Fighting against Large creatures..

[Gigermann]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Enhanced Move doesn't improve Step, unfortunately.

Specifically, I'm referring to this, which should still apply:

This is movement up to 1/10 your Move, minimum 1 yard, in any direction

[Bruno]

Regarding which hit locations you can reach on a given target:

This cannot be tied to SM. Like the hexes you fill on the combat map, this is not a function of SM alone, but of posture (with SM being a rather small factor) and of the Reach on weapons used by the shorter guy.

On a humanoid, predominantly upright creature, you don't need a very high SM difference to bring the upper body entirely out of reach of a SM 0 combatant with a Reach 1 weapon. On the other hand even an elephant can be struck in the face by a man with a sword due to its horizontal posture, and an elephant-sized dragon, with less of the long-legs-tall-body shape and more of the long-and-low-serpentine body shape is going to be even easier to reach all of its vitals.

Heck, take a gander at Stegosauri, which are 4 m tall, but specifically designed to keep their heads close to the ground for ease when grazing, and thus walk around with their heads at about 2 meters (close enough to human head height to make no never mind) as are most of the organs in their bodies.

On the other end of the spectrum are sauropods, which are specifically designed to be able to keep their heads up high... but their bodies are on the elephant-design philosophy - squat.

Even more extreme are giraffes, who have everything up on stilts and unlike a humanoid have to go to extreme lengths to get their heads down far enough to drink - it is the most awkward splay-legged knock-need shuffle I have ever seen in the animal kingdom. And that's including the grade 7 school dances.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Enhanced Move doesn't improve Step, unfortunately. I think Extra Step was pegged at about 20 points somewhere on the forums here, which looks like a fair price to me.

Yeah. Without bothering to look for those old threads, I recall the typical range offered being from 15-25 points. Someone (Douglas, I think) advocated an even higher price of 30 or more. I used to be the one expounding the 15 point price, but after some time tinkering with it, I've moved my estimation up a bit. The 20 point price seems better, now, and I wouldn't blink if a GM wanted to charge 25 in a game I was in. It's still inappropriate for many games, though (MO).

[Gigermann]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Regarding which hit locations you can reach on a given target:

Given all that, I think the "large creatures" issue isn't fully served by the "multi-hex" mechanic currently in place—which deal with only the x-y dimensions. It really needs to consider the z dimension as well. For example, a SM+1 9-foot giant-type might only take up one hex, horizontally, but vertically takes up 3 hexes—which would suggest that one would need an increased reach (better than C, anyway) to strike the head (unless he's hunched over for some reason).

There's another "large creatures" issue that may need address—the "miss by one" mechanic on Hit Location. It would seem that you would have to miss by a lot, when attacking the Vitals of a SM+3 creature (FREX), to miss the Torso as well. Quick fix: miss by one=Miss by 1+SM

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I'm also pretty sure they can't dodge, so Reduced Dodge down to 0 seems to be a necessity.

Why do TL4 Ships-Of-The-Line get a dodge, but not Carriers?

Originally Posted by Gigermann

Specifically, I'm referring to this, which should still apply:

At that speed yes, but Enhanced Move requires that you accelerate at Move to get there.

Originally Posted by Bruno

This cannot be tied to SM. Like the hexes you fill on the combat map, this is not a function of SM alone, but of posture (with SM being a rather small factor) and of the Reach on weapons used by the shorter guy.

Originally Posted by Gigermann

Given all that, I think the "large creatures" issue isn't fully served by the "multi-hex" mechanic currently in place—which deal with only the x-y dimensions. It really needs to consider the z dimension as well.

What I do is simply apply the rules for Fighting at Different Levels to hit locations when appropriate. Works great.

There's another "large creatures" issue that may need address—the "miss by one" mechanic on Hit Location. It would seem that you would have to miss by a lot, when attacking the Vitals of a SM+3 creature (FREX), to miss the Torso as well. Quick fix: miss by one=Miss by 1+SM

This has been suggested a few times in the various "Rapid-Fire is broken!" threads.

[The Mage of Macungie]

While we're on the topic of XL creatures and combat, how do direct damage spells work with multi-hex creatures? I know Sleep etc. just costs more fatigue but would Create Fire do appropriate damage to each hex or the same as a normal human? Example: Against a giant covering 3 hexes, assuming that the damage calculates out to 3, would the giant take 9 HP or 3 HP?

This assumes the Create Fire has a large enough radius that the giant is trapped within.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by The Mage of Macungie

While we're on the topic of XL creatures and combat, how do direct damage spells work with multi-hex creatures? I know Sleep etc. just costs more fatigue but would Create Fire do appropriate damage to each hex or the same as a normal human? Example: Against a giant covering 3 hexes, assuming that the damage calculates out to 3, would the giant take 9 HP or 3 HP?

I don't think it makes much sense that bigger things generically burn faster. I think it's 1d-1 for being in a fire at all, not 1d-1 per hex of fire.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by The Mage of Macungie

While we're on the topic of XL creatures and combat, how do direct damage spells work with multi-hex creatures? I know Sleep etc. just costs more fatigue but would Create Fire do appropriate damage to each hex or the same as a normal human?

Your question doesn't seem to be about "direct damage spells" so much as area effects. This would apply as much to normal fire, hand grenades, etc as it does to magic, but wouldn't apply to, for example, the Fireball spell, which works just like a normal attack (only it's maaaaagical).

Originally Posted by The Mage of Macungie

Example: Against a giant covering 3 hexes, assuming that the damage calculates out to 3, would the giant take 9 HP or 3 HP?

Hitpoints are not scaled to map area, and actual surface area doesn't scale to map area, so I strongly recommend against it. Hitpoints scale with the cube root of mass, surface area scales with, I think, 2/3rds of mass unless I'm confused. So if you REALLY want to do math with fractional exponents to convert from number of hexes covered to a damage multiple, I think there's something horifying involving 1/3 power and 2/3 power and some division.

I got lost somewhere in there, but yeah, basically it doesn't work because the relationship between surface area and hitpoints is nonlinear.

We tried just multiplying by number of hexes filled and it was immediately obvious that it was WAY overpowered that way.

At the moment I'm going with "large subject takes exactly the same damage whether one or all of its hexes are in the effect". Which is favorable for the large subject but does at least make it very easy to hit them.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Bruno

At the moment I'm going with "large subject takes exactly the same damage whether one or all of its hexes are in the effect". Which is favorable for the large subject but does at least make it very easy to hit them.

Which goes along with the way human-size targets are affected by a Large-Area Injury. I don't think it's a problem that larger creatures are not going to take more damage from larger AEs. Besides the giant being easier to hit, you might be able to target your AE at a hit location :)

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I don't think it makes much sense that bigger things generically burn faster. I think it's 1d-1 for being in a fire at all, not 1d-1 per hex of fire.

On the other hand, it's that a 4 hex creature takes the same damage if it's entirely in a fire versus just having one hex in a fire. The "burning slowly" would be represented by having more hit points.

Of course, thanks to cube-square issues, a giant in a giant-sized fire probably doesn't burn as quickly as a human in a human-sized fire. I think the "most realistic" approach ends up scaling fire damage with number of hexes to the 2/3 power or something irritating like that.