[Fantasy] Can technology allow humans to win against giants?

[Michael Thayne]

DFRPG Monsters 2 has an interesting take on giants: unlike some fantasy settings where giants are portrayed as mostly stupid and evil, DFRPGs declares that giants are literally just bigger, stronger humans... except that have serious problems acquiring giant-sized gear, so they end up fighting with nothing but clubs, rocks (for throwing), and their own thick skin. My question is: does this set-up make any sense?

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that giants defy the laws of biology in precisely the way GURPS seems to have decided is more-or-less standard for giant fantasy creatures: they can have exactly the same proportions as analogous smaller creatures without being at any risk of collapsing under their own weight, but the amount of additional weight they can lift, beyond their own body weight, scales with cross-sectional area rather than mass. However, let's further assume that realistic scaling laws apply to giant equipment. What problems does this cause? One will be that at the bronze age, scaled-up bronze items may bend much easier than their human-sized counterparts. Iron mitigates this in some ways—but in other respects, the historical difficulties with making really big things out of iron could hit giants harder.

But I'm less clear on the implications for non-metal artifacts. For example, how I'm not sure what difficulties would be present in scaling up a bow-and-arrow (possibly significant, since that's not how most ancient artillery worked?) Or what about scaled-up farm implements? I of course know that the square-cube law applies to artifacts just as well as it does creatures, but if humans are using tools stronger than strictly necessary anyway, it might not be a big deal, at least for smaller "giants" (say at SM+2). So insight into realistic scaling up of non-metallic items would be very much appreciated.

[sir_pudding]

For wooden items you'll run into increasing difficulty finding lumber with the right properties, and at some size you'd completely exceed the properties of natural lumber entirely for any given application. Unless you have equally proportionally giant trees.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

For wooden items you'll run into increasing difficulty finding lumber with the right properties, and at some size you'd completely exceed the properties of natural lumber entirely for any given application. Unless you have equally proportionally giant trees.

At what size though? That's a big part of what I'm wondering. Suspect the effect kicks in earlier for bows, which IIUC need the right kind of wood, compared to some other tools. But I don't know this stuff very well at all. I know in the classical era, torsion designs were generally preferred to flexion designs for heavy weapons. But I'm not sure how much of that is flexion designs being hard to scale up vs. torsion designs being hard to scale down.

[Varyon]

Ignoring physical limitations on materials, let's assume two roughly comparable areas. In one, humans are present; in the other, SM+2 giants. They develop largely independently until they hit TL DF, then encounter each other and decide going to war against each other is a grand idea.

I can't speak to the DFRPG, but I know that GURPS DF is, apparently, meant to follow the ration scaling rules from Bio-Tech. In that, a human scaled up to SM+2 would require 4x as much food. So, the area with giants would have 1/4th the population - but as each giant should be 4x as strong, they can each produce similar amounts of work. So that's a draw.

Each area has similar amounts of raw materials. Tools for giants should scale linearly in weight with their BL. Here's where we see something of a divergence - tools for giants cannot simply be scaled up human tools, or they'd weight too much. So, giant tools must proportionally be either shorter (and thus less effective) or thinner (and thus less resilient). This is going to see giants lagging behind humans, because their tools are less effective - they can no longer do 4x the work, because they either have less ability to make use of leverage (tools are proportionally shorter) or have to spend more time repairing and replacing their tools (tools are proportionally thinner). Logistically, therefore, the giants are inferior to humans. Giants also have the issue that they have a smaller pool of talent to draw from - if great inventors are one in a million (or any other number you go for), the humans will statistically have had around four such individuals by the time the giants get one.

For combat, giant weapons and armor must similarly be 4x heavier than those for humans. For armor, this means the same DR as what the humans have. This may cause problems for the giants prior to contact with the humans, as to get comparable protection against other giants to what humans have against other humans, the giants would have to wear proportionally heavier armor (8x heavier, rather than 4x). This may result in a technological divergence, where giants wear armor that provides markedly less coverage to what human armor does, only protecting the vital bits (because armor that protects everywhere - or as close to everywhere as human armor does - is too dang heavy). Additionally, giant weapons either aren't going to have proportional reach to what human weapons have, or are going to call for more logistic support to repair and replace, for the same reasons as their tools have similar issues.

How many combatants you can field, and how effective these combatants are, is dependent on your logistical support, and as already noted, giants don't have as much of that as the humans do. So, the giants are going to be outnumbered by more than 4 to 1. They're strong enough to make 4 to 1 roughly even odds, but they're likely using inferior arms and armor, so 4 to 1 would actually favor the humans - and the humans actually outnumber them by more than that. Now, things are almost certainly still within a range where what tactical and strategic decisions the commanders (and those below them in the chain of command) make will be able to swing things in one direction or the other, but over all, I'd say humans are well in the lead.

Note the same analysis would indicate half-sized humans would have an advantage over full-sized ones (probably not halflings though, they eat too much). In that case, however, it may be more difficult for such small humans to find members of sufficient strength to do certain kinds of work, such as running a forge. Of course, we can flip that back around - there may be forms of labor the giants are readily capable of that the humans have great difficulty finding members of the appropriate strength, which may be able to give them an advantage. I suspect humans would still win out, but it's hard to say.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

At what size though?

The realistic scaling rules in LTC2 might be a close enough approximation. At some point the costs become so prohibitive they might as well be impossible.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

The realistic scaling rules in LTC2 might be a close enough approximation. At some point the costs become so prohibitive they might as well be impossible.

You mean LTC2 pp. 20-21? Those rules don't really purport to be realistic. Though TBH even without actually scaling up the bows, "small" giants (SM+2 or SM+3) will be in good shape if they can acquire bows with rated STs of 3x the minimum—which RAW seems to allow. Ugh, maybe I should suck it up and learn to use The Deadly Spring (Pyramid #3/33) to first recreate standard bows and then try to use it to create some suitable giant bows.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

You mean LTC2 pp. 20-21? Those rules don't really purport to be realistic.

I meant compared to the rules in DF Loadouts.

[Fred Brackin]

Just as a side note of sorts you can make giants with Bio-tech too. That would be the Size Modification section on p.63-64. The results would make you think that giants were impractical unless you ued the Musculo-skeletal mods from p.54 in concert with the size changes. :)

For a "natural" organism that grows from birth to its full size with no ouitside assisstance this probably tops out with TL11 technology creating a 30' "Titan".

You'll need to add Lifting St/Striking ST/HP (balanced) in addition to buying "straight" ST but if you add it all together that 30' guy has and effective ST 125 and is able to lift his own weight over his head.

Being 5x human size his weapons weight 125x. If you want to deal with those here's PK's variant rules for that.

https://www.mygurps.com/index.php?n=...ngerCharacters

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I meant compared to the rules in DF Loadouts.

Oh huh. Somehow I thought the rules were the same, or at least decently close. Armor is actually pretty close—2x vs 2.25x—but weapons only have a 1.5x weight and cost modifier in DF.

[Michael Thayne]

Incidentally, AFAICT The Deadly Spring is quite favorable to giant bows. So if there's any issue with giant bows, it doesn't capture it.