Morbidly Obese Character?

[Diamond Cross]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEe-UIvftUg]YouTube - The strongest sumo wrestler Asashouryuu[/ame]

 

[Tonguez]

though penalties to more specific activities (e.g. climbing, jumping) make sense.

No they don't. I am admittedly overweight (although not morbidly so I am probably in the obese range)

I may not jump as well as I once did but I am reasonably strong and agile and I'm a good climber. Climb and Jump in this case are trained skills and with training even obese people can do them

Overall though I agree use the encumbrance rules and if you wish apply lower stats

 

[Klaus]

I don't see the need for much in the way of house rules here.

Just tell him to:
1/ Make sure Strength and Dexterity are low (8 & 10 or so); and
2/ Never train Endurance, Acrobatics, Stealth or Athletics.

Cheers, -- N

PS: Isn't there a forum for this game?

Agreed.

Build the character as desired, then explain things as needed.

Character has low Con and Dex and isn't trained in Acrobatics and Stealth sounds good.

 

[frankthedm]

Encumbrance penalties for the flab and a 2 point circumstance modifier for when the weight will matter is the minimum penalties i'd recommend for someone who is morbidly obese. If just overweight / obese then the normal encumbrance penalties should be enough for the amount of flab the player wants.

i would use the encum. rules. i know for a fact that i can run with the best of them and i'm not skinny. Friend of mine almost soiled his shorts when i caught up to him and he's a track runner. I've also carried four people 35 yards in a football game (would have kept going except my brother figured out that he needed to hold my feet together to get me to stop). so don't assume that someone who is overweight is not strong or quick.

OP called for a morbidly obese character, not just overweight or obese.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Encumbrance penalties for the flab and a 2 point circumstance modifier for when the weight will matter is the minimum penalties i'd recommend for someone who is morbidly obese. If just overweight / obese then the normal encumbrance penalties should be enough for the amount of flab the player wants.

OP called for a morbidly obese character, not just overweight or obese.

You seem to be of the mistaken belief that morbidly obese is somehow referring to people who are the cartoonish puddle-of-human level of obesity, which is not the case at all. Morbidly obese just refers to people who are overweight to the point that it causes health problems.

And if you're talking the BMI version with no reference to overall health, then pretty much every muscle-focused athlete qualifies as morbidly obese.

 

[Verdande]

I don't see how any adjustment is necessary at all. If the character is morbidly obese and still an adventurer, he's probably capable of moving around and fighting like normal.

Give him a low Constitution score, and that's probably about that.

Why low Con? Well, Con is the measure of a person's ability to endure and to run, and if your character is morbidly obese, he is perhaps not in the best shape possible for him. He may not be able to keep up in long-distance events like a thinner individual?

That's about as far as I'd go, however. The rest is either role-playing only, or irrelevant. After all, like a poster above me said, do you penalize different ethnicities or genders?

 

[Fridayknight]

Yes, but they are freaks who drink egg yolks! Some people are so obsese that they cant even move (i should watch less rubbish tv).

 

[bardolph]

I play 4th edition and we had a player that wants to create a morbidly obese character. I find this a cool idea if he agrees to role play him properly and not just be a short time gag.

My question to everyone here is what type of mechanic penalties should I impose on this obese character?

Some ideas we had:

• Cut movement speed by half
• All endurance, acrobatics, athletics, and stealth are reduced
• weight limits of gear greatly reduced

Anything else, I want to be somewhat serious about this, and not just make him a laughing stock - although my image of him is pretty funny.

All penalties should be voluntary. Allow the PC to reduce more than one attribute to less than 10 (without compensating bonuses).

If you want to have fun with it, you can tweak the human racial template (assuming the PC is human). Maybe drop the base speed to 5 squares, but add in "Encumbered Movement" and "Stand Your Ground" powers from the Dwarf template.

It may also be fun to create one or more "racial feats" that take advantage of his unusual stature. For example:

Smother
Encounter Power
Standard Action

Can only use against an adjacent, prone target. Perform a Grab maneuver. If it succeeds, the target is at -5 to escape the Grab.

 

[Ahzad]

The real question is what would Mirt the Moneylender have to say about all this?

Or Volstagg the Lion of Asgard!

 

[Nytmare]

Unfortunately, I most frequently see players looking to make characters like these because they've got a problem with the system, and they see this as an opportunity to somehow prove something. Forgive me if I come off as cranky.

The thing that bothers me most about this is that it caters to the idea that to roleplay correctly there need to be mechanical penalties involved to appropriately show up all the min-maxing that happens when you roleplay incorrectly.

What bothers me just slightly less is that it ignores the complex balancing act that 4th Edition has tried to integrate into the system under the guise of somebody's flawed sense of reality.

Question: How do you create a morbidly obese character in 4th Edition?

Probably Innocent Question Hiding Behind the Morbidly Obese Question: How do you make a slow, fat, weak guy, who gets winded walking across the room?

Answer: Make a slow, fat, weak guy and describe him as being slow, fat, and weak however the hell you want. You don't need to invent a feat called "lazy" to make a lazy character.

This also makes me wonder what the motivations are in having a character that bucks the whole "all for one, and one for all" mentality of 4th Edition so arrantly? 4th Ed, at least straight out of the box, isn't really geared to handle a party of superhero/superhero/superhero/non-adventurer, with a handicap and a lisp, who doesn't have any spectacular abilities of note, and who got thrown in with the rest of these guys cause he didn't have any other options.