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Old 01-27-2013, 10:53 AM   #1
ErhnamDJ
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
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Default Carrying vs Lifting

Lifting ST covers two things:

1) Carrying things. Like a backpack, or a donkey's pack, or worn armor.

2) The ability to lift things. Like a man lifting a gate so the party can pass, or a rescue worker trying to move a tree someone is trapped under, or a weightlifter in competition.



There are competitions for both uses of Lifting ST: there are carrying competitions and there are also weightlifting competitions. Someone who excels at one doesn't necessarily excel at the other. Think of small women who can bear a lot of weight, but who can hardly lift any weight at all off the ground.

From this, I figure that Lifting ST ought to be separated into two different kinds of ST: Lifting ST and Carrying ST.

What I'm talking about is having one of them affect your encumbrance and the other being the total amount you can move around.

What is the best way to handle that? Should it be a limitation on Lifting ST if you only want one variety? Would it be Lifting ST (Carrying only, -50%)?

Or should I split them into two separate traits? That would have the advantage of allowing more limitations to be placed on one. If it's a limited version of Lifting ST, then it would only be able to take an extra -30% of limitations, but if I was trying to do this for a large creature with a size limitation of -80%, then that would be a big price difference for that trait.

Are they both worth the same, or is one of them worth more than the other? I could price them both at 1.5/level, or I could price one as 2 and the other as 1. It seems to me like carrying is much more useful, so I would probably split them into Carrying at 2/level and Lifting at 1/level. That seems like a nice breakdown which allows us to preserve Lifting ST the way we have it now. Only it breaks down into two constituent traits.

Thoughts?
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Old 01-27-2013, 12:05 PM   #2
Dinadon
 
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Default Re: Carrying vs Lifting

Lifting and carrying are just active and passive forms of the same activity. If you are carrying something, you must have lifted it, and if your lifting something you are carrying it. There is also already a difference between lifting and carrying. You can lift at most 8xBL with your arms, but Extra-Heavy encumbrance is 10xBL, and you can carry at most 15xBL. Someone who doesn't match this either has weak arms, a strong back, both, or some other location based strength.
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Old 01-27-2013, 12:26 PM   #3
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Default Re: Carrying vs Lifting

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dinadon View Post
Lifting and carrying are just active and passive forms of the same activity.
If I were to think of them as being conceptually related, then I would think of them more as short-term and long-term versions of the same thing.

But that breaks down for robots and horses and aliens and supers.

Quote:
If you are carrying something, you must have lifted it
Not so. A horse can't lift very much, but he can carry a lot. It's certainly possible to imagine a real person whose carrying capacity does not relate to their lifting ability in the way the rules say they can. I'm trying to decouple those.

There have to be people out there who can carry more than they can lift, and vice versa. I think that one is easier to imagine. Someone who is very strong at lifting things in the short-term, but whose strength doesn't translate over directly into their ability to carry that weight.

Quote:
and if your lifting something you are carrying it.
Okay. But what if someone is a weightlifter and they can lift a lot for a short period of time, but they lack the ability to carry that amount of weight at all for any longer period of time? Or what if they can squat an incredible amount of weight?

Also note that I dislike the Lifting skill for a number of reasons (a skill is something you learn and can carry with you when you switch bodies, while what that skill does is part of the physical muscles themselves), so I'm assuming this will be replacing that.

Quote:
Someone who doesn't match this either has weak arms, a strong back, both, or some other location based strength.
Right. I get that. So how do I model it? Does splitting up the Lifting ST advantage into 2/level for carrying and 1/level for lifting work out okay?

I can come up with lots of examples for why I would want to do that. Animals, robots, supers, real people to a measurable degree.
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Old 01-27-2013, 01:16 PM   #4
Dinadon
 
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Default Re: Carrying vs Lifting

If someone can lift a lot, but can't carry it far, then they have the Strong Arms advantage. If someone can carry a lot but can't lift much, then they have the Weak limitation on their arms. Either way, lifting in GURPS is ultimately tied to your arms. If you have a heavy hiking backpack sitting on a table, but strapped to your back, when you lift it off the table you'll be lifting with your whole body, not your arms, and your body is stronger than your arms. Since you'e not lifting with your arms but your back you need to compare this to your Carry On Back rather than your Two-Handed Lift to see if you can lift it off the table.


There is also the Payload advantage, which is the advantage for increased carrying capacity. So really I don't see a need for something new. Just take Lifting Strength with a limitation for Not The Arms.

Last edited by Dinadon; 01-27-2013 at 01:20 PM.
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Old 01-27-2013, 01:18 PM   #5
Blood Legend
 
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Default Re: Carrying vs Lifting

We're forgetting about FP in here. You can't just pile on Heavy Encumberance and not lose some energy walking around with it.
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Old 01-27-2013, 01:24 PM   #6
ErhnamDJ
 
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Default Re: Carrying vs Lifting

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Originally Posted by Blood Legend View Post
We're forgetting about FP in here. You can't just pile on Heavy Encumberance and not lose some energy walking around with it.
Not always, though. It could be a robot or undead that doesn't even have FP.

What I'm talking about is someone (or something) that uses different ratios for lifting and carrying than what the default rules give you. They might have the encumbrance of someone who is ST 15, but only lift as someone who is ST 11. Or vice versa.
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Old 01-27-2013, 01:35 PM   #7
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Default Re: Carrying vs Lifting

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Originally Posted by Dinadon View Post
There is also the Payload advantage, which is the advantage for increased carrying capacity. So really I don't see a need for something new. Just take Lifting Strength with a limitation for Not The Arms.
Payload doesn't work for normal humans either, since the stuff you carry with Payload doesn't count against encumbrance at all, which isn't what I'm looking for.



What I'm getting at here is that how much you can lift and how much you can carry before reaching different encumbrance levels are conceptually distinct. As such, I would like to model them with different traits.

To take this to the extreme, I might want a superhero that can lift extraordinary weights, but whose encumbrance is maxed out by them. I would model that as something like Lifting ST 1000 and Carrying ST 20, or something like that.

Or I might want a superhero who can carry an incredible amount, but who can't lift very much. He might be able to only lift a few hundred pounds, but if he stacks enough weight on himself, then he can carry a million pounds.

That would make sense for a robot. Lifting machines that can only pick up three hundred pounds at once, but a frame and body that can support hundreds of thousands of pounds. That can't be done with Payload, either, since I still want the robot to experience encumbrance.

It even says that under the description of Payload:

"Machines that can push or pull large external loads – or pick them up and carry them with arms, cranes, etc. – have Lifting ST (p. 65), not Payload. Ordinary cars and trucks have Payload, but forklifts, tugboats, and the like should buy Lifting ST to represent their abilities."

And you can't use the Weak modifier on arms for this either, since I'm not trying to reduce Striking ST, and also because I'm trying to get these to apply to the whole body, not only the arms.
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Old 01-27-2013, 02:45 PM   #8
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Default Re: Carrying vs Lifting

In general, carrying vs lifting is arm ST vs lower body ST. I would allow the 'no fine manipulators' limitation on ST to apply to any ST that can't be used for manipulation, even if the character has manipulators (possibly rename it 'lower body', and keep the same -40%).
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Old 01-27-2013, 02:57 PM   #9
Polydamas
 
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Default Re: Carrying vs Lifting

Quote:
Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ View Post
Not so. A horse can't lift very much, but he can carry a lot. It's certainly possible to imagine a real person whose carrying capacity does not relate to their lifting ability in the way the rules say they can. I'm trying to decouple those.
What do you mean? I think a horse could lift at least as much as it can carry if it knelt and had the load placed on its back; a camel or elephant certainly can. Equids just have No Fine Manipulators. So i don't understand the situation you are trying to address.

The robot sounds like a mix of different ST and Arm ST plus the Feature that one's body cannot move up and down.
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Old 01-27-2013, 02:57 PM   #10
ErhnamDJ
 
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Default Re: Carrying vs Lifting

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
In general, carrying vs lifting is arm ST vs lower body ST.
Even if Arm ST covered all cases of wanting to raise lifting ability, there's still no way to raise only carrying capacity without raising lifting ability. Payload is as close as it gets (though it ignores encumbrance), and Payload explicitly doesn't do what I'm looking for.

And things get even more screwy when you want to lower one and raise the other. If I wanted to Lift as though I had ST 15, but carry as though I had ST 7, how would I do that? Buy down my ST to 7, then purchase HP back up to 10, and purchase Arm ST 8? That's a lot more trouble than splitting Lifting ST into a carrying trait and a lifting trait, since Arm ST still doesn't exactly do what I want. And what if I want to strike with my arms as though I had ST 7 there too? Arm ST adds to lifting ability and striking damage.

And then what if I want to carry as though I had ST 15, but lift like ST 11? How do I do that? Payload doesn't do it. I can't sell down Arm ST.


Arm ST doesn't even do it, anyway. A person with no arms can still lift things. Imagine an armless man lifting a heavy iron gate resting behind his neck on his shoulders. Or with his feet. Or his knee. Or something else, if he's not human.

I'm pretty sure the only way to handle this is to split Lifting ST into two separate traits: one for lifting and one for carrying. What would each be worth in terms of points? How much do I sell those for? Together they each equal three points, since they're the same thing together as a single level of Lifting ST, so how are those three points divided between them? Is one worth more than the other, or are they both worth the same amount of points?
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