racial reduced consumption

[Henchman99942]

Do smaller and larger races eat smaller and larger meals? Is this part of the built in SM side effect? Or do you have to specifically take something like increased or decreased consumption? These seem to affect the number of meals and not the size of the meal so I don't think this is the best fit. Clothing is smaller or larger as part of the side effects from SM. I should think meal size would be as well.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Henchman99942

Do smaller and larger races eat smaller and larger meals? Is this part of the built in SM side effect?

Bio-tech page 62-63

Note: Consumption of consumables (water, air, food, etc.) is normally proportionate to Size Modifier (SM), as described below. Starvation effects (p. B426) accrue whenever a creature misses 1/3 of its daily food requirements – a meal, for a human. These naturally exceed those of a human for creatures of SM +1 or more, and are smaller for those with SM -1 or less. Neither is grounds for Increased Consumption (p. B139) or Reduced Consumption (p. B80), which are for beings that require more or less food than their SM would indicate.


Weight: Multiply the miniature’s weight by the number shown. Also multiply the weight of any given meal by this amount, e.g., a meal for a 1/2 scale creature has 1/8 normal weight. However, the total number of meals per day (three for normal humans) is multiplied by the inverse of scale, e.g., six meals a day at 1/2 scale, nine meals a day at 1/3 scale, etc. Thus, a scale 1/2 creature eats six meals of 1/8th normal weight per day. Thus, the total weight of consumption is the square of scale.

weight = scale^3, so scale 1/2 gives weight 1/8.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Henchman99942

Do smaller and larger races eat smaller and larger meals? Is this part of the built in SM side effect? Or do you have to specifically take something like increased or decreased consumption? These seem to affect the number of meals and not the size of the meal so I don't think this is the best fit. Clothing is smaller or larger as part of the side effects from SM. I should think meal size would be as well.

Realistic animal metabolic rates, and hence food, water and oxygen demands, scale roughly with mass^3/4, so should vary about as 10^(3SM/8) with size modifier. But GURPS is quite general, and lots of things with size modifiers aren't animals at all, so you probably should buy the effect separately, the same way you do other stuff like ST or Hit Points that also scale with size, but don't come with it for free.

[Anthony]

It's actually moderately realistic to set food requirements based on BL, while humans are a slight anomaly due to high brain food requirements, in general metabolic rates are strongly correlated with muscle and follow similar scaling. This does mean a pixie with ST 5 eats about 25x as much as a normal SM -6 critter (which would have ST 1) but that's hardly a big deal.

[scc]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

Bio-tech page 62-63

weight = scale^3, so scale 1/2 gives weight 1/8.

Space however, may disagree with this. Page 92 says that a whole race can have increased or reduced consumption, Of course this seems to be used to adjust how much food the race as a whole eats.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's actually moderately realistic to set food requirements based on BL, while humans are a slight anomaly due to high brain food requirements, in general metabolic rates are strongly correlated with muscle and follow similar scaling. This does mean a pixie with ST 5 eats about 25x as much as a normal SM -6 critter (which would have ST 1) but that's hardly a big deal.

Something that based food requirements on a combination of ST (general metabolism) and IQ (for hungry brains) would be interesting. We might be able to kludge something together if you know the BL-based trend and how humans deviate from it.