Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 03-05-2012, 12:32 PM   #11
Bruno
 
Bruno's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
Default Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?

Quote:
Originally Posted by JCurwen3 View Post
So that's why I'm curious - does the skull see any of that bone mass increase that comes from weight increase (esp muscle gain)? Is it evenly distributed or just specific to various selected body parts? My search skills failed to uncover an answer.
It's ONLY in the specific body parts, and it's in a very distinctive way as well - the bone remoulds in response to stress at the point of stress. It doesn't just randomly stimulate bone growth - that's a medical disorder, not a healthy reaction.

Bone density will go up on bones that take significant stress. It's a local reaction in the bone itself to the stress - as the bone approaches the point of breakage due to the stress, it reacts by "freaking out" and building itself up to prevent it from happening in the future. The stress needs to be applied regularly, and the reaction is localized to the bone(s) that are under stress, and most dramatically concentrated where the muscle(s) that are applying the stress are attached to the bone(s). IE with enough muscle development over a long enough period of time, an anatomist can read your naked skeleton and say what kinds of motions you were doing.

I'd buy carrying jugs of water on your head building up the skull bones before I'd buy lifting weights... and only in the areas of the skull that are involved in bearing the load. Similarly spending your entire life putting heavy work on your jaws (chewing jerky for your entire life, using your jaws as clamps in various crafts, as is pretty common in stone age societies) will build up bone density both in the mandible and at the muscle attachment points for your jaw muscles... but not elsewhere on your skull, and quite possibly not in ways useful for deflecting bows.

I'm also not sure that more bone density is going to protect the spine alone - with all the segments, I'd rather put my money on more bone mass via more bone volume. But I don't really know enough about traumatic spine injuries to make an educated guess on that one.
__________________
All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table
A Wiki for my F2F Group
A neglected GURPS blog
Bruno is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2012, 12:38 PM   #12
Bruno
 
Bruno's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
Default Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?

Bone density in the skull varies by species even without getting into size differences. Pig skulls, pig jaws, and pig teeth are all tougher than the human equivalents, even for human-sized pigs. Our skulls are kind of pushing their structural limits to hold our big brains inside, and this might be why there are so many human skulls with saber-toothed cat fang holes in them - the cats probably figured out very quickly that we go "crunch" nicely.

This may be more in the same category as Move and SM, or temperature comfort ranges and SM - "often, but not consistently enough to make it a feature of SM rather than something on the individual racial template".

I think a general design guideline would be helpful though - much like a general design guideline for Move is useful for making larger/smaller variations of a species. Island dwarfs/giants as an example, and fantasy/sci-fi enlarged or shrunk animals as well.
__________________
All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table
A Wiki for my F2F Group
A neglected GURPS blog
Bruno is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2012, 01:04 PM   #13
Ze'Manel Cunha
 
Ze'Manel Cunha's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
Default Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?

Quote:
Originally Posted by JCurwen3 View Post
Does this sound reasonable as a house rule?
No, just pay for the DR, don't give out extra for free.

It's the same as SM and move, you still have to buy the extra BM, you don't get any extra for free.

You can justify buying extra based on size, but species variation has more to do with it than size alone.
Ze'Manel Cunha is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2012, 02:04 PM   #14
JCurwen3
 
JCurwen3's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Default Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
No, just pay for the DR, don't give out extra for free.

It's the same as SM and move, you still have to buy the extra BM, you don't get any extra for free.

You can justify buying extra based on size, but species variation has more to do with it than size alone.
Would you think it would at least be appropriate to buy the extra DR (skull or spine only) with the Size limitation, for a discount?

Also, this only answers the question for high SM. I can't see a RAW legal way to lower DR (for the little guys... or for maybe the odd humanoid that tragically has soft cartilage where his skull bones should be). I mean, it's simple enough to house-rule that it's just switching the DR cost to negative and only allowing it to be lowered down to 0 DR for any given location (no actual negative DR allowed); not really much abuse potential considering it wouldn't give you many points to get rid of the 2 DR for Skull and 3 DR for Spine considering those locations' to-hit penalties and how the Partial limitation to DR works. But is it RAW?
__________________
-JC
JCurwen3 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2012, 02:08 PM   #15
Anthony
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?

It's probably more realistic to base on hit points than SM, to be honest. CLarge creatures have thicker skulls because they can, not because of any intrinsic scaling with size.
Anthony is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2012, 02:24 PM   #16
Dunadin777
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Default Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
It's probably more realistic to base on hit points than SM, to be honest. CLarge creatures have thicker skulls because they can, not because of any intrinsic scaling with size.
Yes, but this is a reason for structural DR not to scale with anything, and certainly not to scale with HP. Otherwise a ST 15 human will have a skull and spine that's 50% more resilient to injury than the average human, and a ST 20 human will have a 100% more resilient skull and spine. That's just ridiculous. It's much more reasonable to simply leave such things as part of racial design features, and even then the scaling probably should never be so extreme.
__________________
Finds party's farmboy-helper about to skewer the captive brigand who attacked his sister.

"I don't think I'm morally obligated to stop this..."
Ten Green Gem Vine--Warrior-poet, bane of highwaymen
Dunadin777 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2012, 02:44 PM   #17
Gold & Appel Inc
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: One Mile Up
Default Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
It's ONLY in the specific body parts, and it's in a very distinctive way as well - the bone remoulds in response to stress at the point of stress. It doesn't just randomly stimulate bone growth - that's a medical disorder, not a healthy reaction.
QFT. Normal bone is normal bone, and differences in durability is a function of HP more than anything resembling human scale IMHO. It can get bigger but doesn't change in density until you get up into superpowers and such.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
Bone density will go up on bones that take significant stress.
I'm also not sure that more bone density is going to protect the spine alone - with all the segments, I'd rather put my money on more bone mass via more bone volume. But I don't really know enough about traumatic spine injuries to make an educated guess on that one.
I have no problem at all with physical creatures that depend on a higher-than-average sturdy spinal structure having more DR, especially against Crushing, but I find your build slightly excessive.
Gold & Appel Inc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2012, 02:50 PM   #18
Anthony
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dunadin777 View Post
Yes, but this is a reason for structural DR not to scale with anything, and certainly not to scale with HP. Otherwise a ST 15 human will have a skull and spine that's 50% more resilient to injury than the average human, and a ST 20 human will have a 100% more resilient skull and spine. That's just ridiculous.
It's not a lot more ridiculous than the ST 20 human having 20 hit points to start with.
Anthony is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2012, 02:58 PM   #19
Dunadin777
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Default Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
It's not a lot more ridiculous than the ST 20 human having 20 hit points to start with.
I'd have to disagree. Being able to take, endure, and feel a lot of damage compared to other people is not nearly so outlandish as the concept that you can take twice as much punishment to x location without being injured or even feeling any significant pain. I know a few people I'd believe have 5 or more hit points than me. But if their spines or skulls were that much thicker than mine, I'd assume that I had a bone deficiency first before making a contrary conclusion.

Really, the idea that something based on anatomy, physiology, and structure could scale directly with an abstract GURPS stat feels just plain wrong. Skulls and spinal cords are generally as resilient as they can be for what they need to do for the creature involved. That's why creatures with notable skulls and spines generally also have things like small brains or limited flexibility.
__________________
Finds party's farmboy-helper about to skewer the captive brigand who attacked his sister.

"I don't think I'm morally obligated to stop this..."
Ten Green Gem Vine--Warrior-poet, bane of highwaymen
Dunadin777 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-05-2012, 03:02 PM   #20
JCurwen3
 
JCurwen3's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Default Re: Skull and Spine DR - shouldn't these scale?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
It's not a lot more ridiculous than the ST 20 human having 20 hit points to start with.
Ha, yes, that's a good point.

Um... speaking of "to start with", are there any rules anywhere about these DR figures for babies and small children? I know newborns have soft skulls, especially in some areas; they might have a fractional DR better than flesh alone but not enough to warrant a full 1 DR. And at some point that becomes 1 DR, and then later on 2 DR (different values for the spine too, of course). If there aren't rules, any suggestions?
__________________
-JC
JCurwen3 is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
bestiary, damage resistance, hit points, monster creation, scaling, skull, spine

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 02:37 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.