Part XXVIII - RPG Stats and Women
None of the standard RPG stats give women parity with men, nevermind a bonus. The one exception is a rote Magic stat, but many RPG's try to redefine magic in terms of mundane stats, all of which favour men. This is because almost everything in an RPG focuses around the male sphere rather than the female sphere.
This is because of sexual dimorphism. Both of our sexes evolved to excel in different spheres. Men are biologically disposable, whereas a woman's fertility it universally required. Women will not be kicked out a society, except in EXTREME circumstances, whereas a man's ability to reproduce is very easily replaced.
Men evolved to take on the more physically dangerous and demanding roles, while women evolved to take on the more social, collective, local upkeep roles. "But, that's unfair." Well, yeah, because women were never meant to compete with men. If a woman encounters danger, her best chance or survival is to summon a man to protect her. As such, women have the superpower of summoning men to their aid.
They have Neoteny, the evolutionary trait of retaining childlike features through adulthood. They literally evolved to be cute, to make men want to protect them.
How had you can hit, along with your ability to physically lift, push, pull, climb, etc.
Women have, on average 50% of a man's upper body strength, and 75% of a man's lower body strength.
So, when you see a woman using a fighting style that focuses heavily on kicking, it's her using techniques that mitigate her deficiencies in strength and reach. Women's olympic weightlifting records are half of those of the men. The strongest woman is roughly on par with the average man.
HP, stamina, shock resistance, trauma resistance. Men have higher stamina in every regard, from the sprinting Lactic Acid tolerance to the longer VO2 to higher muscle rebuilding to recover the next day.
Male bones are both more dense, and larger in diameter. Men have large and denser muscles. Male ligaments are large. Trauma that might cause a compound fracture in a woman might cause a hairline fracture in a man. As long as fracture are in position, the body will naturally repair. But fractures don't necessarily occur ACROSS the bone, and if it goes at an angle, you now have a spear in your body. So, even if a bone breaks, there's a much greater chance it can be easily set and allow the man recover.
When it comes to diseases, men are not just more resistance to every pathogen, women when pregnant naturally compromise their own immune system to prevent rejection of the fetus. Men can lose more blood while still functioning, while 1 week our of every 4, women need twice the iron of a man. If your apothecaries cannot correct this, then the women will be anemic, and her body will take much longer to recover, from everything.
This is an interesting stat, but Dexterity in RPG's is actually Agility. Power = ForceXVelocity, which means your ability to accelerate every part of your body is increased with power, which men excel at. For mobility, men have longer stride lengths, and more power. They are better able to resist the stress of crossing obstacles, and have the power and reach to overcome them. Reaction time and rapid threat assessment are also male traits.
What's annoying about this is that Dexterity is the one of the only traits women have an advantage over men in, but not in RPG terms. Dexterity is you ability to move your fingers and limbs in a nimble fashion. This includes spinning, sewing, and manipulating tiny humans without hurting them.
"But that's women's work".
Yes. Every piece of cloth, from rags to cloths to clothes to the sails of tallships were spun by women.
Can dexterity help women in combat.
The advantages it could grant women would only apply at extremely high levels of skill, and a male that is equally skillful could use his own, more numerous advantages, like strength, reach, and bodymass.
There is one area where dexterity could really help in combat, Critical Strike. You hit a human in a critical artery, (heart, heart, heart, heart, neck, neck, neck, neck, crotch, crotch), with a half-decently sharp knife, and they will bleed out in 30secs. Humans are actually ridiculously easy to kill, if you know how to do it right, and/or have the appropriate tools.
What about bows? Women and bows are tropes right?
There are two sides to this.
On one hand, in every - single - regard, men are better with bows.
It doesn't matter how good you are with a bow, it matters if you hit hard enough to kill them.
While a woman with a bow would be weaker than a man with a bow, have lower range, less armour penetration, and lower ability to resist trauma, it does not take very many arrows to kill a human. As long as you can consistently hit the target at the appropriate range, and their targets aren't wearing arrow-proof armour, (this depends on the draw weight of the bow and the distance you are shooting), as long as you hit, even a single arrow can be debilitating. A single barbed arrow can completely take a soldier off the battlefield, and kill them if they don't get good medical treatment pretty quickly.
But that said, stronger bows means stronger stopping power. A man hitting you with a bow will cause more physical trauma than a woman. This will, as the name suggests, stop the target, and cause more damage from trauma.
So, a man with a 250lb Longbow will probably kill a woman in a single shot, but if they are at 25 yards, and she's quicker on the draw, she will hit him before he can let loose an aimed arrow.
A bow can nearly equalize a women's combat abilities, under certain conditions.
How about throwing, also a ranged weapon? Except for the male Human body is ridiculous good at throwing weapons, both in spacial awareness, and the ability to move their bodies in ways woman cannot to dramatically improve their power and precision.
If a woman has a spear thrower, which is a stick you can use for leverage when throwing, she can easily kill most men with a thrown spear.
Intelligence in an RPG is typically IQ. This is the kind of intelligence we can measure, and the kind that men also excel at. Rote mathematics, spacial orientation, and applied book learning. That said, the women that excel at this are much better than baseline men. But, if you make magic power and MP based off of intelligence, then women would not have the advantage.
This depends on your definitions.
Women are naturally more likeable, to the point a women with below average initial reaction would have the same likability as the average man. Women also have the super power of entreating upon men, and everyone is willing to believe a woman is in danger.
But, if we take leadership and the ability to have a clear and powerful voice, then men take the advantage. And the ability to speak powerfully and clearly is how Charisma-based spellcasting works, and leadership is what often determines party size.
Lore, which depends upon societies, as various societies have had wise MEN and wise WOMEN.
But hunting and surviving the elements is male. They are much better, in every way, at long distance navigation.
Cunning. Women have social cunning. Men have combat/hunting/survival cunning.
So, why am I talking about this? Pretty simple, these are natural traits that Humans instinctively understand, and if you ignore them, then you break the willing suspension of disbelief.
Now, the willing suspension of disbelief is, shockingly, willing. But the more deviations that you do, then the harder it is for the willingness to remain. And people will look at it and start laughing. It's basically a pain threshold, that when someone passes, they will go from love to disdain.
Am I saying not having women be core elements of your story? Absolutely not. Every story I've written has been a harem story, with most of them being battle harems.
The first way is the traditional way, make them the heart of the story. If you combine the male story of struggle and overcoming conflict, with the female story of I'm-good-enough, you get a male lead that does the actions in the story, and a female lead that is the emotional heart of the story. The best example of this is Princess Leia. There are three main characters in Star Wars: Luke, the young hero that goes on a hero's journey, Han, the loveable rogue that goes through the rebel with a heart of gold journey, and Leia, who's a diplomat. And the prequels quadrupled down on the importance of diplomacy, to the point that diplomats do more than space wizardry.
From the 1980's to the early oughts, this was THE standard for every - single - mainstream movie.
Another solution is to make magic a female thing. Again, if you don't use standard RPG stats, and make Magic it's own category, then women can excel at magic. So, make all of the women in the party spellcasters, boom, done. Or make some of them hybrids, like spellswords, so they can use their magic in the combat. It makes perfect sense that your fighter, barbarian, and ranger, to have a healer, mage, and spellsword with them. This is basically every Final Fantasy, ever. Give or take a monk or thief.
Add a divine blessing. RWBY does this with Aura. Many of the RPG-mechanics-verses do this with experience level mechanics. And by doing this, you provide a simple way for the audience to just accept it. Because she has levels in holy knight, and standard RPG stat growth is logarithmic.
Fourth, add a higher level female. Like, young hero, and skilled swordswoman. She would be his lancer, help train and guide him, but maybe doesn't have the charisma or destiny or explosive stat growth to be the hero.
For those that don't know what the lancer trope is, just think Han Solo. He's not the hero. He doesn't have the pedigree, or destiny, or prophesy, or space wizardry, but his experience and skill are invaluable throughout everything they do.
RWBY again, did this right. They had divine blessings, (Aura), gave the main quartette magic pedigrees and the power of plot. Then they added Jaune, (Ron Weasley), to explain how Aura does NOT work, and Pyrrha, (Hermione Granger), to explain how Aura does. And they made Pyrrha Achilles, who was so skillful that no one could land a hit on him. Funny enough, despite being the protagonist of the Iliad, Achilles was the Lancer to either Menelaus or Agamemnon, (depending upon your perspective).
We also have Valeria from Conan, that no one doubted could fight.
This is because the hero/protagonist is not directly competing with the lancer. The lancer is fighting the evil minions, who might have a much lower level of training. They aren't The Hero, or The Big Guy, but they might be better at crowd control.
Fifth, add different races, or in more mundane worlds, add different nations.
The Prime of His Youth starts with Jack Darby, mundane Human, and Arcee, Femme Cybertronian who's one of the most skilled warriors ever created. Then add Sirenia, a socially awkward non-combatant that pushes the main pair out into the outside world.
Feared Love stars Spike, a Dragon. I tried to do something else, but of course it ended up an epic Sparity romance. While none of the others can directly compete with him in shear power, Earth Ponies, Pegasi, Unicorns, Changelings, Crystal Ponies, Chthonic Ponies, and Winter Deer all offer completely different abilities, and completely contrasting personalities. None of them, other then maybe the Changelings, even have a remotely similar roles.
The Changelings all have different personalities, but they are personalities that support different ponies. Adding an aide is an absolutely incredible to get a character to open up without actually opening up. Think Alfred for Batman, or Mako for Conan:
"He is Simmerian, he don't cry, so I cry or him."
Before that, I had the Lion of Cynn:
Protagonist/Hero / Male Human Sageknight
Male Dwarf Dragoon / Merchant. His "I know someone" is a catch phrase, and the main way the plot of the first book made any sense.
Female Dwarf Nurse / Alchemist: Acts like a housewife. Marries the protagonist becoming his (head) housewife.
Female Gnome: Gnomes are good at connection, making them good at earth magic, communication, maintaining mechanical objects, and gardening.
Male and Female Elf: Elves use body magic. This allows them to heal, transform, and enhance their bodies, to the point they can use longbows far too strong for their scrawny frame.
Female Dwarf Valkyrie: They fight with wind and lightning. Female Dwarves are about as strong as Male Humans. Dwarves also consider swords to be girly. Male Dwarves use the word Mannish to basically mean girly, (from their perspective), and will stop using it on Men when they respect them. Despite the fact they are literally men.
None of them have powers or personalities that overlap. The Female Dwarf is as strong as the Male Man, and it makes perfect sense for her to be a frontline fighter, even without the lightning powers. The Elves use stealth and can annihilate large groups of enemies with their longbows. The Gnome and Dwarven nurse don't need to fight to be useful.
But what if you want to make the protagonist female?
Make her skillful and witty, like Lara Croft? Guns are a great equalizer for women. We love video games that give us bigger and bigger guns, but most modern militaries used bullets that are "good enough", i.e. much weaker than they used to be.
Go the RWBY route, and give Ruby divine protection, a hero's pedigree, thematic powers, plot powers, magic, and OP laser eyes. She's also adorkable, and either braces her rifle by stabbing it into the ground, or just uses it's recoil to help her super hero flight.
Taarna, that has the power of? Something. We are definitely told she has the power of - something.
Samus Aran that is genetically engineered and has powered armoured. if there was a male in her position, he would be even stronger, but, luckily for the universe, there isn't. One Samus blows up more than enough planets as it is.
EVE, 2B, and The Major are super duper super cyborgs.
KOS-MOS is a robot with the power of God.
Shion has the power of Clarke's Third Law. They literally call it ETHER / Especially THEory of Rudimentary. Well, that, and Jujitsu.
Mass Effect has "engineers" throwing fireballs. And despite being a world that actually gives you an appropriate amount ammunition, (1,000 rounds), the battles are never actually long enough that a man's stamina would make much of a difference. And it is light enough to not really affect carriage.