Stats for a giant beetle?

[Ultraviolet]

Does anyone have stats for a giant beetle?
Or is there one in a published book?

I've tried a search on the forum, but can't seem to come up with anything.

[Aldric]

Since it seems no one is willing to help...

What king of giant beetle did you have in mind ?
Size would be helpful to start statting it, since a quick seach didn't come up with anything.

[Ultraviolet]

Originally Posted by Aldric

Since it seems no one is willing to help...

What king of giant beetle did you have in mind ?
Size would be helpful to start statting it, since a quick seach didn't come up with anything.

Thanks
I already found a 4' bombardier beetle in AtE2, but I was thinking bigger. Like truck sized, or at least hippo sized!

And a scarab or dung beetle would be appropriate I think.

Also: It's not of earth-shattering importance to find anything. But 4 weeks ago, on the afternoon of a game night the current GM asked stats for a kangaroo. I found that in 5 minutes search, but no such luck this time.

[Bruno]

Monster Hunters 3 gives the Mummy a big (SM 0) scarab form, but this is a supernatural mummy-scarab and not appropriate as a "mundane" giant bug.

As noted in ATE2, the bombardier beetle can be used as a basic "beetle" with some tweaks; I would say just removing the blast, and increasing the Mandibles bite a point or two.

A beetle the size of an elephant would have comparable ST (45) and you could argue either DR 7 (+1 for each +1 SM) or DR 15 (as it is now ~5 times longer in all dimensions). 7 is more plausible, as DR 15 chitin would be difficult to drag around for a beetle, with its splayed legs, but a SM 3 beetle wouldn't be able to drag it's OWN body around with splayed legs, so at this point it just depends on how tough you want it.

With ST 45 you can expect a 5d+5-ish crushing mandibles attack (for things with big ol' scary pincers treated as strikers); as strikers, they do not take damage when parried by a weapon.

Originally Posted by Aldric

Since it seems no one is willing to help...

This was posted at oh-god-oclock in the morning in North America; 4 hours later many posters are still in bed and others are working on their coffee. The European vanguard are awake, but at work or school. Also, there really aren't a lot of giant beetles kicking around in GURPS, and folks generally don't post to say "Nope, don't have one."

[ericthered]

Ok, this is right up my alley, I'm currently wrapping up a game that featured both giant beetles and kangaroos, though neither was very prominent.

for kangaroos (and many animals in general) I recommend GURPS animalia, Which has a section on macropods (kangaroos of all sizes, present and prehistoric). Gurps animalia lets you pick a weight and then extrapolates a ST.

I've got a very simple giant beetle template from when I started playing gurps, that just gives Flight, Teeth, Wild Animal, Hexapod, and some DR. That's really all you need, plus attributes. The two hardest attributes to pin down are ST and DR. I built a table of weight to ST in a blog post a while back, and it seems to be the most useful thing on that blog. I usually recommend DR at around 1/10th of hit points for large creatures, and with a hard shell a beetle can justify around double of that.

With a "Hippo sized" beetle, that's 3,000 lbs, for a small male or a large female hippo, and that would give the following stats:

ST    28    HP        28
DX    11    Per        11
IQ    3    Will    11
HT    11    FP        11

Ground Move    5
Air Move    10
Speed    5.5
DR        6

Traits: Flight, Teeth, Wild Animal, Hexapod

DR probably needs to tweaked to fit your campaign, and your idea of what a giant beetle should be like, but 6 is probably just a touch low. You could easily go as high as 10. You need to decide if you want the big bugger to fly or not: beetles can generally fly, but slowly.

[Ultraviolet]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Monster Hunters 3 gives the Mummy a big (SM 0) scarab form, but this is a supernatural mummy-scarab and not appropriate as a "mundane" giant bug.

As noted in ATE2, the bombardier beetle can be used as a basic "beetle" with some tweaks; I would say just removing the blast, and increasing the Mandibles bite a point or two.

A beetle the size of an elephant would have comparable ST (45) and you could argue either DR 7 (+1 for each +1 SM) or DR 15 (as it is now ~5 times longer in all dimensions). 7 is more plausible, as DR 15 chitin would be difficult to drag around for a beetle, with its splayed legs, but a SM 3 beetle wouldn't be able to drag it's OWN body around with splayed legs, so at this point it just depends on how tough you want it.

With ST 45 you can expect a 5d+5-ish crushing mandibles attack (for things with big ol' scary pincers treated as strikers); as strikers, they do not take damage when parried by a weapon.



This was posted at oh-god-oclock in the morning in North America; 4 hours later many posters are still in bed and others are working on their coffee. The European vanguard are awake, but at work or school. Also, there really aren't a lot of giant beetles kicking around in GURPS, and folks generally don't post to say "Nope, don't have one."

Yes, I'm aware of the challenges of European vs. US time zones. Forum users are usually very polite and willing to answer, once they have a chance.

But the ballpark figures for en elephant sized bug seems useful.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by ericthered

DR probably needs to tweaked to fit your campaign, and your idea of what a giant beetle should be like, but 6 is probably just a touch low. You could easily go as high as 10. You need to decide if you want the big bugger to fly or not: beetles can generally fly, but slowly.

I'm working on an elephantine writeup, I'll make it consistent with yours. I plan on posting it to my blog when done - is yours going up on your blog? I'd like to link to it (or, if you prefer, include it in the post).

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Ultraviolet

But the ballpark figures for en elephant sized bug seems useful.

I mostly agree with them, but with a couple of caveats:

I would tend to get rid of the air move; even real beetles commonly do more crawling than flying, and flying at all is incredibly unlikely for anything that weighs more than a ton.

IQ 3 is ridiculously high. I don't think any real insect could be given IQ higher than 1, and there's no reason to treat giant insects as being exceptionally smart. IQ 3 is as smart as a not very smart mammal or a nonpasserine bird, and smarter than a reptile; that's really a huge boost in neural organization. I could maybe stretch a point and allow IQ 2, "as smart as a turtle," if you want to postulate somewhat better neural efficiency.

I assume you want to ignore realistic biomechanical issues like breathing via tracheae and limb thickness.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by whswhs

IQ 3 is ridiculously high. I don't think any real insect could be given IQ higher than 1, and there's no reason to treat giant insects as being exceptionally smart. IQ 3 is as smart as a not very smart mammal or a nonpasserine bird, and smarter than a reptile; that's really a huge boost in neural organization.

I might actually go as high as 2 or 3 for a fantasy giant beetle, operating on the theory that they are somewhat tameable as riding beasts/construction vehicles by coleopterans (if you've got coleopterans, clearly insectoids can be cleverer than is realistic in your game world). First trick you always teach them: Don't eat me. That's really hard to teach to IQ 1 critters...

[Aldric]

Hey... It worked. Ppl woke up and saw the post.

I would adjust DR to whatever you need for the setting... Is it going to face bows and arrows or rifles?