A few days ago I started to finalize the backstory and properties of my newest Pathfinder character, an Elf Paladin. After I got her backstory down and her build laid out I went to the core rulebook to look at those nice tables that give you the ability to randomly roll for height, weight, and age. My 6ft 2in Paladin turned out to be less than 120 pounds. I understand Elves are lithe creatures, but the idea of a gangley 120 pound Paladin made me a little sad. That is until I looked back at her statblock. Her 14 strength is higher than about half my current characters, shes actually kind of powerful for her weight.

Power for weight. Its an important aspect of transportation, but not so important in fighting arenas. But say for just a second, if you had to have any of the core races pull a cart, who would you pick. Before running some numbers I’d chose Half-Orc without blinking, maybe Dwarves ahead or just behind them. I went down the rabbit hole, looked to close to the face of Math-God. I decided to calculate the most effective strength to weight core-races.

For this exercise, I simplified things. I used average rolls for weight, and I averages male and female weights to get an average race-weight. In the core rulebook, the women of core races weight less than the males. Usually not by too much, but it’d be a compounding factor that’d only muddy the result. I also didn’t use any age templates. For their racial statblocks, I used the basic melee NPC statblock. We’re talking about pulling carts, you probably want melee attuned members of your respective race being your imaginary cart-pull representative. For races with an assignable bonus like Humans, Half-Orc, and Half-Elves, that bonus was assigned to Strength. I will also only be noting the pull/drag weight, which is just the maximum load multiplied by 5.

Race	Base ht	Base wt	Modifier	Wt multiplier	Avg ht	Avg wt	Avg wt/race
Human M	58 in	120 lb	11	X5	69 in	175 lb	157.5 lb
Human F	53 in	85 lb	11	X5	64 in	140 lb
Dwarf M	45 in	150 lb	5	X7	50 in	185 lb	170 lb
Dwarf F	43 in	120 lb	5	X7	48 in	155 lb
Elf M	64 in	100 lb	9	X3	73 in	127 lb	119 lb
Elf F	64 in	90 lb	7	X3	71 in	111 lb
Gnome M	36 in	35 lb	5	X1	41 in	40 lb	37.5 lb
Gnome F	34 in	30 lb	5	X1	39 in	35 lb
Half-E M	62 in	110 lb	9	X5	71 in	155 lb	145 lb
Half-F F	60 in	90 lb	9	X5	69 in	135 lb
Half-O M	58 in	150 lb	13	X7	71 in	241 lb	221 lb
Half-O F	53 in	110 lb	13	X7	66 in	201 lb
Halfling M	32 in	30 lb	5	X1	37 in	35 lb	32.5 lb
Halfling F	30 in	25 lb	5	X1	35 in	30 lb

Base Melee NPC	Human	Dwarf	Elf	Gnome	Half-Elf	Half-Orc	Halfling
Str 13	15	13	13	11	15	15	11
Dex 11	11	11	13	11	11	11	13
Con 13	13	15	11	15	13	13	13
Int 9	9	9	11	9	9	9	9
Wis 10	10	12	10	10	10	10	10
Cha 8	8	6	8	10	8	8	10

In the end we end up with varied weights, but only 3 different strength amounts; 11, 13, and 15. The push/drag capacity of  11 Str is 575lb, 13 Str is 750lb, and 15 Str is 1,000lb.

Next we’ll take the average racial weight and divide the races carrying capacity by that. With that we’ll get pounds per pounds also known as “How many times body weight”.

Race	Push/Drag Load	Avg Race Wt	Lb/Lb (x*body wt)
Human	1,000 lb	157.5 lb	6.35 Lb/Lb
Dwarf	750 lb	170 lb	4.41 Lb/Lb
Elf	750 lb	119 lb	6.3 Lb/Lb
Gnome	575 lb	37.5 lb	15.33 Lb/Lb
Half-Elf	1,000 lb	145 lb	6.9 Lb/Lb
Half-Orc	1,000 lb	221 lb	4.52 Lb/Lb
Halfling	575 lb	32.5 lb	17.7 Lb/Lb

Things are pretty even across the board. All the medium sized races have Lb/Lb ratios between 4.4 and 6.35. Elves have the lowest load capability, but are slighter in build and able to keep relative pace with the other medium races. The denser Half-Orc and Dwarves score lower Lb/Lb rations, even though they’re your traditional “strong” races. The small sized races break this math however. Being able to pull/drag an astonishing 15.33 times their body weight, Gnomes are outdone by their Halfling betters who can pull/drag 17.7 times their own body weight! Pound, for Pound Halflings are the strongest core race. Horray Frodo!

Below, for some real world reference I made another chart detailing some other feats of strength.

Entity	Push/Drag Load	Average Wt	Lb/Lb
Bengal Tiger	1,213 lb	430 lb	2.82
Valiant the Dog	1,000 lb	103 lb	9.7
Kevin Fast	416,299 lb	300 lb	1,388

Pound for pound, humans are stronger than the most numerous of Tiger species. This does not mean you should go out and mess with Tigers. Absolute strength is still a thing. There’s that random fact we all learned in school that ant can lift 100 times their body weight. Have you ever been moved by an ant? Didn’t think so. The last man on the list there, Kevin Fast pulled an airplane, 1,388 times his body weight, for about 30 seconds. The values in the Pathfinder core rulebook seem to approximate burden weights, not feats of strength. Just wait for Kevin Never-Fast the Halflings double airplane pull, it’ll be the stuff of legends.

 

**Barbarian in the comments caught my slip up about small and large characters. Rather than edit the article I just want you to direct down to the comments for the correct numbers.**