Fire Giant Dreadnoughts in VOLO's GUIDE TO MONSTERS

WotC posted this image a couple of days ago, along with a brief note that that Volo's Guide to Monsters has "quite an extensive entry" on Fire Giant Dreadnoughts. Spiky! Also check out yesterday's Giant Lore preview, and the preface - there's a bit of a giant-based focus o the previews, which is likely because Storm King's Thunder is the current storyline. The book hits stores on November 15th (November 4th in preferred stores).

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[dave2008]

Let's do the math.

Plate armor for a human is 65 lb.

A Fire Giant is about 18' tall according to the MM. That means it's about 3x as large as a human in all dimensions, and therefore has 9x the surface area.

If you maintain the thickness of the armor but make it 9x as big in surface area, it has 9x the volume and therefore 9x the weight.

Plate armor for a Fire Giant weighs about 585 lb. Call it 800 lb. if you want to strategically thicken certain areas or widen it to account for their stocky build.

A Fire Giant has a Str of 25. Carrying capacity for Str 25 is 25 * 15 * 4 (for being Huge) = 1500 lb.

Ergo, fantasy physiology (Str 25 + 4x carrying capacity for being Huge, per PHB rules) implies that regular mechanical engineering is 100% A-OK. You don't need fantasy mechanical engineering to get fire giant plate armor to work.

However, if you made everything proportionally larger (since it doesn't really make sense to make it the same thickness as that would make it weaker) than you are looking at 1755 lbs of armor. That is still only about a third of the giants body weight. So while cumbersome, not impossible. Also, the dreadnought has greater strength (27).

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The suggestion above that mostly-unthickened armor (800 lb. per previous post) will "bend under its own weight when not set down" is too silly to even address. It's normal plate armor thickness, strategically thickened in certain places (at 800 lb., it's about 35% heavier than merely scaled-up plate, which is 585 lb.); it's not origami tinfoil. Think before you speak, people.

However, if you made everything proportionally larger (since it doesn't really make sense to make it the same thickness as that would make it weaker) than you are looking at 1755 lbs of armor. That is still only about a third of the giants body weight. So while cumbersome, not impossible. Also, the dreadnought has greater strength (27).

That's not how armor works. 1/4" armor is 1/4" armor, regardless of whether it's on a pixie or a Fire Giant or an APC.

If you wanted to thicken Fire Giant armor proportionately (3x normal thickness) as you suggest, you'd need to find a way to give them the benefit of that thickening, e.g. damage resistance 5.

Bottom line: the claim that you need fantasy mechanical engineering in order to armor Fire Giants in plate armor is bogus. Fantasy anatomy alone is more than sufficient to allow regular engineering to apply. Fantasy engineering, like requiring proportionately thicker armor "just because", actually makes the armor problem worse than using real-world engineering.

(Also, plate armor for gnomes and halflings should probably be lighter than 65 lb., with proportionately less strength required than Str 15 to wear it.)

 

[LordEntrails]

Bottomline; can this thread die now? I really hoped it already had.

 

[dave2008]

The suggestion above that mostly-unthickened armor (800 lb. per previous post) will "bend under its own weight when not set down" is too silly to even address. It's normal plate armor thickness, strategically thickened in certain places (at 800 lb., it's about 35% heavier than merely scaled-up plate, which is 585 lb.); it's not origami tinfoil. Think before you speak, people.

I didn't suggest that, that was someone else.

That's not how armor works. 1/4" armor is 1/4" armor, regardless of whether it's on a pixie or a Fire Giant or an APC.

That is not how it works (of course plate armor is not close to 1/4" thick, but I get your point). If you have two 1/4" sheets of steel, one that is 2' x 2' and another that is 6' x 6' they do not have the same design load capabilities. Armor is more complex, but it is conceptually similar to a floor diaphragm which I work with in building design all the time. The more spread out the diaphragm the thicker it needs to be. I rule of thumb in construction is 1" per foot of span. So it you have a floor span of 24', you roughly need 24" of floor structure (usually steel and concrete). If you decrease that to 8' you would only need 8" with similar materials by the rule (in reality you could span 8' with only 4" of concrete and steel but you get the idea).

If you wanted to thicken Fire Giant armor proportionately (3x normal thickness) as you suggest, you'd need to find a way to give them the benefit of that thickening, e.g. damage resistance 5.

I agree, but in 5e I don't think that is the way to handle it. I think large size armor should have higher AC, just like large size weapons do more damage.

Bottom line: the claim that you need fantasy mechanical engineering in order to armor Fire Giants in plate armor is bogus. Fantasy anatomy alone is more than sufficient to allow regular engineering to apply. Fantasy engineering, like requiring proportionately thicker armor "just because", actually makes the armor problem worse than using real-world engineering.

(Also, plate armor for gnomes and halflings should probably be lighter than 65 lb., with proportionately less strength required than Str 15 to wear it.)

That was not a claim I made. I posted the math for proportionally scaled armor that indicated even if the armor is 3x as thick (which I agree it would not need to be) it would still be feasible for a fire giant to wear it.

I did claim that I like some bit of fantastic engineering in my fantasy creatures, equipment and castles.

 

[dave2008]

Fantasy engineering, like requiring proportionately thicker armor "just because", actually makes the armor problem worse than using real-world engineering.

What? How can fantasy engineering make it worse. We don't even know what fantasy engineering is!

Of course real-world engineering would dictate thicker armor to achieve relatively the same performance. I can't say it is proportional because it actually would need to get thicker than 3x at some point. Depending on strength of materials and where on the curve the human sized vs. giant sized armor is. As you get taller and wider your need to eventually get thicker (thicker than the same increase in width and height) to maintain dynamic similarity. However, I have no idea where that is with a suit of armor. It happens fairly quickly with flesh and bone, deformed steel, however, is a much different situation.

 

[dave2008]

Bottomline; can this thread die now? I really hoped it already had.

Why? Who doesn't love a lively discussion on the strength of materials and engineering principles in fantasy armor

However, Volo's is out now, so we have the actually discription in the book to bounce the discussion off of. That is what prompted me to post.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

That was not a claim I made. I posted the math for proportionally scaled armor that indicated even if the armor is 3x as thick (which I agree it would not need to be) it would still be feasible for a fire giant to wear it.

I realize that wasn't a claim that you made. I gave you XP earlier, remember? I may have been unclear by addressing multiple people in one post--I thought that nearly-quoting AaronOfBarbarian would be enough to show who I was talking to there, but apparently you thought it was you.

I'm not going to argue over whether plate armor for a giant is more like increased spans for flooring or just a larger floor. At least we've settled the point that you don't need to handwave any engineering if you've already handwaved the physiology.

 

[dave2008]

I realize that wasn't a claim that you made. I gave you XP earlier, remember? I may have been unclear by addressing multiple people in one post--I thought that nearly-quoting AaronOfBarbarian would be enough to show who I was talking to there, but apparently you thought it was you.

I'm not going to argue over whether plate armor for a giant is more like increased spans for flooring or just a larger floor. At least we've settled the point that you don't need to handwave any engineering if you've already handwaved the physiology.

no worries, I knew you were quoting [MENTION=6701872]AaronOfBarbaria[/MENTION]n, but I didn't realize you knew you were quoting him. I was just trying to make that clear. Difficulties of communicating through forum posts.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

...too silly to even address. ...Think before you speak, people.

I wonder, should I just start tossing that kind of attitude at every opinion someone shares that disagrees with me, or would the implication that someone disagreeing with me is being "silly" or doesn"t "think" be viewed as against the forum rules for addressing the poster rather than just the post.

And on top of your poor attitude, you've misquoted me - I said the larger, heavier, but same thickness armor would bend under its own weight if set down, and you've put the opposite state (specifically "not set down") in quotes implying I said it to then call "silly".

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

And on top of your poor attitude, you've misquoted me - I said the larger, heavier, but same thickness armor would bend under its own weight if set down, and you've put the opposite state (specifically "not set down") in quotes implying I said it to then call "silly".

You're right, I typo'ed.

I still have nothing to say about your supposition that plate armor will crumple under its own weight when scaled up by a linear factor of three and strategically thickened to the tune of a 35% weight increase. I shouldn't have to say anything about that--the supposition speaks for itself.