I suppose so, but the point is that such preferences are entirely player-imposed. I think the most accessible example would be Drizzt. Undoubtedly, he’s come across weapons with better enchantments. But he chooses to stick with the two scimitars.

Crpg’s prior to including proficiencies changed that mindset. Every fighter could, and would, use whatever had the highest to-hit, damage or other benefit. Every fighter was equally adapt at swords and axes and halberds. And while in pen-and-paper it allows players to role-play how they want, in crpg it makes the characters bland carbon copies.

I’m not complaining, I want to make that clear. I’m just pointing out an element that crpg’s can’t emulate from pen-and-paper, because the crpg puts more focus on the mechanics.

Initially, there were no character creation mistakes. Everything was pretty well random. You rolled once for each stat, and took what you got. Later revisions allowed you to roll up to 3 times and keep the best one, or swap your stats around, etc. But that was to allow more flexibility in choosing a class, not for min/maxing. Because the focus of the game wasn’t as much on the battle mechanics, it just wasn’t an issue. The idea of making a mistake at character creation is only post-crpg.

That’s why, getting back to the main point, it wasn’t as big of a deal that females couldn’t roll the highest strength. Because men rarely did, either. Nor did people complain that their cleric with 18 strength couldn’t roll for exceptional strength - except for maybe the very rarest of players who rolled an 18 strength cleric!

But in the crpg, where the mechanics are front and center, it makes it more profound to cripple the characters based on gender, without even giving anything as a trade off.

Some CRPGs handle character weapon preferences simply by not allowing the characters to equip other weapons. For example, in Chrono Trigger, Chrono can only equip swords, Marle only bows, and Lucca only guns. While some of this was seen in Final Fantasy 6, it is really Chrono Trigger that it became this strict. Or you might see that sort of thing with character classes; different classes can equip different items. For example, in Wizardry 5 you'll find some katanas, but fighters can't equip them; only samurai and ninja can.
Thing is:
* You can have characters who aren't balanced with each other, particularly if you have one player who got really lucky with stat rolls.
* You can have non-viable characters. For example, a character with extremely low constitution is going to have major issues surviving. There's also hard ability score requirements for high level spells (that aren't always implemented in CRPG adaptations of D&D), making lower stat characters non-viable longer term. Then there's also the remote possibility of a character not qualifying for any class with their starting stats, resulting in character creation failure.

At this point, I'd argue that the whole principle of the thing matters here, even if it comes up rarely in practice. The fact that the rules are sexist in this regard is enough of an issue to turn many players (particularly female players) off from the game.

One thing that can help is giving different weapon types distinct mechanics. A couple examples here:

In SaGa 2:
* Swords and axes use agility to hit and strength for damage.
* But there's lighter weapons, like rapiers, that use agility for damage instead.
* Bows and guns don't use the user's stats for damage. Guns use strength for accuracy, though that only matters for the weakest gun.
* Martial arts are treated as weapons, complete with limited durability. Furthermore, the power of a martial arts attack increases as durability decreases, with the final use doing triple damage on top of that factor.
* Machine guns and grenades always hit, are otherwise like guns, and can hit an entire group of enemies.
* Spells, of course, use different mechanics and usually hit groups.

In Final Fantasy 5:
* Attacks hit by default in this game.
* But some weapon types, like axes and bows, can miss. And, some targets can dodge.
* Axes have larger damage variance than swords, and they also pierce defense.
* Daggers and bows ignore half of the target's evasion. (This puts bows in an interesting situation; they have an inherent chance to hit, but have an easier time hitting evasive targets.)
* Rods, while weak, are a bit like spells; they use the attacker's magic power to determine damage.

Those are only negatives in CRPG’s. In a p&p game, they would inspire interesting dynamics. How would the character who rolled fantastic Olympian stats act around the normies? The normies in the party which he still must rely on for his own survival! Why is he slumming with the low-talent losers club, anyway?

Why does the fighter have a low Constitution? Was he sickly as a child and had to overcome? Or attacked by life-draining undead, which left him with a great anger and/or phobia? In the CRPG, it doesn’t matter, it’s a throwaway character, tossed aside with the re-roll button.

Agreed.