The above post was nothing else then an answer on the question whether or not the average physical dymorphism between the sexes in general also applied to specific professions where this could play an important role. Obviously, this is, on average, the case.

The point here is of course average, as there is no reason why a woman could not be stronger then a man. As I said at the start, such a rule should at most be optional and never enforced. Credible participation of human women in NPC organisations is another thing. Technology obviously is the big equaliser here, but the lower the tech level the more logical it will be not to see vast numbers of, say, female legionnaires. To me, such political correct interpretations of history, even in an alternate reality, disrupt the suspension of disbelief. I could have proposed another optional rule, giving all men a bonus on their strength (at the cost of something else), but an optional bonus might even generate more flak then an optional malus, even if it is more realistic. Just taking a look at Olympic level male weight lifting compared to female weight lifting should make it obvious that even in the best of the best in the same category of sports, the average male strength advantage is still present.

More importantly, trying to achieve as realistic a portrayal of the imaginary reality that is a fantasy world makes female PC's stand out all the more. If every second warrior is a woman, how interesting will it be to play that female gladiator? If we look back to some of the fantasy classics, Red Sonja is quite a bit cooler as she is a heroic woman in a male world. If women besting males at swordplay would be as normal as men besting men, where would be the fun? In my opinion, trying to keep the sexual dimorphism of men and women in mind while portraying the setting of an adventure world will only improve the story of female characters.

                                                                                                                      FvR

If I may, Van Riebeck, The Red Sonja  example is fine if you want your caracters to be indeed special BY being female ; for myself, and a lot of people, being male or female have usually no effect on the coolness factor. Who is the character, his/her demeanor, his/her personnality, his/her choices, turmoils, deeds & misdeeds, that's important. His/her sex is usually a cosmetic choice, likewise you prefer your character tall or short. So, do we really want to create penalties/bonus on a cosmetic choice, in a universe working on the rule of cool ?

If a the gender of a character is a cosmetic choice, then any differentiation is obviously not needed. For me, gender choice can never be cosmetic as there are few things that have more impact on who we are and, if we truly RP, who our characters are then our gender. Sure, if we limit games to hack and slash, it does not matter. But once you take a step further, it is something that offers so much potential to enrich the game that it would be a pity not to use it. Same with Tall or short now you mention it. Darn, would Tyrion Lannister (if you don't know him, do discover a Game of Thrones) be half the man he is if tall or short would not be important?

                                                                                                              FvR

P.S. Yes, I do admit that Tyrion is one of my favourite characters ever.

van Riebeeck said:

I was not  really talking about an Hack n' Slash style campaign either. If you want to base your character first on "I'm a female" or "I'm a male", fine ! I do think that it entails a character a bit shallow. Being a men or a women have effects, sure. But it is along the same of chosing if your character is a little bit under or over average concerning his size. Shall we give a malus to Intimidation to someone because he is a ten centimeter smaller than the average, or asking awareness tests for the one who is ten centimeter taller to avoid bumping  at door steps ?

Sure, you can extract a lot of drama from your character being from one sex or the other. But you can do so also with his/her birthdate and astrological sign, the relationship between his/her parents,  if she/he has siblings or not. Do you think we need rules for that too?

For this kind of things, I'd rather let the rules out, and just let my players  use their imagination. Rogue Trader is a game with a lot of rules, but it is character driven. As your characters are quite free and can decide what they can and will do, who they are is important and influence the game. The players have the same freedom. Shall we straight-jacket them, by giving them rules on how to give personnality on their characters ? Personnaly, I don't think so.

Well, however you turn it, I cannot see character gender as a cosmetic choice. But is is true statistics and rules will not be vital for the RP aspects, even if it aids if, to take the Game of Thrones comparison a continuation, Shae is not able to smack Shagga son of Dolf around.

There is a reason why I take this tack. Martin has done very good work in making his world believable by maintaining a 'realistic' social gender differentiation. Does this mean his female characters are a jot less interesting? Not that I think so, Daenerys Targaryen or Brienne of Tarth are capable of giving any man a run for his money. At the same time, not even a female Wildling as redoutable as Chella daughter of Cheyk of the Black Ears, a character as hard as you can get them, will be as strong as Shagga son of Dolf. And he makes sure of other 'realistic' consequences of what we might call stats as well: a maiden as strong as Brienne of Tarth will never be able to compete with Cersei Lannister in the jousts of courtly love. However unfair it is and how much beauty there might be hidden below the skin (and vice versa), the world is as it is and an ogrish women will seldom be considered a natural beauty.

In short, the only thing I aim for is to make characters believable. I suppose I am a bit traumatised by waifish beauties who happen to be STR 18/97 and CHA 17 paladins (good old 2nd edition) that just rock my suspension of disbelief.

                                                                                         FvR

 So play FATAL.

Errant said:

Noooo! You invoked the name of The Game That Shall Not Be Named!

Invoking "A Game of Thrones" won't help your case with me - I don't like it. Martin keeps killing off characters left and right, thinking it's all edgy, but after a while it just got annoying and boring, since he killed off most of the characters I liked.

Also, the 40k setting isn't A Song of Ice and Fire, it's not even close to our own modern day - you have no idea how much change there has been to human genetics in the 38,000 years between now and the time of this setting. For all you know, women in 40k are just as physically capable as men - evolution and the requirement for humans to survive on very different worlds scattered across the galaxy would actually cause most humans to be different depending on what planet they're from.

Why would mankind develop differently in the 38,000 years from now than it had in the 200,000 years before? Or, if we take primates, as the odd 65,000,000 years before? Sure, there will be gravitational differences in space and on different planets, but will those differences completely negate the physical gender differentiation? One thing is certain, they will influence both the male and the female of the species, so if planet X would induce heavier muscle growth, the baseline differences would still be maintained. They will surely differ from people on planet Y, but that is not what matters here.

I really fail to see what would be so bad about giving a human male character a strength advantage as an optional rule. Sure, it will give them a slight edge in physical combat, but that is only realistic. It will not make them better void pilots, make them shoot their plasma pistols more accurately or transform them into better politicians. But it will make them better mining slaves, that is certain!

                                                                        FvR

Give your guys strength advantages then give your women willpower/toughness advantages for having to spent the last 40k years dressing to impress men and not killing them all.  You might also want to give them strength/agility bonuses for all the poles their ancestors have work over the millenia to make a living off all those dim witted men by claiming their working their way through college when they weren't.

van Riebeeck said:

Ogryns, Squats... various other weird and wonderful variations of humans popped up due to environmental effects, which is slightly unrealistic considering the rate of human evolutionary process, but its a big galaxy further complicated by weird magical warp stuff, which is the unknown variable in the equation. As for co-existant homo sapiens, up until 24,500 years ago there where still neanderthals running around some parts of Europe.

As for the physical advantages/disadvantages of the sexes, it really is so negligable and highly variable across a population not to be worth the while to differentiate. I've known women communications riggers and rock climbers that have all the upper body strength, stamina and coordination that their male counterparts have, which is a trained and exercised part of physical development.

I think a big mistake here is the assumption that male or female characteristics would result in a flat bonus or penalty on characteristics. They don't. If anything, they would affect the range of said characteristic, but the weakest man alive may still not be stronger than the weakest woman, owing to the simple fact that both genders originate from the same type of cell and development is largely identical (which is why things like hermaphroditism in humans exist).

Anyways, if you really want to create a rule for this*, don't take the cliché "-4 STR" approach but rather work with expanding the range, just like biology actually works. For example, you could either allow Re-Rolls of a "benefited" characteristic (like "Tearing"), or let a player roll 5d5-3 (2-25) or 3d10-1 (2-30) instead of the usual 2d10 (2-20).

As to what stats would be affected, I would say that males clearly have an advantage when it comes to strength, whereas statistics show that females tend to be better shooters, warranting a Ballistic Skill advantage. This balances nicely in that both are combat statistics merely having an effect on the style of warfare, but not trying to force the characters into specific roles cultivated by centuries of oppression (kitchen, sandwhich, etc) - in essence, a fighter can still be a fighter, a man just has a certain chance to deal more damage in close combat whilst women have a certain chance to make better snipers.

(*: as has been said before, the characters in this RPG are not even intended to conform to some average)

As far as the STR/CHA 18 paladin example is concerned, I would say that the same reasoning would apply to males as well. Apart from Charisma not depending solely on the body, of course.

A waifish female paladin Lynata, not so much as a female paladin per se. But you are fully correct, the look of a character should more or less be in sync with its statistics. And strength just asks for quite a bit of musulature, both in males and in females. You also note fully correctly that charisma is more then just the looks, but, alas for our shallow race of men, that first impression is still so vital. I think I do not say nonsensen when I state that in general musulature that would be considered good looking on a man will be found less attractive on a woman, however unfair this might be. As such, a freakishly strong woman will seldom be considered handsome...even if she might be a great leader of men (and yes, I know freakishly is not a nice way to put it, but I wish to stress the way such a woman will be seen by the general public).

By the way, I am interested where you found that women are better shots. Considering the fact that men have evolved hunting, that seems quite odd. Their time-space analysis seems in general to be slightly better (even if this is a contentious subject). On the practical side, just a quick look at the best shots in Britain gives a vast male dominance. And yes, shooting is obviously a fieldsport that is more practisced by men then by women, with a plethora of cultural and historical reasons to explain it. But those girls that take up the challenge and go for serious shooting (as opposed to the socialites) can indeed be razorsharp and very good at what they do. Still, till now the exalted upper ranks of top shots seem to be mostly filled with men.

What seems to be a fact is that women have far better empathy and skill with words. Again, this is in general. One could balance the strength loss with fellowship and skill gains.

                                                                                                     FM

As much as I promised myself I wouldn't ever say this...

http://avp.wikia.com/index.php?title=Drake_(USS_Sulaco)&image=M56-smart-gun-aliens-jpg

Your argument is invalid.

I really fail to see how a picture of one strong woman would invalidate the facts that:

- In general, human men are stronger then human women.

- The strongest human men are stronger then the strongest human women.

However much we can argue about whether this should be translated into stats and how this might be translated into stats, these facts are beyond doubt.

And yes, I do know that WH40K takes place in the far future and do know that different planets and lifestyles might result in changes in humanity. But I still do not see one solid argument why these changes would affect women more then men, or men more then women. If they affect both genders equally (which seems to be within the field of logic), there is no reason to presume the differences we do find today will not be present tomorrow. Furthermore, the number of different habitats would give a wide divergence amongst the whole of the human race, which the game nicely uses by introducing modifiers for the origin of players.

                                                                                       FvR

[removed, will post again with proper formating - this forum software needs fixing]