1. I remembered it wrong then. My bad. Doesn't make it sexist, though. It just makes it more believable.

2. The drow society absolutely dictates how people behave in the drow cities. Brainwashing is the norm from birth. Again. Read up on the lore. You ate completely off target here. If you romance Viconia you can actually change her views and name her Lawful Neutral as well. So it is even in the game.

3. Shar is also an evil goddess. Not as bad as Llolth, sure, but still. Viconia is getting treated the way she is because of what the drow are known to do to people. They sacrifice babies - that bit is common. So a drow priestess (they are the ones doing the sacrifices) walks into town.....Vocionia getting attacked is kind of in the cards. You might notice the conversations you can have with her that she keeps her face hidden a lot too - when around humans and the other races. This is for that very reason.

4. The Elder Scrolls is a different setting\world all together. They also have High-elves, wood-elves and others.

5. The story of someone betraying a god is a classic one in many mythologies. In the drow case it involves sacrificing babies and all kinds of very dark shit.

I don't know, where did you get that she should be punished for anything?

In fairness, it's not just muscle mass and strength that men have the edge in. Sports built around dexterity, speed and coordination are overwhelmingly dominated by men and the world class females that participate in their own leagues are usually only on par with highschool male athletes. I wouldn't qualify realism as "sexist."

Ha.

Shar is arguably far more evil than Lloth is. Lloth is just an old Lilith-esque story about a good deity that was ambitious and wanted to be in charge and failed. Shar is one of the original primordial evils from whence all the other evils eventually sprang, a deity that tried at the creation of the world to stop life. Viconia switching out one monstrous evil to devote her life to for another doesn't engender herself on anyone.

Outside being called "Dark Elves" there's really nothing in common between the Dunmer and the Drow. The Drow are objectively evil because alignment exists in Abeir-Toril. It doesn't in Nirn.

Not really. I'm not much of a fan of Salvatore's works, but the majority of the Drow society and their lore came from him. Hitherto, they were just footnotes in books and modules amounting to little more than "demon Elves."

I'm sorry, but I don't buy the "realism" argument. There are many things that would be realistic, but are not included in the game at all, such as having to go to the bathroom, and (excluding more survival oriented settings) having to eat and drink; those rules just aren't fun.

The way I see it, the "realism" argument is just an excuse to exclude female gamers; it seems that some white men just wanted to have a game to themselves and were deliberately excluding women from their game by including such a rule. Why do you want to limit a player's options (and exclude half of all potential players) for no gameplay benefit?

I would consider this rule to be the worst rule in 1e AD&D, even worse than the racial level limits (a rule that was bad enough that the developers of the Baldur's Gate series intentionally did not implement. Imagine if they *did* decide to implement racial level limits in BG2; Mazzy would be unable to advance past level *8*).

Morrowind also had that thing. Females were weaker but had other bonuses. You might notice that races have stat penalties too. Halfings have a penalty to Str because of their lack of muscle-mass. Does this mean white men decided they didn't want short people playing the game? And what makes you think women only want to play characters that needs a high Str? I have played d&d with plenty women, and absolutely none of them felt excluded because of the rules. An average woman of 18 years old arm-wrestles an average guy of the same age. Who wins? The guy.

Baldur's Gate doesn't use the 1e rules. It uses 2ed. Mazzy has a Str penalty. Did this bother you? She is female after all. By your logic this would mean short females are being excluded from the game. Oddly enough she is one of the most popular characters in the game...

First, Morrowind does one thing that 1e AD&D does not; it at least made an effort to balance out the male and female versions of each race. If you notice, every race/gender combo in that game has starting stats that sum to 320. (Interestingly, the first game in the series, Arena, did favor male dark elves over females, but that seems to be a mistake, as female dark elves are balanced (on paper, at least) with every other race/sex combo in that game.)

Regarding Mazzy, I don't see her as having a strength penalty simply because she (like the other NPCs) just has hardcoded stats rather than being generated as a character. (I note that there are some characters in the BG series that have characteristics that are not possible under the rules for PC character creation; for example, Amonen's Wisdom (even after an event changes it) is too low to dual class into a cleric, and I believe BG1 has a character with natural 20 Constitution.) Also, Mazzy has an ability that temporarily sets her Strength to 18/75 (IIRC) that a halfling fighter wouldn't normally get. Aerie has a multiclass combination that isn't possible for an elf.

I don't have the same problem with racial modifiers as I do with gender modifiers, as long as the racial modifiers are at least balanced, and the rules don't make races useless. In other words, no ridiculous rules like the 2e racial level limits (which, as I said, were intentionally not implemented in Baldur's Gate 2).

Do you think Mazzy would still be popular if she were unable to advance past level 8 or so?

In the TES games, lower stats are better. Because it makes you level up faster. If you want to play as an archer, pick the race that is the least suited for it. Gives you some easy level ups early on. Doesn't matter though. if you claim a lower "str" is sexist in D&D it is sexist everywhere. No matter what other bonuses females get. Lets switch it around. Would you have complained if females got an Int bonus and males didn't? I doubt it.

What you see Mazzy as or not is irrelevant. She has a Str penalty due to her size, which equals musclemass - the point stands.

Anomen could have lost some Wisdom after Dual-classing. If you look at his story and behavior, it is very clear that he has gotten rather cocky and obnoxious after he became a priest. He boasts about it constantly. He gets a Wisdom boost later, if you make him see the light, as it were. Could see it as him getting the lost points back again.

Why do the bonuses need to be balanced? It is a roleplaying game. You are playing a person. Having characters with weaknesses is always more interesting, no?

Yes. Mazzy would be as popular if she could only advance to level 8. She is popular because of her personality and character, after all. Her stats are actually pretty poor for a fighter. You might note that non-human characters stopped getting numeric levels back in those days BUT they got something else. Level A, B, C etc. No logic in it, I agree, but it was there.

D&D and BG isn't sexist towards women. It is arguably one of the most inclusive games out there. You thought the Drow were sexist earlier. You were wrong. You are wrong now. And it is OK to be wrong sometimes too. Not having a go at you.

Actually, that is incorrect as stated. In Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion, lower starting *skills* are better for the reason you described. If you want to play as an archer, pick the class that is least suited to it, but (assuming you want to level quickly, which might not be the case, particularly in Oblivion) which still has the skill as a class skill. In Arena and Skyrim, this is not the case (Arena uses XP based leveling, and Skyrim (to my knowledge) got rid of the mechanics that resulted in the counter-intuitive (and disliked by many) behavior.

BG may not be sexist (though I would argue that the romance choices could be sexist (and possibly homophobic due to the complete absence of same-sex romances)), but 1e (not 2e) AD&D was, as were the Gold Box games that implemented the rule in question. With that said, having the only matriarchal society in the game be evil does rub me the wrong way.

Also, while I haven't seen the subplot in question, I believe there's some transphobia in Edwin's subplot, and I could argue that the cursed gender changing belt in BG1 is as well.

If Anomen were otherwise following the rules, the Wisdom boost could not be giving him all his Wisdom points back again. After the boost, he has 16 Wisdom, and you need 17 Wisdom to dual class into a cleric.

Then again, I don't really like the way D&D handles ability scores in general.

(Speaking from an AD&D 1e context here)

Why *can't* I roleplay a woman who is stronger than nearly all men if I want to? (That is what the female strength rule is basically saying; female characters with high strength are forbidden.) Why can't I roleplay someone like Alena (from Dragon Quest 4)?

There is really no reason to have a rule that serves no purpose other than to limit the player's option, and removing that rule would simplify the game syetem slightly while expanding player options without anything being lost. (In fact, 2e *did*, in fact, remove the rule.)

I note that racial level limits have that same problem in games that are high level enough for it to matter (making non-humans non-viable; look at Pools of Darkness for a cRPG example of this), and fail to balance the non-human races in games that aren't (which, to my understanding, is the majority of AD&D campaigns).

You can roleplay as a woman who is stronger than nearly every men....The average Str stat is 10. If you put an 16 or 17 into your Str score you are roleplaying someone who is stronger than most people out there. Only 7% of the popluation in the Forgotten Realms are people that have classes. So whatever you are playing you are exceptional right off the bat. In other words: You can roleplay as Annie Schwarzenegger in her prime.. It is right there when you place your stats.

The rule was in place because the non-humans could live centuries longer than the humans. It was a balance attempt. It didn't work that well.

If all you see is stats and numbers, then yes. I guess at high levels the non humans would be useless at higher levels. I wouldn't call them useless for RP reasons though. Not every character has to be the ultimate killing machine either.
I know Skyrim doesn't have it. They dumbed the game down. Removed the stats and a ton of other stuff.

Bg2 was one of the first games to even have romances. We are talking very early days here. The devs (in interviews) have stated they did not know if players would even like romances in games. I believe David Gaider spoke about this at length some years back. They were fumbling around blindly with it and had no clue if optional romances would add anything. They bit into the development time a bit as well. That is not homophobia at all. Bioware, after they realized romances in games ended up being a popular thing, added gay romance options and the like later.

The Edwin subplot is not transphobic at all. Edwin is a sexist asshole. His gender gets changed against his will. Make a note of that. It happens against his will. Other NPCs pounce on that, using it to taunt him. Wich is perfectly believable too. The man isn't exactly kind to the other NPCs at all. If anything it is actually feminism. A sexist gets forced to live as a woman.

If someone changed your gender against your will, I am sure you would be a bit upset too. And it wouldn't be transphobic of you if you did.

"Transphobia," if such a thing is actually a word, would not have existed as a word when Baldur's Gate was made. They were called crossdressers. This crazy leftist Dtgreene is injecting 2017 ideas into a time when it didn't exist. So, if you are "transphobic", what then? I assume it means you don't like crossdressers, which must mean you are secretly afraid of them since you can't just dislike them for some other reason? Maybe it means you are secretly a crossdresser too and you hate yourself? How deep into the mountain do the tracks of this crazy locomotive go? Regardless, no one gave a damn back then, as this new special class of Democrats did not exist.

Women are far worse athletes than men overall, which is why sports are SEGREGATED. Men are stronger, faster, and quicker, with better reaction times, lower injury rates, and so on. There are biochemical reasons for this, and do not confuse exceptions with the rule. This was common sense for everyone when 1st Edition AD&D was popular. Race and gender strength penalties go together. Oh my God, three foot tall halflings get a one point strength penalty?!?!? That's so racist!

AD&D 1st and 2nd edition rules for race and gender make a hell of a lot more sense than today's commies and their hierarchy of victimhood and special classes of people.

I'd argue that a lot of those realism rules weren't added because of time and game size constraints. A number of RPGs do factor in food and drink. Hell, Eye of the Beholder, another Forgotten Realms IP that predates Baldur's Gate had you managing a hunger system.

But that's all immaterial to the point. You arguing that women having lower physical stats than men is "sexist" when it's analogous to the real-world is just sex-baiting. I mean, even when you were writing it, I'm sure you knew that the whole "an accurate portrayal of the differences between men and women is sexist!" wasn't going to fly, didn't you?

The way I see it, you're condemning a handful of trailblazing game pioneers decades before your social mores even existed. I can't fathom Gygax and Arneson were sitting in their basement with their glued together Stegosaurus "red dragons" wringing their hands and discussing in villainous overtones on how they were going to create a No Girlz Allowed! club out of this whole "dungeons and dragons" thing they were inventing.

Sure, having females operating at lower stats ultimately does deincentivize people toward playing them. But only the shrillest of social crusaders would honestly believe those two toy-loving old coots were trying to exclude attack women in a misogynistic red haze 40 years ago. They were in uncharted waters. There was nothing like D&D before it came along. You find it easy to judge their balancing missteps with the 20/20 hindsight of someone that has seen the thousands of games all built off this prototype that they created. You have that advantage, they did not.

Honestly, shame on you. Shame on you for besmirching those dead men's names and legacies.

wow... really just wow!

Not everyone has to be the ultimate killing machine, but every character needs to be at least *viable*. Let's take the Pools of Darkness situation as an example (the game is based on 1e rules, where the level limits are worse than 2e, and the level cap for humans is 40). In this game, a female halfling fighter can't (without cheating, of course, but I'd say cheating would be justified in this case) advance past level *4*. That's 56 HP *maximum*. Consider that you have a 2e THAC0 of 17 (that's worse than a level 20 mage, who would have 14 THAC0 under 2e rules), and you can't even fulfill your role as well as a character in a completely different rule. Then a 20th level enemy casts Delayed Blast Fireball and you're caught in the area, taking on average (and assuming a failed saving throw, since saving throws are poor at low levels) of 90 damage (1e doesn't cap such spells); that's a lot when you have only 56 HP, and that's with perfect HP rolls. (Also, keep in mind that you don't get any extra attacks for levels; you *might* (in BG rules) have regular mastery in one weapon type, but that wouldn't be enough to save the character.)

Basically, the level limits have the effect of making such characters not viable at all. Get into a combat encounter, and that character's player basically has to sit out the entire encounter, as actually trying to participate would result in the character dying without accomplishing anything. This is not fun gameplay, and the developers should be ashamed of themselves for including such a rule in the first place.

Remember, the developers of the Baldur's Gate series chose to intentionally not implement the rule; there is a good *reason* for this.

You do realize that argument only works if the person you're talking to is cisgender, right?


According to Merriam-Webster, "transphobia" is indeed a word. Also, there is a huge difference between a crossdresser and a transgender person.

There are a few things I can say.

First, there is a quote attributed to Gary Gygax in which he claims to be a "biological determinist", a belief that has been the source of such horrific misapplications of science such as Social Darwinism and Scientific Racism. So, it is quite possible (and very likely IMO) that he actually was being deliberately sexist in making that rule. (I consider biological determinism to be inherently sexist and transphobic, especially since it actually goes against what science actually says.)

Second, the fact that Gary Gygax was a trailblazer does not exempt him from criticism. There is no reason to exclude him from criticism on issues like racial and gender limits, which many DMs houseruled away, and which disappeared as the game went into later editions. (On the other hand, it is still possible to enjoy a work and be critical of it at the same time.)

By the way, for those who defend the female strength rule, what should the strength cap for non-binary PCs (those who aren't male or female) be? (I note that 5th edition D&D explicitly allows non-binary characters.)

Side note: The bigoted belief that girls don't play these sort of games is also why Bard's Tale 1 and 2 have no female characters (except for a princess you can optionally rescue in 2 who doesn't look anything like a princess).