Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered
I suppose hydrostats act like they have EITHER weak or short. they can pick up a small object at reasonable distance, or they can manipulate a heavy object at a close distance.
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Perhaps to some extent. Then again, fully-extended endoskeletal hands have a harder time lifting a weight than doing the same close to the body. Of course, between Weak (elephant) and Invertebrate (octopus), lifting weights is harder for a given ST.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered
I agree that octopodes grapple above their weight class. Just not at +12, which is what 6 extra arms gets you. Above I eyeballed it at +4. It should also be noted most of the time octopodes are up against poor grapplers.
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Hmm. I think it's something on which either of us can only eyeball and guess. I think more than a +4 is warranted, especially for the DX roll to land a meaningful grappling hit, especially against higher-SM targets. With the ST rolls, it's trickier because arms provide a linear bonus regardless of original ST (but doing it otherwise leads to needing a quadratic function to calculate the bonus based on available ST and number of free hands, which is exactly the sort of thing which gave GURPS its infamy for being overengineered).
Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered
Octopodes still can't do with one arm what you can do with one arm. They can grab and move things around, but they don't have fingers. there is some complexity to the grip of each tentacle, but nothing like what a hand has. If you made me choose between 8 vertebrate limbs and 8 tentacles, I'm going to choose the vertebrate structure for everything but prying open clams and retrieving objects from cracks.
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It seems to be a two-way street: I can't pass a ball all the way from the tip of a finger to the shoulder without letting go; I can't even do that with the whole arm; yet octopodes have been seen doing that with a single tentacle. Singular tentacles are probably worse for things like typing, but I'm not sure they'd be any worse for e.g. writing with a pen. Overall, many exceptions are likely to be below GURPS' resolution.