to the situation (because he's high Wis, so he'd pay attention enough to stay on task and not go off on tangents). Maybe he unconsciously reminds people of his power by blowing little flames out of his mouth when he laughs or absentmindedly tearing stones with his claws or drawing glowing magical glyphs in the air with a cantrip.

The idea that he's some kind of super-genius based on his stats is what people want to play him as, and I consider that bad RP in the other direction. I've known lots of people who are great at remembering facts and who are terrible at everything else outside their wheelhouse, and that's the model I use for high mental stat characters. By the same token, I've known lots of people who were terrible at remembering things or doing schoolwork who had massive amounts of skill in other areas and that's the kind of the thing you figure out when get out into the world.

DnD is of two minds about what stats mean. The game tells you that an Int, Wis, and Cha of 3 is a playable character who can fully contribute to the party, but it still assigns stats based on expectations of gross mental ability and beauty.

Heck, ghouls run around with a Cha of 15. That might be because are super scary, but who knows? (I'd play them as doing ghoulish performance crap that draws attention like licking their lips and making hungry growling sounds all the time.)

The game also tells you that mastermind NPCs should have high Int.

I blame a lot of DnD's stat failings on the whole "jock vs. nerd" BS of the 80s and I think it should be dumped in the 21st century.

[Gx1080]

From the 80's? We are talking about the hobby where people are perfectly fine with Casters being superior to not-Casters and punish anybody who dares to play a Paladin.

[Prak]

Yes, hence the stigma of low-int, high str characters, such as orcs. Hence why low-int characters are bad wizards (nerds with magic), and high str characters are expected to be obedient meat shields who are initially useful, but eventually inferior.

[Murtak]

If it bothers you guys too much, just change "Intelliegence" for "Magic Ability". And then Orcs don't have much Magic Ability, so they are bad Wizards. But then you could change "Charisma" for "Willpower" (and fuse it with will) and give Orcs a bonus on Willpower, so they make good Sorcerers, Warlocks and even good Paladins.

See? It works.

Goddamn it, that is the entire point of this discussion. Of course it works. The point is not that you can not have stats, the point is that some stats are impossible to roleplay.

[Artless]

If it bothers you guys too much, just change "Intelliegence" for "Magic Ability". And then Orcs don't have much Magic Ability, so they are bad Wizards. But then you could change "Charisma" for "Willpower" (and fuse it with will) and give Orcs a bonus on Willpower, so they make good Sorcerers, Warlocks and even good Paladins.

See? It works.

Goddamn it, that is the entire point of this discussion. Of course it works. The point is not that you can not have stats, the point is that some stats are impossible to roleplay.

Except it doesn't just work. Renaming or rearranging the problem doesn't fix the problem. Players who want to play Orc Wizards wouldn't get pissed off because their stats supposedly say they're stupid, they get pissed off because the Orc Wizard sucks at being a Wizard. And this isn't something you can solve later by just pointing to their low "Magic Ability" and saying "Well I guess you shouldn't have picked Wizard. Now roll a Barbarian like you're supposed to and let's move on." If the character they had in mind was a powerful Wizard with big teeth, sketchy etiquette, greenish-grey skin and a lot of body hair, why are we suddenly stopping them from doing that? What makes that idea so abominable that all examples of that combo need to be utter garbage when played?

Instead, how's about we finally just decouple statistics from the entire ordeal and just have the races and classes do what they are supposed to do right out of the box? Give the races innate powers or special qualities and have the classes just do what they're made to do. There's honestly no reason to have basic statistics at all anymore, or at least to tie them so fundamentally to a class' core mechanic. At the end of the process you either have a number you're expected to have or you don't, so your chosen profession should just come with those numbers already.

In an acceptable paradigm, Orc Wizards and the like should be completely acceptable life choices because what the Orc gives you should have nothing at all to do with how good you are at Wizarding. Whatever the combination of flavors you put into the chargen machine to spit out the final velvety blend of character options, they should all come out capable of contributing meaningfully to both the game and the narrative.

[Murtak]

Except it doesn't just work. Renaming or rearranging the problem doesn't fix the problem. Players who want to play Orc Wizards wouldn't get pissed off because their stats supposedly say they're stupid, they get pissed off because the Orc Wizard sucks at being a Wizard.

Right thread, wrong discussion. I was talking about what stats you can roleplay, not about race balance.

[Gx1080]

About Race Balance, I have been arguing that since people will number-crunch the "best" race for a class anyways, is better to simply limit class choices. (To a 5/8 ratio).

So you don't get to be an Orc Wizard period.

[Artless]

Except it doesn't just work. Renaming or rearranging the problem doesn't fix the problem. Players who want to play Orc Wizards wouldn't get pissed off because their stats supposedly say they're stupid, they get pissed off because the Orc Wizard sucks at being a Wizard.

Right thread, wrong discussion. I was talking about what stats you can roleplay, not about race balance.

I'm aware. I was saying that renaming stats and rearranging functions don't resolve either qualm (both of which are a result of Ability Scores being poor mechanics,) that these scores don't give you any useful information beyond dictating which side of the "can or can't" line you fall on in addition to moving back to Orc Wizard business.

I think it's easier both narratively and mechanically if the effectiveness of the things you pick like race, class, spells, powers, mojos, schticks, tricks, feats and skills are not so intrinsically linked to what you've got for your ability scores. Those other choices are plenty capable of informing how the narrative gets affected. As the burdens of ability scores are removed completely or made much more limited in scope and function, describing how your dude looks, thinks and acts in both a game sense and a narrative sense almost immediately becomes a matter of personal preference and style and isn't beholden to an ill-defined mechanic. This obviously doesn't fully resolve the narrative problem of representing the spectrum of score values if you decide to keep them, but at the very least they won't have as severe a bearing on what you can do in the game.

[Gx1080]

@Artless

Ok, I would like to see what kind of system you propose. Because free-form narrative, which is what you get when you remove numbers from everything, is not a system.

[Swordslinger]

I guess the bottom line is that there are things we associate with smartness that we can represent in the game through roleplaying or mechanics, and things we can't. And that means that big umbrella stats like "Intelligence" are bad. But you could chop it up into smaller bits and have that be OK. A stat that described how good you were at MacGuyvering stuff would be fine, since that kind of thing is generally a die roll anyway. A stat that described how good you were at making good decisions would not be acceptable, for reasons too obvious to mention.

I second this. Intelligence as a stat is stupid.

[Caedrus]

The D&D method of racial stat adjustments is detrimental to both mechanics and story. The divide is because some people don't understand the implications of game mechanics, and are suspicious of people who do.

So today I got into an argument with a friend. It was about whether or not racial penalties were really needed. His argument was that the -2 orc intelligence penalty (on a wizard) was important for the sake of the story so that people could triumph over adversity, whereas I argued that it was a stupid penalty designed to screw over players who chose to play something different. This came down to my supposed hatred of stories (admittedly, I despise "for the sake of the story" as an excuse) vs his GM needs powas view. So it got me thinking: Why the hell is there a huge divide between people who follow the rules and people who are into storytelling? Where the hell is the GM is God crap still coming from? Why is this the only hobby where knowledge of the rules is actually demonized? Does it really hurt anyone if some guy pretends to be a space alien while everyone else pretends to be an elf? And why do the "it's for the story" people usually have the worst stories?

Pointless nerd rant which I believe is linked to the decline of the hobby.

That and I hate the DM/player paradigm, for reasons which will be in the next post.

I'm into storytelling, and I think the -2 penalty for orcs is retarded. It doesn't aid the story in any way, because levels (and other player metagame resource investments) DO NOT reflect "how unusual the player is" or "how hard they had to work to get where they are." A sorcerer doesn't need to spend an extra decade or two in school like a Wizard, but you don't need to spend more XP to become a wizard. That would be stupid. And the even stupider thing is that, in my experience, the same people who think you need -2 penalties for orc intelligence would generally agree. As far as I can tell, this is because they didn't actually independently calculate how a game's story could be aided and come to the conclusion that you should have racial penalties, but instead a result of the human psychological tendency to provide overjustification for the status quo.

A -2 penalty for orcs doesn't actually reflect anything in the story, it reflects how many metagame resources (which only matter for PCs, mind) are invested to make a certain character, at the cost of other talents. You don't "triumph over adversity." You just have less points in everything that IS NOT intelligence if you choose to be intelligent. So a half-orc grapple wizard would be more expensive than if you wanted to do a human that used strength and intelligence. The half-orc player ends up with less strength and the same intelligence as the human for the same resource investment. That doesn't help the story, or even reflect the fact that half-orcs are naturally stronger and humans more intelligent (quite the opposite), it just punishes players for not playing a stereotype (which is generally the opposite of what main characters of a heroic fantasy story should be).

If it bothers you guys too much, just change "Intelliegence" for "Magic Ability". And then Orcs don't have much Magic Ability, so they are bad Wizards. But then you could change "Charisma" for "Willpower" (and fuse it with will) and give Orcs a bonus on Willpower, so they make good Sorcerers, Warlocks and even good Paladins.

See? It works.

No it does not.

If orcs have a -2 racial penalty to "Magic Ability" by the D&D method, an orc can have the *exact same magic stat* as a human. The difference isn't that her magic stat is lower, it's that *all of her other stats* are lower for it. So the orc gets less strength, constitution, dexterity, et cetera than the equivalent human mage.

[Artless]

@Artless

Ok, I would like to see what kind of system you propose. Because free-form narrative, which is what you get when you remove numbers from everything, is not a system.

My argument's not about removing all numbers entirely, it's about giving people the numbers they're supposed to have. When you pick a class, you should be able to do what that class says it's supposed to do. You've made an important decision and used up a chargen resource to "buy" your class, your race, your feats and skill points. None of those should end up ruining your character because they interact poorly or even negatively with the others.

My point about removing Ability Scores is predicated upon the fact that at the end of the character generation process they don't give you any useful information on how you're supposed to represent yourself or play your dude, they unnecessarily limit what you can do with the things you've bought with your resources, and they only get more and more divergent and pointless from then on.

And anyway, ever played Munchausen?

[Murtak]

My argument's not about removing all numbers entirely, it's about giving people the numbers they're supposed to have. When you pick a class, you should be able to do what that class says it's supposed to do. You've made an important decision and used up a chargen resource to "buy" your class, your race, your feats and skill points. None of those should end up ruining your character because they interact poorly or even negatively with the others.

My point about removing Ability Scores is predicated upon the fact that at the end of the character generation process they don't give you any useful information on how you're supposed to represent yourself or play your dude, they unnecessarily limit what you can do with the things you've bought with your resources, and they only get more and more divergent and pointless from then on.

Ability scores are fine, unless you have a skill system. When you don't have a sneak skill, a dexterity attribute is useful. If you do have skills covered, attributes become questionable though.

[Starmaker]

About ten years ago, someone wrote to Dragon to bash 3rd edition:
"Bawwww why equal stats for male and female characters? That's unrealistic! That means you force me to have every other orc chief in my campaign to be female! Who gave you the right to say what goes in my campaign bawwww!"

Whoever was in charge of the mailbox at Dragon replied with something to the tune of, "Orcs in your campaign may be sexist fucks, but we aren't."

[Caedrus]

About ten years ago, someone wrote to Dragon to bash 3rd edition:
"Bawwww why equal stats for male and female characters? That's unrealistic! That means you force me to have every other orc chief in my campaign to be female! Who gave you the right to say what goes in my campaign bawwww!"

Whoever was in charge of the mailbox at Dragon replied with something to the tune of, "Orcs in your campaign may be sexist fucks, but we aren't."

Yeah. It's worth noting that the argument in favor male/female adjustments uses pretty much the exact same "logic" as the argument for orcs having nonsense adjustments.

[Gx1080]

*eyerolls*

Listen, racial penalties are unimportant. They could be easily converted on special race powers or something. Thing is (and I'm going to repeat myself):

a)Even with race powers, at the minimal attempt to make said race powers different, someone will number crunch the best race per class.
b)If you get rid of all race differences, there will be a huge shitstorm of people complaining that the game is now "souless number-crunching that doesn't take in account roleplaying". Yes, really.

My opinion, there's better ways to make a character that goes against the grain than simply writing "Orc Wizard" or "Elf Barbarian" on your character sheet. Following a different god, going against family tradition, etc.

[Caedrus]

a)Even with race powers, at the minimal attempt to make said race powers different, someone will number crunch the best race per class.

Not if you make different races good in the same class in meaningfully different ways.

Also, "it won't ever be perfect so we shouldn't try to improve things" is a really, really bad argument for any context.

b)If you get rid of all race differences, there will be a huge shitstorm of people complaining that the game is now "souless number-crunching that doesn't take in account roleplaying". Yes, really.

There are other ways to provide racial differences than a single mechanically and flavorfully borked mechanic, you know.

Or maybe you don't. You should be worried about that.
\\

[tenuki]

Not if you make different races good in the same class in meaningfully different ways.

Love to see that, but I don't see how DnD could ever be the game that does it.

- Characters in DnD chop up or blow up stuff using a boilerplate set of tools defined by their class and level.
- The job description for each class is so narrow that there simply aren't meaningfully different ways of covering the required bases. Your race either synergizes with class (good) or it doesn't (bad).
- Generalist characters hurt group synergy.

Play other games is my advice. They all have their drawbacks, but I don't know any RPG that pigeonholes characters nearly as badly as does the stuff growing on Gygax' rotten corpse; may he rest in peace.

[Username17]

Not if you make different races good in the same class in meaningfully different ways.

Love to see that, but I don't see how DnD could ever be the game that does it.

- Characters in DnD chop up or blow up stuff using a boilerplate set of tools defined by their class and level.
- The job description for each class is so narrow that there simply aren't meaningfully different ways of covering the required bases. Your race either synergizes with class (good) or it doesn't (bad).
- Generalist characters hurt group synergy.

Play other games is my advice. They all have their drawbacks, but I don't know any RPG that pigeonholes characters nearly as badly as does the stuff growing on Gygax' rotten corpse; may he rest in peace.

Uh... 4e is actually halfway there. You have races like Halflings who get to reroll saves, Tieflings who get to do extra damage under certain circumstances, Elves get to reroll an attack, and so on and so forth. If Orcish Rage isn't "+1 to hit and damage with all Strength dependent attacks" but is instead "Activate while wounded to do bonus damage for the next turn" it's a much more defensible choice for a much broader set of classes. After all, everyone likes to do more damage.

Races can provide bonuses that synergize in different ways with a wide variety of classes. Sure, people are going to decide that Halfling Luck is fundamentally more useful on a character with Taunt than on one without, or that Dwarven Courage is simply better for a character who is actually supposed to go into melee than one who doesn't. But there are degrees of optimization here. To a first approximation, being a Goblin Rogue because it gives more mobility and being an Orcish Rogue because you do more damage, and being an Elvish Rogue because you're less likely to miss on your big attacks, and being a Halfling Rogue because you are more survivable all sound vaguely viable. Certainly, there is some sort of synergy between all of those and being a backstabber DPS specialist.

-Username17

[tenuki]

Yeah, I guess that counts as halfway there. But can you do the same for a wizard? I'm really not that familiar with 4e.

Somewhat unrelated, I could think of a campaign where the PCs start out as a bunch of orcs from the same village. That's no way to solve the problem we're discussing here, but it could be a fun way to play a game with an orc wizard in it.

[tzor]

Yeah. It's worth noting that the argument in favor male/female adjustments uses pretty much the exact same "logic" as the argument for orcs having nonsense adjustments.

No they don't. I actually went (many years ago) and did the math. A proper male/female adjustment for a given adventurer based on modern sport types should result in a +0.6 stat adjustment for strength to men. (SAY WHAT?)

The definition of ORC, on the other hand is more akin to a race where everyone can be on the front line for a major NFL team. Thus the stat adjustment. (Note also that in 1E the half orc bonus was only +1 and adjustments were even less significant in 1E than in later editions where they made the min stat bump +2 so most of the time it didn't mean squat.)

[Prak]

Not if you make different races good in the same class in meaningfully different ways.

Love to see that, but I don't see how DnD could ever be the game that does it.

- Characters in DnD chop up or blow up stuff using a boilerplate set of tools defined by their class and level.
- The job description for each class is so narrow that there simply aren't meaningfully different ways of covering the required bases. Your race either synergizes with class (good) or it doesn't (bad).
- Generalist characters hurt group synergy.

Play other games is my advice. They all have their drawbacks, but I don't know any RPG that pigeonholes characters nearly as badly as does the stuff growing on Gygax' rotten corpse; may he rest in peace.

Dwarven Racial Traits

• Bonus Feat: Mason's Sense. All dwarves are ensconced within a society full of worked stone, cut gems, mining, and all manner of things concerning the earth and it's bones. A dwarf receives a +2 bonus to any check made concerning stone, gems, or the earth (including creatures of Elemental Earth). Furthermore, a dwarf is proficient in all picks and hammers, and makes attacks and damage with such at a +2 racial bonus.
• +3 HP/level. A dwarf's hardy immune system and iron stamina make them more difficult to kill.
• DR [1/2 Ch. Lv.]/Piercing. Long days spent before the fiery forge have toughened the dwarf's skin. Their stout and short bodies lower their center of gravity. They can weather blows and turn swords quite well, but arrows punch right through their natural defenses.
• -2 to social interaction. Dwarves tend to be gruff and mildly xenophobic. Regardless of an individual dwarf's composure, most still expect this from them, and remember the dwarven trade embargoes of old, and their days of aiding the Titans. As such, dwarves are at a slight disadvantage in social interaction, unless they've taking great pains to over come this.

Elven Racial Traits

• Bonus Feat: Bow Mastery. Elves spend much of their 110 years before leaving the forest camps training in the use of all manner of bows. An elf is proficient in all bows, including bows they've never seen before (they can pick up a Gnoll Moon Bow, and practically instantly know exactly how to use it, even if their forest camp had never even heard of gnolls, for example). In addition, they receive a +2 racial bonus to all attack and damage rolls made with a bow. (whether this applies to crossbows would likely be a campaign setting decision. I can't see it being harmful, mechanically, but it doesn't exactly fit my conception of elves.)
• Grace of the Forest. Elves spend much of their time running amongst the trees and underbrush of the forest, evading foes and predators with movement, rather than weathering their blows. Elves receive a +1/4 char. levels deflection bonus to AC, and a +2 racial bonus to rolls made to move within a forest, or forest like environment. (An underground mushroom forest counts just as much as a terrestrial traditional forest, counts just as much as an aquatic coral forest, as much as a bizarre fellfrost forest of ice trees and brambles or a cloudscape with tall, tree like formations and "ground" cover that snatches at the feet.)
• Easily Whelmed. Elves bodies are delicate things, seemingly having more in common with birds than mammals, with their light bones. As such, elves are more easily injured than other races, and have -1 hp per level.

Orc Racial Traits

• Bonus Feat: Brawler. Orcs are accustomed to a cultural milieu in which one does not always have a preferred weapon at hand, and is more likely to have to make do with whatever they can pick up. As such, orcs not only ignore non-proficiency penalties, they receive a +2 racial bonus to attacks made with improvised weapons.
• Thunderous Blows. Orc bodies are corded thick with muscle and sinew, with heavy bones that act as brutal, efficient levers, to a degree more honed than any other race's. They deal +1/3 character level damage with all melee weapons they weild.
• Bestial Endurance. Orcs live savage lives more akin to that of an animal than a person. While they do group together in tribes and warbands, life in such is a brutal affair full of casual assault, murder, cannibalism, and even rape. They often as not must run vast distances and chase down prey like primitive races or animalistic predators, and they must be able to survive the abuse and neglect that all orcs face as a simple matter of course in growing up in the culture, such as it is. As such, Orcs may move for twice as long as normal before having to make endurance checks against fatigue, exhaustion, or subdual damage. They receive DR (1/4 char level)/magic, and are immune to poison.
• Uncouth. Orc culture, for lack of a better term, focuses on survival and combat rather than art, literature, or even music more advanced or elevated than beating a drum to communicate over distances or signal to the warband in battle. As such, orcs are Illiterate at character creation, and must spend a skill point to be able to read and write (only 1, covers all known languages), and must spend one additional skill point on all knowledges and performance forms except Kn. Nature, and Perform (Drum).

How's that for a rough start? Any of them would make a good fighter, I think, just in different ways.

Yeah. It's worth noting that the argument in favor male/female adjustments uses pretty much the exact same "logic" as the argument for orcs having nonsense adjustments.

No they don't. I actually went (many years ago) and did the math. A proper male/female adjustment for a given adventurer based on modern sport types should result in a +0.6 stat adjustment for strength to men. (SAY WHAT?)

The definition of ORC, on the other hand is more akin to a race where everyone can be on the front line for a major NFL team. Thus the stat adjustment. (Note also that in 1E the half orc bonus was only +1 and adjustments were even less significant in 1E than in later editions where they made the min stat bump +2 so most of the time it didn't mean squat.)

I'd like to point out that, while in game, race is the appropriate term, out of game you really should have said species, because race is basically just culture irl. Sure there are some basic physiological differences, but those are pretty shallow. Take the darkest complexioned caucasoid, and the lightest complexioned negroid*, the "white" guy will have darker skin.

Also, looking at the biology, I suppose gender based stat differences are vaguely more defensible, given that they are about averages and, to some degree, maximums. But even then, it's not really defensible, because it's a negligible difference, and adventurers are, by default, not average people. Adventurers are basically assumed to be the .01% of the population that has a fate to be more than "Shit Farmer #768" or "Royal Guard #12." So I really don't see why the female half of that .01% should be hindered by the assumption that they have the average strength of a female of their species, rather than just the average strength of their species.


*damnit, it's the right word.