Calculating HP from Mass (alternate scaling)

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by RyanW

7.62x39 has become the predominant chambering for the ivory trade of the last 50 years or so.

But it was my understanding that these were used to machine gun the elephant's flanks with a clip or two and let it bleed to death from the many many holes.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

But it was my understanding that these were used to machine gun the elephant's flanks with a clip or two and let it bleed to death from the many many holes.

Elephants these days are a lot more clued in on the risks of men with guns, too - in areas with poachers, they now are quite aware that men at a distance pointing things at them can hurt them.

They're also using other military ordinance (grenades, RPGs) to hunt the elephants, especially in Zimbabwe where the military is occasionally sent out to kill elephants for pretty random reasons.

Not entirely surprisingly, the Zimbabwe elephants in areas where this has happened are pretty antsy.

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Humans work "well" with this formula as long as they seldom have ST/HP higher than 12 and never higher than 14. Above these levels they cause the whole system to fracture.

Note that the formula you're talking about is the standard one where ST and HP are 2*cube_root(mass_in_lbs). The alternate formula actually seems to work better for humans, it seems.

Originally Posted by Bruno

The top participants in the Strongest Man competitions are 400+ lbs with lots of muscle, and if they're only ST 15 HP 15 I'll go buy a hat so I can eat it.
<snip>
It would take something on the order of "adjusting for conditioning with plus or minus 35%" for the standard calculation to bump up those strongmen into the high teens. The alternate calculation gives numbers for those 380-440 lb strongmen that require much smaller error bars.

Yeah, with standard scaled to cube root 400 lb human averages ST ~14.74, which seems insanely low. With alternate scaled to square root the same human averages 17, with deviation from the average allowed matches reality more closely (as well as the intent to have humans reach up to about 20).

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

That seems consistent with the higher square-root-based HP. A simple Torso hit from the .600 won't inflict sufficient injury to incapacitate, but a Vitals hit will (70 and 105 average injury, respectively, versus HP 90+). With the older Greener rifle, you'd need to make a skull hit to have a chance of 1-hit take down (with skull DR, it'll take a good roll to exceed 90 points). Which may be why it's a double-barreled gun, giving an extra chance for a kill.

With the RAW numbers, an average Torso hit from either rifle would immediately drop the elephant below 0 HP, resulting in incapacitation in seconds and death from bleeding out (or a follow-up shot) shortly after. It sounds like that was not the expected result of an imprecise hit.

So it seems to work well then for elephants! I had been worried it made them unrealistically resilient but it seems it matches the actual reality of trying to kill an elephant much more closely (by strongly encouraging head or vital shots).

Okay! I think I'm settled on the realism of the alternate scaling! Thanks for the help all.

[Anthony]

Large animals typically aren't durable enough in GURPS, though I'd usually resolve it by giving them multiple levels of DR(tough skin) rather than more hit points, as the problem is mostly being too vulnerable to small hits.

The problem with a square root for hit points is that it results in hit points scaling at a different rate from DR, and when you've got a penetration-based damage system that's a mess. The fix I favor is wounding type adjustments based on the size of the attack and the target.

[Mr Frost]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

...
Yeah, with standard scaled to cube root 400 lb human averages ST ~14.74, which seems insanely low. With alternate scaled to square root the same human averages 17, with deviation from the average allowed matches reality more closely (as well as the intent to have humans reach up to about 20)...

Note that athletic people generally have more strength and toughness than ordinary Humans and it can be by quite a significant margin .

I generally factor this in when statting a character with an upper ceiling of about x 1.4 {ie , twice as strong as mundane folk that size} and an average for people with strength emphasizing lifestyles {concreter , pre-gunpowder soldier , the bloke that brings Oprah Winfrey Her meals} at about x 1.2 normal strength .

I believe this should be done with wild and work animals which are athletic simply due to the pressures of survival and then some are stronger yet again by evolved design {wolverine and Moose leap to mind} .