Clothing costs for different sizes

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by ericthered

But if you really want to dive deep, scaled up humans won't need thick clothes, no.

Although they may still wear them- in humans, fashion frequently dictates far more clothing than the environment would seem to call for, so there's no reason to assume giants wouldn't sometimes overdress as well.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Although they may still wear them- in humans, fashion frequently dictates far more clothing than the environment would seem to call for, so there's no reason to assume giants wouldn't sometimes overdress as well.

This is especially important in a time when clothes are expensive. "It will cost the shirt of your back" may not mean much nowadays, but back in the day a shirt could easily cost a month's salary. So having a lot of clothes, and the kind of clothes that was work-intensive (like a thousand hand-tied rosettes) was a great way to say "I am rich. Fear me."

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Although they may still wear them- in humans, fashion frequently dictates far more clothing than the environment would seem to call for, so there's no reason to assume giants wouldn't sometimes overdress as well.

Ideas of decency as well. There are many places where, at least during certain times of the year, humans would be more comfortable (physically) simply being outright nude, but wear clothing - sometimes quite a bit of it - because running around naked, or even in skimpy clothing, would be considered scandalous. The same would likely be true of giants, provided they have comparable psychology and history to humans (although they may be more inclined to find skimpy clothing or even outright nudity more acceptable*, given they'd be even less comfortable than a human when "overdressed").

Humorously, while it's not uncommon to depict pixies and the like either nude or in translucent clothing (the latter because a lot of clothing materials become translucent when very thin, which normal clothes would be if the same relative thickness on a pixie as on a human), realistically such would need relatively thicker clothing than a human would for staying warm.

*EDIT: This is even more likely if I interpreted whswhs' suggestion correctly, and needed weight scales linearly with height (and thus thickness scales as the inverse of height - twice as large means half as thick). In that case, a giant may well require translucent clothing to be thermally comfortable at typical temperatures, meaning covering everywhere would either leave them uncomfortably hot or with naughty bits visible. This would be more of a drive to consider skimpy clothing that only covers the naughty bits - or outright nudity - to be acceptable. If the giants still consider fully clothed to be the most appropriate, I'd expect clothing designed to have strategically-placed holes (for venting heat without being risque) would be popular, but perhaps only generally in reach of the wealthy (holes require the material around them to be reinforced to prevent tearing, which is going to cost more), making such a status symbol. You end up with the dichotomy that the poor have to make due with skimpy clothing, while the well-off can go around fully clothed, which I think has been the case in various times/cultures for humans as well.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Are you saying clothing weight should scale linearly with height? That is, a 5-yard-tall giant should have a shirt that weighs roughly 2.5x as much as what a 2-yard-tall human's does? This would work out to the giant's shirt being 2/5ths the actual thickness - and 4/25ths the relative thickness - of a human's. Or are you instead saying that clothing worn for warmth would simply stay the same actual thickness, thus scaling with the square of height?

Yes and no.

That is, it depends on what kind of campaign you're running. If you're going for semirealistic biophysics, the 5-yard-tall giant needs 6.25 times the area, but 0.4 times the thickness, to stay equally warm; that comes to 2.5 times the weight. If you're going for visual/cinematic effects, where gigantic and tiny "humans" look and move like the human actors who play them, then you need the area modifier but you should also multiply the thickness by 2.5, which gives you 15.625 times the weight.

Scaling for area but keeping the same thickness isn't going to work for either, I don't think. The thickness that works for humans will have giants sweltering and pixies shivering; but also, it won't look right visually, because it will be, for example, 0.4 times as thick in proportion to the giant's limbs and digits, and will look as if they were scantily clad.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Yes and no.

That is, it depends on what kind of campaign you're running. If you're going for semirealistic biophysics, the 5-yard-tall giant needs 6.25 times the area, but 0.4 times the thickness, to stay equally warm; that comes to 2.5 times the weight. If you're going for visual/cinematic effects, where gigantic and tiny "humans" look and move like the human actors who play them, then you need the area modifier but you should also multiply the thickness by 2.5, which gives you 15.625 times the weight.

Scaling for area but keeping the same thickness isn't going to work for either, I don't think. The thickness that works for humans will have giants sweltering and pixies shivering; but also, it won't look right visually, because it will be, for example, 0.4 times as thick in proportion to the giant's limbs and digits, and will look as if they were scantily clad.

Your semirealistic biophysics suggestion will leave the giants looking far more scantily-clad (needing clothing proportionally about 1/6th as thick as human clothing), and will have pixies bundled up in winter clothing*. That is certainly something to keep in mind, and of course helps justify frost giants or the like - they prefer to live where it's cold, as otherwise they either have to run around nearly naked or overheat.

*An SM-4 pixie - which is really quite large for such, being 1.5' tall - would require clothing that is proportionally 16x as thick as what a human needs. Absent magic, this means pixies probably can't function anywhere humans would need more than summer clothing to deal with the cold, as their clothing would be too bulky for them to move.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

*An SM-4 pixie - which is really quite large for such, being 1.5' tall - would require clothing that is proportionally 16x as thick as what a human needs. Absent magic, this means pixies probably can't function anywhere humans would need more than summer clothing to deal with the cold, as their clothing would be too bulky for them to move.

This is more in line for Bio-tech's "miniature humans". Pixies are magic and have "Fae Temperature Tolerance". This is seen even among Elves who run around dark and probably damp woods without bundling up like humans from Michegan. :)

Giants without high bio-tech levels of superhuman ST would also be magic. With enough bio-tech I could make a 30 ft tall "titan". Probanly only 9 ft without.

In either case we can play with body heat through metabolism. Very small creatures eat more proportionately than very large ones and it's to make up for lsot body heat.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

In either case we can play with body heat through metabolism. Very small creatures eat more proportionately than very large ones and it's to make up for lsot body heat.

On one hand that's a fair point, and certainly works with the biophysics. On the other, it's long been observed that animals in colder climates tend to larger body sizes, precisely because the rate of heat loss is lower. Speeding up the metabolism can only go so far.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Yes and no.

That is, it depends on what kind of campaign you're running. If you're going for semirealistic biophysics, the 5-yard-tall giant needs 6.25 times the area, but 0.4 times the thickness, to stay equally warm.

First of all, 'semirealistic biophysics' and '5-yard-tall giant' don't belong in the same sentence. Secondly, you're making the assumption that metabolic rate is linear in mass (the amount of insulation required is proportional to surface area / metabolic rate), which isn't a particularly good model for either realistic animals or cinematic giants.

[ravenfish]

It should be reiterated that clothing has functions other than insulation. Inhabitants of a subtropical desert are likely to be clad head to toe, but this is to keep the sun off rather than to keep the heat in, so larger wearers have no reason to make their clothing thicker (unless they become so big their garments threaten to tear under their own weight, in which case they may need heavy reinforcing)- and good reason not to, given that losing heat is usually the goal.

---

Using thickness of fur as a proxy for amount of clothing needed for insulation, Google Scholar for "fur thickness size" produces an article "BODY INSULATION OF SOME ARCTIC AND TROPICAL MAMMALS AND BIRDS" by Scholander et. al., the abstract of which says that "From the size of a fox to the size of a moose there is no correlation between insulation and body size, they all have about the same insulation per surface area". This would seem to imply that, for whatever reason, larger characters may not actually need thicker coats, even where the primary purpose of a coat is to stay warm.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

First of all, 'semirealistic biophysics' and '5-yard-tall giant' don't belong in the same sentence. Secondly, you're making the assumption that metabolic rate is linear in mass (the amount of insulation required is proportional to surface area / metabolic rate), which isn't a particularly good model for either realistic animals or cinematic giants.

I think metabolic rate scales roughly as the square of height* (given equal proportions), so given surface area scales the same, it looks like you'd want constant thickness for clothing - that is, clothing weight would also scale with the square of height. That follows from what ravenfish said about fur thickness being roughly the same between a fox and a moose, and is sort of what I initially expected.

*Food consumption does in Bio-Tech, albeit in the form of meal weight scaling with the cube of height and meal frequency scaling linearly with the inverse of height (so x2.5 to height - as for our SM+2 giant - is x15.625 to meal weight, but x0.4 to meal frequency, for x6.25 to daily food intake), so it follows that metabolic rate - which is largely what "uses up" the energy from the food - would scale the same.