The "Size Discount for ST -- Why?" Discussion

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

It essentially penalizes large characters that aren't super strong.

Seems like a dumb idea to have large creatures with insufficient strength to move their great bulk around. If the system discourages silly builds then that is a plus, not a negative.

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

Seems like a dumb idea to have large creatures with insufficient strength to move their great bulk around. If the system discourages silly builds then that is a plus, not a negative.

Except that strength is your excess power after moving your bulk around.

Are balloons unrealistic?

[starslayer]

Originally Posted by simply Nathan

Except that strength is your excess power after moving your bulk around.

Are balloons unrealistic?

But not your ability to move around things scaled to your size, liked tools, weapons, and food. It should be easier via some method for a larger creature to be able to effectively move about those things.

Balloons are an effective way to life and move heavy weights, I would expect a balloon PC to have a lot of vulnerabilities, but be quite strong so as to lift, carry, and fly with heavy objects (relative to a sm0 human)

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by simply Nathan

Except that strength is your excess power after moving your bulk around.

Are balloons unrealistic?

Interesting question! I have the original Cosmos series by Carl Sagan on DVD. In that series he speculates that balloon like creatures could exist high in the atmosphere of gas giant planets where the atmospheric pressure is much higher than on Earth. The closest Earth native I can think of is the jellyfish, which is helpless on land. At any rate I don't think balloon creatures are likely to inhabit the same environment as human-like creatures so any strength comparison between the two is irrelevant.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by simply Nathan

Except that strength is your excess power after moving your bulk around.

Are balloons unrealistic?

ST assumes you can choose where something goes. Balloons are limited by physics, which really don't care about your ST score. I don't care how strong you are, you're sinking to the bottom of a lake of liquid helium (assuming you somehow had the ability to not die almost instantly in said lake).

[starslayer]

Just realised another interesting way that size should factor in:

Let's say a sm0 human and an sm+5 giant are friends;

They decide to hit the gym together and start a strength building regime.

The giant can, should, and does see greater overall return for time spent working out vs numerical St increase. (Ie they both work or sufficiently to get 10 cp worth if strength gains, that's 1 point for the human, but two for the giant)

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by starslayer

Just realised another interesting way that size should factor in:

Let's say a sm0 human and an sm+5 giant are friends;

They decide to hit the gym together and start a strength building regime.

The giant can, should, and does see greater overall return for time spent working out vs numerical St increase. (Ie they both work or sufficiently to get 10 cp worth if strength gains, that's 1 point for the human, but two for the giant)

Which is more ST increase in absolute terms, but is much less relative to the the ST the giant probably has to go with that size.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

How far below average?

I think it is a bad idea for adventurers to have below average strength. For my Vietnam-American War campaign the lowest strength was 11. Any lower than that and you would be heavily encumbered just carrying your standard equipment (where equipment issued is based on historic accounts of what they actually used).
...

Thing is that might well be perfectly realistic (military load outs are heavy, soldiers do complain about them, there is a long and glorious history of official and unofficial attempts to lighten loads when ever possible).

However that said I tend to allow soldiers who have gone though training regimes that involve a lot of marching and drill with full pack, lifting ST. To model their ability to operate with such loads.

(not that I have any issue with some soldiers in the Vietnam war having ST11)!

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Thing is that might well be perfectly realistic (military load outs are heavy, soldiers do complain about them, there is a long and glorious history of official and unofficial attempts to lighten loads when ever possible).

However that said I tend to allow soldiers who have gone though training regimes that involve a lot of marching and drill with full pack, lifting ST. To model their ability to operate with such loads.

(not that I have any issue with some soldiers in the Vietnam war having ST11)!

Lifting strength is a good idea for soldiers and perfectly realistic as long as it doesn't vary too much from base strength. Is the minimum strength for weapons based on lifting strength?

[simply Nathan]

Really though, being a bulky size should just be a Disadvantage that gives you points and most large entities should have high ST to reflect their size. The net of something like SM+1[-25] and ST+5[50] is [25] worth of advantage which seems appropriate to me. Worse off than SM 0 with ST 15 but clearly much better off than SM+1 with ST 10.

The first problem with making it a discount on ST is that it really doesn't pay off at the low levels to meet the minimum reasonable ST for a given size, encouraging disproportionately strong giants.

The second problem is that the ST itself is not made less potent by virtue of coming out of someone larger. No Fine Manipulators gives a discount because without hands, you are more limited in how you apply your strength; being bigger doesn't really do this.

If the point is to encourage building large things with appropriately large ST, why does an SM+9 giant pay the same for his ST as an SM+8 one? Or an SM+20 giant, for that matter? Why does and SM+5 giant wolf get no help buying up his ST to the (higher) appropriate levels than an SM+4 one?

It's almost like the problem with the Cannot Wear Armor limitation on DR; just making it a Disadvantage and pointing out possible justifications and combinations would make it way easier on everyone (except the DF Barbarian who is, unabashedly, designed around exploiting this kludge).