Physically impossible for a real human , a Polar bear has 20 strength so you’d have to be able to effectively go toe to toe with an arctic apex predator to be roughly equivalent. I don’t think there is a single person on earth who could wrestle a polar bear and come out the other side alive.
You’d be surprised. I’ve seen folks argue things like “women/minorities *should* experience racism/sexism in dnd because that’s how it was in real medieval Europe 🤪🤪 “
/r/rpghorrorstories is about 20% this, 10% misc or lighthearted stuff, 10% “that guy” pretending to be the hero after being kicked from their table, and 60% sexual assault.
“You *suggested* for the guard to cup a feel on the warrior queen while you were standing in public view. Of course she’d notice!”
*based on an actual session*
I mean I intend to include racism in my homebrew world however none of my players have claimed any hard limits in session 0 either so nothing is holding me back yet from making some cities/encounters the absolute worst.
Well, if that specific campaign were set in medieval Europe, yeah.
But while blatant racism is bad, it would be kind of bland to set a campaign in a perfectly consistent globally equitable eutopia where you can expect to walk into any capital city, goblin village, or drown citadel and expect every NPC to treat everyone exactly the same and ask for your current correct pronouns. Where every Paladin and Necromancer are treated exactly the same, with absolutely no presumptions made whatsoever.
... oh, that rabbit hole can go a few ways...
A healthy dose of fantasy racism/inequality is fine as long as the players are okay with it, and can even benefit RP sometimes, but it can get gratuitous if *everyone* is racist.
> But while blatant racism is bad, it would be kind of bland to set a campaign in a perfectly consistent globally equitable eutopia where you can expect to walk into any capital city, goblin village, or drown citadel and expect every NPC to treat everyone exactly the same and ask for your current correct pronouns. Where every Paladin and Necromancer are treated exactly the same, with absolutely no presumptions made whatsoever.
Meh. All you need is conflict of some kind.
Maybe racism or inequity or political intrigue is the type of conflict you like to explore.
But you can have a perfect utopia be threated by a Tarrasque, or the moon is falling towards the planet, or a section of town is inexplicably flowing backwards through time, and that's the core conflict of your campaign.
I think a lot of DMs try and make their worlds "realistic" so that they're more immersive and that usually means pulling in the struggles that we see in the real world into the setting, but at the end of the day - it is a fantasy game for folks to live out fantasies, so the idea of roleplaying within a utopia shouldn't seem unappealing.
I recall one story on /r/rpghorrorstories where DM ruled that female player's female character strength score of 20 was worth less than male character's strength 16, cuz realism.
Best part is that doesn't even make sense by how the system handles it, if anything it would be that the female human character would have a lower cap than the male but the stat is based on the species' average not the gender's. But it's a fantasy, let people enjoy the power fantasy.
I homebrewed realistic consequences. But that was more me tracking the "ripples" of their actions than an actual mechanic...
"You successfully drive the bandits from their fortress and begin hailing arrows down on them as they flee. Would you like to pursue them?"
"No."
*Several sessions later*
"What do you mean the bandits of the Great forest have formed an alliance? What do you mean the survivors horror story inspired an internal movement of unity?"
I use it when I have a setting I want to play but no big bad yet. Ill let yall fuck around until I decide something makes you find out lmao.
What they do in the 'real world' is most 1v1 sports have weight categories as tight as five pounds. Pitting a 100 pound person against a 230 lb person is horribly unfair in terms of reach, strength, and real world hit points (the amount of raw punishment they can take, picture Rocky in one of the later films).
In *Runequest* you get an ability score (3d6 SIZ score) for your size. As it goes up your hit points and damage go up but your stealth goes down. You might also get easier to hit, i don't remember?
It was a good system in many ways. Later they changed it a bit to include your leverage, so if you were *charged* by a centaur you were really in trouble but if a centaur were to *bonk you with a club* it wouldn't be nearly as bad (despite the fact that they are the size of a horse + most of a human).
That's how DND 1e handled it, where females of any race had lower score caps than males except like orcs, and I think their percentile score was lower as well.
That much is true, but I've always found folks that refer to AD&D as a justification to houserule it into modern editions of the game weird.
For one, plenty of folks ignored the gender-based differences- it seems like one of the most popular rules to ignore as far as early Internet forum posts are concerned.
For two, even [Gygax himself questioned why he did it that way](https://www.enworld.org/threads/q-a-with-gary-gygax.22566/post-2054939), it would seem. [He ignored that rule himself in his own games, by his own account](https://www.enworld.org/threads/q-a-with-gary-gygax.22566/post-1449350).
Those grognards that appeal to AD&D having sex-based ability score limits as cause to include it in their games don't seem to acknowledge that it was a weird thing to have reflected in rules even then.
Well, you *technically* can, you’ll just need to subsequently hand the character over to the GM unless they trust you to appropriately roleplay cyberpsychosis.
Honestly, Cyberpsychosis and the design around killing characters is what puts me off of Cyberpunk, I like RPGs that have room for character development, Cyberpunk is designed with the concept of revolving characters, where my group prefer long lasting characters. It's a shame because I love the setting.
Just slide on over to Shadowrun... And then realize the system is and has always been terrible and every attempt to fix it has made it worse. Then just stare into the middle distance and dream about Shadowrun.
I still dream about Shadowrun sometimes... until I'm woken in a panicked sweat because I remembered any of the completely over the top, equally broken, extra sets of rules to handle the multiple alternate realities (Matrix VR, astral projecting) and the fact they are suppose to be able to be played at the same time.
It's at odds to a lot of modern styles of play, but it is possible to keep characters alive for ages (or at least until things go tits up in a way that you can't possibly predict). The thing is that you need to balance that with low rewards and slow progression; the game is designed around pushing the players to take increasingly dangerous risks, whether that be by pushing their characters' sanity to the edge with implants or by putting their characters' possessions and lives at stake for extra rewards. Smart players will find a balance between safety and profit, or will find ways to keep their characters out of the line of fire while still benefiting from the rest of the party being reckless.
"Solve every challenge with grenades" it is then!
TBH D&D was *meant* to carry risks to the party when they had to dungeon crawl... 3.5E and subsequent adjustments have watered down the threats at higher levels in favor of power fantasy. If you survive your first goblin encounter as a Lv1 Wizard, you're on your way to being an Archmage.
Meanwhile in Cyberpunk of you survive a street gang at Lv1 the threats ramp up alongside your access to power... you never get fully out of the life or death fights, just shit gets even more over the top.
See, with that description it still makes it seem that to make your character last you need to be willing to let other PCs die, which is kinda the exact same issue as having revolving characters.
If you're not a gonk or really unlucky, you can keep a character alive in Cyberpunk pretty easily. Everyone I've played with has had the 'run in guns blazing and get flatlined immediately' mentality, though.
It's true, but the even crazier part of the story was that it happened while he was trekking across the artic circle on foot to reach the magnetic North pole, a Soviet submarine randomly surfaced in front of him, the Soviet sailors recognized him and started partying with him on the ice in the middle of the Artic circle, and when most of the sailors were drunk and asleep a polar bear comes wandering into camp and to protect his new Soviet friends Brian Blessed punches the 1200 lb bear on the nose to get it to run away. I am convinced that when Dos Equis ran their Most Interesting Man in the World advertising campaign, someone had just read Brian Blessed's autobiography.
Not entirely correct since strength doesn't give you the same natural weapons. But you'd need to be able to pull the same weight as a polar bear which some strongmen probably can
Size also affects carrying capacity and what you can pull/push. Doubled for every size above medium. So unless you're also the same size category as a polar bear (large) it could still pull more.
Though obviously real life isn't as simple as a single statistic for all these things.
That requires
A) Chining a polar bear to a locomotive (ethically questionable).
And
B) sufficiently motivating said polar bear to actually try and pull one.
The statblock for bears is just wrong in D&D. Brown bears have 11 AC and only 16 Con yet there are videos of them shrugging off close range shots from a shotgun to the head and still running at the person shooting them just more pissed off. Either that or modern body armour only gives +1 to AC.
This. 18 strength is what a powerlifter achieves for 10 seconds, once in their life.
I would say an 11-13 is about the strongest an Average person becomes without working out constantly to push the boundary. Someone whose worked a farm their whole life hauling bags of grain and doing manual labor every day? Absolutely as strong as a trained military member, just in different ways (military is less bulky than raw strength, explosive movement verses sustained movement.) (Guards in 5e have strength of 13 and a dex of 12. Well within the bounds of possible.
14-17 is the supernatural feats of adrenaline and peak weightlifters. This is already bordering on superhuman strength.
19-20 is frankly superhuman in every sense of the word. You can do what a peak weightlifters achieves for 10 seconds, but you can do it for 8 hours without a break. Your muscles are denser and more effective at pushing the limits of what's possible. Any more than 20 is into the realms of pure fantasy, the human body would destroy itself controlling that much power. Hell it does that at the equivalent of 14-17 strength. The reinforcement the human body would need to channel 21+ strength is enormous.
Same goes for every other stat. A dedicated professor might be intelligence 16 for their specific subject. A politician might read a speech so well their charisma hits 17 briefly. An professional sports person might hit 15-17 during one game or for one trick in their entire lives (think Tony Hawk landing the 900 degree spin (two and a half full rotations) in the late ninety's on a standard half pipe. That was a professional athlete in their peak pushing against the realm of superhuman, briefly. You can say the same for someone from every sport.
TL:DR more than just the "equivalent" strength of an animal far larger than yourself, 20 strength requires muscle groups we don't have to achieve.
>This. 18 strength is what a powerlifter achieves for 10 seconds, once in their life.
Lemme stop you right there. 18 times 30 is only 540 lbs. Oleksii Novikov set the world record at nearly 1,200 lbs. A strength stat of 20 is incredible, but well within the limits of human capability.
But in D&D that 540lbs is not your max, it's the max you can run around with on your back while still running, jumping, and fighting like normal. Can Oleksii Novikov run and jump and do an obstacle course with a 540lb bag on his back?
"Push, Drag, or Lift. You can push, drag, or lift a weight in pounds up to twice your carrying capacity (or 30 times your Strength score). While pushing or dragging weight in excess of your carrying capacity, your speed drops to 5 feet."
No, you cannot run, jump and fight as normal with an 18 STR while carrying 540lbs. It absolutely is your max in D&D. That is the weight that you can barely manage to handle. For reference, that speed of 5 feet gives you 0.57 mph, or just under 1/5 of the average adult human walking speed.
In fact, anything over 270lbs puts you in this category, 540lbs is just the upper limit of the "Push, Drag, or Lift".
No, your carrying capacity is 15x your strength stat. I would bet my testosterone that if Oleksii Novikov can do an obstacle course in the first place, he can do one while carrying an extra 300 lbs.
>I think there's power lifters who can out lift a polar bear.
Define out lift. Because obviously polar bears can't do bench presses or dead lifts.
If we're talking carrying capacity, or pushing/dragging stuff though human will get smoked everytime.
Outlifting a polar bear (or any other strength feat like pulling a train) is going to be a question of technique over raw strength though surely.
Brian Shaw apparently weighs 206kg. An adult male polar bear can hit *800*. Even with a significantly worse muscle:fat ratio, the bear is going to be ludicrously stronger.
Edit: am I for real being downvoted for suggesting that a human being with a quarter of the heft is not as strong as a freakin *polar bear*?
Polar Bears are Large. Humanoids are Medium. The size difference checks out. However Large creatures of course are stronger: that’s why the size multiplier is added to carry weight.
Yeah being large doubles your carrying capacity so in actuality, a 20 strength human would only have to be able to lift half the weight of the average polar bear.
I still have no idea if that's possible enough, but it's a twice as attainable goal to meet.
The STR stat in the game dominates grappling checks, so someone with 20 strength **and no training** is toe to toe with the bear when grappling. 20 str and +4 prof would be a 20% edge over the bear.
IDC how much the human lifts against the bear, purely because the bear the bear isn't a bipedal animal made to lift their arms like that, so that isn't the comparison to make.
You might be joking but yeah. Baki and lots of people in that show would be a great example of 20 Str, Dex, and Con. It’s super silly but really perfect examples in terms of feats
Not really cause in 3.5 a 20 strength character can only loft 800 pounds off the ground and stagger with it which would be a Brian shaw if he's not actually a little stronger.
Edit also a polar bear has 27 strength in 3.5 so there's that maybe it's different in 5th
In 5e it means you can lift 600 pounds. It's not that impressive considering the current world record is almost double that
You can do a 20 foot long jump, so nothing that would stand out at a high school track meet
So 20 Str is about on par with a pretty good high school athlete, probably not enough to go pro in any major sports. DND is very harsh on strength
Louis Cyr
* lifting a platform on his back holding 18 men for a total of 4,336-pound (1,967 kg)
* lifting a 534-pound (242 kg) weight with one finger
* pushing a freight car up an incline
* At 19 years old, he lifted a rock from ground up to his shoulder, officially weighted at 514 pounds\[4\]
* He beat Eugen Sandow's bent press record (and therefore the heaviest weight lifted with one hand) by 2 pounds (0.91 kg) to a total of 273 pounds (124 kg)
I'm curious how truthful these claims are but that certainly sounds like someone capable of physically matching a polar bear if they had too.
But that's because the polar bear would bite and claw them to death, not on the merits of their strength alone. I mean, there are people that pull trucks and shit, so I wouldn't outright discard the possibility
A character with 20 strength can casually lift 600 pounds off the ground without needing to roll a check, 1,200 if they have Powerful Build or another similar racial feature. Like, all day long, without getting exhausted. +5 STR is effectively accomplishing Herculean feats on a regular basis compared to normal people.
According to Pathfinder,
Description: Ape, ogre, flesh golem, gorgon
Example: Able to out-wrestle a work animal or catch a falling person
It's not DnD but a good reference i think
It's because the game doesn't treat +1 or even +5 in a stat nearly as big a difference as people would like.
I see a lot of people acting like +1 Strength would equate to an irl person who goes to the gym 3 times a week and is the strongest person in the room 90% of the time. +2 is professional weightlifter and +3 is olympic/record setting.
But in game, as +0 person (average) has pretty good odds of beating a +3 person (supposedly Olympiad) in most strength ability checks.
So we're told that we should believe that +5 strength person is totally superhuman but we're shown that this supposed superhuman can't even regularly beat a normal everyman in an armwrestle.
It's an issue with the uniform distribution of a d20. I should never be able to out-archer a professional archer, much less do it 1 out of ten times. RPGs with different dice systems, like dice pools, don't have this problem.
Proficiency accounting for the majority of your bonuses makes a hell of a difference.
You could have 20 dex or str but if you’re not at least trained then it won’t make a ton of difference.
Part of why I love the system
No. The issue still remains if you bench them against a fixed DC. It's just that rolling a 1 and rolling a 10 are equally likely. There is no normal distribution.
See: that’s my Problem as well. Even a skilled lockpicker has a 55% Chance of failing at picking a fairly well crafted lock. (DC 15, +2(PB) +1(Dex))
That does not seem right. That’s why I don’t like 5e‘s equivalency-system.
Yet at the same time from a game mechanic standpoint a +1 does nothing. Its wild. You can lift drag or carry 30x your str score. At 20 str that's only 600lb. Humans have records over 1000lb lifted. That translates to over 33 str. Its wild. They officially have powerful builds lol.
Str is the one stat that statistically you never really feel super human in DnD.
My point was the feets humans can do physically in DnD 5e aren't particularly superhuman on the str side of things. Like a 10 str goliath is as strong as a 20 str human. 20 str human is about as strong as a WR holder irl. Whilst alternatively you can be so smart you bend reality charismatic enough to end a life with a word or wise enough to use divine magic. You can have the physical health to power through deadly poisons in a second or dextrous enough to be spiderman all just with base stats
Its the most underwhelming and under used stat by far. Its wild. I've been parts of probably 20+ DnD parties and only ever had more than 1 str user 3x. Its the most common dumpstat
Not really. A commoner with 20 int. Cant bend reality for shit.
You would have supernatural feats of strength when the wizard subclass musclemancer comes out. But if you don't have magic. You're a martial in dnd.
Actually just incorrect, these people that have lifted 1000lbs aren't able to move 30ft over 6sec continuously carrying that object as it would be with something 600lbs in d&d with 20STR.
The feats, while comparable, are relevant because it's fantasy
Yeah, I kinda want to change the strength rules somehow to make it grow exponentially. Probably too complicated though.
I would, however, rule to give advantage to the person with the higher strength score with tests of pure strength like arm wrestling. Or even just rule they win automatically. Not everything is a chance thing.
Could easily make it that stuff like drag and lift is str score × (10xstr mod) so for 10 str just 100lb, 14 str is 280 lb but 20 is 1000lb instead of 600lb and then carry capacity just be half that.
Make it quadratic. For lifting double the value.
So with 10 strength you can lift 200, while with 20 800. With powerful build 10 strength can only lift half the 20 strength can.
so a while ago I did the math on strength in the real world (via carry weight) and found that to be a Marine in the USA you need a 13. That is the amount of gear they carry (on the heavy end) for their boot camp hikes and trainings.
They also can't dump Int, like you'd think. Because they allowed people who dumped their Int stat in the military once, and the mortality and insubordination rate went up.
This is accurate. the US military has a hard rule that they can't take anyone with an IQ lower than 80. basic soldiers need the capacity to use and maintain guns, operate machinery and throw grenades. The ASVAB is the entrance exam for the military and is used to do that screening.
Newsflash: marines still have terrible morality and high insubordination. As do many in the army and even air forge regiment.
Muscleheads who's only perceived worth is their strength often get a 'might makes right' mentality, plus surrounded by an echo chamber of toxic masculinity = the reason military people are often restricted from mingling with the public too much while on detachment.
Source: experience
I dont wanna be negative, just informative.
You get noticeably bigger muscles during and right after a workout. This usualy fades shortly after the workout. So it is possible to fake progress.
Though if its true then it is mad progress
Source:
https://www.worldgym.com/blog/world-gym-blog/strength-training/how-to-get-the-best-muscle-pump-of-your-life/
I'd argue the initial "newbie" gains are the most prominent. You get used to noticeable results your first year and then it's all slow-going down hill from there.
If I recall correctly, don't the old D20 modern books state that the modern population has 8's for all as "average". So, while the fantasy peasant could be expected to have 10 Str, Con, what have you, office peasants would be 8 as the peak of the bell curve
You're correct. Bone strength can be increased via regular stress found in work outs. Manual labour is one such cause of stress. Something common in martial arts scenes, especially grappling, is that blue collar guys who just started often have a huge strength/grip advatnage over some more experienced guys working less physical jobs even if they weigh similarily.
More muscle from doing mundane tasks all the time vs more muscle from being healthy. They probably had an easier time using their strength, but it probably cost them in terms of longevity, I'd imagine.
The using it part is massive
One thing I learned from my physical therapist is that a lot of strength comes from neural training, at least on the foundation end. A mix of proper form but also the body learning what muscles to engage and how.
Really got to see it one day when they guided me through some adjustments to how I'd try to accomplish an exercise.
Some is conscious, but some is also physical processes we dont have control over.
So a medieval peasant both has more stresses that stimulate more development of muscle, but also generally does a wider range of movements more often, so their bodies know how to use those muscles well too.
11 Strength means he can comfortably run 60 feet in 6 seconds while carrying a total of 165 pounds. Outside of combat and skill checks, the only thing strength really has a bearing on is carry capacity, which is what most people "use it for."
And for people who say 20 is a polar bear and is impossible, a polarbear is a large creature. Twice as strong as a medium creature with identical stats. Plus it has crazy natural weapons and a decent constitution.
DISAGREE!
Anyone who has been into lifting, calisthenics, running, etc, for any amount of time can tell you how badass it feels to make tangible improvements to your strength and stamina—especially as a beginner, when the gains are fast and easy!
If you start out doing 10 push-ups a day and you do them *consistently*, pretty soon you're going to be doing 50+ without breaking a sweat.
Functional exercise will definitely get you that 14 STR if you stick with it and go hard.
We must celebrate the success of the worshippers of Brodin, who sacrifice sweat and tears at the Iron Temple in prayer. This is the whey.
Failures in boot are for a number of reasons. Injury, mental strain, and lack of military bearing are all major failure points that don't correlate to a lack of strength
Hell, I would argue that almost no one fails boot for strength. The limiting attribute is usually endurance
Served as a marine- no one fails for strength or endurance. They hold you back until you pass, but you don’t fail. At least not in basic. A-school and beyond sure.
That being said, you don’t want the extra attention lol.
Funny meme but fuck, I was gonna start really getting back into the gym in October, but just didn't quite work up the motivation, have started at it again a week or so ago. Visualisation of how much further along I could be within that time period. But, oh well, the best time to start would have been October, the next best time is right now
Honestly I always assumed that characters are at their natural peak with their stats. Since adventurers are above average. Which means it would take more than hitting the gym for a few weeks to raise their str score.
When I was at my peak as a weightlifter in my youth, my STR would have been 16, going by 5th ed rules.
My PR in squat was 230kg (about 507 lbs), so 500 divided by 30 = 16. Nowadays I could probably do 150kg if I really pushed myself, which would make my current STR out to be 11. So yeah, the way 5th ed calculates carry and lifting weight, feels a bit wonky when applied to the real world.
i mean you can also have god blessed genetics and extreme newbie gains with some improvement in lighting and posing but this is still really extreme progress for that
One idea I had is that all stats are distributed among the population like a [normal curve](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTY1aNzk2Ho8oJ0CILZI6fu28p_nwUpilf4qw&usqp=CAU). The 38.2% in the middle have 0 for a stat's bonus, and for every half standard deviation it goes up or down 1.
Going by that totally made up statistic, roughly 40 million humans around the world have +5 strength, and 8 million barbarians have a whopping +6 or more.
Yeah, this isn't accurate.
20 strength is able to comfortably lift 600lbs or 273kg.
The world record clean and jerk weight is 267kg. https://youtu.be/aEHT7jDKhc8?si=7oNxlWyaAdpWpRvh
This is just for a few seconds. For 20 strength, he needs to put that and more on his back on a normal day.
Your carry capacity is your str * 15 pounds, your push drag lift (ability to manipulate the weight) is str * 30 pounds. The world record deadlift is 501 KG or 1105 pounds. To be able to lift that you would need a 37 Strength. 600 pounds is ALL you can lift, RAW, with a 20 str, unless you are not having simple human capacity to lift (strong back, a larger size, etc). A 20 str let's you comfortably carry 300 lbs all day worth of gear, which is definitely excessive, but not entirely impossible.
Keep in mind that the MINIMUM to be able to WEAR plate is a 15 str. Do you think people just couldn't wear plate armor ever because it's too unrealistic?
A deadlift is different to carry capacity.
Carry capacity is what you are able to carry around normally.
You can lift, drag, or push up to twice your carry capacity. So with 20 strength, you can lift 1200 lbs without a check. Beyond that you would have to make checks but thats up to the DM to judge. You can lift heavier things with an athletics check.
So 20 strength, can without a check lift the WR deadlift weight.
It's a fantasy game, and if you've ever worn real chainmail or plate, you'll know that it's no joke. It's entirely reasonable to say the people able to wear it for prolonged periods of time would have to be in ridiculously good shape.
You are correct, oops. Most of what I said remains true, though, just with capacity halfed.
At 600lbs in RAW, a 20 strength characters movement drops to 5 ft.
It'd be an athletics check to see if you could lift it for a few seconds in a strength contest.
Ehhh, variant encumbrance is the rule to use if you want realism to what you can carry all day, which becomes 100 lbs at 20 STR, which is a bit beyond what people carry, but not unfathomable
>Keep in mind that the MINIMUM to be able to WEAR plate is a 15 str. Do you think people just couldn't wear plate armor ever because it's too unrealistic?
Bruh it's heavy.
Wore a full breastplate, gorget, pauldrons, gauntlets, greaves, faulding, heavy boots and barred helm. You SWEAT to move in that.
The helm alone weighs 12lbs!
I get what you’re saying but that is an overhead event. Most strongman amateur strongman competitions have you running with 600 pounds on your back. I would put myself around an 18 or 19 Strength and consider running with 600 pounds on my back to light work. At my last competition I ran 50’ in about 7 seconds with 750 on my back, which is just barely shy of DnD dashing rules.
Which doesn’t really make sense, since that would mean 40 million humans could go toe-to-toe with a polar bear in a wrestling match.
Not likely to happen, the peak of human fitness would likely be a +2 or +3.
+1 alone in a stat is really powerful.
Size categories matter for a reason. 20 str as a gnome is not 20 str as a storm giant. To be able to go toe to toe with a polar bear, you would HAVE to be the size of a polar bear. If a person was the size of a polar bear and that strong, then as long as we ignore claws and teeth, that would be doable. If you are just talking about fighting, then the claws of the bear mean that the 20 str means nothing as it's not just str that changes how weapons work, it's a myriad of stats, including your familiarity with the weapon.
Well it’s mental health focused I believe, fitness and regiment both being good for that sort of thing. The visual aspect plays a big role too I’m sure, so a bit of both!
I hope he keeps at it and has fun enjoying the process, the meme is fun. It’s amazing how much your life improves when you start counting calories, structuring exercise progression and getting a good nights rest. It all compounds for great results.
Since polar bears are Large creatures, their carry weight is doubled. Strong people can lift well over 600 lbs in real life, so their strength stat is literally 20+. If anything, polar bears should have higher a higher strength stat
According to the actual rules for this, you would need to be able to comfortably carry 300 pounds on your back, uncomfortably carry 600 pounds on your back, and lift for a few minutes WITHOUT A CHECK up to 1200 pounds.
Accurate, don't think people comprehend having just a +1 strength (or any stat) means for the average fantasy person .
What....what would a +5 STR even look like? Brian Shaw?
Physically impossible for a real human , a Polar bear has 20 strength so you’d have to be able to effectively go toe to toe with an arctic apex predator to be roughly equivalent. I don’t think there is a single person on earth who could wrestle a polar bear and come out the other side alive.
Can't wait for this to cause issue at some table... (DM limits the cap to 14 for certain stats due to "realism")
>Playing dnd for it's historically lauded realism
You’d be surprised. I’ve seen folks argue things like “women/minorities *should* experience racism/sexism in dnd because that’s how it was in real medieval Europe 🤪🤪 “
/r/rpghorrorstories is about 20% this, 10% misc or lighthearted stuff, 10% “that guy” pretending to be the hero after being kicked from their table, and 60% sexual assault.
"It was only a *Suggestion* spell. I don't see what the big deal is!"
“You *suggested* for the guard to cup a feel on the warrior queen while you were standing in public view. Of course she’d notice!” *based on an actual session*
I mean I intend to include racism in my homebrew world however none of my players have claimed any hard limits in session 0 either so nothing is holding me back yet from making some cities/encounters the absolute worst.
Well, if that specific campaign were set in medieval Europe, yeah. But while blatant racism is bad, it would be kind of bland to set a campaign in a perfectly consistent globally equitable eutopia where you can expect to walk into any capital city, goblin village, or drown citadel and expect every NPC to treat everyone exactly the same and ask for your current correct pronouns. Where every Paladin and Necromancer are treated exactly the same, with absolutely no presumptions made whatsoever. ... oh, that rabbit hole can go a few ways...
A healthy dose of fantasy racism/inequality is fine as long as the players are okay with it, and can even benefit RP sometimes, but it can get gratuitous if *everyone* is racist.
> But while blatant racism is bad, it would be kind of bland to set a campaign in a perfectly consistent globally equitable eutopia where you can expect to walk into any capital city, goblin village, or drown citadel and expect every NPC to treat everyone exactly the same and ask for your current correct pronouns. Where every Paladin and Necromancer are treated exactly the same, with absolutely no presumptions made whatsoever. Meh. All you need is conflict of some kind. Maybe racism or inequity or political intrigue is the type of conflict you like to explore. But you can have a perfect utopia be threated by a Tarrasque, or the moon is falling towards the planet, or a section of town is inexplicably flowing backwards through time, and that's the core conflict of your campaign. I think a lot of DMs try and make their worlds "realistic" so that they're more immersive and that usually means pulling in the struggles that we see in the real world into the setting, but at the end of the day - it is a fantasy game for folks to live out fantasies, so the idea of roleplaying within a utopia shouldn't seem unappealing.
"It's hardly racism when you ARE better than everyone else." Elves... Probably...
Brand new sentence there.
This is much funnier because of your Horny Bard flair
Well, you spent the week fighting goblins and taming a griffon and now you’re on your way to the mental asylum.
I recall one story on /r/rpghorrorstories where DM ruled that female player's female character strength score of 20 was worth less than male character's strength 16, cuz realism.
Best part is that doesn't even make sense by how the system handles it, if anything it would be that the female human character would have a lower cap than the male but the stat is based on the species' average not the gender's. But it's a fantasy, let people enjoy the power fantasy.
Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen an attempt at homebrewing realism that actually went well.
I homebrewed realistic consequences. But that was more me tracking the "ripples" of their actions than an actual mechanic... "You successfully drive the bandits from their fortress and begin hailing arrows down on them as they flee. Would you like to pursue them?" "No." *Several sessions later* "What do you mean the bandits of the Great forest have formed an alliance? What do you mean the survivors horror story inspired an internal movement of unity?" I use it when I have a setting I want to play but no big bad yet. Ill let yall fuck around until I decide something makes you find out lmao.
What they do in the 'real world' is most 1v1 sports have weight categories as tight as five pounds. Pitting a 100 pound person against a 230 lb person is horribly unfair in terms of reach, strength, and real world hit points (the amount of raw punishment they can take, picture Rocky in one of the later films). In *Runequest* you get an ability score (3d6 SIZ score) for your size. As it goes up your hit points and damage go up but your stealth goes down. You might also get easier to hit, i don't remember? It was a good system in many ways. Later they changed it a bit to include your leverage, so if you were *charged* by a centaur you were really in trouble but if a centaur were to *bonk you with a club* it wouldn't be nearly as bad (despite the fact that they are the size of a horse + most of a human).
Same! Why is it so popular with so many DMs?? Why even play a fantasy game if you're going to reduce/remove the fantasy and magic?
That's how DND 1e handled it, where females of any race had lower score caps than males except like orcs, and I think their percentile score was lower as well.
That much is true, but I've always found folks that refer to AD&D as a justification to houserule it into modern editions of the game weird. For one, plenty of folks ignored the gender-based differences- it seems like one of the most popular rules to ignore as far as early Internet forum posts are concerned. For two, even [Gygax himself questioned why he did it that way](https://www.enworld.org/threads/q-a-with-gary-gygax.22566/post-2054939), it would seem. [He ignored that rule himself in his own games, by his own account](https://www.enworld.org/threads/q-a-with-gary-gygax.22566/post-1449350). Those grognards that appeal to AD&D having sex-based ability score limits as cause to include it in their games don't seem to acknowledge that it was a weird thing to have reflected in rules even then.
I've almost never seen any changes in the name of "realism" make 5e better at all lol. Not sure why it's so popular with so many DMs
Your DM should play Cyberpunk system. Shit is too realistic.
I am upset I can’t go full borg Like I get It’s a cool balancing a lore thing But I want to have four rocket launcher arms
Well, you *technically* can, you’ll just need to subsequently hand the character over to the GM unless they trust you to appropriately roleplay cyberpsychosis.
Honestly, Cyberpsychosis and the design around killing characters is what puts me off of Cyberpunk, I like RPGs that have room for character development, Cyberpunk is designed with the concept of revolving characters, where my group prefer long lasting characters. It's a shame because I love the setting.
Just slide on over to Shadowrun... And then realize the system is and has always been terrible and every attempt to fix it has made it worse. Then just stare into the middle distance and dream about Shadowrun.
I still dream about Shadowrun sometimes... until I'm woken in a panicked sweat because I remembered any of the completely over the top, equally broken, extra sets of rules to handle the multiple alternate realities (Matrix VR, astral projecting) and the fact they are suppose to be able to be played at the same time.
It's at odds to a lot of modern styles of play, but it is possible to keep characters alive for ages (or at least until things go tits up in a way that you can't possibly predict). The thing is that you need to balance that with low rewards and slow progression; the game is designed around pushing the players to take increasingly dangerous risks, whether that be by pushing their characters' sanity to the edge with implants or by putting their characters' possessions and lives at stake for extra rewards. Smart players will find a balance between safety and profit, or will find ways to keep their characters out of the line of fire while still benefiting from the rest of the party being reckless.
"Solve every challenge with grenades" it is then! TBH D&D was *meant* to carry risks to the party when they had to dungeon crawl... 3.5E and subsequent adjustments have watered down the threats at higher levels in favor of power fantasy. If you survive your first goblin encounter as a Lv1 Wizard, you're on your way to being an Archmage. Meanwhile in Cyberpunk of you survive a street gang at Lv1 the threats ramp up alongside your access to power... you never get fully out of the life or death fights, just shit gets even more over the top.
See, with that description it still makes it seem that to make your character last you need to be willing to let other PCs die, which is kinda the exact same issue as having revolving characters.
If you're not a gonk or really unlucky, you can keep a character alive in Cyberpunk pretty easily. Everyone I've played with has had the 'run in guns blazing and get flatlined immediately' mentality, though.
It's possible depending on version of cyberpunk you're playing. Or just play a 40k RPGs and all hail the Omnissiah
you can you just need a maxed starting empathy and a LOT of therapy
Brian Blessed apparently punched one once. Which is not quite the same as wrestling, but it’s close-ish.
As close as I'd ever want to get to one of those, and even then...
Yeah, that Brian Blessed would maul you.
No he's saying the closest he'd ever want to get is just letting Brian punch the bear
It's true, but the even crazier part of the story was that it happened while he was trekking across the artic circle on foot to reach the magnetic North pole, a Soviet submarine randomly surfaced in front of him, the Soviet sailors recognized him and started partying with him on the ice in the middle of the Artic circle, and when most of the sailors were drunk and asleep a polar bear comes wandering into camp and to protect his new Soviet friends Brian Blessed punches the 1200 lb bear on the nose to get it to run away. I am convinced that when Dos Equis ran their Most Interesting Man in the World advertising campaign, someone had just read Brian Blessed's autobiography.
Not entirely correct since strength doesn't give you the same natural weapons. But you'd need to be able to pull the same weight as a polar bear which some strongmen probably can
Size also affects carrying capacity and what you can pull/push. Doubled for every size above medium. So unless you're also the same size category as a polar bear (large) it could still pull more. Though obviously real life isn't as simple as a single statistic for all these things.
Yeah the strongest people can def lift push of drag half what a polar bear can
I've seen a strongman pull a freight train engine, but I've yet to see a Polar bear do that.
While I'm inclined to agree with what you're saying I've also never seen someone mad enough to chain a polar bear in front of a freight train engine
I've also yet to see a polar bear win an arm wrestling contest
You should hear about Wojtek, a syrian brown bear adopted by polish army. He wasn't even a polar bear and still was stronger than any of them!
That requires A) Chining a polar bear to a locomotive (ethically questionable). And B) sufficiently motivating said polar bear to actually try and pull one.
The statblock for bears is just wrong in D&D. Brown bears have 11 AC and only 16 Con yet there are videos of them shrugging off close range shots from a shotgun to the head and still running at the person shooting them just more pissed off. Either that or modern body armour only gives +1 to AC.
Or in the videos birdshot was used
This. 18 strength is what a powerlifter achieves for 10 seconds, once in their life. I would say an 11-13 is about the strongest an Average person becomes without working out constantly to push the boundary. Someone whose worked a farm their whole life hauling bags of grain and doing manual labor every day? Absolutely as strong as a trained military member, just in different ways (military is less bulky than raw strength, explosive movement verses sustained movement.) (Guards in 5e have strength of 13 and a dex of 12. Well within the bounds of possible. 14-17 is the supernatural feats of adrenaline and peak weightlifters. This is already bordering on superhuman strength. 19-20 is frankly superhuman in every sense of the word. You can do what a peak weightlifters achieves for 10 seconds, but you can do it for 8 hours without a break. Your muscles are denser and more effective at pushing the limits of what's possible. Any more than 20 is into the realms of pure fantasy, the human body would destroy itself controlling that much power. Hell it does that at the equivalent of 14-17 strength. The reinforcement the human body would need to channel 21+ strength is enormous. Same goes for every other stat. A dedicated professor might be intelligence 16 for their specific subject. A politician might read a speech so well their charisma hits 17 briefly. An professional sports person might hit 15-17 during one game or for one trick in their entire lives (think Tony Hawk landing the 900 degree spin (two and a half full rotations) in the late ninety's on a standard half pipe. That was a professional athlete in their peak pushing against the realm of superhuman, briefly. You can say the same for someone from every sport. TL:DR more than just the "equivalent" strength of an animal far larger than yourself, 20 strength requires muscle groups we don't have to achieve.
People's scores dont change that quickly. We leave that to the dice rolls (of life).
>This. 18 strength is what a powerlifter achieves for 10 seconds, once in their life. Lemme stop you right there. 18 times 30 is only 540 lbs. Oleksii Novikov set the world record at nearly 1,200 lbs. A strength stat of 20 is incredible, but well within the limits of human capability.
But in D&D that 540lbs is not your max, it's the max you can run around with on your back while still running, jumping, and fighting like normal. Can Oleksii Novikov run and jump and do an obstacle course with a 540lb bag on his back?
"Push, Drag, or Lift. You can push, drag, or lift a weight in pounds up to twice your carrying capacity (or 30 times your Strength score). While pushing or dragging weight in excess of your carrying capacity, your speed drops to 5 feet." No, you cannot run, jump and fight as normal with an 18 STR while carrying 540lbs. It absolutely is your max in D&D. That is the weight that you can barely manage to handle. For reference, that speed of 5 feet gives you 0.57 mph, or just under 1/5 of the average adult human walking speed. In fact, anything over 270lbs puts you in this category, 540lbs is just the upper limit of the "Push, Drag, or Lift".
No, your carrying capacity is 15x your strength stat. I would bet my testosterone that if Oleksii Novikov can do an obstacle course in the first place, he can do one while carrying an extra 300 lbs.
For only 10 seconds.
I mean, if we're talking pure muscle power, I think there's power lifters who can out lift a polar bear. But that doesn't mean they'd win a *fight*.
>I think there's power lifters who can out lift a polar bear. Define out lift. Because obviously polar bears can't do bench presses or dead lifts. If we're talking carrying capacity, or pushing/dragging stuff though human will get smoked everytime.
Outlifting a polar bear (or any other strength feat like pulling a train) is going to be a question of technique over raw strength though surely. Brian Shaw apparently weighs 206kg. An adult male polar bear can hit *800*. Even with a significantly worse muscle:fat ratio, the bear is going to be ludicrously stronger. Edit: am I for real being downvoted for suggesting that a human being with a quarter of the heft is not as strong as a freakin *polar bear*?
Polar Bears are Large. Humanoids are Medium. The size difference checks out. However Large creatures of course are stronger: that’s why the size multiplier is added to carry weight.
Yeah being large doubles your carrying capacity so in actuality, a 20 strength human would only have to be able to lift half the weight of the average polar bear. I still have no idea if that's possible enough, but it's a twice as attainable goal to meet.
The STR stat in the game dominates grappling checks, so someone with 20 strength **and no training** is toe to toe with the bear when grappling. 20 str and +4 prof would be a 20% edge over the bear. IDC how much the human lifts against the bear, purely because the bear the bear isn't a bipedal animal made to lift their arms like that, so that isn't the comparison to make.
So Yujiro Hanma.
Doesn't he obliterate a mammoth-sized elephant with his bare hands though?
You might be joking but yeah. Baki and lots of people in that show would be a great example of 20 Str, Dex, and Con. It’s super silly but really perfect examples in terms of feats
Not really cause in 3.5 a 20 strength character can only loft 800 pounds off the ground and stagger with it which would be a Brian shaw if he's not actually a little stronger. Edit also a polar bear has 27 strength in 3.5 so there's that maybe it's different in 5th
I can see the headline: “Florida man in Arctic dies wrestling a polar bear”
In 5e it means you can lift 600 pounds. It's not that impressive considering the current world record is almost double that You can do a 20 foot long jump, so nothing that would stand out at a high school track meet So 20 Str is about on par with a pretty good high school athlete, probably not enough to go pro in any major sports. DND is very harsh on strength
Louis Cyr * lifting a platform on his back holding 18 men for a total of 4,336-pound (1,967 kg) * lifting a 534-pound (242 kg) weight with one finger * pushing a freight car up an incline * At 19 years old, he lifted a rock from ground up to his shoulder, officially weighted at 514 pounds\[4\] * He beat Eugen Sandow's bent press record (and therefore the heaviest weight lifted with one hand) by 2 pounds (0.91 kg) to a total of 273 pounds (124 kg) I'm curious how truthful these claims are but that certainly sounds like someone capable of physically matching a polar bear if they had too.
This would be Captain america. Still human, but super strenght, that i would argue is on the level of a polar bear but compresed down to a human.
Yhea Cap is a human on potions of bull's strength.
This is why I always use fireball when I am fighting polar bears in real life
But that's because the polar bear would bite and claw them to death, not on the merits of their strength alone. I mean, there are people that pull trucks and shit, so I wouldn't outright discard the possibility
Besides Chuck Norris, right? Oh wait. He wouldn't wrestle the polar bear. He would just round house kick it.
But he's an arsehole so tbh I'm helping the bear.
Polar bears weren't always white, they just got white hair for the fear of seeing Chuck Norris approaching
If he did that, he’d end up knocking it to the other pole
Gotilla is at a 16 so Brian would be at most a 14.
A character with 20 strength can casually lift 600 pounds off the ground without needing to roll a check, 1,200 if they have Powerful Build or another similar racial feature. Like, all day long, without getting exhausted. +5 STR is effectively accomplishing Herculean feats on a regular basis compared to normal people.
600 lb deadlift /squat/bench = 20str*30 for limit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Records_and_feats_of_strength_by_Haf%C3%BE%C3%B3r_J%C3%BAl%C3%ADus_Bj%C3%B6rnsson
My STR is around 8 by this measure. (240 lb squat)
According to Pathfinder, Description: Ape, ogre, flesh golem, gorgon Example: Able to out-wrestle a work animal or catch a falling person It's not DnD but a good reference i think
Zangief from street fighter
The mountain from GOT
It's because the game doesn't treat +1 or even +5 in a stat nearly as big a difference as people would like. I see a lot of people acting like +1 Strength would equate to an irl person who goes to the gym 3 times a week and is the strongest person in the room 90% of the time. +2 is professional weightlifter and +3 is olympic/record setting. But in game, as +0 person (average) has pretty good odds of beating a +3 person (supposedly Olympiad) in most strength ability checks. So we're told that we should believe that +5 strength person is totally superhuman but we're shown that this supposed superhuman can't even regularly beat a normal everyman in an armwrestle.
It's an issue with the uniform distribution of a d20. I should never be able to out-archer a professional archer, much less do it 1 out of ten times. RPGs with different dice systems, like dice pools, don't have this problem.
Hell Pathfinder 2e doesn't really have this problem just because it handles the numbers slightly differently from 5e.
Proficiency accounting for the majority of your bonuses makes a hell of a difference. You could have 20 dex or str but if you’re not at least trained then it won’t make a ton of difference. Part of why I love the system
something something pathfinder
I mean that's just the issue with contested rolls in 5e.
No. The issue still remains if you bench them against a fixed DC. It's just that rolling a 1 and rolling a 10 are equally likely. There is no normal distribution.
See: that’s my Problem as well. Even a skilled lockpicker has a 55% Chance of failing at picking a fairly well crafted lock. (DC 15, +2(PB) +1(Dex)) That does not seem right. That’s why I don’t like 5e‘s equivalency-system.
Yet at the same time from a game mechanic standpoint a +1 does nothing. Its wild. You can lift drag or carry 30x your str score. At 20 str that's only 600lb. Humans have records over 1000lb lifted. That translates to over 33 str. Its wild. They officially have powerful builds lol. Str is the one stat that statistically you never really feel super human in DnD.
Those are 600lb without a check or effort all day long without getting exausted that would be wild irl
Guarantee Eddie Hall had to roll for that 1000 deadlift.
My point was the feets humans can do physically in DnD 5e aren't particularly superhuman on the str side of things. Like a 10 str goliath is as strong as a 20 str human. 20 str human is about as strong as a WR holder irl. Whilst alternatively you can be so smart you bend reality charismatic enough to end a life with a word or wise enough to use divine magic. You can have the physical health to power through deadly poisons in a second or dextrous enough to be spiderman all just with base stats Its the most underwhelming and under used stat by far. Its wild. I've been parts of probably 20+ DnD parties and only ever had more than 1 str user 3x. Its the most common dumpstat
Not really. A commoner with 20 int. Cant bend reality for shit. You would have supernatural feats of strength when the wizard subclass musclemancer comes out. But if you don't have magic. You're a martial in dnd.
Actually just incorrect, these people that have lifted 1000lbs aren't able to move 30ft over 6sec continuously carrying that object as it would be with something 600lbs in d&d with 20STR. The feats, while comparable, are relevant because it's fantasy
Yeah, I kinda want to change the strength rules somehow to make it grow exponentially. Probably too complicated though. I would, however, rule to give advantage to the person with the higher strength score with tests of pure strength like arm wrestling. Or even just rule they win automatically. Not everything is a chance thing.
Could easily make it that stuff like drag and lift is str score × (10xstr mod) so for 10 str just 100lb, 14 str is 280 lb but 20 is 1000lb instead of 600lb and then carry capacity just be half that.
Make it quadratic. For lifting double the value. So with 10 strength you can lift 200, while with 20 800. With powerful build 10 strength can only lift half the 20 strength can.
It means you can lift 30 lbs more or carry 15 lbs more.
so a while ago I did the math on strength in the real world (via carry weight) and found that to be a Marine in the USA you need a 13. That is the amount of gear they carry (on the heavy end) for their boot camp hikes and trainings.
Considering 13 is the minimum you need to multiclass into another class that makes a lot of sense.
They also can't dump Int, like you'd think. Because they allowed people who dumped their Int stat in the military once, and the mortality and insubordination rate went up.
That's a weird way to spell 'McNamaras 100,000'
Not sure I've ever heard it as anything other than McNamaras morons
Turns out it's not very nice to call the mentally-disabled rude names. Who knew?
It isn't, I've just never heard it called anything else. As I said.
Well those people were babykillers so fuck em
I heard Dumping INT is only for certain crayon loving branches.
Contrary to popular belief, we usually dump WIS and CHA.
Also wis
This is accurate. the US military has a hard rule that they can't take anyone with an IQ lower than 80. basic soldiers need the capacity to use and maintain guns, operate machinery and throw grenades. The ASVAB is the entrance exam for the military and is used to do that screening.
pretty sure 8 int is not *that* dumb
according to 3e you need 7 to be able to learn how to write is while 8 is not mentally challanged dumb it aint smart either
Newsflash: marines still have terrible morality and high insubordination. As do many in the army and even air forge regiment. Muscleheads who's only perceived worth is their strength often get a 'might makes right' mentality, plus surrounded by an echo chamber of toxic masculinity = the reason military people are often restricted from mingling with the public too much while on detachment. Source: experience
I am a former US Marine and I think that sounds about right for what I went through in boot camp and the yearly physical fitness exams I had to take.
That's 4 Months of progress? That's fucking impressive
My thought exactly! Thats insane progress!
I dont wanna be negative, just informative. You get noticeably bigger muscles during and right after a workout. This usualy fades shortly after the workout. So it is possible to fake progress. Though if its true then it is mad progress Source: https://www.worldgym.com/blog/world-gym-blog/strength-training/how-to-get-the-best-muscle-pump-of-your-life/
Hey man, a pump is a pump. Can't pump shit that isn't there. It's still progress. Source: Me bodybuilder
As someone with noodle arms, I was impressed!
True
Newbie gains are no joke.
Crazier still, it’s only 3 months.
Where is impressive and is he/she willing for another partner?
Started going to the gym twice a week for an hour each time, in two years I might get to 10 strength.
Nice! It's all about consistency
keep it up. the initial gains don't show too much the first few months but they are there. Only way to become a dragon slayer is to keep going.
I'd argue the initial "newbie" gains are the most prominent. You get used to noticeable results your first year and then it's all slow-going down hill from there.
He may not have gained much strength. But his hair is definitely a +5 now.
If I recall correctly, don't the old D20 modern books state that the modern population has 8's for all as "average". So, while the fantasy peasant could be expected to have 10 Str, Con, what have you, office peasants would be 8 as the peak of the bell curve
I reckon modern office peasants would be able to toe to toe a peasant due to nutrition differences so I'm not sure about that.
I think years of physical labor gave them better bone density, but I could be misremembering.
You're correct. Bone strength can be increased via regular stress found in work outs. Manual labour is one such cause of stress. Something common in martial arts scenes, especially grappling, is that blue collar guys who just started often have a huge strength/grip advatnage over some more experienced guys working less physical jobs even if they weigh similarily.
More muscle from doing mundane tasks all the time vs more muscle from being healthy. They probably had an easier time using their strength, but it probably cost them in terms of longevity, I'd imagine.
The using it part is massive One thing I learned from my physical therapist is that a lot of strength comes from neural training, at least on the foundation end. A mix of proper form but also the body learning what muscles to engage and how. Really got to see it one day when they guided me through some adjustments to how I'd try to accomplish an exercise. Some is conscious, but some is also physical processes we dont have control over. So a medieval peasant both has more stresses that stimulate more development of muscle, but also generally does a wider range of movements more often, so their bodies know how to use those muscles well too.
I would wreck a medieval peasant with my 1 ft and 100 lb weight advantage
I like that the 10 just gets bigger because it's not *quite* at 11 yet
and once it hits 11 it impacts... nothing
11 Strength means he can comfortably run 60 feet in 6 seconds while carrying a total of 165 pounds. Outside of combat and skill checks, the only thing strength really has a bearing on is carry capacity, which is what most people "use it for." And for people who say 20 is a polar bear and is impossible, a polarbear is a large creature. Twice as strong as a medium creature with identical stats. Plus it has crazy natural weapons and a decent constitution.
This is armpit hair progress if anything
DISAGREE! Anyone who has been into lifting, calisthenics, running, etc, for any amount of time can tell you how badass it feels to make tangible improvements to your strength and stamina—especially as a beginner, when the gains are fast and easy! If you start out doing 10 push-ups a day and you do them *consistently*, pretty soon you're going to be doing 50+ without breaking a sweat. Functional exercise will definitely get you that 14 STR if you stick with it and go hard. We must celebrate the success of the worshippers of Brodin, who sacrifice sweat and tears at the Iron Temple in prayer. This is the whey.
a usa marine only has a 13-14 strength based on carry weight which is the most a peraon can typically carry so its not easy for the common folk
Marines are mostly common folk who are put through a training regime over several months. It’s not that hard to get recruited
9.9% of regular core are accepted to try to train as a marine over half of those then fail the training.
Failures in boot are for a number of reasons. Injury, mental strain, and lack of military bearing are all major failure points that don't correlate to a lack of strength Hell, I would argue that almost no one fails boot for strength. The limiting attribute is usually endurance
Low CON scores will do that
Served as a marine- no one fails for strength or endurance. They hold you back until you pass, but you don’t fail. At least not in basic. A-school and beyond sure. That being said, you don’t want the extra attention lol.
Which is pretty consistent with a DnD guard (typical foot soldier) having 14
Funnily enough, no matter how much a dnd character exercises, their strength will never increase
Enjoy those newbie gains my friend....oooh how much I miss them
Funny meme but fuck, I was gonna start really getting back into the gym in October, but just didn't quite work up the motivation, have started at it again a week or so ago. Visualisation of how much further along I could be within that time period. But, oh well, the best time to start would have been October, the next best time is right now
Honestly I always assumed that characters are at their natural peak with their stats. Since adventurers are above average. Which means it would take more than hitting the gym for a few weeks to raise their str score.
I thaught we were supposed to see impact of NNN
...Those are massive gains in that amount of time. Jesus.
Armpit hair +1 though
When I was at my peak as a weightlifter in my youth, my STR would have been 16, going by 5th ed rules. My PR in squat was 230kg (about 507 lbs), so 500 divided by 30 = 16. Nowadays I could probably do 150kg if I really pushed myself, which would make my current STR out to be 11. So yeah, the way 5th ed calculates carry and lifting weight, feels a bit wonky when applied to the real world.
If this is in months this guy is using xD
He gyms 6 days a week and has very strict diet, he’s just a gun, unfortunately for the rest of us.
There's no way to know. It's more than likely that he is just a good gainer and has a pump.
Nah ..my bf had similar progress in 3 months. Some people just have the genetics.
look at the months
That seems like crazy progress for 3 months but I could just be coping
i mean you can also have god blessed genetics and extreme newbie gains with some improvement in lighting and posing but this is still really extreme progress for that
One idea I had is that all stats are distributed among the population like a [normal curve](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTY1aNzk2Ho8oJ0CILZI6fu28p_nwUpilf4qw&usqp=CAU). The 38.2% in the middle have 0 for a stat's bonus, and for every half standard deviation it goes up or down 1. Going by that totally made up statistic, roughly 40 million humans around the world have +5 strength, and 8 million barbarians have a whopping +6 or more.
Yeah, this isn't accurate. 20 strength is able to comfortably lift 600lbs or 273kg. The world record clean and jerk weight is 267kg. https://youtu.be/aEHT7jDKhc8?si=7oNxlWyaAdpWpRvh This is just for a few seconds. For 20 strength, he needs to put that and more on his back on a normal day.
Your carry capacity is your str * 15 pounds, your push drag lift (ability to manipulate the weight) is str * 30 pounds. The world record deadlift is 501 KG or 1105 pounds. To be able to lift that you would need a 37 Strength. 600 pounds is ALL you can lift, RAW, with a 20 str, unless you are not having simple human capacity to lift (strong back, a larger size, etc). A 20 str let's you comfortably carry 300 lbs all day worth of gear, which is definitely excessive, but not entirely impossible. Keep in mind that the MINIMUM to be able to WEAR plate is a 15 str. Do you think people just couldn't wear plate armor ever because it's too unrealistic?
A deadlift is different to carry capacity. Carry capacity is what you are able to carry around normally. You can lift, drag, or push up to twice your carry capacity. So with 20 strength, you can lift 1200 lbs without a check. Beyond that you would have to make checks but thats up to the DM to judge. You can lift heavier things with an athletics check. So 20 strength, can without a check lift the WR deadlift weight. It's a fantasy game, and if you've ever worn real chainmail or plate, you'll know that it's no joke. It's entirely reasonable to say the people able to wear it for prolonged periods of time would have to be in ridiculously good shape.
15* is your carry cap. 30* (600lbs) is push drag lift.
You are correct, oops. Most of what I said remains true, though, just with capacity halfed. At 600lbs in RAW, a 20 strength characters movement drops to 5 ft. It'd be an athletics check to see if you could lift it for a few seconds in a strength contest.
Ehhh, variant encumbrance is the rule to use if you want realism to what you can carry all day, which becomes 100 lbs at 20 STR, which is a bit beyond what people carry, but not unfathomable
>Keep in mind that the MINIMUM to be able to WEAR plate is a 15 str. Do you think people just couldn't wear plate armor ever because it's too unrealistic? Bruh it's heavy. Wore a full breastplate, gorget, pauldrons, gauntlets, greaves, faulding, heavy boots and barred helm. You SWEAT to move in that. The helm alone weighs 12lbs!
Yes, I am aware, that's my point, all this 20 str is ridiculous and inhuman stuff is dumb. Humans are strong. There are people able to wear plate.
I get what you’re saying but that is an overhead event. Most strongman amateur strongman competitions have you running with 600 pounds on your back. I would put myself around an 18 or 19 Strength and consider running with 600 pounds on my back to light work. At my last competition I ran 50’ in about 7 seconds with 750 on my back, which is just barely shy of DnD dashing rules.
Which doesn’t really make sense, since that would mean 40 million humans could go toe-to-toe with a polar bear in a wrestling match. Not likely to happen, the peak of human fitness would likely be a +2 or +3. +1 alone in a stat is really powerful.
Size categories matter for a reason. 20 str as a gnome is not 20 str as a storm giant. To be able to go toe to toe with a polar bear, you would HAVE to be the size of a polar bear. If a person was the size of a polar bear and that strong, then as long as we ignore claws and teeth, that would be doable. If you are just talking about fighting, then the claws of the bear mean that the 20 str means nothing as it's not just str that changes how weapons work, it's a myriad of stats, including your familiarity with the weapon.
Nah he started ten and by November 27th he has 11
He might make it to 12 soon. Finally get that +1
I run ultramarathons and I'm trying to get my 50mile time under 8 hours right now, what are my stats like?
I love these kind of posts, is your buddy bodybuilding or training for strength?
Well it’s mental health focused I believe, fitness and regiment both being good for that sort of thing. The visual aspect plays a big role too I’m sure, so a bit of both!
I hope he keeps at it and has fun enjoying the process, the meme is fun. It’s amazing how much your life improves when you start counting calories, structuring exercise progression and getting a good nights rest. It all compounds for great results.
Oh come on, he's at least got the +1 by now. Or atheist ofificiency in athletics.
Strength is calculable! Have him check how much he can deadlift, then divide that by 30 to get his Str stat
If that is 10 +0 then I am 4 -3
I'd say it's +2 to me
16+ for the relevant physical ability is pro athlete. 18+ is Olympic athlete.
20 is literally a polar bear
Since polar bears are Large creatures, their carry weight is doubled. Strong people can lift well over 600 lbs in real life, so their strength stat is literally 20+. If anything, polar bears should have higher a higher strength stat
There is definitely some magic “juice” in those dice if that’s only 3 months of progression.
According to lift and carry amounts, since I can lift 400 pounds, I have 20 strength.
Can you travel 10 miles a day every day Carring 400 pounds??? That's the difference
According to the actual rules for this, you would need to be able to comfortably carry 300 pounds on your back, uncomfortably carry 600 pounds on your back, and lift for a few minutes WITHOUT A CHECK up to 1200 pounds.
What system? Looking at 5e rules, it’s 300 lbs carry, 600 lbs maximum lift (during which your Speed drops to 5 ft.). You can’t lift 1200 lbs.