male and female characters have always had different starting stats in all the elder scrolls games so why would they change it :shrug:

Wouldn't care one way or the other. The stats may be different as previous TES games to just keep things somewhat interesting and different.

Bingo! Look at your Oblivion Guide and then check the Races and Stats. It is Not much of a difference but a Noticable difference

Exactly. If everything should be defined by "what you do" then why not just have the character start as some shapeless amoeba and you morph into a generic asixual being later on. After all nobody like diversity or having to make choices.

actually male and female stats did differ in oblivion.
i just didn't know until i read the strategy guide.

Actually, when it comes to gender issues, sixism is almost non-existent on Nirn. Race related issues though....yeah, Nirn is quite xenophobic.

They differed in Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion.

Daggerfall had the stat differences in the game files but there was a bug that made them NULL. Daggerfalls were also extremely sixist, too oddly enough Big bonuses for males and pretty much nothing useful for females.



Not exactly. Notice there's next to no Female guards or soldiers in Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion. Theres a few but they are a major minority.

Unfortunately no as with the only starting aspects of health/energy to differentiate one cannot categorically say women are healthier or men have more energy as those two simple attributes/adjectives are so broad one can argue 10 different things that could fall under the heading of health.

So no, while starting characters are health and energy I don't see how you could gave a bonus to one or the other merely on gender.

This question is really irrelevant now that the stats are removed. The only differnce will be their physical appearance on the screen.

Fix'd

Just because there's no stats doesn't mean races and genders won't receive any benefits, they may get damage multipliers or mana multipliers or disposition multipliers or blocking multipliers, so on and so fourth.

You mean attributes, and one's gender could affect how much health/stamina/magicka they start out with. The race would give a basic standard, and the gender could easily specialize from there.

I don't think the OP was talking about multipliers that are attributed to races. He was referring to stats.

It's "almost" non-existent. Notice just three examples:

1. None of the Emperors have been women (that I'm aware of - could be wrong).
2. Uriel Septim had no daughters.
3. Most of the leaders in Oblivion were male (and if you say "Mages Guild", remember who the archmage was).
4. Many of the leader roles, with whom the player character interacted, were male.

Now before you bite off my virtual head, I've always attributed this to lore, a bit, and to the type of society and culture Bethesda was trying to portray in Cyrodiil. Certainly the TES series has been much better at incorporating women into the game than other games that I could name, including many recently released titles. Even if it seems at times that we're just part of the scenery.

Now - I really, really do have high hopes for Skyrim. Woman played a much more equal role in Norse mythology and times, we like to remind guys, are a 'changing.

~ Dani ~

Health, magicka, stamina are just tank numbers. IE how much you have before you run out. I don't think stats fit this philosophy, as they define that generally women are smarter than men but men are stronger then women. Depletion is not in the cards.

Some basic things I think should be there:

Argonians swim faster, unaffected by posons and disease.
Khajiit jump higher and take less fall damage
Imperial have a barter/speechcraft bonus(however they are going to do this)
Nords Frost resist and highest health
Orcs Good melee damage and decent health, and the ability to go beserk if health is to low.
Bosmer have less animals attacking them and approach them, and have a decent speed and jump bonus.
Breton decent magicka bar and magicka resistence
Altmer resistant to disease, and highest magicka count
Dunmer can resist fire
RedGaurd Very fast with the highest stanima

Be careful how you interpret statistics. Studies showing that women have better people skills show that for a sample of a particular society, some form of the average readings on personal skills has a higher result for females than males. It does not mean that every single female will have better social skills than every male. Similarly, not every man is stronger physically than every woman by the difference of average strengths.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

Oh you are so freaking wrong! Go read up on the histories, there have been plenty of female emperors. [censored], a dark elf was an empress once, and lead Tamriel into a [censored] golden age during her reign.

So...Anyone who doesn't produce a daughter is now sixist? That's a little harsh.

Yeah, I guess that being the lady who was the head of the Fighters Guild doesn't count, or that there are plenty of high ranked members of the Thieves Guild, Fighters Guild, and Mages Guild. And ignore that the PC can be a leader of every organization as a female.

Hrmm...either you ignored most of Morrowind (or never played it), or you are cherry picking too much.

Too late.


Also to note, you should take account of Morrowind too. There are plenty of female leaders and the like in nearly every organizations. The Imperial Guard may be the exception, but I never played that. And you should note that the PC, as a female, can also become a leader to all organization the PC joined, assuming the PC has the skill and attribute requirements (for MW at least). No one can become a head in DF, only a really high rank.

I hope not. The referenced stats (ignoring that Skyrim doesn't have them for this point to be made) really don't have an inherent connection to either gender and I dislike the thought that they do.

Four, during the Septim dynasty at least: Kintyra I, Kintyra II, Katariah (a Dunmer!) and Morihatha. The first reigned uncontested, the second suffered from accusations of illegitimacy rather than any concerns of being a woman, the third is considered one of the golden ages of the Empire and the fourth inherited a bad political position from her brother. There isn't any indication that the people of Cyrodiil have any trouble with a woman on the throne at all.

This. The Health Umbrella is now supposed to encompass numerous definitions,some historically favor men others female and some neither at all. Hence would be quite sixist to give bonuses based upon gender fro something as abstract as "stamina" when that can mean straight ability to continue physical exertion or ability to withstand physical exertion/stresses.

That and since skills are things one learns some sort of blanket of males get +5 to one handed implies that every bakers son picks up a weapon and trains with it.

Feel better?

Okay, fair enough. What histories are we talking about? I've not read every word every written about TES so, yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe there were Empresses but not in any game I played. Meaning: a character in the game, not a reference in a book. Different there.

Edit: NM see Maccabeus' post for a better answer.

And what exactly did Vilena Donton do in the game? Seriously? What deep role did she play? All the Fighter's Guild quests were given by men. All of them, right? This quote from UESPwiki:

"In fact, she is in reality just a figurehead leader for the guild, since she immediately (and permanently) delegates her authority to assign duties to the Fighters' Guild Champion, Modryn Oreyn."

I'm not going to fight with you - seriously - and I'm going to say this as a way of explanation: it takes more to make a video game gender-equal than populating it with a few token females.

And again, see my previous post. You took everything of out context.

~ Dani ~

I can't believe neither you, nor Gothgirl, nor Hellmouth (You're a lore buff! You should know this, Hellmouth!) mentioned the greatest of all the female rulers of the Empire! Alessia was the slave girl who escaped, led an uprising against her former Ayleid slavemasters, and DESTROYED the first Tamrielic Empire (the Ayleid empire) to form a new one in which Alessia, who the gods practically favored as a human representative on Nirn, ruled as the Tamrielic Empire's first human Empress. She freed all the early, human inhabitants of Cyrodiil, led an uprising in which she destroyed the entire Ayleid Empire, and formed an entirely new Empire of which she was the first ruler!

Wow, you're right. How could we forget?

What game was she in? As a character (e.g. Emperor Uriel Septim), not a reference? 'Cause I probably didn't play it.

~ Dani ~

To be fair, all four games (five of six, if you count Battlespire and Redguard) so far have been during the same emperor's reign, barring Martin's incredibly brief time on the throne. A sample size of two is hard to determine a trend from... there's no lack of low-level sixism in Oblivion (I'm looking at you, "The Sirens' Deception"...), but I'm not sure that's fair to include.




Apologies, my focus tends to be on the Third Era. Alessia is as much a folk/religious hero as a historical figure, though, although I'll allow that a female folk hero[ine] could be counted as being as good as a ruler, I suppose.

Even if it was sixist, which it isn't, who cares? Its a game.