-4 Str

-4 Str is a meme and trollbait from /tg/. The term is used as a shorthand way of saying that all women -- especially adventurers -- are significantly weaker than men, and ought to take a -4 modifier to their strength score. One can guarantee that by invoking these words a musclegirl image dump or a stupid argument will ensue, sometimes both.

History

Though its origins are shrouded in mystery, some evidence has come along to point to -4 Str's beginnings, or at least a very similar concept.

An oldfag says: "This meme is at least as old as 1978. Check page 15 of 1st ed. AD&D: a table for racial min/max for each stat and gender, but the only real difference is -1 Str for femme Dwarves, -2 Str for femme Elves, -3 Str for femme Gnomes and Halflings. All the other stats -- Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Chr -- are the same for both genders. Cue feminazi bashing of Gary Gygax."

It's ironic this stat showed up in people's games of D&D at all, and managed to stay with it for a while (hoping it isn't still kicking somewhere) because the Wizards explicitly made the effort in 3.5 books to use female pronouns almost every instance of a pronoun for describing a class not involving a character passage. And throughout there are illustrations of heavily armored, imposing, lethal, women. Even before that edition of DnD, when the Magic the Gathering game was created (at it's inception largely for the sake of DnDers), all the angels have been depicted as distinctly female in illustration and name, from the game's creation to today, and are well known as some of top of the line cards.