Strength, creature size, hp, damage...

[Spatzimaus]

These types of scientific debates are fine in D&D, as long as you accept at the end of the day that science takes a backseat to fun and game balance.

I'd say that Strength is more abstract than you calculated. For example, I have a Human and a 12' Giant. The Giant is 8 times the mass, so yes, the pressure would be twice as much on his skeleton. However, I'd say that the Giant's skeleton would be thicker to compensate, as you mentioned. This makes for a thicker-looking creature; it won't be exactly the same proportions.
(Example: picture a Dwarf as being a scaled-up Gnome. Thicker body structure. Or picture a 3E Halfling as being a scaled-down Human, with thinner bone structure giving them the higher agility)

So far so good, but how does that apply to STR scores? Just because I weigh eight times as much as you doesn't mean I can hit you eight times as hard, because there's a speed factor there. If my arm weighs eight times as much, and my muscles have four times the cross section and twice the length, do I still break even? Probably not; I'd swing slower, so I'm slightly less likely to hit you (the -1 attack penalty), less likely to dodge out of your way (the -1 AC penalty), and when I DO hit, you'll take more damage thanks to the increased force behind the blow (the higher STR) but it won't scale up as much as my weight does.
Now maybe I DON'T swing slower, but that'd require a different muscle structure, which means you can't assume scaling up keeps things the same.

This doesn't mean I can't support my own weight. It just means I can't hit you eight times as hard.

Now, you were arguing that bipeds and quadrapeds should scale the same. But there, it's a question of what fraction of your musculature is oriented in the correct direction. If a quadraped increased in size by a factor of 8, its carrying capacity increases by the same factor because its entire body is structured in a way to let it balance on its legs. It increases the pressure on each leg, of course, but the creature is still stable and the load acts the same as the creature's normal body. That is, assuming you balanced the load correctly around its center of gravity.

A biped, however, wouldn't increase by a factor of 8. First of all, the load isn't distributed evenly; if you're carrying something, you're carrying it above your center of gravity and off center (either in your arms or on your back). Bipeds aren't automatically stable, either, so you're more concerned with torque around your center of gravity (Force * Distance, and distance is doubled) than you are about pressure on the legs. Since distance doubles with size doubling, the force you can carry increases by a factor of 4, because your musculature will be built to take 8 times the total torque of before (torque would be resisted by your own body's rotational inertia, which scales by a factor of 8).
It's the price we pay for having two hands free to punch someone in the face.

Just remember: Dragons can fly. Once you accept that, all the physics doesn't matter.

 

[Stalker0]

Why do we have to be consistent? I like physics as much as the next evil genius, but what does consistentcy have anything to do with my enjoyment of the game. The game scales in a resonable way that makes it easy for most to understand and calculate, while balancing it to allow for a little medium sized fighter to actually have a chance at a huge dragon.

Why does it matter if that makes sense or not? All science has ever done was give us a set of rationales that are relatively easy to understand, and that gives us reproducable results when confronted with our environment.

DND created a universe, and gave us a set of rules that are easy to understand, and give us a reproducable game that's enjoyable every time we play. We need nothing more from those rules.

 

[Great Umbrage]

Consistency is required, insofar as it affects gameplay.

This issue actually came up when I tried to use the Monster Manual guidelines to generate some giant-sized creatures. Then I outfitted them with giant-sized armor and realized that they can't carry them. That's when I noted the Str increases as insufficient.

As I said, this is an issue that is easily fixed by increasing the Str per size category.

Obviously, looking at the recommendations, someone, probably a designer, did go over the physics of the process just as I did. What I'm saying is that the reasoning or the result is incorrect.

I am, in no way, advocating a complex system wherein the players need to make detailed calculations in order to do anything. That is something that the system should take care of, and should be reduced to a simple score, like Strength. However, it should also be accurate and not result in gameplay inconsistencies.

 

[Great Umbrage]

These types of scientific debates are fine in D&D, as long as you accept at the end of the day that science takes a backseat to fun and game balance.

Agreed. And consistency gets in the way of fun and game balance. That's why I'm tackling this now.

I'd say that Strength is more abstract than you calculated. For example, I have a Human and a 12' Giant. The Giant is 8 times the mass, so yes, the pressure would be twice as much on his skeleton. However, I'd say that the Giant's skeleton would be thicker to compensate, as you mentioned. This makes for a thicker-looking creature; it won't be exactly the same proportions.
(Example: picture a Dwarf as being a scaled-up Gnome. Thicker body structure. Or picture a 3E Halfling as being a scaled-down Human, with thinner bone structure giving them the higher agility)

So far so good, but how does that apply to STR scores? Just because I weigh eight times as much as you doesn't mean I can hit you eight times as hard, because there's a speed factor there. If my arm weighs eight times as much, and my muscles have four times the cross section and twice the length, do I still break even? Probably not; I'd swing slower, so I'm slightly less likely to hit you (the -1 attack penalty), less likely to dodge out of your way (the -1 AC penalty), and when I DO hit, you'll take more damage thanks to the increased force behind the blow (the higher STR) but it won't scale up as much as my weight does.
Now maybe I DON'T swing slower, but that'd require a different muscle structure, which means you can't assume scaling up keeps things the same.

This doesn't mean I can't support my own weight. It just means I can't hit you eight times as hard.

First, the source material does not in any way indicate a difference in musculature or bone structure, or even proportion, in many of the giants.

Now, you were arguing that bipeds and quadrapeds should scale the same. But there, it's a question of what fraction of your musculature is oriented in the correct direction. If a quadraped increased in size by a factor of 8, its carrying capacity increases by the same factor because its entire body is structured in a way to let it balance on its legs. It increases the pressure on each leg, of course, but the creature is still stable and the load acts the same as the creature's normal body. That is, assuming you balanced the load correctly around its center of gravity.

A biped, however, wouldn't increase by a factor of 8. First of all, the load isn't distributed evenly; if you're carrying something, you're carrying it above your center of gravity and off center (either in your arms or on your back). Bipeds aren't automatically stable, either, so you're more concerned with torque around your center of gravity (Force * Distance, and distance is doubled) than you are about pressure on the legs. Since distance doubles with size doubling, the force you can carry increases by a factor of 4, because your musculature will be built to take 8 times the total torque of before (torque would be resisted by your own body's rotational inertia, which scales by a factor of 8).
It's the price we pay for having two hands free to punch someone in the face.

Wrong.

The center of gravity is not an issue here, because in similarly proportioned creatures, the center of gravity and everything else scales up the same with size increases.

Note that I said in REAL WORLD PHYSICS bipeds (and quadrupeds) of similar proportions only increase carrying capacity by 4 times, but that in FANTASY PHYSICS, this needs to be 8 times to account for the creatures that exist in fantasy but would never exist in real life.

Just remember: Dragons can fly. Once you accept that, all the physics doesn't matter.

So you're saying that even if the rules say colossal dragons and giants both have Strength scores of 10-11, you can explain it away by saying "dragons can fly, physics doesn't matter"? That's a cop-out.

Physics shouldn't matter, but when simple problems of logic crop up, there should be solutions. For instance, a Huge giant, according to the Monster Manual guidelines, has only 16 times the carrying capacity that a Medium-sized creature does, but must wear armor that is 64 times as heavy. This is not something that requires an Einsteinian brain to figure out something is wrong. The fix? Increasing the recommended Str.

I can just as easily say that "Magic explains everything," but that's not an explanation that players will accept for everything. They expect their world to work the same way as the real one, unless the premise states otherwise. They want to be able to apply reasoning and logic to figure out the world in which they play. That is how they can interact with it.

For players to be able to experience the world and immerse themselves in the gaming experience, a degree of realism is necessary. And the first step to realism is consistency.

 

[Celebrim]

This has all been done before. There is nothing new under the sun.

For those that are interested. Buy GURPS and as many rules supplements as you can. Next, download GULLIVER from the website. Next, dive into the rules for a couple weeks, and maybe spend a day or two converting animals into X point creatures and playing with thier stats to make them feel right. Decide on a implementation, abopt 500 house rules into your campaign, play with things until you think it feels just right. Knock yourself out. The results will be spectacularly detailed and realistic.

And ultimately, however satisfying, all that work won't help you make better campaigns.

 

[dcollins]

In response to Caliban, I know that most of fantasy simply accepts that something like what you prescribe happens, but remember too that giants not only have to carry around their own weight, but also the weight of giant-sized objects. Your reasoning accounts for the giant's mobility...if he is naked, but does not address the fact that most giants, especially civilized ones (cloud, storm) will likely be wearing and carrying things. How can a giant warrior attired in full battle armor and sword move with even part of the mobility of a human in full armor, which in itself is not that gracefully.[?]

I don't understand how you came to this computation that giants don't have "the mobility of a human in full armor". Let's assume a warrior with scale mail, l. steel shield, longsword, and crossbow:

Human War1, Str11 -- 55 lbs. gear, Medium load (Max 115 lb).

By the rules, Huge armor increases by x5 weight (PH p. 105). Using that same figure for all other scaled-up gear on the giants you mention:

Cloud Giant, Str 35 -- 275 lbs. gear, Light load (Max 12,800 lb).
Storm Giant, Str 39 -- 275 lbs. gear, Light load (Max 22,400 lb.)

Now I'll assume that you didn't like the x5 figure for increased weight and instead decided that you should multiply weight by x64 (4^3) instead for Huge equipment (which is arguably not what should be done). But this still results in:

Cload Giant, Str 35 -- 3,520 lb. gear, Light load (Max 12,800 lb).
Storm Giant, Str 39 -- 3,520 lb. gear, Light load (Max 22,400 lb).

So if anything, it looks to me like the true giants get more mobile as they equip themselves with the same equipment, as compared to humans. My opinion and analysis are actually that giants are cartoonishly too strong for their size, compared to other creatures.

What I've also noticed is that the giants in the Monster Manual II are quite strong, especially the giant-kin, who are not supposed to be as big as the true giants. The Firbolg has a Str of 36 and the Fomorian, 34, which is about 10 more than the guidelines...the values actually sound pretty good. I think a new set of guidelines would help, but its impact on game balance would likely be an issue. The problem lies, really, in the abstraction that is hit points, and the escalating ability bonuses. I somehow am beginning to find the damage system in Mutants & Masterminds more and more appealing.

This is perhaps a separate issue. The creatures in the core rules (I do not own the MMII) certainly do not generally comply with the guidelines laid down in the Williams article on the subject (and the type/size categories certainly don't use the advancement rules at the start of the MM), at least for Hit Dice, as I explain here: www.superdan.net/dndmisc/monster_hit_dice.html


I would certainly very much resist your impulse to correlate hit points and damage with sheer mass -- that is clearly contradictory to the rules as they stand. Mass shouldn't in and of itself represent hit points (if an opponent can stab a vital artery, it's irrelevant how much extra flesh there is on your body). The standard damage ranges specified in the Williams article, and DMG p. 162, (which do seem generally in compliance with the core rules) only increase by one die type per size category -- not even close to a doubling or octupling which you seem to imply is warranted (clearly, hit points encompass the landing-of-the-blow-in-a-vital-location, not anything like a direct transference of kinetic energy).