Normal size women who display super strength are nothing new. Even before Elly May Clampett and Granny were seen picking up fallen trees and flinging full grown men around the room, the voluptuous chicks of L’il Abner were running men down, throwing them over their shoulders, and schlepping them off to the Sadie Hawkins dance. In the case of Elly May and Abner’s girls, it was that hard livin’ mountain life that instilled tensile, long muscled strength. Of course for Granny it was her moonshine (a potion which also appeared to give her super speed), also known as “rumatiz medicine.”
I was always especially fascinated by women who were much stronger than they look. Actually, anyone who is way stronger than they look is pretty interesting. I think it started with Marvel Comics for me, where a little skinny dude like Spider-Man could bend girders and punch through brick walls. Even Daredevil, who could (according to the Guide to the Marvel Universe) bench press the same weight as a gold medal winning Olympic weight lifter, was fairly normal of build. And the super strength of werewolves, vampires, and other creatures of more or less average build who could lift grown men over their heads with one hand were always cool.
I think it is that comic book background that has me giving people a break as far as how muscular they look with their strong characters in my AD&D or Champions games. Very often you get somebody who has a 16 or higher strength character, but they envision that PC as being fairly normal of build, sometimes even thin. Sure, even in real life you get wiry dudes who seem to be able to perform great feats of strength.
One of my older brother’s friends when I was a kid was this fairly short and not especially muscled dude, and I remember him getting in a fight and literally picking up a guy who was bigger than him over his head and throwing him into a wall. From what I was told that was not unusual for him. I heard stories about him getting in bar fights, where he would slam a guy onto the bar and then slide him across it face first like in a saloon from a cowboy movie. Now, my big bro is a 6’5” former football player, and not only have I seen him do things like that in the distant past, he looks like he could. At 6’2” and only having bench pressed a max of 275 in high school football (probably the pinnacle of my pure strength), I might have been able to lift a man over my head. I never tried though, much preferring to go for the immediate take down on any past opponents over pluck n’ throw. The point is in our cases we looked like the strength we had. Big dudes doing big things.
But it does seem to take a little suspension of disbelief when there is a female character with a 17 or higher strength, and she doesn’t look like one of those beastie chicks doing the caber toss down at the highland games. For example, my player Terry has a female fighter named Helena who she started with a 17 strength. Far from looking like a beast, Helena is around 5’7” and although maybe a little lean and hard-bodied she just does not appear to have that kind of strength. Or does she? She is a broadsword and shield fighter, so you can imagine her developing decent upper body strength; muscle long on the bone.
I don’t really oppose that, and I let characters look like whatever the player wants them too. Sure, it gets a little nutty when somebody with an 18/50 strength wants to look like Kate Moss or whatever, but it is a fantasy game after all. A woman can be as strong as an ox, and not look like one if that is the player’s preference.
