What has high SM ever done for us?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Gnome

Others have mentioned "Combat Writ Large" from Pyramid #3/77, which goes a long way toward making positive SM worth it in combat, even in low tech settings. If you take all of its advice, you'll see benefits of slamming smaller targets, increased height allowing you to fight using Combat at Different Levels (B402), and a few other tidbits.

The big problems with thinking fighting at different levels makes much difference are:

1. It's hard capped, while size adjustments aren't.
2. Flight exists.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Gnome

Others have mentioned "Combat Writ Large" from Pyramid #3/77, which goes a long way toward making positive SM worth it in combat, even in low tech settings. If you take all of its advice, you'll see benefits of slamming smaller targets, increased height allowing you to fight using Combat at Different Levels (B402), and a few other tidbits.
We've been playing with these optional rules for years, and we've found the advantages of positive SM (and disadvantages of negative SM) helpful in balancing out these features.

Most (though not all) of that article is simply a compilation and clarification of the rules already in the Basic Set, and even without the optional extra rules big creatures are pretty scary if played right and all the rules applied.

The thing is, as with any opponent, whether the fight is on their terms or on those of their smaller opponents is really important. In a space where there's enough room for the larger combatant to move freely, but enough cover they can't just be pin-cushioned from range (or they're enough faster than the smaller combatants that they can force melee), and/or obstacles they can freely cross and the little people can't, the big guys can be really, really tough. When there's enough open space to 'kite' their bigger size just makes them better targets, and in confined spaces they'll have penalties due to lack of space (though confined spaces implies everyone is in melee range and that means the big guy gets to play grappling games).

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The big problems with thinking fighting at different levels makes much difference are:

1. It's hard capped, while size adjustments aren't.
2. Flight exists.

Yeah, for all the character points the giant spends on strength a normal-sized character could just buy flight hang out overhead. Heck the classical tiny fantasy "pixie" usually has wings and the ability to hover, so it would actually have the height advantage bonuses over any high SM character, and since at least human-like giants tend to have their eyes and skulls in the upper part of their body the pixie would likely want to fly around over there anyway to inflict maximum damage.

High SM characters have significant advantages when grappling, but the problem is that grappling is a slow way to take an enemy out of the fight, and the giant becomes an even easier target for other enemies in the meanwhile since defending yourself from other opponents while grappling is difficult. Grappling is best for one-on-one fights or situations where you can force a one-on-one.

In practice a giant is probably going to have to keep swinging weapons instead, and after hitting the high-advantage cap they'll be doing so at a penalty. And against a fantasy pixie they'll be facing double penalties since the pixie will be both tiny and at an angle overhead. Of course against something as small as a pixie they have great chances at finishing a grappling fight, but the pixie also has fantastic chances of stabbing the giant in the eye of the giant misses the grappling attack.

I'd argue that it is actually pretty much how you'd expect a fight between a super-strong pixie and giant to go, but character point wise the giant is kinda hosed. The pixie can f.ex. hide in an enemy's backpack unnoticed while an Yrth giant can't even fit into a regular house. It isn't great sign that the pixie is comparable or even better in a fight than the giant.

.

As a side note As for super strong tiny humanoids, that is actually pretty accurate to a lot of folk-lore. Swedish Tomte f.ex. didn't fly, but they were tiny yet said to be able to kill a cow with a single angry punch. Fantasy stories are also full of similar super-powered small people. With that in mind a, say, HP 15/Striking ST-15/Lifting ST-8 tiny person seems like a quite reasonable character concept. Either way GURPS in no ways limits the ability for small characters to have (and be effective with) high ST, or simply subvert a lack of strength with telekinesis (like the Hell Fairy posted before) or magic.

[RedMattis]

I think someone else suggested something like it before here, but I think the best way to balance SM would be by including a strength increase/reduction with the SM, and still keep the discount on ST. Probably would work best with the KYOS ST-rules.

F.ex. Let's say that each doubling in total height comes with 4 times the Lifting Power. We'll based the KYOS ST value on that. Remember that double height means 8 times the weight of the creature, so for cinematic giants they will need more strength.

Let's test it out real quick. I'm assuming strength is based on the square of the height increase. (because of muscle-cross section strength)

0.5 Meter tall: SM-4:
25% height, Target: 6% lifting weight (0.6 kg). Creature Weight 1.5 kg
ST-9 [-90 points] - Actual Lift: 2.5 kg :(

0.7 Meter tall: SM-3:
35% height, Target: 12% lifting weight (1.2 kg). Creature Weight 4 kg
ST-9 [-90 points] - Actual Lift: 2.5 kg

1 Meter tall: SM-2:
50% height, Target: 25% lifting weight (2.5 kg). Creature Weight 13 kg
ST-6 [-60 points] - Actual Lift: 2.5 kg

1.5 Meter tall: SM-1:
75% height, Target: 56% lifting weight (5.6 kg). Creature Weight 42 kg
ST-3 [-30 points] - Actual Lift: 10 kg

2 Meter tall: SM+0:
100% height, Target: 100% lifting weight (10 kg). Creature Weight 100 kg
ST+0 [0 points] - Actual Lift: 10 kg

3 Meter tall: SM+1
150% height, Target: 225% lifting weight (22 kg). Creature Weight 340 kg
ST+3 [30 points/27 points] - Actual Lift: 20 kg

5 Meter tall: SM+2
250% height, Target: 625% lifting weight (62 kg). Creature Weight 1500 kg
ST+8 [80 points/64 points] - Actual Lift: 63 kg :(

7 Meter tall: SM+3
350% height, Target: 1225% lifting weight (122 kg). Creature Weight 4200 kg
ST+11 [110 points/77 points] - Actual Lift: 130 kg

10 Meter tall: SM+4
500% height, Target: 2500% lifting weight (250 kg). Creature Weight 12'500 kg
ST+14 [140 points/84 points] - Actual Lift: 250 kg

15 Meter tall: SM+5
750% height, Target: 5625% lifting weight (562 kg). Creature Weight 42'000 kg
ST+17 [170 points/85 points] - Actual Lift: 500 kg

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Okay, so there are a few problems here. First off getting -9 ST for being 0.5 meter tall is probably not going to be a 0-point feature. Low ST is a pretty painful disadvantage, and I'm not 100% convinced that low SM is overpowered on its own unless you also mix it with f.ex. flight, telekinesis, or magic.

Second, ST+3 every SM level actually seems acceptable, but the enormous jump (ST+8 at SM+2 is less so). Probably the easiest to just say +3 ST per SM level, and you'll just have to buy two extra levels if you want to follow the square/cross-section scaling, though realistically the creature is going to need strength improvements anyway just to make supporting its own weight plausible enough.

GCS tells me that you can carry 15x your basic lift on your back, so after SM+1 carrying another member of your race becomes impossible, and probably the 7 meter creature is about where I'd start worry that it will really struggle to support itself. (Carry on Back weight of 1800 vs weighing 4200 itself)

Formulas:

Target Basic Lift = (height / 2m )^2 * 10 kg

Creature Weight = (height / 2m)^3 * 100 kg

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Here is a suggestion:

Increased Size Modifier [0 points/level]
Also increases ST by 3

Decreased Size Modifier [0 points/level]
No change compared to RAW.

I think these are fair in typical settings these are fair.

Being bigger than average is a serious inconvenience, especially high SM since it makes it limits your options (more than low SM); you can't fit into a lot of places the other can, and you're not able to partake in a lot of activities: f.ex. stealth operations. Finding equipment is also likely to be more difficult in most settings, and getting things custom-made could get extremely expensive due to the materials and increase work involved.

The Increased Strength lets the giant haul around more stuff and hit harder right out the gate, which I feel balances out the huge disadvantages a bit. In practice you could of course just make Increased Size Mod a -30 point disadvantage instead of adding ST. Almost the same result, except the player gets the -% for SM when they buy up their strength, and it won't dig into the disadvantage-point allowance if someone wants to make a super-weak giant wizard...

Being smaller then average is an occasional inconvenience, most notably for finding equipment and such. However a small size could make ordering custom made-equipment cheaper than for larger characters (unless you're small enough that you're hiring a watchmaker to make you armor). Being hard to spot, hit, and easy to find cover in a fight is a huge advantage. It is also easy to escape a lot of weaknesses inherent to being small by buying f.ex. adding Flight, Magic, or Telekinesis.

[Anthony]

The core problem with SM is that almost all of the advantages of high SM, and drawbacks of low SM, relate to making your ST more or less effective, so sure, a SM-1 barbarian might be balanced against a SM+1 barbarian (even that I consider dubious, but there are at least non-ridiculous arguments), but if I'm playing a thief or a wizard, low SM is pretty much all upside, because the downsides relate to things I don't care about or was already going to fail at.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The core problem with SM is that almost all of the advantages of high SM, and drawbacks of low SM, relate to making your ST more or less effective, so sure, a SM-1 barbarian might be balanced against a SM+1 barbarian (even that I consider dubious, but there are at least non-ridiculous arguments), but if I'm playing a thief or a wizard, low SM is pretty much all upside, because the downsides relate to things I don't care about or was already going to fail at.

A SM+1 mage gets one more yard of range with regular spell when not using a wand or staff to extend their reach. There's something a small mage doesn't have. Larger than that and their extended reach will apply with staves and wands as well. Most of the time it's a very minor benefit, probably of most use when fighting other casters (though them having to burn tons of energy to affect you with regular spells is probably a much bigger one, offset by you also having to burn tons of energy to affect yourself).

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The core problem with SM is that almost all of the advantages of high SM, and drawbacks of low SM, relate to making your ST more or less effective, so sure, a SM-1 barbarian might be balanced against a SM+1 barbarian (even that I consider dubious, but there are at least non-ridiculous arguments), but if I'm playing a thief or a wizard, low SM is pretty much all upside, because the downsides relate to things I don't care about or was already going to fail at.

Is there even a downside to a SM-1 barbarian? SM-1, or heck why not SM-8 barbarian, all just pay [10/level] for strength. Stick some wings on your little murder hornet and the dungeon monsters will soon be without eyeballs.

You lose some stuff, like the ability utilize reach weapons (and stuff like Whirlwind attacks), but overall I'm pretty sure the mini-barbarian is a bit more combat-effective just from being hard-to-hit alone.

Originally Posted by Rupert

A SM+1 mage gets one more yard of range with regular spell when not using a wand or staff to extend their reach. There's something a small mage doesn't have. Larger than that and their extended reach will apply with staves and wands as well. Most of the time it's a very minor benefit, probably of most use when fighting other casters (though them having to burn tons of energy to affect you with regular spells is probably a much bigger one, offset by you also having to burn tons of energy to affect yourself).

There is only one mage that is always guaranteed to be around, and that is you yourself. I think it is much worse having spells be hard to cast on yourself than hard for others to cast on you when you're a mage yourself. Makes it more expensive to cast various useful flight/invisibility/etc.-spells.

Personally I'd let giants cast spell on themselves without the penalty. A giant wizard is such a dreadfully ineffective build already, they don't need further nerfs.

Besides, iirc. spell cost only scales upwards. It isn't cheaper to cast spells on little pixies than it is on humans.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

Is there even a downside to a SM-1 barbarian? SM-1, or heck why not SM-8 barbarian, all just pay [10/level] for strength. Stick some wings on your little murder hornet and the dungeon monsters will soon be without eyeballs.

Depends how many levels of the Giant Weapon perk the GM allows, because small weapons have reduced min ST, and thus reduced max ST.

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Depends how many levels of the Giant Weapon perk the GM allows, because small weapons have reduced min ST, and thus reduced max ST.

Maybe you're right. I read something about Low Tech Companion 2 having rules for scaling weapons? Perhaps the simple fact of being able to wield huge weapons makes playing something like a Yrth Giant a bit more worth it.

Though a pixie would still be pretty strong. Even without a weapon a miniature barbarian's punching damage is still amazing if it invests in strength. Never mind that a pixie could of course use Telekinesis to control an SM+0 weapon, but I guess the GM could call that munchkinism and give tiny pixie telekinesis hands unless it buys some house-rule enchantment... But anyway, this topic was about high SM not low SM.

[Anthony]

Anyway, the simplest way of balancing high SM is to just delete rules (that aren't in Basic anyway) such as armor weight scaling and using positive SM as a penalty to hit in melee -- if you want those effects, take disadvantages to reflect them.