[freeroleplay] How big is my monster?
- From: Samuel Penn <sam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: freeroleplay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 14:25:34 +0100
After starting to think about vehicle rules, I decided that I needed
to overhaul Yags' size attribute. 'Size' is a guide to how big a
creature is, and also determines how many body levels it has.
An adult human has a size of 5 (and hence has 5 body levels for
purposes of taking damage). Minimum possible size is zero (which
works, since all creatures have an 'Okay' body level, and a
'fatally wounded and dying' body level in addition to any from
'size'.
Now, the question is, how big should other things be? How quickly
should ability to absorb damage go up with size? Things are complicated
because we also have a 'soak' attribute, which reduces damage, which
should also possibly go up, but not by a huge amount. I think it's
possible to just think about 'size' by itself.
How much bigger is a horse than a human? How much tougher should
it be? 'Not at all' is a possible answer for the 2nd question I guess,
but that would really break the way Yags works at present :-)
My current very rough guide is:
4 - 6 (Medium) 130cm - 210cm tall/long
7 - 10 (Large) Up to 5m tall/long
11 - 15 (Huge) Up to 10m tall/long
16 - 21 (Enormous) Up to 16m tall/long
22 - 28 (Gigantic) Up to 23m tall/long
29 - 36 (Colossal) Up to 31m tall/long
37+ (Titanic) Anything bigger.
Blue whales and Cthulhu would be in the Colossal bracket. I'm thinking
that this needs to be extended out over a bigger range.
If I'm going to extend it to cover vehicles (cars, lorries, ocean
liners, star destroyers) I'd like something a bit more definite
rather than some vague guidelines.
I've been toying with equating it to volume, with a possible function
of 10 x sqrt(volume). This puts humans at 5 (0.25m^3, I estimate) and
blue whales at 100 (100m^3, estimated).
So... any thoughts? Does a blue whale deserve to have Size 100 (and
therefore 100 body levels)? Should it be larger? Smaller?
--
Be seeing you, -------------------------------
Sam. http://www.bifrost.demon.co.uk/
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