Giant Question
 

A: Zero

Q: What's the MA of a ST 30 Giant in Fine Plate with a Small Shield, Battleaxe, Backpack, 3 days of human rations and three quart sized waterskins? (I.e. one day provisions for a giant.)

Re: Giant Question
 

It's MA will be largely unaffected due to the advantage of it's great strength.

Re: Giant Question
 

Note that one weapon, one shield, one suit of armor, one backpack, and one day of provisions adds up to 301 pounds. As this exceeds ten times ST the giant is too heavily laden to fight. Thankfully he's not carrying a dagger or torch.

Re: Giant Question
 

I've just realised that the section on "Advantages of Great Strength" seems to have disappeared from the new edition. Pity. Nevertheless, I would only consider the encumbrance rules to apply to human sized figures, not to Giants or other large creatures; as you've demonstrated, they simply don't work for these sorts of creatures.

Re: Giant Question
 

There are two fixes for horses and giants and centaurs, oh my!

You can apply my complex math here: https://www.hcobb.com/tft/house_rules.html#Weight

Or use the existing encumbrance rules and divide the load carried by the number of hexes of the figure. (I.e. divide loads by two for horses and by three for giants.)

The two methods are about the same for multi-hex figures. It depends on how badly you want to say "no amour buddy!" to the Lizard People.

Re: Giant Question
 

Lizard people are nerfed now, so you can probably get away with giving them the bad news.

Re: Giant Question
 

A hex-based multiplier is simpler (i.e. a giant can manage 3 times the weight over a 1-hex figure of equivalent ST). And add a x2 modifier for quadrapeds.

Re: Giant Question
 

Give reptile men and other 'large' 1-hex figures a 1.5x multiplier.

Re: Giant Question
 

Is the giant's spiked club of Melee page 21 (and Wizard, and TFT, etc.) a one handed weapon as shown on the counter? Can I carry something really terrifying like a dagger in the off hand?

Yes, a dagger.

Of course when the giants get to IQ 8 they use a cestus on each hand and humanity is doomed.

Re: Giant Question
 

I wouldn't even bother to worry about the mechanics of it. Once you get to the monster stats, they are all made up without a strict system anyway.

Re: Giant Question
 

I tend to agree with this. However, it is possible to play a Giant somthe question of exactly how much he could carry might well come up.

Re: Giant Question
 

Or a centaur (both races are available to players in my campaign)... hence the need for a fix.

Re: Giant Question
 

So the options on the table so far are:

A: As it is written, so shall it be. Giants can't realistically wear armor and horses can't carry two adult humans at all.

B: Use the current rules but divide load by size in hexes.

C: Apply Henry's quadratic load and percentage reduction to movement rules.

Re: Giant Question
 

D. Put back advantages of great strength

Re: Giant Question
 

There is still a section on advantages of great ST, but it's been ... edited, changing and leaving out several of the old entries. (my least favorite is the change making 2-handed weapons usable one-handed with only 3 extra ST - clearly a "we want this to be possible" thing, but I'd much rather it not be possible for most humans, than it be super-easy, automatic for octopi, etc).

But it didn't help with encumbrance anyway. It removed the MA effects of armor, but it didn't remove their weight. Encumbrance rules say "A figure may not carry more than 10 times his ST and travel normally." So if you want a weight-based encumbrance system, you do need to re-calibrate it if you want even a max ST 36 warhorse to be able to carry more than 360 pounds. Not to mention an ordinary horse with ST 14-18 being limited to 140 to 180 pounds.

Re: Giant Question
 

Exactly. My hex-based adjustments may not be completely realistic, but they get the numbers much closer than RAW and they are easy to apply.

Re: Giant Question
 

Horses have slightly different rules. If you check p. 66 and p. 130 horses can carry up to ST*12. So the "nag" could carry 168 to 216 lbs, a light riding horse could carry 240 to 264 lbs and so on.

The rules for ST are a little wonky - carrying capacity is linear with ST but maximum lift is quadratic (see p. 65.) I think it might make sense to give an encumbrance multiplier for large creatures in lieu of custom rules.

Re: Giant Question
 

One giant advantage of "divide load by size in hexes" is that this is the load per hex. So a giant could carry 30x ST distributed over his body (armor or such), but could only pick up 10x ST with one hand or 20x ST with both hands.

Re: Giant Question
 

As surface area quadruples when size doubles, it seems reasonable that eventually a creature becomes so large that full steel armour will become too heavy for it to move.

Re: Giant Question
 

Note that Armor Weight and Cost increases faster than divide by size in hexes so the armor is getting heavier as the critter grows.

Re: Giant Question
 

But note body weight goes as the cube of linear size; if the premise is that giant things have body plans/compositions similar to their normal sized relatives, then you should assume a 10-12' tall humanoid is 8x the ST of a 5-6' tall humanoid, but that their armor only weighs 4x as much, so is easier to carry.

Re: Giant Question
 

Weight ~ ST squared

Twice as tall is eight times the mass and therefore 2.83 times the ST.

Mechanically the load an object can carry increases by the cross sectional area (length squared) while the total weight increases by the volume (length cubed).

Model resistance to damage as digging through the radius of the critter to reach its heart and therefore "hit points" scale with length.