Fat... where did the extra encumbrance go?

[Gudiomen]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

There's no need for an "extra encumbrance" disadvantage. If your Move is reduced by your weight, buy down your Move. If your Dodge is reduced as well, buy down your Basic Speed.

Yes, fat people are often sluggish as well, so Basic Speed is appropriate too.

Mind you, there's tons of instances where a -1 to Move can represent tons of disadvantages... Bowlegged, Maimed Leg, etc...

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by The Benj

My bones don't break

In the interests of reality checking, what kind of tests have you put them through?

[chris1982]

Originally Posted by The Benj

... fair bit of my "excess" weight is from my freakishly dense bone structure....

Bone is about 14% of the weight of a human. I think you are overestimating this effect a bit ;-)

Maybe you have some muscle? That weighs quite a bit...

[Bruno]

Importantly, GURPS 4e has gone with the explicit design assumption that "ST and BL measure your ability to lift other stuff, not yourself". Otherwise ANYONE with more than 150 lbs of mass would have "permanent encumbrance" - muscles weigh more than fat, lb per lb, and it doesn't matter if your ST is 15, if you're a 6'8" barbarian and weigh 300 lbs, you're still carrying twice as much weight as the ST 15, 5'2" 150 lb guy who hauls sofas for a living ("Two Small Men With Big Hearts" Moving is real, and operates in our area). And therefore should be hauling around extra weight as encumberance.

3e was inconsistant and weird and ran into this issue in several different places. 4e solved the issue by saying "ST 0 is enough to move your own body, by definition. ST measure Surplus lifting capacity only."

Because height and weight don't have any character point value assigned to them, making the character who's heavy from fat take game penalies and the character who's heavy from bone or muscle take no game penalties is evil and inconsistant. So an Overweight or Fat character is mostly getting points for being difficult to shop for, not being able to fit in small places, getting a small social stigma in some societies, and having a Distinctive Feature.

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

There's no need for an "extra encumbrance" disadvantage. If your Move is reduced by your weight, buy down your Move. If your Dodge is reduced as well, buy down your Basic Speed.

I disagree, for a couple of reasons:
1. That doesn't cover getting a penalty to Acrobatics, Climbing, Fencing, Judo, Karate etc. (which being fat certainly does for the first two, I'm not so sure about Fencing, Judo, or Karate)
2. It makes you slower in terms of turn order, which carrying loads doesn't (and being fat doesn't either)

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

In the interests of reality checking, what kind of tests have you put them through?

Heh. No active and intentional experiments, just a variety of falls, crashes, fights, etc. Most notably a cliff fall (~10 metres, onto bare stone) and getting hit by a van. I'd just put it down to luck until I got an x-ray and the tech mentioned it.

If I had to stat it, I'd say it's far from Unbreakable Bones. It's more like an extra HP or 2.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by The Benj

I disagree, for a couple of reasons:
1. That doesn't cover getting a penalty to Acrobatics, Climbing, Fencing, Judo, Karate etc. (which being fat certainly does for the first two, I'm not so sure about Fencing, Judo, or Karate)

I'm not convinced that being fat SHOULD require a penalty to those skills. Some people have fat that's badly distributed and would throw off their balance. They can use that as a song and dance to explain an quirk giving -1 or -2 to the entire category of skills (or just flat out buying down DX if they see their character as generally un-co-ordinated, and picking up a level of Manual Dexterity).

However, some people (especially women) have fat evenly distributed - large breasts are certainly a handicap, but they're (importantly) a mitigatable handicap on something that would probably only rate a quirk in the first place.

Originally Posted by The Benj

2. It makes you slower in terms of turn order, which carrying loads doesn't (and being fat doesn't either)

I personally don't think fat should be giving people a Dodge penalty in the first place, any more than having 300 lbs of muscle gives you a Dodge penalty. If someone's so big they're easier to hit, they have SM +1 - they're just wide, not tall.

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I'm not convinced that being fat SHOULD require a penalty to those skills. Some people have fat that's badly distributed and would throw off their balance. They can use that as a song and dance to explain an quirk giving -1 or -2 to the entire category of skills (or just flat out buying down DX if they see their character as generally un-co-ordinated, and picking up a level of Manual Dexterity).

However, some people (especially women) have fat evenly distributed - large breasts are certainly a handicap, but they're (importantly) a mitigatable handicap on something that would probably only rate a quirk in the first place.

Even being "evenly distributed" doesn't stop the fact that you're carrying more mass than your strength can properly support, although uneven distribution would be even worse, that's a different issue.

I personally don't think fat should be giving people a Dodge penalty in the first place, any more than having 300 lbs of muscle gives you a Dodge penalty. If someone's so big they're easier to hit, they have SM +1 - they're just wide, not tall.

It's not an issue of size, but of maneuverability. You are less able to quickly get out of the way of things, just as if you were wearing thigh weights, wrists weights and a lead belt.
Someone with 300lbs of muscle can move that weight, because they're using 300lbs of muscle to do it. Fat doesn't make the same contribution to doing that, it just hangs there.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by The Benj

Even being "evenly distributed" doesn't stop the fact that you're carrying more mass than your strength can properly support, although uneven distribution would be even worse, that's a different issue.



It's not an issue of size, but of maneuverability. You are less able to quickly get out of the way of things, just as if you were wearing thigh weights, wrists weights and a lead belt.
Someone with 300lbs of muscle can move that weight, because they're using 300lbs of muscle to do it. Fat doesn't make the same contribution to doing that, it just hangs there.

You seem to be missing the fact that someone who is fat carries that weight all day long. They naturally must have a great deal of lower body strength in order to do so. Underneath all that fat there is, literally, the musculature of a body builder. Leg muscles and back muscles can't tell the difference between someone being 300 pounds of muscle and being 300 pounds of fat; the muscles simply get bigger to carry that weight around. (interestingly, this means that many body builders suffer from the same lower back and knee problems that obese people do)

That's not to discount that some people who are obese are also extremely unfit and barely capable of carrying themselves around, but that is far from universally true. Many people who are obese are relatively fit and strong.

[Ulzgoroth]

Fat not including built-in encumbrance is fine. But I'd like a leveled 'encumbered' advantage. Despite Rev. Pee Kitty's claims, it is not generally equivalent to buying down a select set of stats.

OTOH, it may be un-priceable since it does (under some conditions) amount to a proportional reduction in linearly-priced stats.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by The Benj

Someone with 300lbs of muscle can move that weight, because they're using 300lbs of muscle to do it. Fat doesn't make the same contribution to doing that, it just hangs there.

Someone with 300lbs of muscle doesn't get ST 15 in GURPS. Someone who spends 50 points gets ST 15. You can buy that ST 15 if your character weighs 120 lbs or 400 lbs.

Therefore, the character who weighs 300, or 400 lbs and still has "only" ST 15 is carrying more "extra" weight than the character with ST 15 and 120, 150 or 200 lbs. Pounds are Pounds, whether they be muscle or fat; it's like the old nut about "which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead" - they're both pounds.

If both characters have the same ST and the same pounds, then trying to differentiate "Fat" pounds from "Muscle" pounds is bogus.