GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

I generally assume that a professional of Race A with be proportional to the same type of professional of Race B, so if a human blacksmith has ST 12 (44% above an ST 10 average), then an ogre blacksmith will have an ST of 24 (44% above a ST 20 average). That way I don't have to think about how strong each profession is, just racial averages. So if humans are base 1, ogres would be 4, and just multiply all ST related stuff by 4 for what equivalent ogres can do.

I'm not sure how always-true this is. For instance, the felinoids of my space opera setting are really low ST, to the point were it probably makes the most sense for them to never have gotten into medieval-style iron working. With fur, claws, fast reflexes and so forth making them the apex predators of their home planet (in a rather starker way than we humans have been apex predators of our planet since the mid or late stone age), they'd probably make do with minimal bronze, silver and gold working, until they got to the point where they could smelt steel and use machines.

My mental model is that a blacksmith needs to be this strong to hammer the iron as a full-time job, at best scaled slightly for SM, but there's no need to assume that an average-ST ogre isn't plenty strong enough to work as a blacksmith full-time, so over half of ogres are eligible for the job, and the work does not noticably "challenge" their musculature to stimulate strength development.

Originally Posted by Tyneras

I agree, more ST seems to only help some of the manufacturing processes. Lumberjacking and smelting look like they might be helped by having stronger workers, while glassblowing and pottery, not so much. Those might require more exotic advantages than more ST.

What I'm most interested in is labour, especially construction labour. It has got to involve a lot of moving stones, brick or rubble around, and so if the labourers are higher ST, that ought to make a big difference.

Also stone cutting. How much does ST help there? I'm inclined to assume the shaping of the stones isn't particularly ST-intensive. Maybe all masons are minimum ST 11, but being stronger shouldn't enable them to work more than a few percent faster, because the chisel-hammering doesnt have to be - as far as I know - full force.

Oh, and farming. Harvesting in particular. How ST-intensive is that?

And how does high HT, and Fit or Very Fit, interact with laobur?