alhoon wrote:ewancummins wrote: If you look back at my games, you will see the great majority of NPC fighter types have been male. Warrior women exist, but they are rather unusual. More common than in most historical societies, yes, but not more common than in American or British fantasy literature written before the 1990s.(Bit of a guess on that last part, as I haven't read an awful lot of the newer stuff.)
I don't think there were warrior women in historical societies with a few notable individual exceptions (Joan D'Arc and a few pirate women). To put simply, before 20th century the idea of a warrior woman was unlady-like I think. Women were conditioned to think their place was in the kitchen.
DROW: Yes, I think Drow women had higher level cap as clerics and men as mages too.
As for females being stronger, here's
Wikipedia confirming it.
The 'kitchen' stuff really depends on the period and place, or literary material, you are trying to emulate. Spot on if you are going for certain Victorian ideas of feminine domesticity (which don't necessarily apply to lower class girls and women, of course).
There's plenty of evidence that some Medieval European women travelled with armies, defended castles, operated businesses, sometimes led troops (not common, but a noblewoman might do it under certain conditions), etc.
Common women also did field work, as did children.
What women almost never did was become wandering killers/soldiers.
Though I've read that some women joined their husbands as bombard crewmen, in the early days when the guns were made by individual smiths and hired out as needed.
You are dead right that female professional or habitual combatants seem to have been
very rare in actual history. It's something that does not show up much at all, for pretty obvious physical reasons: women are smaller, weaker, and somewhat slower (running) than men on average. This makes a big difference, no doubt all the more so in premodern combat with muscle-powered weaponry. It's also pretty dumb for a society to encourage many of its fit and healthy young women of breeding age to go off and risk getting killed, maimed, or captured. Men are more replaceable, up to a point. No women to bear children= no future.
There are some notable exceptions, like the all-female king's 'wives' regiment in the kingdom of Dahomey, which the French fought in the 19th Century. They were an exceptional group. Most women and girls in Dahomey didn't do this kind of stuff.
I believe Albanian ''Sacred Virgins'' have actually fought, too. But, again, that's an exceptional group. It's not at all a normal female role in the culture.
There is the question:
Is your Ravenloft more Medieval , RennFaire Fantasy, Gothic, what?
I've created a separate thread about sex roles and related stuff, so I won't derail this Vistani thread.
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)