Just started trying out this mod- a lot of fun but for some reason the caste bonuses aren't working for me- I just got an unfathomably weak steel clan member at embark... doesn't seem possible from the raws- lists 3000! as the minimum under the phys_att_range for strength... am I missing something? I tried a few more embarks and still get characteristics below the phys_att_range minimums.
2000 is actually the minimum strength, 3500 is the average. Anyway, the description of their attributes is based off of the caste's stats, not the creature's average stats. So an unfathomably weak steel dwarf will have a strength of 2000, which is still stronger than some dwarves will ever be able to achieve, and they'll be able to reach 4500 with enough training, which is nearly the strength cap in Dwarf Fortress. I've just looked a bit closer, and I've remembered that female steel dwarves are way stronger than male steel dwarves, and their minimum strength is 3000, and average is 4000, which would mean that their strength is higher than most dwarves will ever be able to reach, and with training they can reach the maximum strength a creature in Dwarf Fortress can have, without some crazy modding tricks.
EDIT:Actually, I did some math wrong and somehow added 2,000 and 3,500 together and got 4,500. minimum strength male steel dwarves' strength cap is the maximum of 5,000. (Warning: Mostly irrelevant modding ramble ahead)Though, I do wonder if it can go above that if the attributes start out really high because that's just all that you're allowed to specify in the raws, and I know from the Dragonball Z mod that attribures definitely can go over 5,000, though to my understanding it's not through standard methods. So theoretically you would have a maximum strength of 10,000. I've been told that 5,000 is the maximum even in that kind of circumstance though. Now that I think about it more, I remember there's a token that lets you change the attribute caps, which by default are set to 200 percent of the starting value or the starting value plus the average, but you could change that to 5,000 percent of the starting value at least (I haven't tried higher), so, you could get an even higher attribute cap. This is probably already known though, but I think I would have heard of it before.