Amused DF3 Observation

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

One Explosive Fireball ruins their whole day. And armor thick enough to give even 1 pt of DR weigns somewhat more what they do, to put it mildly.

Does it? They're about 10% of human height, which means 1% of surface area, which means you could have armor of normal thickness for 1% of the weight. If anything, Pixies should be *easier* to armor than normal humans, in terms of carrying the requisite weight of armor.

Might be hard to make it sufficiently flexible at that level of relative thickness, though.

-Max

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Nope. I just wanted something with only 1 HP, so it could be easily squished, but enough ST to have an outside chance at fighting if the player really wants. Pixies very intentionally have ST 5, HP 1. Nothing says that they can't raise ST to 15 and have HP 11, if somebody wants a monster pixie. The basic idea here is that we have a ST 1, HP 1 bug that gets +4 ST because "it's maaaagic" (and because ST 5 at least lets you carry more than a few coins). I'm willing to admit when I screw up, but this isn't a screwup.

Is the -4 HP from the template supposed to be applied *after* the HP = 130% ST maximum? I.e. is a ST 15 pixie intended to be limited to 11 HP, or can he go up to 19 HP like any other ST 15 character?

-Max

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Does it? They're about 10% of human height, which means 1% of surface area, which means you could have armor of normal thickness for 1% of the weight. If anything, Pixies should be *easier* to armor than normal humans, in terms of carrying the requisite weight of armor.

Might be hard to make it sufficiently flexible at that level of relative thickness, though.

-Max

But they weigh 1/1728th of normal. By being 'thick enough to provide a point of DR'. You don't do a 1/12th * 1/12 * 1/12 reduction in armor.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

But they weigh 1/1728th of normal. By being 'thick enough to provide a point of DR'. You don't do a 1/12th * 1/12 * 1/12 reduction in armor.

I'm sorry, come again? Why would you reduce the thickness by a factor of 12 just because you're scaling down the surface area? In other words, can you back up your 1/1728th figure with references, or are you just disagreeing about how thick the armor would be?

Note that DF3 gives the weight as 1/25 normal, which makes the armor 4 times THICKER than human armor. 4 mm instead of 1 mm, or whatever, just concentrated on a smaller (Pixie-sized) body.

-Max

[vitruvian]

But they weigh 1/1728th of normal. By being 'thick enough to provide a point of DR'. You don't do a 1/12th * 1/12 * 1/12 reduction in armor.

'They' meaning the pixie, or meaning the armor? If the former, this is incorrect, as the pixies provided are about as dense as metal and weigh a few pounds; furthermore, their own body weight is irrelevant to their own encumbrance levels, which at ST 5 is a full quarter of a full-sized person's. At 1/144 weight for armor with the same thickness but reduced surface area, it's not going to cause them any problems, weight-wise. If the latter, that's not reflected in the weight table, which only gives it as 1/25 weight for the armor, despite the massive DR reduction.

Note that DF3 gives the weight as 1/25 normal, which makes the armor 4 times THICKER than human armor. 4 mm instead of 1 mm, or whatever, just concentrated on a smaller (Pixie-sized) body.

And yet it gives -6 DR. I think this is one instance where DF is actually *harsher* on the little guys (once one gets over their ridiculously high ST in the first place) than a more 'realistic' treatment would be. Same goes for the weapon adjustments. I'd probably go multiplicative on the DR and weapon damage bonus (e.g., 3/4, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/10 or so) *and* give full weight reductions for reducing things in all dimensions, so pixie plate would be something like 1/1000 weight. Even if they had a semi-'realistic' ST of 1 for their scale, such a weight would pose them no problems whatsoever.

Or you could just edit the racial template to leave them with 5 HP to start, and say the same magic that lets them be unreasonably strong for their size also makes them inordinately difficult to squish.

[Anthony]

The main problem for armoring pixies will be the physical thickness of the armor -- there's a limit to how thick you can make armor before it interferes with movement, and that limit is proportional to the size of the creature being armored. Still, something like a breastplate could plausibly be an inch thick on a human, which means 1/12 of an inch thick on an pixie, which is about DR 6.

It would be very tricky to armor the wings and still leave the pixie able to fly, however.

[Kaldrin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The main problem for armoring pixies will be the physical thickness of the armor -- there's a limit to how thick you can make armor before it interferes with movement, and that limit is proportional to the size of the creature being armored. Still, something like a breastplate could plausibly be an inch thick on a human, which means 1/12 of an inch thick on an pixie, which is about DR 6.

This is DF. Leave the real world limits in the real world. Pixies are magical anyway.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kaldrin

This is DF. Leave the real world limits in the real world. Pixies are magical anyway.

If we're going to ignore real world limits, there's no reason to pay attention to real world scaling of things like equipment weight.

[rosignol]

Originally Posted by Anthony

If we're going to ignore real world limits, there's no reason to pay attention to real world scaling of things like equipment weight.

True. IIRC, the 3rd ed Fantasy book finessed this by saying something along the lines of "...smiths know tricks of armor construction that do not work at larger scales".

I am disinclined to worry about it. Dungeon Fantasy seems to be a 'light on rules, heavy on fun' take on GURPS, and I'm fine with that.

[vitruvian]

If we're going to ignore real world limits, there's no reason to pay attention to real world scaling of things like equipment weight.

True, but there's also no reason to make the consequences of such scaling *harsher* than they would be, real world, either.

It would be very tricky to armor the wings and still leave the pixie able to fly, however.

I think it's assumed that pixie armor *doesn't* cover the wings, just has holes for them to poke out of...

My take - go for the simplest approximation that makes some sense, but more importantly, *allows for fun game play*.

First, allow pixies to have HP commensurate with their strength. Their structural integrity and toughness are as anomalously great in comparison to their size as their ST. So they have ST 5, effectively 25x greater (in terms of lifting and encumbrance, anyway) than the ST 1 they really should have? Okay, they're all miniature men of steel; scaled up, you'd be looking at ST 50 supers. At 5 HP to start with, they'll still be plenty fragile in the dungeon.

Second, for equipment, make the baseline assumption that for all equipment that would logically scale equally in three dimensions, weight goes as the Volume/Weight Scale, while damage bonus or DR goes by the Linear Scale; round to the nearest whole number, as opposed to always rounding down.

SM Linear Measure Linear Scale Area Scale Volume/Weight Scale
-1 1.5 yards x2/3 x1/2 x1/3
-2 1 yard x1/2 x1/5 x1/10
-3 2 feet x1/3 x1/10 x1/30
-4 1.5 feet x1/5 x1/20 x1/100
-5 1 foot x1/7 x1/50 x1/300
-6 8 inches x1/10 x1/100 x1/1000
-7 5 inches x1/15 x1/200 x1/3000

So, scaled pixie armor would be 1/1000 the weight, probably full cost due to the craftsmanship involved, and would protect the little thing (exclusive of the wings) at DR 6/10, rounded to DR 1. Lesser armor wouldn't provide any DR at all, unless Fine or enchanted. Or, you can make the armor thicker in proportion to your body, and get a higher DR, but for every level of SM you go up in linear scale, not only does the weight go up by the difference in factors, but you get assessed a DX penalty due to the awkwardness of the getup - not due to the weight, just the way it doesn't want to move around your joints, etc. So, for example, a pixie could get plate made at treble thickness (effectively the same thickness as for SM -3 plate armor) and get DR 2 from it, but it would be at the cost of a -3 DX penalty. Far better to get the suit enchanted with Fortify...