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Old 07-07-2017, 11:38 AM   #11
safisher
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Default Re: Stating Kong...

Look at David Pulver's Extreme Damage article in Pyramid 34. It provides some alternate rules for dealing with HP and damage for large creatures. Also, Kromm''s article Combat Write Large in Pyramid 77 deals with combat and large creatures very well. I wouldn't run Skull Island without looking carefully at both.
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Old 07-07-2017, 03:13 PM   #12
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Default Re: Stating Kong...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Juca View Post
Also, I found the movie official specifications of Kong, which put the ape at a massive 158 tons, or 348.000 lbs (talk about a buff ape...), but it seems that I did the wrong calculations on its hit points, that should be about 140, which, when you consider that now it is taking 1/3 damage from the rifles, "feels better" than the standard rules.

Thanks again! (also, can someone please check the math on its hit points?)
Your math looks good if you're using metric tons. Otherwise, it would be 136.
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Old 07-08-2017, 10:52 AM   #13
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Default Re: Stating Kong...

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Originally Posted by Juca View Post
It looks like a good house rule, thanks! Maybe I will settle for something less complex, like IT:DR equals to SM/2 (round down) versus pi, imp and tigh burning attacks, but it was what I was looking for!

Also, I found the movie official specifications of Kong, which put the ape at a massive 158 tons, or 348.000 lbs (talk about a buff ape...), but it seems that I did the wrong calculations on its hit points, that should be about 140, which, when you consider that now it is taking 1/3 damage from the rifles, "feels better" than the standard rules.

Thanks again! (also, can someone please check the math on its hit points?)
The weight seems a little light - if wikipedia is to be trusted, a largish gorilla stands 6 feet tall and weighs 400 lbs. If Kong stands 100 feet and has similar proprotions, he's around 16 times taller (17 is technically closer but 16 easier to work with) which gives around 4,096 times the mass or around 800 tons.

Of course, it's worth remembering that Kong clearly has an abnormal metabolism. The normal GURPS scaling rules assume realistic physiology - so strength tends to increase at a 2/3 power rate of mass and GURP ST at a 1/3 power rate. Realistically, a 100 foot gorilla couldn't exist in Earth gravity. Therefore Kong's muscles, bones, tendons, etc are all many times stronger than those of terrestrial animals and his strength scales directly with mass. So Kong should be 4096 times as strong, not 256. In GURPS terms, his ST should be 64* that of a normal gorilla. There's an interesting write up of a gorilla in GURPS here which I find more reliable than the books. That gives a male gorilla ST 19, Arm ST+4, and DR 1. Scaling up, Kong would have ST 1216, plus Arm ST +256 as well as DR 64. That's before considering optional wounding rules. That seems closer to the movie.
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Old 07-09-2017, 06:54 AM   #14
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Default Re: Stating Kong...

Mass of realistic animals scale as the length scale^4 because limbs have to be proportionally larger than normal. At some point that breaks down because you can't have that large animals. The heaviest land animal that ever existed would weigh somewhere in the vicinity of 75 tonnes (reference).

I think the best way to model this without changing the RAW too much is some kind of Injury Tolerance that rescales impaling and piercing damage. Call it IT: Humongous, it rescales impaling pi+ and pi++ to x1 damage and give it a value of... 20 points? 15 points? Somewhere around that.
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Old 07-09-2017, 09:18 AM   #15
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Default Re: Stating Kong...

Anyway, if the Skull Island version of Kong is 100' tall, let's say he's SM +7 (30 yards). Using the rules in GURPS Space for a 30 yard creature, that's a weight of 337 tons. That gives us ST 175 (from Space) and HP 700 (using Pulver's Extreme Damage article, which also means that most bullets do 1/10th damage to him, for his size; the same article gives him a punch of 6dx13, so he can wreck tanks and combat aircraft). The GURPS Weird War II book has a Giant Monster creation system in it. It suggests DR equal to HP/10, so this Kong would have DR70, which would totally stop an MG without the 1/10 pi reduction. I would not use both an Injury Tolerance rule and increase DR, though I might give him DR3, as Kromm's Combat Writ Large article suggests (which is close to DR4 Thick Hide in Space). That same article suggests that every Kong attack is large-area injury, too. Using the Big Swings rule, he's +4 to hit against humans as he crushing an area. All they can do dive for cover. It also suggests a +7 to ground move, as a minimum. Anyway, you can get a good approximation at this point of what a giant 100' ape could do in GURPS using these optional rules.
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Old 07-09-2017, 09:18 PM   #16
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Default Re: Stating Kong...

The other thing is, its a movie. Not a game or real life.

A movie is like playing with a GM who refuses to read the ruleset and just makes things up as they go along.
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