How much does my giant weight?

[aramis erak]

The main thing to know is, for objects that are similar aside from scale, volume goes up as the cube of height. So, a 12-foot tall giant, if he's made of the same stuff as a human, would weigh eight times as much as a 6-foot tall man.

So, let's say m and h are the mass and height of one creature, and M and H are the mass and height of another creature with the same build. And assume both creatures have the same density (not a good assumption from an engineering point of view, but if you go down that road you quickly conclude that giants are impossible).

Then what you have is:

(M/m) = (H/h)^3

or equivalently:

M = m * (H/h)^3

An 9-foot tall giant, for example would weigh roughly 3.4 times as much as a 6-foot tall human.

Then, if you really want to get into detail, consider the creature's build. For example, giants are depicted as more stocky than humans. You have to put a number on how much more, from the point of view of the thickness of their limbs and trunk. Square that to get the increase in cross-sectional area, and hence the increase in volume for a certain height. A truly massive giant (built like, say, a dwarf), for example, might have limbs 50% thicker than a normally-proportioned human at the same scale. This would make him 225% (1.5 squared) as heavy. For our 9-foot tall giant, that'd come out to about 200 * 3.4 * 2.25 = 1520 lbs.

The numbers for giants in the Monster Manual (cited above) are mostly in line for human proportions and density at the given height.

The same general rules of proportion apply to any body shape, whether human or whatever. You just need a good baseline, which may not always exist (for example, nothing in the real world is shaped like a dragon). Taking your dire wolf question, though, a wolf is probably a reasonable approximation for a lot of quadrupedal predators, though. An adult male grey wolf weighs about 90 lbs, and is 5.5 to 6 feet long, and about 2.5 feet high at the shoulder. This implies that the Monster Manual listing (9 feet long, 800 lbs.) probably doesn't include the tail, and represents a wolf about 5 feet high at the shoulder.

the flaw there is than bone weight capacity goes up with the cross-sectional area, which is a square function of the size multiplier... the proportions must needs change, lest they begin to have the bone-lack-of-strength issue of severe cases of Marfan Syndrome and certain other giantisms.
Rolemaster Companion had a decent chunk on how to figure it, accounting somewhat for needed size changes of bone...

 

[aramis erak]

I think you're all missing the point. If this is a DnD based question doesn't the giants weight have to be measured in coins?

there's a conversion rate... I'm too lazy to look for explicit conversions.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I am sorry you are so obsessive over this date time of the post.

I am not. I courteously pointed it out in my first response genuinely as a good-faith endeavor, and then responded completely as an amused response to the resultant evasiveness.

Somehow you missed the reason for my post even though I stated it rather clearly.

I did not miss the reasoned motivation for posting. I don't know why you believe that this is so.

The time date stamp is in the title of the post and in every reply which make the idea of not knowing it was almost twenty years old when I replied rather obtuse.

On this board and several others (including some, like the Giants in the Playground gaming board, which have different policies regarding thread necromancy), people routinely fail to realize that they are doing so. This exchange really was an earnest attempt at precaution against a reasonably common occurrence that you might or might not have stumbled into, and it could have ended in exactly one statement on each side.

You have actually gotten to the point of your obsession that it is amusing.

Let me assure you that I will sleep very well tonight, knowing that that is how you feel.

Then with the "To the subject at hand" it feels like going back to the unclear confusing of the simplicity of the concept, adding to the obtuse information "Make it whatever without reference to reasoning it out"?

I have no idea what you are talking about. I said nothing like "Make it whatever without reference to reasoning it out." That paragraph starting "To the subject at hand" was not specifically directed at you, but to the thread topic in general. There was nothing obtuse about what I said -- it wasn't a factual reference to game-rule metrics, such as the (let's be clear, useful) chart you provided-- but rather an aside about needing to make sure whether the game you are in is playing by those measures (given variability in how a DM might interpret large creatures). It is a proverbial 'check with your DM' statement, and hardly one I expected anyone to have a problem with.

I think you're all missing the point. If this is a DnD based question doesn't the giants weight have to be measured in coins?

That's the most D&D answer of them all, to be sure. If you're playing gp=xp, I'm sure the giant will be measured in coins (along the lines of 'an 8-pt buck').