Are there any published materials about different body sizes?

Question

I'm wondering if there's any official published material on different body types such as overweight/underweight (as well as short and tall characters) in the history of Dungeons and Dragons.

Specifically, the most likely thing I can think of would be an alternative 'official' (not third-party) weight/height generation method, either in a sourcebook or in the Dungeon/Dragon magazine?

Note, this is not a duplicate of the related question - How can I make an overweight character? - as I'm after official published material. In contrast to the linked question, I'm interested in underweight/overweight characters as well as short/tall characters.

I'm defining 'different body sizes' as anything outside the minimum and maximum heights and weights possible.

My initial interest was that I'm planning on playing an overweight dwarf, and noted the limits of the height/weight tables in the 5e PhB. Following on from that I have been trying to figure out what makes more sense:

• scaling up the character's height to compare the equivalent weight to humans of the same height, or
• scaling down the height of existing overweight real-world individuals to dwarf heights

And would give the right dwarvish body type more 'accurately' that just adding on an arbitrary number of pounds.

After that I considered this might have been featured in official published material somewhere in one edition or another, which would help me figure out the above for this character and future characters of different races.

Answer 1

No, just attempts at representing standard heights and weights

Dragon Magazine covering OD&D to D&D1

Looking over the Dragon Magazine Master Index there are a small number of articles that cover height and weight:

Article Title	Author	Issue	Page	Edition
"Weights & Measures"	P.M. Crabaugh	10	19	OD&D
"How Heavy Is My Giant?"	"Shlump da Orc"	13	5	OD&D
"Realistic Vital Statistics"	Stephen Inniss	91	10	D&D1

Having reviewed these articles via the magazine archive these are all to do with either the heights and weights of (at the time) non-standard races, or attempts at more realistic generation methods that still don't deliberately account for non-standard body types.

Advanced 2e D&D

Although not an alternative system, I have found the generation method for previous editions:

I've been able to confirm that the height and weight tables here are faithful to the original books, and are in pounds and inches:

Race	Height Base*	Height Modifier	Weight Base*	Weight Modifier
Dwarf	43/41	1d10	130/105	4d10
Elf	55/50	1d10	90/70	3d10
Gnome	38/36	1d6	72/68	5d4
Half-Elf	60/58	2d6	110/85	3d12
Halfling	32/30	2d8	52/48	5d4
Human	60/59	2d10	140/100	6d10

And it comes with this note:

_{*Females tend to be lighter and shorter than males. Thus, the base numbers for height and weight are divided into male/female values. Note that the modifier still allows for a broad range in each category.}

For humans, as an example this covers a BMI^* of ~16 to ~36, which is a wider range than the 5e PhB covers, but from what I know this doesn't go into any details about actual body types. For instance, it doesn't cover the difference between a low-fat percentage/muscular character at BMI 36 vs. a character with higher fat-percentage. It doesn't distinguish between short and tall characters of different weights either, etc.

Tying it back to your example of an overweight dwarf, the same AD&D 2e tables produce a maximum BMI^* between ~35 and ~65, but again there's no commentary I can find that these aren't just correlated to standard dwarven body types, or if the upper and lower bounds would constitute 'different body types'.

---

_{* I'm only using BMI a comparisons between editions/races, and not as a good measure of body types, as evidenced in the paragraphs this footnote is for}

Answer 2

The question is if there is any official published material "in the history of the game". Well, I was a child and played when the whole D&D thing started (i.e. "Basic") to the 90's. So my wheelhouse is about the history and I can't answer anything about the rules and editions of the last 2 decades because I don't care for them.

I purchased and still own the originals of every single book/module ever made, and had a subscription to the Dragon Magazine (thanks Mom). Read all the books/modules so many times... to the point of memorizing all of them and could quote things by page #. No joke.

And admittedly my memory is not what it used to be (I'm a doddering old mage after all) but I cannot recall any official source material (excluding any articles in the magazine) about different body sizes. The various rulebooks barely covered encumbrance, let alone body types.

I think you'll have to define your own rules about how your character's physical stature affects things, and be sure to adjust any stats to be appropriate. That's what the original game and versions did and it's OK to follow suit (and doesn't the newest edition allow you that flexibility anyway?)