User talk:IGTN/Feral Libram/Size Matters

On Square-Cube Law Stuff

Hey, wb IGTN! I'm out of town and will give this a more thorough ponder and response in a few days. Couple of quick things though. I'm not super attached to my setup though, and if this works better there's not a good reason to try to make them interchangeable. I appreciate the thought though.

Second, most of what's here looks written from a relative pov, but this part doesn't appear to be: "Small creatures fill smaller portions of their spaces than big creatures do, which is intentional because small creatures are much more nimble and able to maneuver within their space than big creatures are, even with similar dexterity." What are the implications of this when two small creatures face off against each other? What about when a small creature faces off against a much smaller creature? It seems odd to have this one absolute setup in an otherwise relative one, and a blind application of your phrasing suggests that their space sizes change in response to their foes. Nimbleness doesn't really have anything to do with size, it seems more a tag that gets applied to a creature in addition to whatever their other qualities are that differentiates them from other creatures of the same size.

I haven't really thought this through, but creature space sizing could be a function of size and base speed, using whichever would result in a larger space. And the 5' step could be replaced with a quarter move action, giving faster creatures a larger adjustment and slower creatures a smaller one. Then small things get big spaces still if they actually are mobile / nimble and small spaces if they're not and big creatures get the same, essentially divorcing the idea of nimbleness from size. I'm not sure if I like Barbs taking up more squares because they have fast movement or not yet, or that creatures could have different space sizes for different movement modes, or that spells that affect base move might get complicated, but I'm willing to put it down here so I don't forget it before I get back.

Alternately, sufficient size differentials could apply haste or slow or other effects to various members, but that seems like it would run into issues any time there was an assortment of sizes in play. Again, haven't thought it through all that much, I just don't want to lose it before I get home. - Tarkisflux 17:56, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

The nimbleness thing is more the way the ground and the square/cube law work out. Admittedly, that's bringing real-world physics in (and the square/cube law says that giants shouldn't exist, but we're conveniently ignoring that part), but I think what it offers is worth it, since it gives us the chance to have big things do terrain damage when they start dodging like little things.

Basically, I'm approaching this from the perspective that being 60' tall isn't like being 6' tall isn't like being 6" tall. At 6" tall, you can afford to throw your weight around, and not risk breaking everything or hurting yourself too much. At 60' tall, you have to be a lot more careful.

Reconfiguring the entire thing so that speed can give you a larger square size and adjustment length could work and making medium creatures occupy space with their speed works. 1/4 move for space size and adjustment length; immobile medium creatures are 30" (2-1/2') and scale from there. Colossal gets to 40' unless it has a movement speed greater than 160'. The only problem is adding in speeds that aren't particularly maneuverable (Fly speeds less than Good or maybe even less than Perfect, for instance), but that can be worked out later.

For extra-nimble big things under the draft system I have up now, I was planning to add a feat with a high Dex prereq that gets higher the smaller you are that doubles your space and adjustment length (something like Dex 15+ at Colossal, +2 more dex per size category smaller) --IGTN 19:21, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I get where you're coming from, but I don't think that's necessary for terrain damage to get into the game in a reasonable way. More than that though, the idea that 6" isn't like 6' isn't like 60' is going to complicate up the game to a point I think bad while also being out of genre. If the PCs get captured by a wacky mage, miniaturized, and dropped into a doll house of death (or an ant farm, or the backyard, whatever) the scl means they get to jump higher and lift a larger percentage of their body weight then they could previously. That's a bit odd, since they just jump all over the dollhouse throwing desks at each other, but your current space sizing means that they also have a larger combat footprint and you can't fit as many of them in a proportionally similar room. The map for very small creatures doesn't even behave the same way as the map for normal sized creatures at that point, and these are tweaks that many players and MCs aren't going to remember or use them.

I don't think it works any better on the other end of the scale either. People don't expect giants to be able to lift a smaller portion of their body weight than they can, if anything they expect the opposite. And if you're going to let them have that, there's no reason to assume their bodies can't withstand the stresses that result from moving as proportionally fast as we do. It also suffers all of the forgettable map and movement issues that the very small sizes suffer, though in slightly different ways.

tl;dr - fighting very different sized creatures is supposed to be different in genre, but actually being a different sized creature isn't. It's like adventuring with a different set behind you, and not supposed to change all that much. Adventurers shrink for faerie villages and grow for giant cloud castles, and they don't expect to function differently. So make the monsters behave that way if it's appropriate for them, but not the sizes themselves.

I think it's better to just say "fvcking magic, how's it work?" and let people change scales without changing their combat grid mechanics as well. And that means scaling the default space sizes at the same rate as the heights change. Going with smaller than the SRD sizes would be a good call, as that allows you to have slow sluggishy things that don't control their spaces as well (a minimum space size if you will, I think about half my adjusted chart is pretty reasonable starting point here actually), with adjustments outwards made for having a reasonable movement speed. For aerial creatures, we could just reduce their space size benefit from speed based on their maneuverability. So clumsy gets no benefit, poor gets 25%, and so on.

Terrain damage for size differences is a great call though. I'd love if that got worked into the game in a non MC-fiat sort of way, so I could biggen myself up and go crush me some smurf villages. But you can get most of that already with just the damage adjustments (assuming a "fixed in size frame hit points" setup anyway, where x hp/inch is replaced with x hp/<some sort of size frame unit>). A colossal guy walking around in a normal (medium scale) forest gets +45 to damage, and basically knocks over any 4" or smaller tree he walks near. He gets more if his foot "falls" that distance to the ground, so tying falling damage in here in some form would probably give area damage results that are useful. I'm not sure if the current falling rules (with their scale fixed weight addition to damage) work as-is or if they'd need an update as well though :-/ - Tarkisflux 21:57, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Where does this even go?

I had this in Chapter 6, which is a pretty rules-heavy chapter (it's going to be pretty long, if the Book of Elements is any comparison, without needing new rules). Now I'm thinking of moving it to Chapter 5, with the Dragons, Giants, and Megabeasts. Comments? --IGTN 19:35, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Chapter 5 is an already long long chapter, and I'm concerned about adding it there. But it's certainly relevant to the material there, and it wouldn't be too out of place. Chapter 7 might work as well? That looks like it'll be tackling other system based issues with the plant type, and it might fit in there-ish, depending on what sort of ecology talk you get up to. Otherwise, toss an interlude in between a couple of chapters? - Tarkisflux 22:04, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

On The Foot Grinder

Are you doing rules for the blood loss and the destruction of limbs thing, or just rolling it into the normal hit point pool and forgetting about it? I find the latter pretty unsatisfying, but I think that's where you're going with it. Since you're doing megabeast rules anyway, why not incorporate them in a light fashion here, where the limbs that you were attacking just didn't get any special actions but did have their own hp pools. And when the sections were dead they couldn't be used effectively, allowing vulnerable sections to fall within reach and the attacker to deal actual damage to the creature (or however you're doing it). Adding on a bleeding condition per lost limb looks like it covers your "chew them up and let them die" stuff. - Tarkisflux 04:59, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd have to come up with a rule for non-megabeast creatures getting per-limb hit point totals (even, say, a PC beset by Lilliputians would need per-limb hit points), and effects when a limb gets destroyed, and so on, and I don't want to do that. D&D doesn't do called shots, and a per-limb hit point total is, basically, a called shot system. That's an entire huge system of its own, since it'd have to apply to non-humanoid targets (Brownie vs Elephant, for instance), so in the absence of that, you can stab someone to death in the foot. It's not quite as cinematic as it could be, but I'll be adding more things about combat maneuvers to encourage their use. Megabeasts are the closest to a called shot system I'm going to do, and they're made with taking called shots in mind since the effects of losing a limb are specifically spelled out for them.

One idea I'm developing, I'll want some combination of allowing people to aid on trip checks against big things, negating size penalties (possibly just make it an edge option), and reducing the size penalty to damage for prone things, probably by one step. So you don't called shot the giant's leg off and dismember it to bring it down and kill it, but you can get a bunch of people to run at it with a rope to trip it, then kill it in the face. --IGTN 05:11, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I genuinely don't think its particularly complicated or slippery sloping towards called, but the trip plan in conjunction with the current climb to negate some annoying penalties setup covers it well enough that I'm not going to complain. Assuming that the penalty reduction from climbing also applies against prone monsters anyway. - Tarkisflux 02:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I looked back over the RoW special attack actions, and only Bullrush even includes the special size modifiers. Trip, Pin, and Lift don't have anything of the sort (though Lift is limited by carrying cap and probably not going to happen against really big things). Were you intending to add those back in, maybe eliminating or halving them if you have the edge on a larger target?

As for running at giants with rope to trip them, the basic Trip setup looks like it would work well enough as a starting point. Problems seem to be determining what bab and strength modifiers you use, as well as how to reduce the size penalty. I think putting some weight on the "captain" of the team and using their bab for the touch attack is a good starting point, and gives heroes a place in the limelight during the attempt. The strength modifier I'm less clear on. I don't want to use median or mode since calculating that each time is annoying, but I don't want to use max or min since I want group composition to matter. You should be sending out your biggest guys for that, not just filling the team with weaklings to get the job done. A pile of aid another checks to contribute towards the highest guy's strength feels workable, but I'm concerned about there being too many rolls. Blegh. A reduction in size modifier by one step for each doubling of people on the rope looks like a sufficient scaling rate, since the first +4 makes the job about twice as hard (before it falls off the RNG). It doesn't keep up with weight at all, but I can't think of any genre reason why it should and it's much more manageable than 8 guys per modifier. - Tarkisflux 00:50, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

On Attack Bonuses

Are you comfortable with the attack bonuses here being applied to touch attacks against inanimate objects as well? I'd really prefer to have a unified set of bonuses to track for attacking tiny creatures and trying to grab / shoot a tiny object. - Tarkisflux 05:00, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Attack bonuses would apply to inanimate objects, yes. Damage bonuses would to most objects, but not to walls, doors, and similarly shaped objects. Those lose thickness based on the attacker's size and the damage done. If something has 15 hit points per inch of thickness, a medium attacker breaks through a foot by doing 180 damage to it, a large attacker 2 feet, a small attacker 6 inches, and so on, because it's thematic for a dragon's breath to do more damage to buildings if it's bigger. --IGTN 05:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

So for large attackers, wood effectively has 15 hit points per 2 inches? And for small attackers it has 15 hit points per half inch? That works well enough, and is pretty similar to what I was babbling about above.

The dragon thing is weird though. All of the other modifications have been physical only, we're not making energy damage changes here are we? So why does dragon's breath get that bonus (aside from thematic reasons)? Is it just a special thing dragons get get because they're awesome, or is this a more generic breath weapon / energy damage thing? - Tarkisflux 03:36, 5 April 2011 (UTC)