02-15-2020, 02:51 PM | #11 |
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Re: Quadruped Golem question
Yes that is an option. A nasty variant is the Golem-Armor Swordsman from Dungeon Fantasy 2 which is effectively two golems in one. Kill the Flesh Golem and the armor it wears becomes its own golem.
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02-15-2020, 08:22 PM | #12 | ||
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Re: Quadruped Golem question
Keep in mind I'm talking about golems without Extra Legs, which is how they are priced in this article. All golems in this article are priced as 2-legged golems.
If you JUST have horizontal then when you need to be on 4 LIMBS to move about, but the other 2 limbs are your arms. You can use one hand (if you have hands) while standing on your other limbs, Quote:
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I am also pointing out that it is entirely feasible to design a clumsy horizontal creatures that go about on 4 limbs without needing "Extra Legs", so the clumsy "not as well balanced as an actual animal" idea of a golem MIGHT have been what Ehrbar intended. B263 for example, has Horizontal as part of the "Ground Vehicle" morphology trait, which does not have Extra Legs. It actually has "No Legs (Tracked or Wheeled) [-20]" and "No Manipulators" (no arms, no legs). B145 doesn't really explain how Horizontal would interact with those two disadvantages... Now clearly you can move about without your arms touching (ground vehicles don't have arms) so we need to define in what way Horizontal is disadvantage (worth points) by understanding how the default (Horizontal) Ground Vehicle would be outperformed by a non-Horizantal variant on Ground Vehicle morphology. I think the key aspect here is the 2nd sentence: You can stand on your hind legs for short periods, but find this very uncomfortable. I don't know that standing is LITERALLY meant here, considering the following: You can use .. two hands while sitting on your haunchesThis seems to imply that lifting 2 arms off the ground (balancing on 2 legs) requires sitting and can't be done in a standing position. I think this represents the usual cat or dog. They might be able to briefly leap into the air via 2 hind limbs, but to actually BALANCE requires them to sit. SOME dogs (yes I've seen America's Got Talent) can walk around on their hind legs, but I think that represents them buying up Horizontal to Semi-Upright as an exception to their species baseline template. I think the idea is that *no standing on only 2 legs: require at least ONE limb (could be arm or leg) to "stand"This should mean, for example, that there should be a problem with having using the Ground Vehicle template for a bicycle or motorcycle, since they are able to balance on 2 wheels, so the "Horizontal" disadvantage for a motorcycle doesn't really seem to be present in full... Some portion of it DOES seem to be present, on the other hand, since motorcycles can't really drive too well when balancing on their rear wheel (popping a wheelie). GV might've been intended for bikes (car, tank, ETC.) as "Wheels" does say "Specify how many – one to four, or any higher even number" So you might even have "Ground Vehicle" for a Unicycle or Bicycle or Tricycle... but I honestly can't figure out how the presence/absence of "Horizontal" would apply to those cases. Horizontol (B139) keeping in mind the Quadriped Metrrait seems to be applied more broadly like: "Normal requirements" is strange though because normal humans CAN balance on 1 leg, at least briefly. Less than a second, for example, when walking, is automatic. Kicking on the other hand, has some risk of falling. I imagine the way it might work in practice, if we had rules for odd forms of locomotion is like so:
- - - B263 mentions dropping No Manipulators for Vermiform for "snake men" for example. That would mean they could slither around with their arms free. If I gave "Horizontal" to a snake man, then instead of using arm/s to assist legs standing/walking, I think they would use their arm/arms (which could be paws, if you took No Fine Manipulators instead of No Manipulators) to assist the body in slithering instead. - - - As best as I can get my head around it, "Wheels" isn't "No Legs" in the sense that Aerial/Bounces is, for example, because it does say "treat each track or wheel as if it were a leg". RAW that might even mean wheels can kick, except that I think "No Manipulators" probably subtracted that part. Being able to have things treated like legs and "No Manipulators" I think basically means "you have leg-like things but they can't manipulate things like legs can". So you couldn't for example make a kick attack, use your legs to grapple someone, etc. Otherwise NM would prevent NLW from having wheels to target and that would be strange. Wheels basically can't manipulate objects, at best the only applicable "attack" I can see for a car would be Overrun/Trampling to represent rolling over a target. You couldn't even do 'stamp kick'. B55 "Cannot Kick" we know is 5 points, and AFAIK would refer to the basic kick attack so to account for the remaining 15 point gap between No Fine Manipulators and No Manipulators could perhaps be done by identifying other stuff that legs can do but wheels can't. For example: *"Cannot Knee Strike or Knee Drop with legs-5"No Legs : Wheels seems to be a combination of stuff like "Cannot Jump" and "Cannot Use Legs to help Arms Climb" and "Nuisance: Always Leave Visible Trail" No-Wheels: Tracked is same value yet leaves more visible tracks than wheeled PLUS is noisy... this is offset by the vague "let you handle rough terrain more easily" benefit which I guess the GM can define, hopefully enough to balance out those drawbacks compared to wheeled. *checks pg 26* that Stone Golem has HP 10 higher than it's ST... supports my theory :) |
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02-16-2020, 03:07 AM | #13 | ||
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Re: Quadruped Golem question
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Let me restate that last point (as if the bolding wasn't enough): you get values closer to the author's if you use the [-35] version of Quadruped then his own [-40]. How messed up is that? Things are so FUBARed that I have basically thrown out everything in that article but the Stats and recalculating everything (and showing my work) Quote:
IIRC there was a usenet comment about the point costs being wrong.
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02-16-2020, 09:31 AM | #14 | ||||||
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Re: Quadruped Golem question
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814-232=582 subtracting 60 energy for NFM [-30] brings us down to 522 subtracting 20 for Horizontal [-10] brings us down to 502 The final result of 518 (Q Energy) is 16 more energy than that, so we would expect to see 8 more points of advantages. As such I agree with your point: Extra Legs [5] would move us in the right direction... but we'd still be missing 3 points of advantages. Quote:
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I wonder if perhaps we should move on from the Adamant Golem to analyzing the energy of other kinds of golems. Perhaps we might notice a pattern there that could inform us further? I feel like we're fixating too much on it since it's conveniently the first one presented to us. It may be that the author worked in certain traits for these golems included in his pricing, but neglected to mention those features in the chart or do an 'under the hood' for them. For example, I notice there is a "Glass Golem" and "Paper Golem" in this list. I would expect Fragile: Brittle for a golem made out of glass and Fragile: Flammable for a golem made out of paper. So I'll take a look at their basic costs to see how that works out... I'm going to ignore Q Energy for now, we could approach that later if need be. Glass is 470 energy. Relative to the Clay baseline (ST 15 DX 11 IQ 8 HT 14 DR 0 Skill 10) glass is +4 DX [80] +1 IQ [20] +2DR [10] for a total of 110 extra character points, which should mean it should cost 220 energy to make more than a Clay Golem does. 250+220=470 so this works out... which is bad for me because I totally think glass should be prone to shattering... but we can see in this case the author DID include the cost of the DR, so Adamant just might be an isolated instance? Paper is 210 energy. Relative to the Clay baseilne they are -2 ST [-20] so 20 less CP is 40 less energy, which works out (250-40=210). IE the author is competent usually, so let's be nice :) I of course don't like this, because I think paper should be flammable, so I would apply Fragile to get a further energy discount. |
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02-16-2020, 11:09 AM | #15 |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Luxembourg
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Re: Quadruped Golem question
I just inputed the table in Excel.
At first glance, and without doublechecking : Of the 175 biped golem, 14 energy cost are wrong: All uranium are off by -10 Bakelite SM -2 is off by -20 Marble SM +1 is off by +100 Marble SM +2 is off by +100 Titanium SM -2 is off by -100 Adamant is off by -64 Adamant SM +1 is off by -64 Adamant SM +2 is off by +56 (delta 120 from other adamant ?) Adamant SM -1 is off by -64 Adamant SM -2 is off by -64 Of the 175 Quadruped golem, 19 energy cost are wrong (adding horizontal -10 and NFM -30, and -40% on DX and ST, only above 10): Adamant is off by -48 Adamant SM +1 is off by -48 Adamant SM + 2 is off by -48 Adamant SM -1 is off by -48 Adamant SM -2 is off by -48 Aluminum is off by -18 Aluminum SM +1 is off by 30 Lead SM +2 is off by -80 Marble SM +2 is off by -80 MMC is off by -30 MMC SM +1 is off by -30 MMC SM +2 is off by -30 MMC SM -1 is off by -30 MMC SM -2 is off by -30 Uranium is off by -10 Uranium SM +1 is off by -10 Uranium SM +2 is off by -10 Uranium SM -1 is off by -10 Uranium SM -2 is off by -10 Edit corrected a mistake - I was counting the -40% on ST below 10. Edit 2 : the energy delta are = 2* cp delta, so my justification were wrong ... the file : https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oh...qktcwaJSwgUkFO Last edited by Celjabba; 02-19-2020 at 05:29 AM. |
02-16-2020, 02:07 PM | #16 |
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Re: Quadruped Golem question
I've been using the Spreadsheet of LibreOffice (Calc) to recalculate the Golems energy totals as doing it manually resulted in med missing something or doing something wonked that resulted in a total that, upon rechecking, was way off.
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02-16-2020, 02:12 PM | #17 | |
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Re: Quadruped Golem question
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I imagine you can open the file I linked in libreoffice. |
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02-16-2020, 02:52 PM | #18 | |
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Re: Quadruped Golem question
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ST DX IQ HT HP DR Skill Point adj Energy Q Adj Q Energy Adj Adamant golem 35 12 9 15 35 12 14 Points 250 40 20 0 10 60 4 374 878 -151 -302 576 Energy 500 80 40 0 0 120 8 NA 878 So it is off by 64 energy. As I mentioned before the Adjustment for DR (Ablative) +2 (10*-0.8) is 2 points but it is in the wrong direction [-2] rather then [+2] But, and this is where things get interesting, I realized the Adjustment applied to the entire DR 12 but the math cranked out [-48] [60*-0.8) As I said I really wish the author had stepped through the energy calculation process
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02-17-2020, 01:52 AM | #19 |
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Re: Quadruped Golem question
Oh I looks like the author used some of the specs from the Golem table in Magic Items 3. The problem with that is every golem had split HT; Bakelite Golem has ST 12 HT 12/17 for example. That really throws the calculations off. I noticed that many of the HT stats are higher then they were in Magic Items 3.
As for why we would use that second stat, well that is what the did for the Stone Golem in Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons. To be fair to the author the Clay Golem in Magic didn't adjust its HP (it was 20 not 15 in Magic Items 3) so I can excuse that hiccup.
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02-17-2020, 08:31 AM | #20 | |
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: Quadruped Golem question
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So how much of the pricing discrepancy is corrected when we add the HP column (exceeding default HP from ST) and pay the 2/level for it? |
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