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Old 08-15-2018, 07:48 PM   #1
Mirtai
 
Join Date: Oct 2013
Default Size Limitation on Growth, what to apply it to.

OK, here's a bit of a simple question.

According to Powers pg 50, a character with Growth should also be able to use the Size limitation on their enhanced move as well as their strength, due to the larger stride of a giant.

What about a Giant Robot or just a straight up giant who's always big. Would those also get the Size limitation to their Enhanced move? Or do you have to be able to change size to get that limitation?
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Old 08-15-2018, 08:13 PM   #2
Mirtai
 
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Default Re: Size Limitation on Growth, what to apply it to.

Also, while I'm here, what is your opinion about adding the Size limitation to other things as appropriate?

The GM's in our game decided that, for example, the Size limitation could be applied to Telescopic vision, because a 100 ft tall giant having trouble seeing the end of his own arm (or accurately throwing his own body length), is just silly... not to mention bigger optics really do work better (and are way easier to target.)

It was a homebrewed adaption on the rules obviously, but how crazy were we?
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Old 08-15-2018, 08:57 PM   #3
Kelly Pedersen
 
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Default Re: Size Limitation on Growth, what to apply it to.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirtai View Post
According to Powers pg 50, a character with Growth should also be able to use the Size limitation on their enhanced move as well as their strength, due to the larger stride of a giant.

What about a Giant Robot or just a straight up giant who's always big. Would those also get the Size limitation to their Enhanced move? Or do you have to be able to change size to get that limitation?
I would say that an always-large creature should not get a Size modifier to their Enhanced Move, no. I think what's happening here is that Size is sort of pulling double-duty, and is really two different limitations here, depending on the traits it's being applied to.

For ST (and HP), the Size limitation represents the fact that higher ST isn't quite as useful to a larger creature, compared to a smaller one, because the weight of equipment increases as size does, without necessarily improving in effectiveness. Armor is the classic example. Let's say that DR 10 plate armor for a human-scale person weighs 50 lbs. Now, take a person ten times as tall (i.e., SM +6). According to the scaling rules in Low-Tech Companion 2, armor scaled to fit them would weigh 100 times as much, but still provide the same 10 DR. So, a character with high ST but also larger size effectively gets less and less net benefit, because their gear ends up weighing more, eating up their margins. Hence, the Size limitation for ST.

Now, with Enhanced Move, I think what's actually happening is that the Size limitation is functioning more like an Accessiblity limitation, along the lines of "only in an altered body form". Now, I know that Accessibility is canonically set at -10%, but I think that's assuming all body transformations are roughly equally inconvenient. Increasing SM, however, clearly isn't all equally inconvenient at all - growing to 3 yards tall from 2 means you can still fit in most buildings built for humans (though you'll have to duck), can still use human-scaled tools pretty well, and easily fit down pretty much all streets and such. Growing to 50 yards tall, however, suddenly greatly restricts your range of movement in any areas built for humanity, unless you're willing and able to crash through a bunch of buildings. So, having Enhanced Move (Ground) 5 is much less useful if you have to grow to SM +6 to access it, compared to only having to grow to SM +1. So the increasing limitations are valid, I think.

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Originally Posted by Mirtai View Post
Also, while I'm here, what is your opinion about adding the Size limitation to other things as appropriate?
I'd allow it on any advantages that are only available at larger sizes and that are legitimately inconvenienced in their use by that larger size. That probably includes most movement advantages, for example, and a number of defensive combat advantages, since larger SM makes it easier to hit you, and thus makes defensive advantages less useful. For example, I'd probably allow someone to buy DR with the Size limitation if they had Growth.

Advantages that didn't fall into the above categories, I'd allow a -10% Accessibility for "only while in altered body shape", but I wouldn't allow more than that if growing didn't actually make them less useful.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirtai
The GM's in our game decided that, for example, the Size limitation could be applied to Telescopic vision,
This, for example, I'd allow the -10% for "Only while in altered body size", but not the full Size limitation. I just don't see how it's more inconvenient to use Telescopic Vision at SM 6 compared to SM 2.
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Old 08-15-2018, 11:03 PM   #4
Mirtai
 
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Default Re: Size Limitation on Growth, what to apply it to.

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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
I just don't see how it's more inconvenient to use Telescopic Vision at SM 6 compared to SM 2.
Two 100 ft tall giants are trying to play catch. They're about six body lengths apart... say like a pair of normal guys throwing the ball across a living room.

Let's say they have a 10 dex, and 1 point in throwing like any high school football fan might, so an effective skill of 9. They have a -14 to the throw from the range penalties, but to hit the other giant, they get a +7, meaning that they only need to roll a 2 on 3d6 to hit the other giant with the ball... so... essentially never. They can't hit the broad side of a giant-sized barn, much less another giant without a miracle. I'd say that this is at least mildly inconvenient. And the bigger the giant, the larger this inconsistency grows.

A giant that big has difficulty accurately throwing something the length of their own arm... much less tossing it at someone reasonably far away. It makes sense that they'd have a discount on Telescopic vision to make up for that... and, like with the Enhanced Move which characters with Growth do officially get a discount to purchase, bigger eyes see better just like bigger legs take bigger steps, so it has the benefit of making sense as well.
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Old 08-16-2018, 07:14 AM   #5
Bruno
 
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Default Re: Size Limitation on Growth, what to apply it to.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirtai View Post
A giant that big has difficulty accurately throwing something the length of their own arm... much less tossing it at someone reasonably far away. It makes sense that they'd have a discount on Telescopic vision to make up for that... and, like with the Enhanced Move which characters with Growth do officially get a discount to purchase, bigger eyes see better just like bigger legs take bigger steps, so it has the benefit of making sense as well.
That's not the logic of GURPS traits. If it makes sense, then you buy it, spending the points as usual. If you can't envision one trait without the other, you don't buy it unless you're prepared to buy the other. You don't get a discount on things that would be handy for your particular body configuration - you just suffer if you don't buy them.

The closest thing to an exception for this is The Size Limitation (tm) for ST and HP, and it's not because it's "convenient" for a SM +10 giant to be stronger than someone else, it's a very weirdly done subsidy for the SM +10 that is specifically only an exception for ST and HP. An implicit admission that positive SM is probably a disadvantage.

Otherwise the size limitation would only apply to "enough levels that make sense with that level of SM" - it "Makes sense" for a SM 1 creature to have ST in the 14-20 range, but it doesn't "make sense" for SM 1 to go with ST 1000; a ST 1000 creature who's SM 1 still gets a -10% discount off those 990 levels of ST because it's not some sort of metatrait.

What you're proposing is a metatrait, and GURPS doesn't give discounts just for bundling things into metatraits.
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Old 08-16-2018, 01:53 PM   #6
Kelly Pedersen
 
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Default Re: Size Limitation on Growth, what to apply it to.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirtai View Post
A giant that big has difficulty accurately throwing something the length of their own arm... much less tossing it at someone reasonably far away. It makes sense that they'd have a discount on Telescopic vision to make up for that...
As I said, I agree that some Telescopic Vision to make it easier for big creatures to hit things in scale is a reasonable trait. However, as Bruno pointed out, GURPS doesn't give discounts because something would be "reasonable" for your character to have. Limitations are for when the trait is limited in some way, not as useful as the default trait is. I don't see how this applies to Telescopic Vision in this case - a giant is just as able to use their Telescopic Vision to see or hit a target at a given distance as a normal-scale character is. In fact, the giant might get slightly more benefit out of Telescopic Vision than a normal-sized person, since they'll be higher up and have a more distant horizon.

Here's another way to think about the criteria: if a character with Growth wanted to do some task that relied on an ability only available in large size, would being the required size make that task harder? If it does, then the full Size limitation is probably appropriate - this is the case with Enhanced Move, because growing inherently limits the places you can move to. However, if you could grow, accomplish the task without any extra penalties, then shrink again, it doesn't deserve the full Size limitation, only the -10% for "only in altered body form". Telescopic Vision fits here. If you were shooting at a target who was SM +10, and 100 yards away, growing to SM +10 yourself doesn't impose any penalties on your attack or your ability to use Telescopic Vision to gain a bonus to hit them. The only limitation is the inconvenience of having to grow first. Hence, Accessibility, Only in large size, -10% is appropriate, but not Size, -80%.
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