I was reading through the Player's Handbook today to make a character when I saw the Random Height and Weight tables. Looking at that, I saw that the weight, for a Tiefling, was 110 lbs * (2d4). Surely, I thought, a 220-880 lb tiefling is a little bit much compared to their 4'11" – 6'1" height, so I looked at the others, and they are all similar.
Amusingly, the Mountain Dwarf has a weight of 130 lbs * (2D6), which can result in a character of the range of 260-1560 lbs, or close to a full ton of dwarf.
Has there ever been any clarification on this?
Best Answer
The table is poorly formatted, below is how to use it
The following is listed before the table:
Thus you do the following:
The table is as follows:
$$ \begin{array}{|c|c|c|c|c|} \hline Race & Base\ Height & Height\ Modifier & Base\ Weight & Weight\ Modifier\\ \hline \hline \text{Human} & 4'8'' & +2d10 & 110\ lb. & \times(2d4)\ lb.\\ \hline \text{Dwarf, Hill} & 3'8'' & +2d4 & 115\ lb. & \times(2d6)\ lb.\\ \hline \text{Dwarf, Mountain} & 4' & +2d4 & 115\ lb. & \times(2d6)\ lb.\\ \hline \text{Elf, High} & 4'6'' & +2d10 & 90\ lb. & \times(1d4)\ lb.\\ \hline \text{Elf, Wood} & 4'6'' & +2d10 & 100\ lb. & \times(1d4)\ lb.\\ \hline \text{Elf, Drow} & 4'5'' & +2d6 & 75\ lb. & \times(1d6)\ lb.\\ \hline \text{Halfling} & 2'7'' & +2d4 & 35\ lb. & \times\ 1\ lb.\\ \hline \text{Dragonborn} & 5'6'' & +2d8 & 175\ lb. & \times(2d6)\ lb.\\ \hline \text{Gnome} & 2'11'' & +2d4 & 35\ lb. & \times\ 1\ lb.\\ \hline \text{Half-elf} & 4'9'' & +2d8 & 110\ lb. & \times(2d4)\ lb.\\ \hline \text{Half-orc} & 4'10'' & +2d10 & 140\ lb. & \times(2d6)\ lb.\\ \hline \text{Tiefling} & 4'9'' & +2d8 & 110\ lb. & \times(2d4)\ lb.\\ \hline \end{array} \\ $$
Let's say you're a Dragonborn, then you are 5'6" + 2d8 inches tall. You would roll those 2d8, and let's say you got 13, and were thus 6'7''.
Then you would also roll the Weight Modifier dice (2d6), and let's say you got 4. This means you would be 175+13*4 = 227 pounds.
Let's say you're a Gnome, then you are 2'11" + 2d4 inches tall. Let's say got a 7 and ended up being 3'6", then you would add 7*1 to your Base Weight landing you at 42 pounds.