DnD 3e Hill Giant conversion to GURPS 4e

[Fleckenzwerg]

First of all, nice hill giant, Collective_Restraint.

Originally Posted by Exxar

From my experience, directly taking a monster's STR from D&D works the best. I don't think there is a point in calculating a giant's ST according to how much he can lift. The most important thing you need to know about a giant as a GM is how hard will he smash your players, and taking his STR score from D&D is enough for that. If he can lift more than in D&D, well that's a nice added bonus and maybe even more realistic, because GURPS is more realistic than D&D.

Here I have to disagree. I'm seldom happy with STR score of D&D monsters. My preferred way of converting the STR score is to totally ignore it and, since most D&D monsters come with a average weight, to calculate the GURPS Strength score from the monsters weight. In the case of the hill giant that turns out to be ST 21. A bit lower than the D&D score and what Collective_Restraint came up with, but since a rough guideline for strength in GURPS is twice the height, twice the strength, it seems ok in my eyes.

Regarding strange weapons of all shapes and sizes, try GLAIVE if you're into number crunching.

And KROMM had this to say about scaling armor and weapons once:

Originally Posted by KROMM

We'll probably cover this in a future book, but our math at the time we were writing the Basic Set 4e made it clear that there were no simple rules. The problem is that the same SM can give very different surface areas, and SM doesn't reliably have a whole lot to do with ST and arm length. Thus, we'd need a set of rules that could cover many body morphologies and builds, which would be far too complex for something called the BASIC Set.

A quick-and-dirty approach for armor might be:

1. Find height in yards from SM using the table on p. B19.

2. Assume that minimum ST for that height is 5 x height in yards, as is done for Growth on p. B58.

3. Work out the Basic Lift (BL) for this minimum ST.

4. Since ST corresponds to height, ST^2 corresponds to area. Because BL is simply a multiple of ST^2, you can scale armor -- which covers your area -- with BL. Simply multiply armor cost and weight by BL/20, where "BL" is the BL for the minimum ST above and 20 is human-average BL.

Example: An SM +1 creature is on average 9' tall; that is, three yards tall. Minimum ST for that height is 5 x 3 = 15. BL for ST 15 is 45, so armor cost and weight scale by a factor of 45/20 = 2.25. A $500, 18-lb. breastplate becomes $1,125 and 40.5 lbs.

Weapons are more troublesome, because they don't all scale the same way and because materials limit useful dimensions. Still, if you naively assume that a weapon has to scale with its user in all dimensions -- so that it can deliver his full striking force -- then a really dirty way to treat weapons is to scale with (minimum ST)^3/1,000, since ST scales with height and normal human ST^3 = 1,000.

Example: Our 9' creature has minimum ST 15, so his weapons scale by a factor of 15^3/1,000 = 3.375. A $500, 3-lb. broadsword becomes $1,690 and 10.2 lbs.

The ST stat of weapons should just scale with the minimum user ST. For instance, a normal broadsword needs ST 10, so a big one like this needs ST 15. It also requires SM +1 or it's going to be too overbalanced to use. That's not a ST issue but an issue of hand size. A ST 15 man would need to use two hands! Remember that the maximum effective ST to use a weapon is three times its ST stat, so our example sword maxes out at ST 45 instead of ST 30.

Damage is hard to judge; most of the extra damage comes from the user being really strong. And of course with a higher ST stat, the maximum effective ST can be a lot higher, too. Still, some damage comes from weapon weight. I'd cop out and just add (scale factor - 1) to damage. So that broadsword would get 3.375 - 1 = 2.375, or +2, damage. That's swing+3 cut/thrust+3 cr.

[Exxar]

Originally Posted by Fleckenzwerg

but since a rough guideline for strength in GURPS is twice the height, twice the strength, it seems ok in my eyes.

That's the best approach IMO. I just like a bit beefier monsters, so giving an average giant a base ST 12-15 (before multiplication for size) seems nice :)

[Fleckenzwerg]

You're right of course. If the campain world calls for muscular giants (and which fantasy campain doesn't?) hill giants with a strength score of up to, say, 30 are perfectly reasonable. :)

[Collective_Restraint]

Originally Posted by Temrek

The ST is the square root of 1066.663. The Hillgiants ST 32.66. Round however you want.

Originally Posted by Anthony

That's probably not how I'd convert ST. A Str 10 character can carry 100 lb as heavy, so we can probably just set ST to sqrt(heavy load), which for a ST 25 Large (x2 lift) creature is 1600 lb, corresponding to a load ST of 40.

Originally Posted by Exxar

From my experience, directly taking a monster's STR from D&D works the best. I don't think there is a point in calculating a giant's ST according to how much he can lift. The most important thing you need to know about a giant as a GM is how hard will he smash your players, and taking his STR score from D&D is enough for that. If he can lift more than in D&D, well that's a nice added bonus and maybe even more realistic, because GURPS is more realistic than D&D.

Originally Posted by Fleckenzwerg

Here I have to disagree. I'm seldom happy with STR score of D&D monsters. My preferred way of converting the STR score is to totally ignore it and, since most D&D monsters come with a average weight, to calculate the GURPS Strength score from the monsters weight. In the case of the hill giant that turns out to be ST 21. A bit lower than the D&D score and what Collective_Restraint came up with, but since a rough guideline for strength in GURPS is twice the height, twice the strength, it seems ok in my eyes.

Now this is making my job of selecting the right strenght very difficult :) . So right now I have been suggested a range of ST between 21 up to 40. I was thinking into reverting back the ST of the Giant to 25 but buy him a few levels of lifting ST. I don't want to overkill my players in my games since the campaign is a little bit low-powered. Also, I think giving the Hill Giant illeteracy indeed makes sense. I'm not in front of my books so could anyone tell me how much illeteracy gives ? I think it gives [-3] but I'm not certain. As for Glaive, could anyone do the number crunching for me for the Huge Greatclub and help me out here ? Thank you all guys for all your feedback. Finally, is it okay if I post more conversions like these in new threads ?

[Atreyu_Hibiki]

Originally Posted by Collective_Restraint

Finally, is it okay if I post more conversions like these in new threads ?

Probably best to continue posting them in this thread, or in one of the umpteen-million "D&D Monster Conversion" threads you'll find in the archives. Just run a quick search on "D&D" and "Monster" and you'll find at least 12 threads that exist for the express purpose of collecting monster conversions...

I hope that helps.