Norse Giant can't use his three yards long sword

[JoelSammallahti]

Originally Posted by Huyderman

Armour is simple to scale. Simply cube the modifier to "human-scale" for weight. E.g. half human size is 0.5*0.5*0.5=0.125 the weight. This gives an armour with equal thickness and DR. Multiply again with multiplier for thicker or thinner armour. E.g. 0.5 for half as thick armour with half as much DR.

No, if you cube the scale for weight, you end up with scaled thickness. If you want to retain thickness (and DR) you square the scale.

[Huyderman]

Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti

No, if you cube the scale for weight, you end up with scaled thickness. If you want to retain thickness (and DR) you square the scale.

I know, it's a typo. Wrote from memory rather than my notes... Shame on me.

[jindra34]

Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti

No, if you cube the scale for weight, you end up with scaled thickness. If you want to retain thickness (and DR) you square the scale.

Yeah but i would perfer the DR to scale with size, because come on 7 DR for a gaint is going to be pidly

[Huyderman]

Originally Posted by jindra34

Yeah but i would perfer the DR to scale with size, because come on 7 DR for a gaint is going to be pidly

I would agree. Realistically speaking, it would be reasonable to scale thickness and thus DR also.
However, there are two problems with this. Scaling thickness as well will make the weight of the armor become prohibitavly high for giants. A giant twice the height of a human wearing a giant-scale armor, with giant scale thickness, would need 2.8 times the strength a human would need to carry a human scale armour, while on average only having roughly twice the strength.
The other problem is playability. DR 7 can be pain enough in a TL3 fantasy campaign. DR 14 could be a nightmare.
Personally I assume in my fantasy campaign which are relativily human-centric, that non-humans use human-scale thickness armor. All the major races are human sized +/- 1 SM, so most warfare has developed around that basis. Smaller races has no advantage scaling thickness down, while larger races don't scale their thickness up because the benefit is relativily small compared to the extra weight.

[PK]

Originally Posted by Huyderman

I would agree. Realistically speaking, it would be reasonable to scale thickness and thus DR also.
However, there are two problems with this. Scaling thickness as well will make the weight of the armor become prohibitavly high for giants. A giant twice the height of a human wearing a giant-scale armor, with giant scale thickness, would need 2.8 times the strength a human would need to carry a human scale armour, while on average only having roughly twice the strength.

But twice the ST means 4x the encumbrance, so that should still be fine. Just a point.

The other problem is playability. DR 7 can be pain enough in a TL3 fantasy campaign. DR 14 could be a nightmare.

This I agree with 100%. It's fairly important to keep from unbalancing the game -- in most TL3 games, a giant (who already has 20+ hit points probably) with DR 14 is going to be literally untouchable. A mounted knight could harm him with a lance, or a highly enchanted weapon in the hands of a very strong man could hurt him, but that's about it. That's not necessarily the best situation -- see GURPS Dragons for more on this.

[demonsbane]

Sorry for the tardiness in answering!

Bruno, Mehmet, Silverblade: thanks for your answers, mostly I agree with your points.

Originally Posted by Silverblade

GURPS is usually reluctant to state a definite rule for things that vary a lot with the GMs scenario. There's no single "giant" in fiction or myth. (...) So, there's no real archetypical giant that can be statted across all genres they might appear in, and GURPS then rather suggests than states "This is a giant, always".

Of course I agree with you, but I want to point while GURPS as system handles loosely and differently the issues of giants due its great variability, GURPS Vikings does state a specific giant (30 foot height, SM 4, 4 Hexes, Reach 3, etc), and his 3 yards sword is lacking ;) Same in GURPS Camelot, Giants are stated as Race, but their weapons and armor are lacking. The point is more evident in Vikings since his weapon is specifically mentioned.

Nevertheless, you are right GURPS doesn't limit the giants issue to the examples presented in these sourcebooks (including GURPS Greece, as far I know).

Regarding "Giants seeming to be out of place in GURPS" regardless my feelings this isn't so true if we take in account the rules of the Basic Set regarding Size Modifier, reach, and the sourcebooks already mentioned, and you point it well:

Originally Posted by Bruno

No, they just aren't exhaustively covered in the basic set. In the course of any campaign, you'll have to either make up some equipment, or turn to a supplementary book/internet source/another player in your group. (...)

Yes, you are right. In fact, in the little box (Basic 402) The Wrathchild mentioned (thanks), there is an example of a giant with SM +3.

Originally Posted by Mehmet

• No system, no matter how generic or universal, can provide for every possible issue a GM and his players may come up with within any reasonable number of pages,
• What is important in gaming really changes from person to person (I myself couldn't care less about the different size weapons, you find the issue important) and they have to have a limit to what they will include in an again limited number of pages.

So they have to leave some of the work to us.

Of course. Perhaps you aren't interested in running fantasy games involving giant sized creatures :-) Anyway, I mostly agree with you.
The problem -perhaps very subjective- I have with some of the work they leave to us is: GURPS is very detailed and realistic (specially in combat, strenghts, velocity, weights, damage...), and so I -not having great mathematical nor physics/engineering knowledge- feel myself a bit uncomfortable houseruling things involving these factors at my own whim, I feel myself like entering in contradiction with the well planned and designed rules system. On the other hand, game systems with looser and abstract rules (perhaps HERO System? I'm not sure not knowing that ruleset) make easier to houserule using only intuition, but obviously the result aren't the same.

I'm a bit impressed by the amount of squares and cubic calculations for scaling weapons/armors, min ST/max ST, deducting the weight of the giant's sword... showed in this thread by several of you.
Perhaps I need a crash course!

Originally Posted by Kirby

But surely there's sun on the horizon: With the offered possibilities of realistic vs. unrealistic swords and realistic vs. unrealistic giants, there's got to be some combination to give your PCs the appropriate degree of reverence and fear for your creations, yes?

Of course, Kirby. I verified too, as you said, there are a easy rules for scaling weapons (but not armors :-/ ) in GURPS Mecha:

"One system I'm quite pleased with allows scaling up any ancient melee weapon into mecha-sized versions. It should be useful for fantasy games as well, to give giants their own huge swords or axes." (David Pulver in GURPS Mecha Extras, http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=281 . Bold letters are mine.)

So, thank you for the reference.

It happens I am interested in the issue of giants, what a quirk mine.

About scaling DR with large sizes, I agree too with Huyderman and Rev. Pee Kitty a great DR isn't a good choice for a +-TL3 fantasy campaign. BTW, the Norse giant in GURPS Vikings is stated with DR 6, but they doesn't tell us what of that amount is due to natural DR or equipped armour.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Although I'm on-side with you that if the basic set was going to include things like size modifier and the little teaser in the first chapter about equipping characters with Dwarfism and gigantism, it would have been REALLY NICE to include even a one or two paragraph box on "Here's some quick and dirty rules for scaling equipment for different SM characters (...)

I did found this quoted in the "DnD 3e Hill Giant conversion to GURPS 4e" thread, about scaling armor and weapons. Perhaps that is the answer, too. The size of the text didn't seem to be the main reason for the exclusion, but the complexity (although the rules in G: Mecha for scaling medieval weapons fill only a small paragraph):

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.

Well, there are a lot of answers and options here in this thread. Thanks!

I need to say this is a great community. I will think what to do with my GIANTS!

Edit: As curiosity, GURPS Dragons (including those of Banestorm) natural weapons (Fangs) aren't scaled, neither. Damage is Thrust-1 Imp, regardless the Size Modifier. The same with the Claws and Striker advantages.

[Lord Fitz]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Maybe the giant was using a zweihander?

I just had a fabulous vision, of a Norse giant in Landsknecht clothing. Though were they would find ostrich feathers that size...

On a serious note, I think that somewhere a GURPS writer thought that the damage of a ST 50 giant was great enough that the weapon didn't really matter. If greater accuracy is desired I would add my voice to recommending Rev. P's page several of my players have used those calculations to good effect.

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

But twice the ST means 4x the encumbrance, so that should still be fine. Just a point.

Actually, because of how ST works now, a certain DR will always be the same amount of encumbrance for properly scaled characters.

A small giant just double the height of a normal human will have double the ST score and four times the encumbrance. But DR6 plate armor will also weigh four times as much as a human-sized armor will (It scales by the square of the increase in size, in this case 2). Scaling thickness as well would make the weight scale by the CUBE of the increase, and make the plate armor prohibitively massive for even a x2 scale giant... Nevermind a x10 scale one.

All assuming giants have natural strength levels, without any supernatural strength added in.

[Maz]

Originally Posted by demonsbane

Edit: As curiosity, GURPS Dragons (including those of Banestorm) natural weapons (Fangs) aren't scaled, neither. Damage is Thrust-1 Imp, regardless the Size Modifier. The same with the Claws and Striker advantages.

Well strikers give +1 dam per die. So if you got ST:50 it gives +5, while only +1 at ST:10.

If weapons worked this way, it would be alto easier to deal with. I seem to recall a discussion where this was brought up and someone made some suggestions about it. Cant' remember them though. :\