Gender modified limit? Options

[Da9iel]

Has anyone ever considered adjusting the racial modified limit (and attribute) according to gender? Females are, after all, physically weaker than men both in averages and in maximums. I was considering making all females -1 Str and +1 Cha. Except for dragons. For dragons I would have the males be -1 Str and +1 Cha. (They are more closely related to birds where the males are beautiful and the females are bigger.) :D

The only problem I see with this is that Cha is linked to leadership, and men seem to have just as much if not more leadership than women. Perhaps this is due to social constraints (Da Man been puttin em down) dating back to when physical strength was paramount (to fight off those saber-toothed tigers). Maybe Wil would be more apt. I've known a lot of very, very stubborn women. Then I've known some stubborn men too. :dead:

Back to Cha: I think that encouraging female conjurers and faces would be just fine and dandy. History has witches being more commonly female, and Daisy Mae was always tapped for her "social skills" when those Duke boys were getting into mischief. :love:

[Zenmaxer]

this is not a good idea... never ever give a player access to a free bonus. Speaking as a munchkin, that's like calling yourself big-boned in a troll gay bar.

[Da9iel]

What free bonus? The poor girl needs to get a big strong man to move that heavy couch! ;)

[Sandoval Smith]

What would be the point of doing something like this? It just complicates the creation process for no good reason. At least you avoid the trap of simply penalizing PCs for being females, unlike the arch typical D&D example, where the DM decided all female characters should get a -2 to strength, but balances out by also giving them the 'advantage' of being able to have children.

[Da9iel]

No point really. Just a way to spice things up a bit. A little more realism and a way to encourage a tad more gender bending in a game that tends to have many more male players than female.

[Zenmaxer]

Indulge me for a moment...

Female elf

6+3+1

+exceptional attrib...

10(15)

+bonus attrib point...

start charisma of 11

followed by
good reputation
good looking and knows it

That doesn't sound too hideous... until we make her an aspected mage and give her some attrib boosting spells and lil mind control. This is not someone you want in your campaign, especially because she's going to charm herself up some cultured pheromones really fast.

[Abstruse]

Tell you what, they can stick that in the errata with a note for all the pissed off female gamers, general feminists who hear about it, and the male feminists to send their hate mail and death threats to you personally.

The Abstruse One

[Sandoval Smith]

Realism in what way? Something like this should be the player's choice, not GM whim. If they want to play a female that looks like she stole the face off a bulldog, well good for her, but in which case the change would be a penalty.

Not to mention that the whole concept really stinks of gender chauvanism. If you want more female characters, just let the players know that a little more diversity would be welcome.

If in the name of realism you feel this is really nessasary, well, it's your game. However, I'd chalk it up there with a random table to see if you trip while walking down the street. It adds to realism, but what's the point?

[Kayne]

[Cray74]

[Pistons]

I can move my own couches, thank you very much. Now that I've gotten that out of my system, it's not a good idea for the reasons Cray74 wrote. Aside from genetics that may predispose someone toward greater or lesser ability in one area or another, everyone has the same potential to excel in anything they choose. It's a matter of how it's nurtured in the formative years, and the training and care given later on, that sets some people at higher levels than others.

[Apathy]

[iPad]

[Lindt]

[Cray74]

[Apathy]

It seems like the Becks system does a good job of requiring characters to devote extra resouces in order to get higher-than-average scores. (Though I admit it's not canon).

[Zenmaxer]

:: nods :: I'm with 74 here, and with Pistons.

First off, the charisma issue that you raise is social conditioning, Apathy, beyond a shadow of a doubt. We're a male oriented society, and we're programmed to respond more strongly to women socially and sensually. Ex: A guy in a speedo is a joke, a girl in a bikini is erotic.

Quickness does not measure hand-eye coordination exclusively, or even to a significant degree. Balance, yes, but coordination, not normally. Otherwise, a wee watchmaker would need a quickness of 5-6 to get his job done.... which, incidentally, would let our subject scoot along at a respectable clip of 2 m/s while _walking_. Oh and think about what his jump is going to look like, too. Sounds a lil absurd for a 75 year old gear guru. On the other hand, quickness is related to balance, but that's definately only an average and so can be disregarded anyway. Ms. Samurai Samantha isn't gonna be average.

I'd like to mention that many shadowrunners could easily give olympic athletes a run for their money, if you're looking at combat oriented munched chars... and is there really another kind of combat char?

Finally, game balance. Bonuses to attribs that don't cost build points are an invitation to broken characters, and forcing players to pick "packages" like gender based bonuses will create greater specialization of characters. Basically it's like a free edge from the standpoint of most gamers, with the downside of being really annoying if you want to do something unimaginable and run say... a male Face.

Let me remind you that attrib max rounds up. +1 to racially modified max is very very dangerous. Finally, I really don't like BeCKs. Shadowrun characters are specialized by nature and BeCKs can make skill acquisition quite difficult.

[Black Isis]

I always found it amusing that the people who would suggest things like this are usually not exactly paragons of physical prowess themselves. ;)

It's silly. The variance in the physical "strength" of women and men (which is a vague enough term) is not really worth talking about when you're talking about exceptional individuals anyway, and the Shadowrun attribute system is not granular enough to bother making this distinction even with normal individuals (considering there's only two steps between "average" and "physically unable to move").

I'd have a problem with giving women a Charisma bonus just for being women just as much. It's stupid. Women aren't any more charismatic on average than men, trust me. :P

[Apathy]

[Cray74]

[UpSyndrome]

I don't like the idea of implementing any extra systems that give people the opportunity to munchkin more than they already do, which is quite a bit.

Also, Shadowrun isn't the place for gender discrimination. Oh, except for this one bit from the Pheremone Scanner table in SOTA2063:

[Apathy]

Agree on both points

[mmu1]

[Austere Emancipa...]

You're still talking about averages there. Cray74 repeatedly made it clear he wasn't, he was talking about the theoretical limits. 40-60% the upper body strength obviously cannot hold true for the theoretical limits when the women's weightlifting olympic record in the 58-63kg series is 242.5kg, and men's record in 56-62kg is 325.0kg.

However, to manage even 242.5kg you'd have to have a STR of 11 and roll decently with SR3 basic rules. With the advanced Athletics rules in SRComp, there's no fucking way an unaugmented human could ever manage that, as s/he'd need to have a STR of 11 and still roll 8 successes at TN 13 with 11 dice (if I'm reading that right).

[Arethusa]

Not to get involved here (other than to say I agree with Cray), but I do need to debunk a lot of a pseudoscience that's been thrown around here.

For one, men absolutely have much lower muscle density than women, and if you compare two equally strong olympic lifters of opposing sexes, you will notice that the man is visibly gigantic while the woman is not— yet they can lift exactly the same amounts of weight. Moreover, body is an iffy thing; you can argue that women have a naturally stronger immune system and can withstand more physical trauma than otherwise equal men (naturally in place to aid in child bearing/rearing). Of course, there's marginal evidence on both sides, but I think it's beyond safe to say that what little of this is not bullshit is marginal at best and neither significant nor reliable enough to be worth implementing mechanically.