Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 09-12-2021, 07:58 AM   #21
Anaraxes
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Default Re: Benchmark tables for BL, Damage, Damage Resistance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
Celsius, on the other hand, uses the freezing and boiling points of water as its 0-100 range. The freezing point is useful, but I have no personal use for knowing the boiling point.

So the Celsius scale is not really obviously more useful in daily life.
None of the popular temperature scales were meant to be useful in daily life. Both Farenheit and Celsius were doing their thing in the 18th century. Coming up with a scale was all well and good, but if it were going to be any use for sharing measurements with someone else, that someone else had to be able to build a thermometer that acted the same way yours did, so they'd get the same measurements. That, in turn, suggested that the thermometer should be built from something that was readily available, easily purifiable, and so on. Calibrating the thermometer similarly relied on being able to test an instance against something of known temperature that was also easily reproducible, constant, and readily available.

Farenheit based his scale using a thermometer that had been designed at the beginning of the century (1701) by a Danish astronomer and instrument maker named Roemer.

Roemer's thermometer used alcohol as the working fluid, and when Roemer measured stuff, he picked the point where saturated salt water froze as zero. (Water and salt, easily enough to come by, and you know you're done when the salt stops dissolving and sits on the bottom of your vessel.) He thought 60 made a nice label for the point at which water boiled (another easy thing to do with common materials) because 60 is easily divisible into integers. (Same reason Babylonian astronomers used base 60 math, and Roemer was primarily an astronomer. Also the reason our units of time are multiples of 60.) So, with the freezing and boiling points of water as his endpoints, Roemer measured his alcohol column and found that ice melted at 7.5 and human body temperature was 22.5.

Farenheit was dissatisfied with those fractions in the short range of values as well as the imprecision of the device. He kept the alcohol, make a more accurate thermometer with it, and decided that his degrees would be 1/4 the size of Roemers, so (salt) water would freeze at zero, ice melted at 30, and the human body was 90 degrees, with boiling water coming in at 240. Later more careful measurements resulted in the scale being tweaked a couple of times, which is why we say water freezes at 32 rather than 30, and human body temperature is 98.6 rather than 90. The origins of the numbers have been obscured by more modern accuracy and precision, but it was a scale from water freezing to water boiling.

Twenty or so years later, Celsius came along and decided he needed to tidy up Farenheit's numbers. As the basis for his scale, he picked -- you guessed it -- the freezing and boiling points of water, as they were common and easy to experiment with. Celsius used pure water, though (or as pure as he could get it by distilling), which is why his freezing point is different from Farenheit's. (The freezing point of of a saturated sodium chloride brine is about -21 C.) And as long as he was tidying up things his way, he chose to make the top end of his scale exactly 100 degrees, liking 10s more than Roemer's 60s.

So as you can see, both scales are really the same in terms of how they apply to useful life, as well as the same in their scientific foundation, both based on freezing and boiling points of water, produced and measured with 18th century tech. The differences come from the definition of "water", since mixing stuff into it changes its freezing point, and the arbitrary choice of numbers for those two points, based only on how big you want your numbers to be and how small (and thus precise) you want a single degree to be.

(There's a story that Farenheit wanted 100 to be human body temperature, but I don't think that's true, as his original value was 90. He just wasn't quite as obsessed with base 10 as others, so 100 wasn't as vital of an endpoint, but wasn't as tolerant of fractions, so he wanted more, smaller degrees filling up his range so he could use integers -- which, given the limited precision of the times, wasn't a bad goal. Higher precision without fractions could be thought of as one of those "useful in daily life" considerations.)
Anaraxes is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2021, 08:06 AM   #22
Stormcrow
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
Default Re: Benchmark tables for BL, Damage, Damage Resistance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
None of the popular temperature scales were meant to be useful in daily life.
*shrug* I wasn't commenting on what they were MEANT to be, only on how useful I PERCEIVE them to be. For science, Celsius is better for its compatibility with metric units. For a quick intuition of how comfortable the weather or a room is, Fahrenheit is better for its wider range and 0-100 scale.
Stormcrow is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2021, 08:14 AM   #23
RyanW
 
RyanW's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
Default Re: Benchmark tables for BL, Damage, Damage Resistance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
Celsius, on the other hand, uses the freezing and boiling points of water as its 0-100 range. The freezing point is useful, but I have no personal use for knowing the boiling point.
You have even less use for it if you don't live at sea level. Water boils at 94C in Denver, and at -60C in hard vacuum, for example. So Celsius is based on the physical properties of water under one very unique set of circumstances.

Or, like most SI units, based on physical constants but scaled to come up with the numbers that were more or less arbitrarily established hundreds of years ago. The base ten unit scale and the interplay between some units (like a liter being exactly 1/1000 of a cubic meter) are very practical, but don't believe anyone telling you that SI base units are any less arbitrary than Imperial/US Customary.
__________________
RyanW
- Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats.
RyanW is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2021, 08:33 AM   #24
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Benchmark tables for BL, Damage, Damage Resistance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by RyanW View Post
Or, like most SI units, based on physical constants but scaled to come up with the numbers that were more or less arbitrarily established hundreds of years ago. The base ten unit scale and the interplay between some units (like a liter being exactly 1/1000 of a cubic meter) are very practical, but don't believe anyone telling you that SI base units are any less arbitrary than Imperial/US Customary.
No. The thing that's useful about mksA is that it's all powers of ten. No twelve inches to the foot, three feet to the yard, 1760 yards to the mile, or 20 pennyweight to the ounce, 16 ounces to the pound, 14 pounds to the stone, eight stone to the hundredweight, 20 hundredweight to the ton to memorize. Let alone the weird specialized units like ells and furlongs and fathoms and horsepower.
__________________
Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2021, 09:36 AM   #25
SilvercatMoonpaw
 
SilvercatMoonpaw's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2017
Default Re: Benchmark tables for BL, Damage, Damage Resistance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
No. The thing that's useful about mksA is that it's all powers of ten. No twelve inches to the foot, three feet to the yard, 1760 yards to the mile, or 20 pennyweight to the ounce, 16 ounces to the pound, 14 pounds to the stone, eight stone to the hundredweight, 20 hundredweight to the ton to memorize. Let alone the weird specialized units like ells and furlongs and fathoms and horsepower.
I know! I've sometimes considered creating a fictional measurement system that start with the "common" Imperial units (pounds, feet, gallons [US as I know them], etc.) and then tacking on the metric prefixes to have "kilopounds" and "centifeet".
__________________
Pronoun: "They/She"
SilvercatMoonpaw is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2021, 09:52 AM   #26
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Benchmark tables for BL, Damage, Damage Resistance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw View Post
I know! I've sometimes considered creating a fictional measurement system that start with the "common" Imperial units (pounds, feet, gallons [US as I know them], etc.) and then tacking on the metric prefixes to have "kilopounds" and "centifeet".
SJGames already does that to some extent. Weights are given in lbs with attached decimals when necessary.
__________________
Fred Brackin
Fred Brackin is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2021, 10:08 AM   #27
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default Re: Benchmark tables for BL, Damage, Damage Resistance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
SJGames already does that to some extent. Weights are given in lbs with attached decimals when necessary.
And tons are 2,000lb short tons, which are nearly as easy as kilopounds.
johndallman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2021, 10:47 AM   #28
Rupert
 
Rupert's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
Default Re: Benchmark tables for BL, Damage, Damage Resistance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
And tons are 2,000lb short tons, which are nearly as easy as kilopounds.
I prefer long tons (2,240 pounds), for two reasons. Firstly, they're the common measure of ship displacement (except in the US, and even there quite a few sources use long tons), and secondly because they are very close (~1.6% off) to the metric tonne (1,000 kg, and thus ~2,205 pounds).
__________________
Rupert Boleyn

"A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history."
Rupert is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-13-2021, 05:55 AM   #29
Pursuivant
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Default Re: Benchmark tables for BL, Damage, Damage Resistance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw View Post
Does anyone have some kind of simplified document that lists what BL, Damage, Damage Resistance -- and maybe various kinds of Movement speeds/distances -- mean in terms of something that can be encountered in the real world?
I'll take a stab at it.

Lifting ST

Someone with ST 11 can lift about 25% more than someone with ST 10. Someone with ST 12 can lift about 70% more. Someone with ST 14 can lift about 100% more. Someone with ST 9 can lift about 20% less, & someone with ST 8 can only lift about 65% as much.

Basic Lift
If you can quickly and easily heft a typical 1 gallon/4 liter jug of milk (~16 lb./7.25 kg.) from a tabletop to above your head in about a second you have at least ST 9.

If you can do the same with a sturdy bag holding 5 full 2-liter bottles of soda (4.4 lb./2 kg each =~22 lb./10 kg) you have at least ST 10-11.

If you can do the same with two gallon/8 liter jugs (~32 lb./14.5 kg) held in the same hand you have at least 13 ST.

Move

Move 1 = 1 yards/sec. = 2 mph = ~3.33 kph. A slow walking pace. You're way at the back of the pack in the 2 mile run, taking 1 hour to finish.

Move 3 = ~6 mph or 10 kph. A brisk walking pace or a typical jogging pace. You're in the middle of the pack finishing a 2 mile run in about 20 minutes.

Move 5 = ~10 mph or 17 kph. A moderately fast running pace. You complete a 2 mile run in about 12 minutes.

Move 10 = ~20 mph or 25 kph. A very fast sprint. If you can keep it up you break the world record, taking just 3 minutes to run the mile and blowing away the current record by almost a minute.

If you can hike at about 2.5 miles/hr while carrying about 20 lbs. without significant fatigue you have ST 10 and Move 5.

Damage

Keep in mind that there are no nice, neat physical formulas for GURPS damage from anything other than firearms or similar projectile weapons (e.g., bows). The physics for these sorts of impacts gets complex really fast, to the point that you need a computer program and specialist knowledge to do good modeling. Instead, damage is based on basic physics, forensic evidence, empirical weapons testing, reports by martial artists, and what "seems realistic" based on ~30 years of gaming experience.

A typical ST 10 person (1d-2 thrust damage, 1d swing damage) will, on average, knock out an equivalent ST 10 unarmored person with: 20 punches, 2-3 rapier or javelin thrusts, 2-3 swings of a baseball bat, 1-2 broadsword swings.

A ST 14 bodybuilder will do about twice as much damage as a ST 10 person to an unarmored target, or will be able to do about as much damage to a target armored with cloth, leather, or light mail armor as a ST 10 person could do to an unarmored target.

A ST 20 polar bear (2d-1 thrust) could lay out a ST 10 man with jut 1-2 swipes of its paws.

Armor
In theory DR 70 = 1"/2.54 cm of Rolled Homogenous Armor (RHA) plate. In practice, this gets weird because Cover DR that an object provides is different from DR which protects the object itself.

That said, take a look at the various "Body of" Metatraits (p. B262) and animal DR (p. B455) to get a sense of typical DR values:

DR 1 = A motorcycle jacket, thick fur, padded cloth armor, a thick wool overcoat. Hardwood.

DR 2 = Sole leather, very thick fur or densely padded cloth armor, very light mail over thin padding. Dense hardwood. Packed earth or clay.

DR 3 = Very thick hardened leather, typical mail over padding, 20- 22-gauge hardened steel. Unlikely to be harmed by typical punches.

DR 4 = Heavier mail over thick padding, 18-gauge hardened steel.

DR 5 = ~16-gauge hardened steel. Stone. Unlikely to be (seriously) harmed by typical swung weapon attacks.

DR 6-7 = ~14-gauge hardened steel.

DR 7-8 = ~12-gauge hardened steel. Might stop pistol shots.

DR 9-11 = ~10-gauge hardened steel. All but the strongest melee attacks bounce. Stops weak pistol shots.

DR 15 = Stops high-caliber pistol and SMG shots.

DR 30 = Has a decent chance to stopping rifle bullets.

DR 60 = Stops all but heavy machine gun bullets.

Last edited by Pursuivant; 09-13-2021 at 05:59 AM.
Pursuivant is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-13-2021, 07:11 AM   #30
SilvercatMoonpaw
 
SilvercatMoonpaw's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2017
Default Re: Benchmark tables for BL, Damage, Damage Resistance?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pursuivant View Post
I'll take a stab at it.
Thanks, that's what I needed.
__________________
Pronoun: "They/She"
SilvercatMoonpaw is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
imperial units, metric

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 01:31 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.