Combat Writ Large

[Bruno]

All Hail the mighty Kromm!

I can't find the Pyramid thread for todays issue, so I'm going to go ahead and say that I'm only a few pages in and I'm THRILLED to BITS. The Combat Writ Large article fills in a whole bunch of little vague areas regarding large combatants that are very close to my heart.

So very happy.

[Nymdok]

Couldnt agree more! It was excellent!

I must admit though that it was not what 'pulled the trigger' on my purchase. What sold me was Rice's Article as Encounter balance has long been an interest of mine.


THeres still alot of great stuff to go (Bought it on my lunch break) and Im looking forward to Dan Howards Loadouts.

Nymdok

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Nymdok

I must admit though that it was not what 'pulled the trigger' on my purchase. What sold me was Rice's Article as Encounter balance has long been an interest of mine.

I confess I've had the benefit of reading the drafts of that one :D

[Humabout]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I confess I've had the benefit of reading the drafts of that one :D

Likewise, and I have to say, this is worth the money by itself. I need to check out the rest of the release, but go buy it just for CR's and worry about the rest laster! Do it!

[vicky_molokh]

Neat article.

I'm still puzzled by the fact that Combat At Different Levels applies to different height from SM. It's weird for the same thing to essentially provide both a bonus and a penalty for the same thing. It also seems nasty towards horizontal, slithering/rolling/etc. characters.

I'll need to re-read Big Swings, it seems a bit confusing.

Close Approaches is now official, yay. Rebalanced parry mass ratios are nice.

I'm glad Kromm cleared up the ambiguity about grappling and SM (confirming that the bigger fighter enjoys +Abs(Difference) to the rolls to hit with a grapple, not just after the grapples), but I'm puzzled by the fact that the smaller fighter apparently also enjoys +Abs(Difference). Barely Hanging On is a neat way of preventing elephants from tail-locking whales.

[ArchonShiva]

I'm only partway through and already getting tons of red flags that the nominally "outsized" article has lots of stuff that feels like it breaks down as it departs from Size +0.

A 30 yards humanoid (Size +7) is 15 times the height of a 2 yards human, and thus over three thousand times its volume and mass, as far as I can tell. This puts it at about 500,000 pounds. (15x15x15x150 lbs.)

The article recommends a ST stat of 150, giving it a BL of 4,500 lbs, and making its weight well over BLx100. There will be no carrying the bride at that giant's wedding.

There's other stuff, but I have to go.

[Landwalker]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

I'm only partway through and already getting tons of red flags that the nominally "outsized" article has lots of stuff that feels like it breaks down as it departs from Size +0.

A 30 yards humanoid (Size +7) is 15 times the height of a 2 yards human, and thus over three thousand times its volume and mass, as far as I can tell. This puts it at about 500,000 pounds. (15x15x15x150 lbs.)

The article recommends a ST stat of 150, giving it a BL of 4,500 lbs, and making its weight well over BLx100. There will be no carrying the bride at that giant's wedding.

There's other stuff, but I have to go.

That's nothing unique to the article, but rather a pre-existing condition of how GURPS assesses ST relative to weight.

(Using the guidelines provided by Mr. Stoddard above would result in a 500,000-pound giant having ST 159.)

Edit: Another citation for established GURPS ST-calculation.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

There will be no carrying the bride at that giant's wedding.

And this is wrong, why, exactly?

There's no requirement that a creature be able to lift itself with its own ST. Body weight is not subtracted from Basic Lift; creatures always manage to hold themselves up (somehow); ST is lifting capacity on top of supporting yourself (assuming that needs active ST at all).

The square-cube relationship between ST (cross-sectional area of muscle) and weight (volume) is realistic. 100' foot tall humanoids are not -- possibly for this very reason alone. Bigger, stronger creatures change their shape, geometry, internal anatomy.

If you want fantasy giants to carry their brides, then you just give them enough ST to do so, possibly also decreeing that they're lighter. It's the same way dragons manage to fly, not to mention the fact that magic works. Once the setting postulates giants, you've already moved beyond the realm of applying a simple scaling law over a wide range of size.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

I'm only partway through and already getting tons of red flags that the nominally "outsized" article has lots of stuff that feels like it breaks down as it departs from Size +0.

A 30 yards humanoid (Size +7) is 15 times the height of a 2 yards human, and thus over three thousand times its volume and mass, as far as I can tell. This puts it at about 500,000 pounds. (15x15x15x150 lbs.)

The article recommends a ST stat of 150, giving it a BL of 4,500 lbs, and making its weight well over BLx100. There will be no carrying the bride at that giant's wedding.

That last seems to follow naturally from the square-cube law. Did you ever see pictures of ants carrying objects heavier than they are? That's because they're tiny: Their muscular cross-section is small, but their body mass is even smaller, compared to humans. With really big organisms the converse is true: If you double their linear dimensions you roughly quadruple their muscular cross section, but you octuple their body weight and the weight of objects scaled to it. (As I used to say about the Marvel superhero, to have the proportionate strength of a spider you need the proportionate size of a spider.)

Real animals don't exactly fit the square-cube law, because bigger animals need more massive limbs and thus have greater muscular cross-section; compare the legs of a spider, a gazelle, and an elephant. But bigger animals can lift smaller fractions of their own body weight, and conversely for smaller animals.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm still puzzled by the fact that Combat At Different Levels applies to different height from SM. It's weird for the same thing to essentially provide both a bonus and a penalty for the same thing.

We have to split things up that way because size effects and height effects aren't the same thing. A tiny bug will always experience size effects relative to a human, but height effects won't matter much if it can fly. That's really the simplest illustration of why you need to consider both facets and can't lump them together.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm glad Kromm cleared up the ambiguity about grappling and SM (confirming that the bigger fighter enjoys +Abs(Difference) to the rolls to hit with a grapple, not just after the grapples), but I'm puzzled by the fact that the smaller fighter apparently also enjoys +Abs(Difference).

Huge grapplers can pen in and scoop up tiny targets. Tiny grapplers have a vast choice of handholds on huge targets. In essence, the rules are saying that once you get to grappling range, size doesn't give either side the advantage when it comes simply to getting a grip.

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

A 30 yards humanoid (Size +7) is 15 times the height of a 2 yards human, and thus over three thousand times its volume and mass, as far as I can tell. This puts it at about 500,000 pounds. (15x15x15x150 lbs.)

The article recommends a ST stat of 150, giving it a BL of 4,500 lbs, and making its weight well over BLx100. There will be no carrying the bride at that giant's wedding.

Others have already addressed this:

Exactly. It's completely reasonable to say that creatures should have the same attack and defense penalties vs. others of their SM at any SM, because that's a question of angles of attack, which are scale-invariant owing to the quantities in question all being linear. It isn't reasonable at all to say that picking each other up, slamming each other into the ground, etc. should work the same way at any SM, because physics doesn't work like that. Internal stresses go up with size and bigger creatures are able to lift less and sustain less injury per unit mass.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

If you want fantasy giants to carry their brides, then you just give them enough ST to do so, possibly also decreeing that they're lighter.

That's why giants typically have crazy scaling in fantasy. Usually, they're much lighter than cubic scaling would suggest, which allows them to wrestle and throw each other around like humans, despite this being utterly unrealistic for creatures of their size. It also lets them walk down human highways and stand on the decks of human ships without their ground pressure leaving them knee-deep in gravel or sinking the ship.