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Yes, I agree there should be trade-offs to females' lower STR.
But I highly doubt it was made for sexist reasons, but more for the "realism". Besides D&D was invented by males and played by males, and it may not even have occured to Gygax&CO that females might be interested in playing.
There was more of a gender gap at that time. I'm old enough to remember that no girls played football back then, for example. It was just the way it was. The boys had their games and the girls had theirs, and it was not due to some sexist conspiracy.
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PetrusOctavianus: I think it's racist that Halflings have so low STR (no, not really).
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dtgreene: There actually is a big difference here.

If you play a Halfling, there are trade-offs. In return for lower strength, you get resistance to magic and poison, as well as being able to get 19 Constitution (according to an online copy of the Pools of Darkness manual; might actually be Dexterity in game (havn't checked)). Also, the pencil and paper game gives them bonuses to thief skills, I believe. (Is that implemented in any of the Gold Box games?)

Female characters, on the other hand, are penalized and get nothing in return. It seems that Gary Gigax only wanted people to play male characters, so he penalized those who dared to play female characters (or at least that's my guess). As a result, from a game balance perspective, male and female characters are not balanced each all. (There are good reasons many DMs rule zeroed that rule away and that the rule did not survive to 2nd edition, while the halfling strength limit did.)
My understanding, from reading reviews of POR published when it came out, is that women in AD&D 1e get +1 charisma in exchange for -1 str. So they aren't penalized with nothing in return. For whatever reason, this wasn't included in POR and possibly the rest of the Gold Box series.

However, just to confirm for myself, I fired up my copy of POR off the Forgotten Realms Archives Silver Edition. I created a new character named test, and made them a Human Female Thief. I then added them to my party, chose the modify command, and set all their stats, including STR to 18. I notice that CHA didn't receive a +1 bonus either. I decided to poke around further, and creating a male dwarf fighter and a female dwarf fighter showed that for dwarves, women have a max STR 1 lower than male dwarves, and no CHA bonus. I haven't played around with the other races, but I think it's safe to say elements of AD&D 1st edition were implemented a tad shoddily in POR. I've attached screenshots.

Also, leaping straight from "Men and women are different in this game" to "Therefore the guy who made it must hate women" offends my sense of reason.
Attachments:
Maybe the Charisma bonus was not implemented bacause Charisma plays such a marginal role in the computer games?
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dtgreene: There actually is a big difference here.

If you play a Halfling, there are trade-offs. In return for lower strength, you get resistance to magic and poison, as well as being able to get 19 Constitution (according to an online copy of the Pools of Darkness manual; might actually be Dexterity in game (havn't checked)). Also, the pencil and paper game gives them bonuses to thief skills, I believe. (Is that implemented in any of the Gold Box games?)

Female characters, on the other hand, are penalized and get nothing in return. It seems that Gary Gigax only wanted people to play male characters, so he penalized those who dared to play female characters (or at least that's my guess). As a result, from a game balance perspective, male and female characters are not balanced each all. (There are good reasons many DMs rule zeroed that rule away and that the rule did not survive to 2nd edition, while the halfling strength limit did.)
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Namrok: My understanding, from reading reviews of POR published when it came out, is that women in AD&D 1e get +1 charisma in exchange for -1 str. So they aren't penalized with nothing in return. For whatever reason, this wasn't included in POR and possibly the rest of the Gold Box series.

However, just to confirm for myself, I fired up my copy of POR off the Forgotten Realms Archives Silver Edition. I created a new character named test, and made them a Human Female Thief. I then added them to my party, chose the modify command, and set all their stats, including STR to 18. I notice that CHA didn't receive a +1 bonus either. I decided to poke around further, and creating a male dwarf fighter and a female dwarf fighter showed that for dwarves, women have a max STR 1 lower than male dwarves, and no CHA bonus. I haven't played around with the other races, but I think it's safe to say elements of AD&D 1st edition were implemented a tad shoddily in POR. I've attached screenshots.

Also, leaping straight from "Men and women are different in this game" to "Therefore the guy who made it must hate women" offends my sense of reason.
In the first edition Player's Handbook:
Page 6:
"You will find no pretentious dictums herein, no baseless limits arbitrarily placed on female strength or male charisma..."

Page 9, from the Strength table:
"18-01/50: Maximum strength possible for a female human or male
gnome character"

As you can see, the Player's Handbook promised no limit on female strength but imposed one just a few pages later. Meanwhile, the Charisma table has no mention of a male charisma limit.

Also, the stats aren't equal: A bonus to Charisma does not compensate for a penalty to Strength. Giving human females +1 to Constitution might have balanced out the gender for that race (particularly since both differences only matter for fighter-types), but would not have worked for other races. +1 Dexterity doesn't help because 19 Dexterity has no AC benefit over 18.

The limit on female strength makes no sense from a game balance perspective, since there is nothing to compensate. It also makes no sense from a fun perspective, as it means that players who want to play strong women can't. Also, the rule alienates female players and was commonly house-ruled away.
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rkralik: I still DM with v3.5, but I can't imagine that Wizards would authorize any rework without going to their "latest" version.

In general, the games would be easier for a modern audience to enjoy with out the racial level limits, the female strength rule, and the multi-class restrictions (including for humans as the rules are in the newer systems, otherwise as DCT said, it would be unfair to human characters). Though the math is the same, replacing negative ACs and THAC0s with Attack bonuses and positive Defense ratings make combat much more intuitive.
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dtgreene: Well, the enhanced editions of Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 and Icewind Dale were allowed and are still using 2nd edition rules, so I don't see why this would be any different.

I should also point out that converting Unlimited Adventures to a newer edition would result in all the old designs not being usable, while not converting would allow at least non-hacked designs to work.
There are 2 differences in the situations.
1) The Infinity Engine games already were 2nd edition. So, updating the graphics and re-releasing them without changing the rules isn't releasing new content or really updating an old ruleset.
2) Historically, Wizards has only agreed to "update" the rules of the games to a newer edition unless they went to the version that they are actively selling.

So, I could see them agreeing to update the games for interface/graphics/etc but keep them in the 1st ed rules set or jump to 5ed. You don't really see "new" officially sanctioned content being made in systems that they aren't actively selling.

One possible work-around that just jumped into my head, is that Wizards did a recent reprint of the 1st edition rules after Gygax's death. We played in a tournament at GenCon a couple of years ago called the "Tower of Gygax" that was in a reboot of the 1st edition rules. I do not know (as we didn't buy the books), if they changed some of the stupid rules as part of it. If they did, that would seem a great way to make everyone happy.

A second alternative (after reading several of the posts after yours) would be to do just a graphics/interface update and add a modding interface to let people bypass official rules that everyone has moved on from. Does that make sense? I guess this is what folks are talking about with an updated version of UA?
No new rules in a remaster! I hate feats spam!
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Tarm: No new rules in a remaster! I hate feats spam!
How many feats does a hypothetical character get from 1 to 20?
How many feats does a character in an actual game get over the course of said game?

Answers: seven, and, like, two. Talk about spam.
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Tarm: No new rules in a remaster! I hate feats spam!
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Starmaker: How many feats does a hypothetical character get from 1 to 20?
How many feats does a character in an actual game get over the course of said game?

Answers: seven, and, like, two. Talk about spam.
Its felt like spam every time I've tried it in a game. I'm old school and much more comfortable with just stats.
But if they do a remaster they need to add a vault so we don't have to drop our money!!
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Tarm: No new rules in a remaster! I hate feats spam!
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Starmaker: How many feats does a hypothetical character get from 1 to 20?
How many feats does a character in an actual game get over the course of said game?

Answers: seven, and, like, two. Talk about spam.
I can't say how it maybe in computerized version of D&D using newer rule sets since it's been ages since I played Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, Icewind Dale 2, Temple of Elemental evil, ect. but I'm in a 3.5 edition pen and paper game currently and my level 6 Frenzy Berzerker who I started out as a fighter then went to barbarian and then finally to Frenzy Berzerker has close to 15 or so feats and don't get me started on all the feats the rest of the party has..



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jkhristian: But if they do a remaster they need to add a vault so we don't have to drop our money!!
Well they would need to add one to Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds anyway from Secret of the Silver Blades on there are vaults.

Can't recall if Champions of Krynn and Death Knights of Krynn have vaults or not.
Post edited September 26, 2015 by DCT
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DCT: Can't recall if Champions of Krynn and Death Knights of Krynn have vaults or not.
They do.
In case it was not mentioned, there are reworked versions of Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds available as modiles ("designs") for Unlimited Adventures. I have been playing PoR this way, and have a paladin and a ranger for the first time in this advanture - liking it very much so far.

Go here http://frua.rosedragon.org/modulelist/file.php and search for Game 39 and Game 40 :)
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PetrusOctavianus: Yes, I agree there should be trade-offs to females' lower STR.
But I highly doubt it was made for sexist reasons, but more for the "realism". Besides D&D was invented by males and played by males, and it may not even have occured to Gygax&CO that females might be interested in playing.
There was more of a gender gap at that time. I'm old enough to remember that no girls played football back then, for example. It was just the way it was. The boys had their games and the girls had theirs, and it was not due to some sexist conspiracy.
Back before Gygax passed away, I had a chance to ask him about on Dragonsfoot when he was answering questions there.

His response was basically that it was a stupid rule for a fantasy game and he wishes he hadn't included it, given the source material he was working with.

There were women in Gygax's original Greyhawk campaign, though it was dominated by guys.

As far as updating the mechanics, the scenarios would fall to pieces.

3.x was balanced around 4 or so characters fighting a relatively similar number of enemies, having an exact number of encounters per level, experience being awarded primarily through killing monsters rather than treasure.

They would have to rewrite the entire campaign.

Fancy the big orc assault in Sokal Keep being 5 orcs and 1 goblin because otherwise it'd be "unbalanced"?
Post edited August 20, 2016 by runequester