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Old 04-13-2021, 11:07 AM   #11
phiwum
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
Default Re: Creature ST from size in hexes

Quote:
Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
Fact checking that:

Elephant is up to ten hexes at up to 15,000 pounds while the above says 10,000 pounds.

Curve fitting in excel gives that the best fit is 300 pounds times the size in hexes raised to the 1.7th power.

14 hex dragon is then 13 short tons which is within the high end range estimates for T-Rex.

Code:
Hexes	Actual #	Calc #	Calc ST
1	300	        300	14
2	1000	        975	25
3	2000	       1942	36
4		       3167	46
7		       8200	74
10	15000         15036	100
14	30800         26640	133
The best fit may be found by using the exponent 1.7, but surely the most natural would be raising it to 1.5? I'm not good with these sorts of physical estimates, but area is square and mass should be very, very roughly linear in terms of volume, which is cubic.

Anyway, the predicted ST numbers are uniformly higher for dragons. At size 14, the prediction is fully a third higher than RAW. (It's a little worse than that at 2 hexes.)

If you use 1.5 instead of 1.7, you get the following results.

Code:
Hexes	Actual	Wt Calc	Pred ST	RAW ST	Error
1	300	300	14	12	0.15
2	1000	849	24	16	0.33
3	2000	1559	32		
4	?	2400	40	30	0.25
7	?	5556	61	60	0.01
10	?	9487	80		
14	?	15715	102	100	0.02
These are closer the the dragon ST in RAW, at least at the higher end. The two hex is still puny in RAW. The estimate is 1/3 higher at two hexes and a quarter higher at four hexes, but above that it's spot on.

(I wasn't trying to prove anything about what the "right" relation should be, since I'm not committed to there being a right relation, but if you need one, this seems better. The weights are lower, but I don't reckon weight really matters.)

I've no idea whether a T-Rex is a 14 hex critter or not. A lot of the length is in a narrow tail. Hard for me to estimate that.

Last edited by phiwum; 04-13-2021 at 11:15 AM.
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Old 04-13-2021, 11:29 AM   #12
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Default Re: Creature ST from size in hexes

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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
I've no idea whether a T-Rex is a 14 hex critter or not. A lot of the length is in a narrow tail. Hard for me to estimate that.
Just straighten out the 14-hex dragon tail for a total length of 40 feet, which matches to T-Rex.
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Old 04-13-2021, 12:17 PM   #13
phiwum
 
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Default Re: Creature ST from size in hexes

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Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
Just straighten out the 14-hex dragon tail for a total length of 40 feet, which matches to T-Rex.
I found a picture of Sue here. She measures 12 meters long, but at her widest point, she's only 2 meters or so.

I scaled her up and laid her on ten hexes, so that she's 40' tip to tail. You can see it here. (Is there a way to include images in our posts?)

If you fudge it rather a bit, treating every tail hex as a full hex and filling in here and there, I guess you can get 14 hexes out of her. But I was definitely fudging to do so. The area is probably less than nine hexes, maybe call it ten if she had meat on her bones in a literal sense.

Obviously, I am looking for absolutely anything to do aside from grading.
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Old 04-13-2021, 12:19 PM   #14
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Default Re: Creature ST from size in hexes

Out of curiosity, what does excel say if you skip weight entirely and feed it the ST and hex size of the dragons? What's the best fit then?

And what if you skip the one and two hex outliers?

That grading isn't doing itself...
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Old 04-13-2021, 12:34 PM   #15
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Default Re: Creature ST from size in hexes

Note that hex-size really only stands for one thing:
What hexes around you do you threaten and that threaten you?

So it's not like a reptile man either fills or is entirely contained within one hex.
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Old 04-13-2021, 01:57 PM   #16
phiwum
 
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Default Re: Creature ST from size in hexes

Sure, though that surely makes arguments about the correlation between size in hexes and ST more tenuous.

Last edited by phiwum; 04-13-2021 at 04:38 PM.
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Old 04-14-2021, 11:05 AM   #17
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Default Re: Creature ST from size in hexes

I just go with 10 ST per Hex because it is simple and close enough. I don't want to bother with looking at a chart or pull out a calculator when I have my players fight a 12-hex dragon, it is 12 hexes that's 120 ST and if I want it to be a little weaker or stronger for its size I can fudge the number a bit.

Tyrannosaurus are about 7m long without their tail stand at just under 4m, and weigh close too 18.5k-lb. Since a 14-hex dragon is only about 8m long without their tail I'd say 26k-lb is rather on the high end.
This is of course assuming that the tail isn't counted in the 14-hexes; which is how I play.
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Old 04-14-2021, 12:03 PM   #18
phiwum
 
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Default Re: Creature ST from size in hexes

A 14 hex dragon ends up weighing less than 16,000lbs if you use 1.5 as an exponent instead, for what it's worth.

I thought it was interesting that 1.5 really does track the numbers in RAW. Maybe Steve used the same rule, but I'd wager it's coincidence.

In the Book of Unlife, a one hex golem "typically" has ST of 50 to 100. That's rather a lot of ST, but of course, it's all magic and whatnot. (I happen to love the golem. It's rare to have someone who could create such a beast, since it requires both theologian and create elemental, but that sounds just about right to me. I have one NPC who can make 'em and I don't anticipate ever having another who can do so.)
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Old 04-15-2021, 06:19 PM   #19
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Default Re: Creature ST from size in hexes

That was a lot of math...I've never tried to rationalize this and I'm kind of in awe of the fact that not only have you done it you've created multiple theories for it.

I have used dinosaurs - the old slow scaly kind and the new fast feathered kind, but I have made them 3, 5, and 7 hexes...only squat not long and lean like the Sue Phiwum showed in an above post.

Honestly, though I used that size model because the plastic dino's my niece lent me ended up fitting that size!!
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Old 04-15-2021, 07:03 PM   #20
phiwum
 
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Default Re: Creature ST from size in hexes

I don't personally think there's much need for all this math, but I thought I'd try to understand where Henry gets his numbers from. I think he made a mistake in using a best fit, personally, since there's nothing particularly special about the 1.7 exponent, whereas 1.5 has a natural story behind it based on the relative growth of area and volume.

That it fits the RAW numbers in the higher range is just icing on the cake.

Multihex monsters beyond four hexes seem like a real pain. Changing facing in a reasonable way is hard to figure out, since it commonly involves moving one end of the monster really far. I sure wouldn't have Sue be anything like her "natural" shape.

I may be exaggerating the problem of very large monsters since I haven't had them in play yet.
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