Giant Sized Weapons and Armor

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Giant in chainmail might as well be in chains.

120 pounds of armor divided by ST 25 is a 4.8x load, with only 30 more pounds to go before she loses another point of DX.

I solve this by adding a size multiplier. A figure’s carrying capacity is multiplied by hex-size so a giant can manage 3x the load based on ST alone.

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

I solve this by adding a size multiplier. A figure’s carrying capacity is multiplied by hex-size so a giant can manage 3x the load based on ST alone.

C.f. A Note on Encumbrance, Adventures 2, page 3/7.

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by hcobb

C.f. A Note on Encumbrance, Adventures 2, page 3/7.

It's page 5/7, but I'm not a fan of using division. The load is the load.

[larsdangly]

My solution to the 'weapons' issue is to always use a melee weapon damage bonus equal to +1 damage per 2 full points of ST in excess of the prerequisite, with no bonus given for weapons that lack a ST, and trading +4 bonuses for an extra die. E.g., a ST 30 giant fighting with a two handed spear has base damage of 1d+1+9 = 3d+2 (4d+2 on or vs. charge). You can think of hypotheticals where this approach breaks down, but it scales well across a pretty wide range of situations.

I haven't come up with a good solution to the armor problem. What we need is a way for big, powerful creatures to be harder to kill than they are, as even ST 30 or 40 doesn't take long to ablate down at the base 'lethality' of TFT. I've experimented with giving everyone 1 point of Toughness per full 10 pts of ST above 10, on top of whatever else they have. So a ST 30 giant has 2 points of protection and a ST 70 large dragon has 6+5=11 points of protection. This isn't a terrible rule, but it does result in a significantly different balance of power and so feels like a house rule that sets you off on your own journey, separate from the normal game and its supplements and adventures.

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

My solution to the 'weapons' issue is to always use a melee weapon damage bonus equal to +1 damage per 2 full points of ST in excess of the prerequisite, with no bonus given for weapons that lack a ST, and trading +4 bonuses for an extra die. E.g., a ST 30 giant fighting with a two handed spear has base damage of 1d+1+9 = 3d+2 (4d+2 on or vs. charge). You can think of hypotheticals where this approach breaks down, but it scales well across a pretty wide range of situations.

I haven't come up with a good solution to the armor problem. What we need is a way for big, powerful creatures to be harder to kill than they are, as even ST 30 or 40 doesn't take long to ablate down at the base 'lethality' of TFT. I've experimented with giving everyone 1 point of Toughness per full 10 pts of ST above 10, on top of whatever else they have. So a ST 30 giant has 2 points of protection and a ST 70 large dragon has 6+5=11 points of protection. This isn't a terrible rule, but it does result in a significantly different balance of power and so feels like a house rule that sets you off on your own journey, separate from the normal game and its supplements and adventures.

I can see adding ST related damage bonuses to normal sized weapons. However, I would looking for a good way to assign damage to actual giant-sized versions of normal weapons that could only be wielded by giant-sized characters. I think that it was covered well earlier in this thread but, If you have your own take on it, I'm all eyes and ears.

If I were interested in an alternative for Giants to wear armor, I would offer this from a functional basis.

1. It wouldn't be wrong to simply state that everything is scaled up for giants and that the same encumbrances apply.

2. One could simply apply the encumbrance changes across the board per the benefits of high ST in ITL. However, one could argue that is not scaled properly for a giant wearing giant-sized armor.

3. Simply drop all encumbrances for cloth and leather armor and cut encumbrances for all metal armor and shields in half.

4. Take the encumbrance modifications for benefits of high ST in ITL and scale them up to giant ST ranges.

5. If one wants to get into weight vs. strength charts which starts making it too complicated and could impede the quick fun factor of the game.

Armor has a decent precedent set in ITL that would allow for options 1-4 with little problem. Option 5 would be too complicated and maybe oven decrease the fun factor. I'm certain that we would all be arguing over every little detail. LOL! After running through the actual effects of such a system, you will probably find that it falls in closely with one or two of the prior options.

[larsdangly]

The only real problem with DX penalties for armor on biguns is that they have a rigid upper DX limit, and the penalties impose a cost that is proportionately greater than would be experienced by a typical human. If your base DX is 9 you obviously can't burn much on armor.

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

The only real problem with DX penalties for armor on biguns is that they have a rigid upper DX limit, and the penalties impose a cost that is proportionately greater than would be experienced by a typical human. If your base DX is 9 you obviously can't burn much on armor.

I concur.

However, the question has been raised about the accuracy of those penalties for giants wearing armor.

[Axly Suregrip]

If I recall correctly, in the old ITL, advantages of great ST basically allowed giants to wear leather with no armor DX penalty... just looked it up and pg 8 of the original ITL has both movement and DX penalties reduced for someone of giant level ST (eg ST 30 character could ignore chain MA and DX penalties). I am not going to list it all here. In Legacy ITL all this was removed (see ITL pg 15), so they had their reasons for doing so. Maybe it was too much.

In Legacy ITL on page 132, it states that barding for riding beasts is at 1 point less DX penalty reduction. Maybe a fair approach is Giants and others, is to say for every hex you are over one hex in size you get a 1 DX penalty reduction. So, a 3 hex giant gets +2 to their armor wearing penalties. That is, cloth and leather will have no DX penalty and chain would have a -1 DX penalty, etc. Since this should be enough to make it fair I would keep the weight encumbrance penalties.

Giants in leather armor would be significantly tougher to beat. You can have the IQ 9 giant with toughness & leather armor that will have a total of -4 protection with no DX penalty. Now that will be a very difficult foe.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

My solution to the 'weapons' issue is to always use a melee weapon damage bonus equal to +1 damage per 2 full points of ST in excess of the prerequisite, with no bonus given for weapons that lack a ST, and trading +4 bonuses for an extra die. E.g., a ST 30 giant fighting with a two handed spear has base damage of 1d+1+9 = 3d+2 (4d+2 on or vs. charge).

That makes a giant's two-handed spear a little bit more deadly than a cavalry lance, which is probably just about right considering their size and the momentum behind them. If I've done my math correctly, a broadsword wielded by a ST 30 giant would inflict 2d+9= 4d+1 damage, and a battleaxe wielded by the same giant would do 5d-1 (if adopting the convention that +3 adds 1d-1).

It might be worth putting a cap on damage, so that a figure can't add more dice of damage to a weapon than their number of hexes, regardless of ST. For example, a 3-hex giant's battleaxe would be capped at 6d, regardless of ST, but a megahex-sized giant could do more.

[hcobb]

The spiked club gets 1d+1 for every 10 ST, so that's a half point less than +1 per +2 ST.


Fortunately nobody applies the -2 for fighting giants against the halfling's Dagger Expertise.