Carrying vs Lifting

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

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 certainly can. Equids just have No Fine Manipulators. So i don't understand the situation you are trying to address.

Can they? That's fine. Let's try some different examples, then.

Let's say an elephant can carry five tons once it has the weight on its back, but its legs can't push that much weight up to a standing position. How do I model that?

Or let's say I have a person that I want to lift as though they have ST 8 and to measure their carrying and encumbrance as though they have ST 11. How do I model that?

Or a cartoon animal that lifts as though it has ST 6, but can carry a battleship on its back if it lands on it. How do I model that? Imagine Bugs Bunny pushing a battleship that has landed on him, or something like that. I think I should be able to model such a character, but the rules give me no such ability.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

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.

Did you read the second sentence of what I wrote? I agree there isn't a convenient way that's explicitly listed in the rules, but it's clearly ST (carrying only), and the -40% from No Fine Manipulators fits nicely.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Did you read the second sentence of what I wrote?

I did.

I agree there isn't a convenient way that's explicitly listed in the rules, but it's clearly ST (carrying only), and the -40% from No Fine Manipulators fits nicely.

The thing is, though, that I'm trying to atomize all the attributes. So I would prefer not to handle this as a limitation on an existing trait rather than splitting the trait into the parts that do what I want.

There's a difference between Lifting ST 100 (Carrying only, -40%; Size, -80%) [60] and Carrying ST 100 [Size, -80%] [40]. Or however you might want to do it with different limitations.

It would also be easier for me to work with if it was two separate traits, since I already have all the other attributes split up that way.

What I mean is, I have Per written down as:

Per
Vision - 1/level
Hearing - 1/level
Smell/Taste - 1/level
Awareness - 1/level
Touch/Other - 1/level



That way you can easily separate out your different sense on the sheet. So it's no problem for me to break down ST into:

ST
Striking ST - 5/level
Carrying ST - 2/level
Lifting ST - 1/level
HP - 2/level


I should probably break those down by limb now that I think about it, but the result's not going to look very much different from that. There's no reason that how encumbered a character (which could be anything!) is by different weights should be related to how much weight they can lift. Those two ideas are conceptually distinct.

I can certainly see why they're bundled together, though. It's incredibly precise when compared to IQ.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

ST
Striking ST - 5/level
Carrying ST - 2/level
Lifting ST - 1/level
HP - 2/level

Lifting ST is also grappling ST, and makes more sense, still, as the controlling attribute for grappling than carrying. I also believe I wrote Lifting ST as the controlling attribute to drawing a bow in The Deadly Spring, though I'm aware of the canonical attribution of Striking ST = stuff that impacts ST-based damage.

You may still want Lifting ST = 1/level and Carrying = 2/level. But if you use The Deadly Spring, which doesn't use the Damage Table on p. B16 to figure bow damage, you might want to have Lifting = 2, Carrying = 2, HP = 2, Striking = 4.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Lifting ST is also grappling ST, and makes more sense, still, as the controlling attribute for grappling than carrying.

You may still want Lifting ST = 1/level and Carrying = 2/level. But if you use The Deadly Spring, which doesn't use the Damage Table on p. B16 to figure bow damage, you might want to have Lifting = 2, Carrying = 2, HP = 2, Striking = 4.

I hadn't considered grappling. That should be its own separate thing too.

Here's what I figure I'll do if I'm using all my house rules:

Grappling 1/level
Carrying 2/level
Lifting 1/level
Striking (With vastly reduced muscle-powered damage, and also working for bows) 4/level
HP 2/level

That raises the total of Lifting ST to 4/level instead of 3/level, and puts it at the same price as Striking ST, though I think the two are both worth about the same. People always buy up Lifting ST at 3/level and never buy up Striking ST. I figure raising one a point and lowering the other a point might even them out. I've been trying to get them to buy some of the stuff they never touch by adjusting the prices a little.

I'd be shocked if I didn't see players trying to max out Carrying, since that's what they're buying Lifting ST for in the first place. I'll probably only allow it to differ from the rest by at most two levels. Probably only a single level. What they're really buying with Lifting ST is "Wears More Armor," though that is taken care of for the most part with much lower ST-based weapon damage and with surface area adjusted armor weights (and with shields-as-armor rules too, which give me a headache to think about).

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I'd be shocked if I didn't see players trying to max out Carrying, since that's what they're buying Lifting ST for in the first place. I'll probably only allow it to differ from the rest by at most two levels. Probably only a single level. What they're really buying with Lifting ST is "Wears More Armor,"

Try having a few heavy beams and other large objects fall on some of the PCs' legs, or present a few heavy vertically opened sliding (trap) doors that can't be smashed but need to be lifted up to open.

That'll teach them Lifting ST and the actual ability to lift things is important... ;-)

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

Try having a few heavy beams and other large objects fall on some of the PCs' legs, or present a few heavy vertically opened sliding (trap) doors that can't be smashed but need to be lifted up to open.

That'll teach them Lifting ST and the actual ability to lift things is important... ;-)

Oh, they're going to have their horses fall on them. That'll teach them that Riding-11 isn't enough for going into combat with the cheapest horse they had in the eighty person village.