I've been spending the last few months doing a lot of strength training, and when I was looking at the carrying capacity for pathfinder the other day, something struck me.
People in PF are strong, or people today are weak.
The feat of pushing 100lbs (45kg) overhead is beyond most people I know. It took me a while to achieve that weight for reps (I could do a jerk and get it overhead like that, but the game assumes you can move 20 feet in 6 seconds while bearing your max load). And that is Str 10. Average.
I started with a pair of 35lbs kettlebells (70lbs total), which I was able to get overhead pretty easily. But a lot of my untrained friends would struggle with that, and I don't think any women I know, barring those that actually go to the gym regularly, would be able to do that and walk 20 feet in 6 seconds.
That is Str 7. The minimum allowed strength for a PC when using point-buy. In retrospect, I find it rather hilarious that we've been describing str 7-8 wizards as weaklings barely able to carry their staff and spellbook.
Even now, after months of working out, I find that I am at str 13, tops. I have not tried to lift 150lbs overhead out of fear of strain, so I cannot really say.
I reckon most men who do not work out are around str 6-8, and most women who do not work out are around str 4-7.
Thoughts?
Modern humans also do not do constant manual labor.
Serfs did farm work. Craftsmen did physical work. Nobles practiced the sword.
That's enough to boost the average
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The game is not a simulation of reality. Any comparison to reality will likely fail.
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Well, it's more like the carrying capacity system isn't really designed as a lifting system, it's designed to reflect how much weight you can carry. Can you carry 100 lbs and move at a decent pace (ie: more than 5 feet per round)? That includes stuff in, say, a backpack or duffle bags, mind. If so, you have at least Str 10. I know I've carried around amounts I probably couldn't lift over my head.
The maximum you can carry being how much you can lift is a simplification for ease of use, not a really good measure in its own right. Though if you figure in adrenaline, it'd probably work if you needed to lift something desperately.
Here I thought the charts a bit low honestly. :/ having strength trained off and on most of my teenage years and into adulthood 3-7 months at a time. For instance at 180 body weight I achieved a "lift off ground" of 400 exactly which calculates on the 15 strength, but is not even 2.5x my body weight. A "strong" highschool football player is expected to deadlift about 2-2.5 times body weight. So at 220 lbs a teenager with good strength training will pull around 500 give or take a few pounds. That's a kid. It also the 17 strength mark. So if your picturing !981 Arnold Schwarzeneggar as your image of 17 or 18 strength, think again, its more like Arnold high end of 19 almost a 20 and Sylvester Stallone is your 18 strength guy. Magnus Magnusson you're talking 21-22 strength.
The game does not represent reality. It gives you one strength score for everything and in real life your strength can vary in certain areaa. Also an old woman can possibly outmuscle a troll due to a low roll. IRL that would not happen as strength is more consistent. I am not going to overpower an NFL lineman as an example.
I thought carry overhead was like how people balance stuff on their head, which is surprisingly more stable and supportive then just having it above your head with your arms.
Reality simulator it is not. That much is blatantly clear. As Wraith said, an old woman can out-muscle a troll with far higher reliability than she should have.
It was mostly a notice of how people perceive strength, both as the stat and in relation to real life comparison. It started with me being irked over
Considering the ease and speed with which my barely trained self can swing 35lbs kettlebells around, and a good sword is supposedly balanced, that just seemed off. Like how Bruce Lee had to slow down and ease up to let the camera follow and not hurt other actors. My friend claimed that "you can't swing a sword that big", but I feel that if you are THAT strong, and THAT big, you should not have more trouble with a sword that size than a normal sized person has with a normal sized longsword or bastard sword.
This led to this topic, since I find that in retrospect, I've been grossly overestimating real life strength in comparison to PF averages.
The game does not represent reality. It gives you one strength score for everything and in real life your strength can vary in certain areaa. Also an old woman can possibly outmuscle a troll due to a low roll. IRL that would not happen as strength is more consistent. I am not going to overpower an NFL lineman as an example.
My house rule is that you cannot beat someone who is 2 higher than you in *pure* strength tests. Pushing open a door, attacking, wrestling, and all that call for extras (+bab, +---, ...) and this tips the odds more in the favour of the troll vs old lady.
It can still hapen, but the bodybuilder vs boyscout in a armwrestlingmatch? I know who will win ;)
Reality simulator it is not. That much is blatantly clear. As Wraith said, an old woman can out-muscle a troll with far higher reliability than she should have.
It was mostly a notice of how people perceive strength, both as the stat and in relation to real life comparison. It started with me being irked over ** spoiler omitted **
Considering the ease and speed with which my barely trained self can swing 35lbs kettlebells around, and a good sword is supposedly balanced, that just seemed off. Like how Bruce Lee had to slow down and ease up to let the camera follow and not hurt other actors. My friend claimed that "you can't swing a sword that big", but I feel that if you are THAT strong, and THAT big, you should not have more trouble with a sword that size than a normal sized person has with a normal sized longsword or bastard sword.
This led to this topic, since I find that in retrospect, I've been grossly overestimating real life strength in comparison to PF averages.
Martell was quick, and i'm pretty sure he was using a largish greatsword, after looking at pictures it's almost as tall as he is.
It was mostly a notice of how people perceive strength, both as the stat and in relation to real life comparison. It started with me being irked over ** spoiler omitted **Considering the ease and speed with which my barely trained self can swing 35lbs kettlebells around, and a good sword is supposedly balanced, that just seemed off. Like how Bruce Lee had to slow down and ease up to let the camera follow and not hurt other actors.
Yeah, it wasn't very impressive. Would have looked more plausible if Clegane had wielded a big axe or somesuch.
On PF, it just sounds as if the 'lift over head' numbers are a bit high relative to the 'carrying capacity' numbers.
Martell was quick, and i'm pretty sure he was using a largish greatsword, after looking at pictures it's almost as tall as he is.Reality simulator it is not. That much is blatantly clear. As Wraith said, an old woman can out-muscle a troll with far higher reliability than she should have.
It was mostly a notice of how people perceive strength, both as the stat and in relation to real life comparison. It started with me being irked over ** spoiler omitted **
Considering the ease and speed with which my barely trained self can swing 35lbs kettlebells around, and a good sword is supposedly balanced, that just seemed off. Like how Bruce Lee had to slow down and ease up to let the camera follow and not hurt other actors. My friend claimed that "you can't swing a sword that big", but I feel that if you are THAT strong, and THAT big, you should not have more trouble with a sword that size than a normal sized person has with a normal sized longsword or bastard sword.
This led to this topic, since I find that in retrospect, I've been grossly overestimating real life strength in comparison to PF averages.
And he likely does bicep curls with twice the weight of that sword. It should not be unwieldy for someone THAT strong.
After he got nicked, I understand him slowing down, since Oberyn's spear had enough fantasy super-poison to kill a mammoth.
I can tell you when I was landscaping for 5-6 years I was much stronger without weightlifting than I am now, having an office job and hitting the gym every day.
There's no replacement for a hard working life of exercising 12 hours a day when it comes to strength and endurance. The only thing holding people back in the "medieval" age would have been nutrition. Otherwise I'd easily estimate the average guy's strength would be 1.5x today's.
I also tend to look at the lifting maxes as a way of gauging what the simulated real world strength would be. I tend not to look only at move speeds, because it seems too deceptive and involves factoring in too many abstractions.
That is, how can I really determine where the breaking point is where I begin to suffer max dex penalties, or penalties to my dex and strength based skills, or when my speed has suddenly reached a threshold where it drops by 10 feet per round. And so on.
Saying "Can I lift X over my head?" and "Can I lift 2X off the ground?" is a lot simpler. So far I'm somewhere between a 13 and a 14 based on that, and I've reached a similar conclusion to the OP.
It is also interesting, as Daenar points out, how a lot of young folks that keep to athletics are able to lift a lot of weight, though. Maybe we're more of a split between 7s and 13s, which averages out to 10s even if the average dude's strength isn't a 10.
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Against those saying that this is a failure of the rules, I'd like to propose a mechanical way of representing this that I think is fairly elegant:
Sedentary lifestyle, if statted out for Pathfinder, would be a disease.
It's not that you're meeting people with low base physical scores. It's that you're meeting people suffering from an affliction that has withered away what might be quite decent base scores.
(The base affliction rules provide for some afflictions that, once contracted, cannot be cured by simple Fortitude saves. In this case, it's cure: exercise)
