As I usually say: Realism goes out the window on page 20 of the core rulebook, asking for the game to be realistic is simply asking too much.
Casca from 'Berserk' comes to mind...
Until the first band of the hawk was destroyed. A significantly scarier example is Balsa the spear woman, she's one of the few individuals in fiction who are realistic, and would fair well in the Berserk world.
Sure rule-wise it's fluff, but if you are looking for a certain level of real world in your game, then it's fine.
I would say professional units would tend to be taller and stronger then average. Survival of the fittest.
Non professional mobs - terracotta roof tiles accounted for many a Greek hoplite, Persian warrior and Roman legionary (as well as a few generals).
So you're saying professional military training is a better differentiating factor than gender?
That's an honest question, not just me being sarcastic.My larger point is, it's fine to ask for realism, but I'm not all that sure what this thread is asking us to model realistically. Men have better upper body strength than women? Fine, but that only seems really pertinent if you're encounter is based around arm wrestling, or maybe grappling.
Both the above examples give a feat progression to sixth level, which means we're talking about professionals. If you don't like the idea of big brawny chicks that's your business, but I can't see trained fighters with skinny little girl arms. Wizards of either gender, sure, but no one who trains for physical combat.
What I am saying is a member your average professional female military unit would be taller and stronger than your average female civilian, especially if the unit has seen combat.
The gap in gender difference would narrow, it would still be noticeable but less of an issue.The other place women would excel is as light cavalry. Bow and spear armed they regain an advantage in height.
I don't know about heavy cav as the cost to personally fit plate armor to the wide range female bodyshapes would be prohibitative to the state. I can see units raised by very rich nobles to show off or units raised by places where it was part of that family's culture.
As for real word examples - the Greek amazons were a myth, the Sarmatians and other stepp cultures did have female horse archers, Spartan women trained themselves and did learn to throw javelin.
You need more women then men to maintain your culture. Deliberately placing those that would give birth to the next generation of your tribe/nation in danger is equal to cultural suicide.
In my world female units if they did exist (outside those belonging to mad emperors) would be for home defence and never serve outside their territory.
This is how I would do an all female military in my home brew world (if I had one).
The fortified down of Alistrae sits over the a pass in the black rock mountains. The mountains mark the border between the mist haunted Hobgoblin steppe and the lush kingdom of Byron.
Byron has been at war with the Orcs for many years and the majority of men are called south each year for campaign season to clear the borders.
The women of Alistrae take responsibility for the cities defence when the men are on campaign. Only a small percentage of women are on duty as the calling the whole city to arms would not be economically viable and would only done in the event of an invasion. All women are expected to spend 3 hours one night a week training with their assigned units.
Non combat women and children are taught first aid and fire-fighting.
Baroness Liella takes overall command and is advised by the one armed veteran Sir Villias Barca, Cyliana the priestess of Erastil and the old wizard Arataxus.
Lady Elisa M'alaistier (the 5th daughter of house M'alaistier who was given a choice between entering a gods service or joining the scouts because her family could not afford the dowry) is the commander of the Alistrae Scouts - a group of mounted archers who's task is to seek intelligence regarding the movement of hobgoblins on the other-side of the pass. As well as to patrol the roads and farms surrounding the city keeping them clear of bandits and pests.
The military commands of the town are divided up by wall section. The typical armament of the few male and mostly female guards is studded leather or chain, buckler, a sword staff, a re-curve bow, sling and a short sword.
When called to arms 20 percent of the towns female population can be armed and pressed into service.
I think it's for the better that much of what goes on in the abdominal region is ignored. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be for someone to expect me or any in my group to RP bathroom breaks, menstrual cycles, or genital mutilation.
@ Cranewings, I get what you're going for. The muscle bound woman is not something you'd see in great numbers unless you created "warrior women" society and for some reason it's usually barbarian woman. Anyway, I don't think it's sexist to say that men are naturally more inclined towards strength. However, if this is what you are trying to model, I have a little question for you. Do you find that you make your male sorcerer, wizard, etc with higher strength as well even though they may not find it useful in their field?
I get that you want to make woman the "mobility over brute strength" the norm of your PCs, and I don't necessarily disagree with that proposition, but I'd like you to also look at the inverse as well if that's the route you're choosing.I don't really think that this topic requires an entire thread. Decide if it's dexterity over strength or whatever and go from there, after that gender stops mattering.
Also the title is misleading as any female fighter build is just as "realistic" as any male fighter build. The fact that you can make a clumsy person hit better through strength alone is one of the strange things the D&D system is built around. Also if damage is supposed to be an abstraction of how well one hit, why is strength more important than dexterity? Realistically, men and women need the same skills to become good at fighting. Pure strength based fighting isn't really advantageous when well made weapons are added to the equation. Speed and skill is more important than force especially when the weapons compensate. In cases like that it's just easier to treat it like the game it is, a game.
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So you're saying professional military training is a better differentiating factor than gender?
That's an honest question, not just me being sarcastic.
Yes. Professional military training is a far more important differentiating factor than gender. And the more advanced your killing technology gets, the more clear that gets-- but even with ancient tech and weapons that are apparently entirely strength driven, a well-trained woman will stomp an untrained man rather easily, in spite of the difference in strength and size (unless someone has been insisting on training the woman in methods of combat that are totally unsuited to her capabilities and the man is something of a 'natural'-- almost nothing, in the 'real world' anyway, is answerable in all cases with just a simple yes or no).
One of the problems is the "Universal" weight for the different Items, armors and Weapons.
In 3E, weapon size rules were simpler and more varied. You could wield weapons up to one size category larger than yourself, and there wasn't a restriction for reach-weapons based on size.
So if you wanted to wield a "small longspear" as a human, you could do so as a one-handed weapon. It would weigh half as much, you could use a shield, or wield it 2 handed at your option, and it would have a d6 damage instead of a d8.
Most people took advantage of this with dual-wielding, since you could wield a lighter version of your favorite blade or weapon in your off-hand, while still being able to have Weapon Specialization and similar feats aid you.
They complicated things significantly with the move to 3.5, as now a large longsword, while statistically identical to a greatsword, is not the same thing, and you take a -2 penalty for trying to wield the ogre's sword as treasure.
.
.Technically, an armor for a 5 feet tall guy weighting 130 lbs would be lighter than one made for a 6'6'' 275 lbs guy, not to mention, they wouldn't fit on each other.
One thing that came to mind for me is the Aiel from Wheel of Time. They generally used the same weapons as the men.
A few key points
1. They swore off having children. Even today, take a chunk of time off to bear and raise children can have a huge negative effect on your career. Any group of elite female warriors is going to have to have a solution to the preganacy issue.
2. Echo the earlier comments on selection. Lets say that women are on average -2 strength compared to men(just a stats demonstration) all that does is shift the bell curve to the left by 1 standard deviation. So, for every 10 men with a 14 strength, you should be able to find 1 woman with a 14 strength. If you go through enough applicants, you will eventually find one with an 18 strength(18 +2 for being human, -2 for being female), maybe the female warrior groups are just more selective in their recruiting. The total number of female Aiel warriors was about a tenth that of the men. They were just as skilled and gifted, but there were less of them.
3. Training > physical stats. You can take a person who is physically weak, and if they train long enough they will excel. Even if they pick the wrong martial art, they will still be good. In short, a level 5 fighter with all 10s will beat a level 1 warriors with an 18 strength. To me elite is more about the amount of training recieved.
Looking at the limits of human potential I've noticed he world's strongest weight lifters are male and the world's best gymnasts are female. Though I've known very strong women (that could kick my ass) on average men have more physical strength. It always seemed to me men should have a plus to strength and women a plus to dexterity.
Mental attributes are much harder to objectively quantify so are best left alone. Then again for political correctness I suppose it's best to avoid stat differences all together
Anywho! Seems to me the average female fighter would benefit more from a Dex based Fighter build.
Heptathletes train more for endurance/speed than strength, so comparing strength is a bad argument, that lady could run literal circles around all but the most athletic men. Which, by the way, is actually a kind of freaky thing to behold.
Given these physical limitations, very few cultures have/will invest significant effort in training females for combat outside of a home defense levy (ie not field conditions). As a result, you will find fewer skilled female combatants, relative to the female population... Not to mention the relative values to a low tech society of a womb vs. a dangly bit. The dangly bits are much more expendable...
Men on average are better suited to the style of combat you're talking about. There are however other ways of fighting. As for why few cultures train women warriors I believe that's not just based on potential. Women can be trained to fight in ways that suit them. The simple truth of our evolutionary past is just that men more expendable. Think about like this. If 100 women and 1 man survive you can repopulate and your culture survives. If 100 men and 1 woman survive you're screwed. We're just psychologically wired to not put women at risk like that.
Heptathletes train more for endurance/speed than strength, so comparing strength is a bad argument, that lady could run literal circles around all but the most athletic men. Which, by the way, is actually a kind of freaky thing to behold.Ever thrown a shot put? Muscle counts!
Yes, Mrs Kersee was not a specialized weight lifter. Neither is any kind of infantry trooper. Nor is the average human male I compared her too. Ask the women you know how many of them can bench press 150 lbs. If you find more than 1 in 100, your cheating and only asking the people at your weightlifting club.
Males tend to train for strength, even if it's not as active as going to a weightlifting club, because most men value their physical power more than anything else about their health.
None of that's going to stop her from kicking the crap out of the average males because she's in better shape.
What I am saying is a member your average professional female military unit would be taller and stronger than your average female civilian, especially if the unit has seen combat.Seeing combat makes you taller?
:P
Considering how much time you spend lying down, because standing up is suicide, one would figure it would make you shorter. Although, my old tank company averaged 6'1" in height, so who knows.
While sex might have a minor, minor effect, gender and gender roles would matter a lot more - even for body mass. In a gender-neutral society, the amount of muscle mass would be more even.
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Considering how much time you spend lying down, because standing up is suicide, one would figure it would make you shorter. Although, my old tank company averaged 6'1" in height, so who knows.What I am saying is a member your average professional female military unit would be taller and stronger than your average female civilian, especially if the unit has seen combat.Seeing combat makes you taller?
:P
Heh.
When I joined the Army, I was 5'10" tall. After 23 years of service, including Airborne school and SFAS (didn't get selected due to bad feet, but at least I tried, y'know?) and all that wear and tear, now I'm 5'9" tall... I'd say (based on my experience) that military service does make you shorter. :P
Considering how much time you spend lying down, because standing up is suicide, one would figure it would make you shorter. Although, my old tank company averaged 6'1" in height, so who knows.What I am saying is a member your average professional female military unit would be taller and stronger than your average female civilian, especially if the unit has seen combat.Seeing combat makes you taller?
:P
Heh.
When I joined the Army, I was 5'10" tall. After 23 years of service, including Airborne school and SFAS (didn't get selected due to bad feet, but at least I tried, y'know?) and all that wear and tear, now I'm 5'9" tall... I'd say (based on my experience) that military service does make you shorter. :P
That's what you get for jumping out of planes, if I was jumping out of a plane something went seriously wrong somewhere.
Ok, I tried to avoid this topic, I really really did damnit.
By realistic, I am assuming real-world realistic, not "fantasy world" realistic. I note many people in this thread are bringing up examples such a brienne of tarth and the aiel from the Wheel of time. Those work in fantasy. They don't work in real life. While I will admit the presence of exceptionally physically gifted or skilled individuals (ie adventurers), for significant sized units, you can just about forget about melee combat.
Consider the following, Jackie Joyner Kersee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Joyner-Kersee
Heptathelete (including both shot put and javelin throw), one of the top 1% of women's athletes who ever lived. Her bench press topped out at approximately 150 lbs... http://www.mariahburtonnelson.com/Articles/iwonim.htm
Whereas the average male between 20 and 29 can bench 180 pounds. http://www.elitefeet.com/are-you-an-average-manMass also counts. Real field soldiers need to carry kit. Food, water, spare socks, armor, weapons, entrenching tools, bedrolls...
"What are soldiers for Daddy?"
"Why, to hang things on Sonny."
While it has been suggested that pound for pound, women have better endurance, that extra 40 to 100 lbs of body mass means men fare much better in the field, when all the extra crap is added to the load.
But that is just it, it can be realilstic if you understand the stats. Assuming women are on average 1 standard deviation weaker than men. That means for every 1 woman who can bench 180, there are 10 men who can do it. Fine, the points is while there may be fewer women who can match the men in strength, they do exist. If we are talking about elite groups of professional soldiers who are selective about their members it is safe to assume they don't just let in every 6 strength weakling that shows up on their door step.
Given these physical limitations, very few cultures have/will invest significant effort in training females for combat outside of a home defense levy (ie not field conditions). As a result, you will find fewer skilled female combatants, relative to the female population... Not to mention the relative values to a low tech society of a womb vs. a dangly bit. The dangly bits are much more expendable...
I disargee. The main reason why cultures are reluctant to invest in women in this capacity is that women are suceptable to a certain disease that renders them unable to fight in the field for 1-3 years. Because of this, a group of professional female soldiers would have a plan for dealing with pregnacy. Most likely they would forbid or stygmatize relationships with men.
There has never been historically a tribe of Amazons, or a nation that fielded females soldiers as a primary force.
Y'know, the thing about this thread is, Conan the Barbarian is about as far from historical accuracy as a character can get, and no one ever asks for realistic male fighter builds. Like, ever.
As for Evil Lincoln's (perfectly reasonable but sadly naive) request two pages back, I'll bet you a female fighting force will use exactly the same tactics as a male one; that's what the armor's for.
Mind you, though out all of history, male combatants who ran up to an enemy squad and tried the real world equivalent of power attack/cleave died in the first or second round of combat.
Not to sound like a son of a b+#$% Crane, but the thread title you pointed me to mentions persians, not males. It goes without saying that the persian soldiers were male, but the second and third lines of my above post prompt this question: did it occur to you at all in your research of persian tactics that said tactics put military training ahead of gender as relates to combat effectiveness?
(Disclaimer: I am thinking about this conceptually from a bio-physics standpoint with little historical research backing me and no experience with martial arts. I'm b*!*$%@@ting this, its just what I would expect to see.)
I think the problem is that you are trying to find something that does not really exist: a large scale fighting force designed with prodominently women.
There are 2 different things you need to consider: personal and unit combat. On a unit level, individual mobility is less important. Units of women would be unlikely, but mixed units were not unheard of. In a mixed unit, women would have used whatever weapons their male counterparts would have used, cause unit cohesion is important.
Regional fighting styles would not have been designed specificly for women in most areas. Modifications have been made in some though, so you can look there. People have given some good advice in that regard.
Female-centric styles would be designed to play to their general advantages and downplay their weaknesses. Reach is problomatic, so they would worry about either regaining it,(as with a polearm, where the few inches are less of an issue) or closing quickly and getting inside the opponent (close range grapples/throws). The reduced reach also causes them to get less leverage, so weapons uses in an arc will get less power, causing piercing weapons to become slightly more efficient (I do not know how relevant this would be). They would favor styles that rely less on brute strength and more on speed and accuracy, where they can compete favorably.
Women fighters would have harder times in areas where defensive items were common. Blocking a blow is more difficult when you are physically smaller, brute force techniques will likely be more effective against you, and the defensive items are a higher percentage of body weight and therefore cause faster fatigue.
The problem with modeling any of this in D&D is that none of it has any mechanical ballance. A 16 str determines how much you can lift and how hard you can hit, even though someone's deadlift may be huge while they can't throw a punch to save their lives. It can be in reverse too. Someone may be very good at converting the strength they have into a large impulse, but relatively poor at sustained strain of a lift. Fast, agile combat is not very mechanically rewarding. Also, a lot of abilities can be flavored in different ways and have the same mechanical effect, so trying to tie a style down to a single build is difficult. Also, many of the significant real world differences, like a few inches of extra reach, just don't matter for purposes of the game.
I got thinking about this reading the "Character Gender / Game Play" thread. If I were going for realism in a setting, what sort of fighting can women excel in to a point where they can kill men and monsters?
If you're really looking for realism, you'd probably build them like warriors (like most male warriors) but equip them with weapons suitable for defense of a location - bows and polearms. As plenty of people have pointed out in this thread, women in history were more likely oriented toward defense. This is largely because of the roles men and women played in society - ranging outward (hunting, going to war) vs focused locally (gathering, farming, maintaining the home) - due to the way human sexual reproduction works. Women tend to be pinned down by reproduction, men are not so we have a broad division of labor. Alternative arrangements may be possible, just not as common because of the way the biology works.
As far as looking at mechanical differences, when you're looking at reasonable NPC builds, there's not much point going above a 14 on strength in the first place. So some with a 12, some with a 14 works just fine for both men and women. It's probably not worth much of the effort building in other mechanical differences. If you really are working to portray things realistically, you'll do that mostly via flavor than through mechanics. It's a lot harder for a player to observe the gender roles of women, contrasted with those of men, because she has finesse fighting feats rather than a high strength, than through your flavor text and description.
It depends on if you are simply trying to make a single fighting unit or an entire culture. If it's just a single fighting unit, I would say there would be no differences. If it's an entire culture, cultures generally play to their strengths, and in the case of an female dominated culture, relying on direct raw strength and power is not going to be their strength, and this would hold true in any aspect of their culture, not just the battlefield. In general, I would model such a culture to rely on speed, wit, trickery, and similar indirect tactics throughout their culture, which would carry over to battlefield tactics. I would use similar tactics for any culture that for whatever reason was not in a position to physically dominate their neighbors.
Many barbarian tribes, which is the closest thing you are likely to find to mimic the Celts, would tend to be ruled by might, not a specific gender, so having a gender neutral society is a valid option as well, and give you further options regarding female warriors.
This thread gets off-topic really quickly.
To answer the OP, the thing I'd remember most when designing a women's fighting group is not to fall into the very sexist 'I'm not sexist' trap of believing 'equality' means "women and men must be exactly the same in every way." (I'm talking physically, not legally.)
Every historic battlefield combat-style is built to men's strength because historically, armies were either male-dominated or co-ed. Even historical societies where women's rights outstrapped men's rights (they did exist, including societies where women could initiate divorces and men couldn't, and societies where women chose their husbands and men had little to no say. They just had to dress up and dance and hope a woman liked them enough to pick them,) They still sent the men out to war because ancient war technology favored strength and size.
So my suggestions for how a female-dominated fighting society would work go like this:
(interesting note: As these tactics favor being small and dexterous, men could still participate but would be the minority. You could have all sorts of fun by having your PCs meet the few men in the military and have them get all offended at the PC's 'sexism'.
"Men can fight too! We're not all big, uncoordinated idiots, you sexist jerks!" Fun RP opportunities.)
Main tactic: mounted combat.
European horses needed to be built like tanks to carry giant men in huge plate armor. Women, even in full plate, would weight a lot less, and if they're going for speed and wearing light armor, they could have horses bred for sprint speed instead of endurance. I'd give their horses less HP and a base speed of +20 to reflect that. Horsewomen would favor using bows and their extra speed to kill the enemy without ever getting into melee distance, and make good use of their mounted combat feat (high dex, light armor = high ride skill) to avoid any damage. From what I understand, this is similar to the Arabian fighting style during the Crusades, and is one of the reasons the Europeans could never hold the Holy Land for long. Worth looking up.
Next: probably a lot of archers.
If we're looking to make the women mechanically different from men, then the most common thought would be a -2 str, +2 Dex-hence archers. If there are forests in or near their home, it might be fun to let them use their dex instead of their strength for tree climbing, making it more acrobatic and more in-line with their speed-and-accuracy fighting style. Climbing a rock face might favor upper body strength, but climbing a tree often favors being light and having good balance.
On the battlefield on foot: most likely spears.
As has been mentioned before, Japanese women preferred the polearm as it negated a man's strength and size benefit. If this society goes to war with male armies often, they might employ especially small women who could dodge the bigger, slower men more easily and use the spear to further negate his advantage and better use her speed and size. I'd make these women spear dancers, possibly giving them the benefits of a small size (+1 ac, +1 to hit) without being small, similar to how a Dwarf gets 20 movement speed while remaining medium sized.
For elite guard, nobility and and heroes: the Duelist Prestige Class, the Arcane Archer prestige class and the ranged-Cavalier archetype.
Not much to say that hasn't been said, but if I were a nobleman training my daughters to defend themselves from assassins, then assuming my daughters weren't built by tanks I would train them in fencing. European nobleman were trained to be knights, but in this society the 'knight' equivalent is a mounted archer. I'd start there when designing how most nobles, heroes and elites would therefore have been trained.
And finally, lots of magic.
If I were a female-military in a world with magic and monsters and I knew I'd be facing things that were bigger and stronger than me, I'd go to the tactic that negated all physical advantage: magic. Plus, behavioral scientist have shown that little girls gain language and focus quicker than little boys, so a female society that used magic would find they could start girls in magic training at a much younger age than a male one. Not to mention that with the tactics above, it would be much easier for the society in question to clear a space for someone to throw a fireball, blanketing the slower-moving enemy with area effects and dodging the blasts themselves.
And of course, as with any society, there would be bigger, stronger people employing the 'tank' tactic of heavy armor and big weapons. An all-female society, however, would probably have not developed such a dependency on it like a male-centered military would. With tactics like these you could also explain why women made better warriors, as the bell-curve would support more women being suitable fighters than men.
Actually, that is a good point. I could see an elite group of all female magus bodyguards. They specifically use their magic to cover their weaknesses while fighting. Once they have caster levels, a lot of the problem with carrying weight and endurance vanish as they could use spells like ant haul to deal with those problems.
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I'm locking this thread. It's really trying to have two discussions that are at cross-purposes with each other. If you want to discuss real armies of women or the lack thereof, we don't have a military history forum, so please go to Off Topic.
If you want actual builds for female fighters in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, please post in the advice forum, but you might not get very far, since gender does not affect game statistics and there are already plenty of fighter build threads.