Increased Consumption: how does it work?

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

So I've built a sentient elephant template, and was discussing it with Tantric who is also building one, and the issue of nutrition came up. Elephants spend about 14 hours a day browsing for food, but I don't know that they spend every waking moment eating in those 14 hours. Presumably they also socialize, have sex, look for water, dig for water, fight lions who want to eat their babies, and so on, in addition to eating.

There's more about elephant nutrition here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=28566&page=4


I gave my elephants Increased Consumption 1, Slow Eater, and Increased Life Support (Massive) which means they need 6 meals a day and each meal takes 2 hours. This allows for the slow digestion rate of a non-ruminant herbivore, but I don't think it is enough to cover the huge amount of food elephants actually eat. The problem is that the amount you can eat is not only determined by the time spent eating, but also by the size of your mouth, hand(s), stomach, etc.

How is the Increased Consumption calculated, especially when interacting with Slow Eater? Is it based on how much time you spend eating, translated into number of meals? Or is it based on sheer mass of food, compared to how much a human needs? Both the time taken and the actual resources consumed can matter, depending on which is in short supply during an adventure.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

How is the Increased Consumption calculated, especially when interacting with Slow Eater? Is it based on how much time you spend eating, translated into number of meals? Or is it based on sheer mass of food, compared to how much a human needs? Both the time taken and the actual resources consumed can matter, depending on which is in short supply during an adventure.

The ruling that jumps to mind; the character needs six meals per day, at two hours per meal; seems unfairly restrictive. For the -20 points, you get the drawback of Increased Consumption and an even worse form of Slow Eater, where the so disadvantaged would end up with only four hours per day to actually do anything. Maybe a more fair model would be to take the wasted time from a normal Slow Eater (+4.5 hours eating per day) and divide it up between the six meals required by IC1, so that each meal would take 1.25 hours. You might want to check with Kromm to get an official opinion.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

Or is it based on sheer mass of food, compared to how much a human needs?

Neither, but this is the closest. AFAIKT, it's based on sheer mass of food/water, compared to how much a "human" of your size modifier needs. Food and water requirements scale appropriately based on SM in GURPS. This was clarified in BioTech, but Kromm has also commented on it repeatedly on the forums in regards to Dungeon Fantasy and the Pixies (opposite situation to Elephants - SM -6 and Reduced Consumption 4 - they live off of a crumb of bread and a sip of dew daily).

The baseline time to eat assumes a human-style omnivorous diet (relatively energy dense) and a mouth and throat scaled to your bulk at a ratio similar to that of a SM 0 human.

Creatures that have small mouths relative to their size (Kif, from C.J. Cherryh's books), or need to chew up tough food (termites eating wood), or can only absorb nutrients via osmosis by sitting quietly (I have no idea) would have Slow Eater.

Creatures that eat food with a low energy density, and therefore have to make up with bulk, would have Increased Consumption (Food only). Creatures with a high metabolism would have Increased Consumption (no limitations).

Creatures that only eat rare and/or expensive foods (koalas only eat one of 7 types of eucalyptus, cheetahs will only eat the best part of animals they have recently killed themselves) have Restricted Diet (probably with Substitution, like the Cheetahs do).
This can be combined with the other disadvantages - I don't think Koalas are Slow Eaters, but they could probably qualify for Increased Consumption - they avoid starvation by spending most of their day asleep to keep calorie usage down to a minimum.

But, GURPS doesn't have enough detail in the starvation rules to cover the option of doing bupkis to keep food requirements down, nor the need for active people to eat more food (American soldiers on patrol in Afghanistan are eating ~5000 calories daily, most professional athletes in active training eat 3500-4500 daily).

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

Thanks for the replies!

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

The ruling that jumps to mind; the character needs six meals per day, at two hours per meal; seems unfairly restrictive. For the -20 points, you get the drawback of Increased Consumption and an even worse form of Slow Eater, where the so disadvantaged would end up with only four hours per day to actually do anything.

But that's the whole point: they spend 14 hours a day eating. The only thing is I'm not sure if other activities are mixed into that time period. On the other thread, Tantric quoted an elephant keeper as saying they need 350-352 kg of food per day.

Originally Posted by Bruno

AFAIKT, it's based on sheer mass of food/water, compared to how much a "human" of your size modifier needs. Food and water requirements scale appropriately based on SM in GURPS.

So SM already covers the volume of food and water a species need? If that is so, I only need to account for the effects of being an herbivore.

EDIT: found the thread you mentioned: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=38535&

Originally Posted by Bruno

Creatures that have small mouths relative to their size (Kif, from C.J. Cherryh's books), or need to chew up tough food (termites eating wood), or can only absorb nutrients via osmosis by sitting quietly (I have no idea)

Traeki!

Originally Posted by Bruno

would have Slow Eater.

So it doesn't cover slow digestion? I think it was treated that way in 3E Uplift.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Creatures that eat food with a low energy density, and therefore have to make up with bulk, would have Increased Consumption (Food only). Creatures with a high metabolism would have Increased Consumption (no limitations).

So then for an herbivore I would be looking at Increased Consumption (Food Only), with no Slow Eater?

I don't entirely understand what Not Another Shrubbery suggested, but I could create a half-level of Slow Eater that makes each meal last 1 hour. Or did Not Another Shrubbery mean that the price of Slow Eater should be based on the total number of hours they lose per, not the length of each individual meal, when combined with Increased Consumption?

However, if they can do other things while they digest, then I shouldn't use Slow Eater at all?

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

I don't entirely understand what Not Another Shrubbery suggested, but I could create a half-level of Slow Eater that makes each meal last 1 hour. Or did Not Another Shrubbery mean that the price of Slow Eater should be based on the total number of hours they lose per, not the length of each individual meal, when combined with Increased Consumption?

However, if they can do other things while they digest, then I shouldn't use Slow Eater at all?

You can always houserule new levels of disadvantages by interpolation and comparison (with other traits), but I was talking specifically about the combination of Slow Eater and Increased Consumption. SE tell us that normal people spend .5 hours per meal eating, for a total of 1.5 hours per day. The disadvantage expands that time to two hours per meal, six hours per day, taking away an extra 4.5 hours from other things you might prefer to do. If you just allow SE and IC to combine multiplicatively, your character ends up losing 10.5 hours instead of 4.5 [six meals @ two hours each less the 1.5 hours for normal people]. My feeling is that that is probably not representative of the -20 point total in disadvantages you are getting, and that simply adding the wasted time a Slow Eater (w/o IC) gets onto the time someone with IC (but not SE) would spend eating, is probably a more fair representation of the combination. As I said, you should check with Kromm if you want to be sure.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

So SM already covers the volume of food and water a species need? If that is so, I only need to account for the effects of being an herbivore.

The baseline volume of food and water, yes. I don't have Biotech here, so I can't look up the table; I'll check when I get home - it's something complicated like number of meals scales with the inverse of linear size but the size of the individual meal scales with the 3/2's power of linear scale or something. Which is why there's a table so you don't have to do math.

You're more accounting for the effects of being an Elephant in the specific than the general case of herbivore, but yes :D

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

So it doesn't cover slow digestion? I think it was treated that way in 3E Uplift.

If you don't have to sit reasonably still and aren't particularly distracted by the process of digestion, I don't think it counts. If you can do typical adventurer type things - fight, run, cast spells - while your four stomachs, symbiotic life forms, and 60 yards of gut do their thing, it's not a big problem.

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

So then for an herbivore I would be looking at Increased Consumption (Food Only), with no Slow Eater?

Depends on the herbivore. I'd start with Increased Consumption (Food Only) until you get up to something in the ballpark of the ammount required by the creature. If that gets you within spitting distance of time to eat, don't worry about the details; if you need to pad out with Slow Eater after that, then go for it.

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

Or did Not Another Shrubbery mean that the price of Slow Eater should be based on the total number of hours they lose per, not the length of each individual meal, when combined with Increased Consumption?

I think this is what he meant. The disadvantage could be read either way, as it mentions both per meal and per day loss of time. I'd go with the total daily reduction (4.5 hrs) rather than the per-meal reduction, but it's in heavy "GM's call" territory here.

Originally Posted by Vaevictis Asmadi

However, if they can do other things while they digest, then I shouldn't use Slow Eater at all?

I'd say not. If they can do light work (study spellbooks, work on a tactical plan, write the Great Elephantine Novel) but not adventure, I'd call it half price as a random GM ruling (no basis in rules as written at all there).

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

Now say I want a race to spend about 6 hours a day eating. That's 6 one-hour meals, or 12 half-hour meals.

Increased Consumption 2 (Food Only) costs -10

but

Increased Consumption 1 (Food Only) -5
Slow Eater (+4.5 hrs/day) -10

totals -15, and only covers the time taken, not the volume required.