I would make insects have the highest starting max load. It would make sense to me for them to carry some large amount of weight. Case and point, ants. It just seems kind of strange that the race with the lowest max load, is an insect. I'm only assuming of course that the insects in this game have they same strength traits as insects in our world. But this would mean they become the strongest race in the game. Unless you explain it away as, they use magic to increase the amount of stuff they can carry.

The ability to carry huge amounts of weight (compared to their own size) has less to do with the fact that they are insectoids and with the fact of their size.
It's the relation of muscle mass to strengh.
Basically (really really roughly) you strengh depends on the cross sectional area of your muscle.
But the mass itself increases in a three dimensional volume.
Meaning that size increase is not proportional to strengh increase in orders of magnitude, one is a squared value the other is cubed.
This is why much smaller creatures can handle weight which is relative to themselves quite huge.
 
So ants blown up to our human like size would be roughly just as strong, they would not be able to carry trees or anything.

@Tennmuerti: But they shoot fireballs with magic sticks, and your concerned with some fanciful ideal of thinking magic or "science". I'll Square-Cube law your logic all the way to Grimrock.

@Tennmuerti: But they shoot fireballs with magic sticks, and your concerned with some fanciful ideal of thinking magic or "science". I'll Square-Cube law your logic all the way to Grimrock.

@Tennmuerti: >_> I'll stick with my " They used magic to make themselves lift a lot"

Magic ants yo' XD

magic ant just lifts the whole dungeon up and shakes all the loot out

@drag said:

magic ant just lifts the whole dungeon up and shakes all the loot out

That's actually confirmed DLC.