GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by ciaran_skye

Depends on the worker. I have the feeling the "average human worker" in a manual labor job has a higher than ST 10. I can say at my work where lifting and carrying more than 100 pounds is a routine task and where you're expected to lift up to that every 3 seconds for hours on end there are lots of people with ST11 and 12 and we use lots of machines to help with it.

I generally assume that a professional of Race A with be proportional to the same type of professional of Race B, so if a human blacksmith has ST 12 (44% above an ST 10 average), then an ogre blacksmith will have an ST of 24 (44% above a ST 20 average). That way I don't have to think about how strong each profession is, just racial averages. So if humans are base 1, ogres would be 4, and just multiply all ST related stuff by 4 for what equivalent ogres can do.

I agree, more ST seems to only help some of the manufacturing processes. Lumberjacking and smelting look like they might be helped by having stronger workers, while glassblowing and pottery, not so much. Those might require more exotic advantages than more ST.

P.S.: Outside combat, I consider ST and Basic Lift to be pretty interchangeable.