Matters of Size

[MGuy]

So there are some problems I'm having with size categories. I'm trying to clang together some better rules for larger vehicles and I'm finding the size categories to be less than helpful. So while mine is a tedious fix (adding in more granularity between sizes) I'm interested in knowing what other problems with size categories people tend to run across and any fixes/better systems people use.

There are a few I've seen come up on here (at least what my search could find).
The curious thing about Giant creatures not being able to hide from each other and I found a workable fix to that. Then there was the discussion about Weapon Sizing. Falling Damage came up and I think there've been a number of mini discussions about HP bloat for larger characters but I didn't find a whole conversation dedicated to it. Those all have fixes though, at least fixes that I could use.

[OgreBattle]

I figure for a high fantasy heroic feeling game, size adjustments should be done away with. If a skilled enough human rogue can escape artist his way up a man's butthole, then a giant rogue should sneak as well as his DEX allows it.

[MGuy]

I'd be completely fine if no one used any skill to get themselves in anyone's butthole.

Since we are dealing with Heroic Fantasy there are certain things that are thematic with giant peoples. They are big, strong, tough, and slow. Their attacks hit areas, flatten castles, and most heroes want to straight up dodge any direct blow from them. Save for the 'strongest' of heroes giant stuff should over power you. I think given an appropriate environment that a Giant should be able to sneak past other giants sure but it should reasonably be a lot tougher to sneak past smaller things. Just the same I expect a medium sized rogue to sneak past your regular guy but it should be much harder to sneak past a mouse.

[ACOS]

The biggest issue I've had with size categories has to do with the square-cube law.
Jumping, climbing, etc., should be harder for larger creatures.

Just tossing that out there.

[Zaranthan]

Just to verify: we're implicitly talking about hacking up 3.5 here, yes?

Your issue with giants seems to be the one my DM has: failure to recognize that Large Giants (which is the vast majority of them) wouldn't cause a stir walking down the streets of New York City. Their attacks don't flatten cities any more than Andre the Giant performing a piledriver did. Even the Huge ones would be a curiosity of science, not a menace to civilization.

Now, when you start getting up to Gargantuan or Colossal, then yeah, sure. Give them Crush and Sweep attacks that level city blocks. (Again, not whole cities. They're the size of cathedrals, not islands.) Doing away with the size modifiers to hide and grapple might not be a bad idea. Let their ability scores mean what they say they mean. Maybe give things with Improved Grab or Swallow Whole a +8 bullshit bonus to make 'em scary for their level.

[Seerow]

I generally feel like Colossal caps too small. I mean, when people think of the Tarrasque they think "Godzilla size", but looking at this chart, the smallest incarnation of Godzilla is still taller than double the minimum for colossal. The newest incarnation is literally triple that size. While colossal is theoretically "Anything bigger than this", when you're literally 7x taller than the minimum, you deserve a separate size category. It'd be like treating a 56ft tall Gargantuan Creature like it was Large because the designers only made "Small, Medium, and Large" as categories. And numerically it might make sense... but when you have a 450ft tall creature squeezing into a 30ftx30ft space, it seems more than a little awkward.





Erm, that aside, and a little closer to the actual subject, I actually dislike the idea of giving massive strength bonuses for being larger. Instead, the size modifier should just add on to whatever it is you want that large strength to represent. You want colossal creatures to be able to lift a lot? Give them +16 to effective strength for lifting on top of their x16 lifting multiplier. Now even a colossal creature with only 10 strength is lifting and throwing 7+ tons. You want them to deal lots of extra damage, just add the size modifier as a flat bonus to damage. Strength score should represent an average strength for a creature at that size, rather than trying to require that any big monster has 40-50+ strength.

[hyzmarca]

I generally feel like Colossal caps too small. I mean, when people think of the Tarrasque they think "Godzilla size", but looking at this chart, the smallest incarnation of Godzilla is still taller than double the minimum for colossal. The newest incarnation is literally triple that size. While colossal is theoretically "Anything bigger than this", when you're literally 7x taller than the minimum, you deserve a separate size category. It'd be like treating a 56ft tall Gargantuan Creature like it was Large because the designers only made "Small, Medium, and Large" as categories. And numerically it might make sense... but when you have a 450ft tall creature squeezing into a 30ftx30ft space, it seems more than a little awkward.

The Immortals Handbook (third party d20 supplement, not the original BEMI book) tried to add size catagories, but did so poorly. It just took the bonus scaling from existing size categories and continued it lineally, leading to planet-sized creatures with bonuses that are not in proper scale with their size.

[Stahlseele]

Somebody please explain to me why bigger==slower? ._.
I never quite understood that. Especially in a FantasySetting.
A Giant is a human sized up by . . a lot . . a Human can run at 10kph for example. A GIANT would run the same but due to size/steps would be much faster traveling and maybe even more as the crow flies due to not needing to take into account stuff that's big enough to make normal humans walk around . .

[RadiantPhoenix]

I would assume that a giant's speed would be proportional to sqrt(h). (stride length is proportional to height, h, and stride frequency is inversely proportional to sqrt(h) as per a pendulum)

[Kaelik]

Somebody please explain to me why bigger==slower? ._.
I never quite understood that. Especially in a FantasySetting.
A Giant is a human sized up by . . a lot . . a Human can run at 10kph for example. A GIANT would run the same but due to size/steps would be much faster traveling and maybe even more as the crow flies due to not needing to take into account stuff that's big enough to make normal humans walk around . .

Since when is bigger slower? Bigger comes with a move speed increase.

[Previn]

Somebody please explain to me why bigger==slower? ._.
I never quite understood that. Especially in a FantasySetting.
A Giant is a human sized up by . . a lot . . a Human can run at 10kph for example. A GIANT would run the same but due to size/steps would be much faster traveling and maybe even more as the crow flies due to not needing to take into account stuff that's big enough to make normal humans walk around . .

Since when is bigger slower? Bigger comes with a move speed increase.

But it also comes with a dex penalty meaning it's slower in the initiative department. That's more of where I always envisioned the 'big but slow' coming from.

[Kaelik]

But it also comes with a dex penalty meaning it's slower in the initiative department. That's more of where I always envisioned the 'big but slow' coming from.

Too bad EDIT: Stalhseele's entire argument that giant lumbering beasts should travel further over land because of their long strides does absolutely nothing to argue for them being faster to react to situations.

[Zaranthan]

does absolutely nothing to argue for them being faster to react to situations.

Who was arguing for that?

[Kaelik]

does absolutely nothing to argue for them being faster to react to situations.

Who was arguing for that?

Anyone complaining about big but slow being a problem.

[Previn]

But it also comes with a dex penalty meaning it's slower in the initiative department. That's more of where I always envisioned the 'big but slow' coming from.

Too bad EDIT: Stalhseele's entire argument that giant lumbering beasts should travel further over land because of their long strides does absolutely nothing to argue for them being faster to react to situations.

Did we read different posts? Stalhseele isn't arguing a point, he's asking for clarification why people perceive bigger == slower. In this case, he's equating slower only to movement speed which isn't the only interpretation, so he's missing that the bigger == slower argument can also apply to less dex and thus less initiative.

[OgreBattle]

I'd be completely fine if no one used any skill to get themselves in anyone's butthole.

Since we are dealing with Heroic Fantasy there are certain things that are thematic with giant peoples. They are big, strong, tough, and slow. Their attacks hit areas, flatten castles, and most heroes want to straight up dodge any direct blow from them. Save for the 'strongest' of heroes giant stuff should over power you. I think given an appropriate environment that a Giant should be able to sneak past other giants sure but it should reasonably be a lot tougher to sneak past smaller things. Just the same I expect a medium sized rogue to sneak past your regular guy but it should be much harder to sneak past a mouse.

Then you give them very high scores for whatever stat is used to flatten cities, and low scores towards sneaking. Otherwise your system will require giant tigers to have bonus feats in skill training stealth and other bandaids to go against the confines of a size modifier chart so they can sneak into a dark room full of people to murder them.

[Seerow]

I'd be completely fine if no one used any skill to get themselves in anyone's butthole.

Since we are dealing with Heroic Fantasy there are certain things that are thematic with giant peoples. They are big, strong, tough, and slow. Their attacks hit areas, flatten castles, and most heroes want to straight up dodge any direct blow from them. Save for the 'strongest' of heroes giant stuff should over power you. I think given an appropriate environment that a Giant should be able to sneak past other giants sure but it should reasonably be a lot tougher to sneak past smaller things. Just the same I expect a medium sized rogue to sneak past your regular guy but it should be much harder to sneak past a mouse.

Then you give them very high scores for whatever stat is used to flatten cities, and low scores towards sneaking. Otherwise your system will require giant tigers to have bonus feats in skill training stealth and other bandaids to go against the confines of a size modifier chart so they can sneak into a dark room full of people to murder them.

Why exactly does your giant tiger need to have a level appropriate stealth check? If it is merely trained in stealth, it will probably be good enough to sneak up on average people/prey. But a PC trained in perception should have no trouble spotting a giant tiger, even if it is hiding.

[MGuy]

Seerow hits the nail on the head. A large tiger would only receive a minor Dex pen anyway.

[Drolyt]

I generally feel like Colossal caps too small. I mean, when people think of the Tarrasque they think "Godzilla size", but looking at this chart, the smallest incarnation of Godzilla is still taller than double the minimum for colossal. The newest incarnation is literally triple that size. While colossal is theoretically "Anything bigger than this", when you're literally 7x taller than the minimum, you deserve a separate size category. It'd be like treating a 56ft tall Gargantuan Creature like it was Large because the designers only made "Small, Medium, and Large" as categories. And numerically it might make sense... but when you have a 450ft tall creature squeezing into a 30ftx30ft space, it seems more than a little awkward.

This had always bothered me, and honestly I think it is a bigger issue than any of the mechanical problems with size. According to this analysis even the biggest D&D dragons are much smaller than popular dragons from movies and video games. The movie version of Smaug is seriously about 3 times bigger than a great wyrm gold dragon which is CR 27 (translation: way beyond the point where the game is playable) and things only get worse when you consider dragon CRs are made of lies. The largest non-epic dragons are only gargantuan, or about 6 times smaller than Smaug.

Basically there aren't any really titanic monsters in D&D and that is sad.

[TarkisFlux]

1 - Use relative size modifiers. Big things sneak past big things, little things sneak past big things easily, and big things sneak past little things with difficulty. Go with environments instead of targets if you like, so that it's easier to sneak around the giant's castle or a redwood forest than a badger's den.

2 - If they don't move their limbs at the same relative rates as smaller folks, use a longer round. Combat is already abstracted, so if small things move faster and big things move slower, it can still amount to the same 'effect' in a long enough round. Give them penalties to hit / DCs for physical based special effects (because slow) or bonuses to damage (because big) or both, along with the opposite for smaller creatures. And give big things AoE attacks against things sufficiently smaller than they are, so they can punch down castles or whatever. This works best when you don't give out attribute bonuses or penalties for size changes, so that you don't have to fight against other numbers in the process. You mostly just get multiple columns on your carrying capacity tables instead of the modifiers.

3 - This will probably get me some hate, but fuck weapon sizes as object sizes. Go with sizes relative to holder in this case (so you can dump absolute damage and thus absolute hit points for sizes), and give them bonuses or penalties to damage based on their target sizes as per previous point. Yes, it's fiddly, but you were already doing fiddly anyway from the sounds of it. Anyway, that lets you have giants that smash people and gnats that do nothing worth noting. Add in critical area damage if you want people climbing on targets to reach a critical area and take them down, Shadow of the Colossus style. This sort of thing can also let you have 1HD giants that are still a threat, because you have to reach an area that can damage them before they care, which opens up lots of other options you may or may not care about.

4 - If you don't want more size categories, don't use a height doubling / halving to determine size categories. Use quadrupling / quartering instead. This works with Radiant's contention that speed grows with the sqrt(h) (which assumes they aren't moving their limbs at the same relative speeds, and may not actually be true in your game because 'magic'), since each new size category is just 2 times as fast as the previous ones rather than 1.414 times as fast. Go with actual movement doubling in these cases, unless you want them to be slower than average for some reason. Really though, they're like 24ft tall; they can be faster and enough bigger than you to get bonuses and shit.

[MGuy]

1. This is already something I've done and continue doing.

2. I already do most of this except for the attribute thing. What do you mean fight against other numbers?

3. I'm not sure of your reasoning. Currently I'm leaning on having weapons all do damage based on their size and I can't fathom a reason why I would want to make it more fiddly. Having larger weapons used by larger creatures (and the reverse) gets me the results I want when attributes are added in (at least for what I'm doing). How is making weapon damage relative to the holder gonna produce good results? Wouldn't that just make two weapon fighting the route to go if daggers and greatswords both do the same amount of damage?

4. I actually just intended to have more size categories, but really only the larger ones. I've been trying to hammer out workable vehicle rules and colossal alone is not enough to cover all the different sizes.

[Stahlseele]

ok, seeing how i am not from a DnD background, i did not know about the dex penalty at all.
this just seemed like as good a place as any as to why bigger==slower almost all the time . .
not just movement speed over land then, but also in terms of reaction i guess?
i have no clue about DnD Mechanics, i want to know where this comes from and why this is a Thing That Exist almost anywhere.

[OgreBattle]

i have no clue about DnD Mechanics, i want to know where this comes from and why this is a Thing That Exist almost anywhere.

But a 20meter tall Gundam with wings and a scythe will still be speedy. Different settings have different ideas of 'normal', then anything larger than normal wil be slower, like the 40 meter Psycho Gundam being slower than a 20meter gundam.

But in a human scale setting, the 20 meter tall cyclops is very likely to be lumbering compared to a 2 meter tall adventurer.

[tussock]

So there are some problems I'm having with size categories. I'm trying to clang together some better rules for larger vehicles and I'm finding the size categories to be less than helpful. So while mine is a tedious fix (adding in more granularity between sizes) I'm interested in knowing what other problems with size categories people tend to run across and any fixes/better systems people use.

I did that for a couple years, and then I stopped. It's really not worth it. If you want size Collossal +1, and then +2, and then +5, just do that. Just make your vehicles fit the size system and don't include the things which don't fit. Remember than real medieval ships are tiny.

There are a few I've seen come up on here (at least what my search could find).
The curious thing about Giant creatures not being able to hide from each other and I found a workable fix to that.

Giant creatures, in the real world, would shake the ground when they move, make the wind blow as they breathe, and push around tall trees like grass. We have mice where I live, and they can hide from cats in inch-long grass just fine. Bad luck for them, cats have Scent (Ex) and they Search the area of mouse-smell.

Of course, climbing and jumping and tumbling should also carry the big-is-useless size mod, to at least stop Elephants from climbing trees. But mostly people just have them not doing that and then it doesn't matter.

Even the falling damage thing, where horses should just totally explode on a fourty-foot drop rather than running away a bit sore, like rats do IRL, it almost never matters. Halflings should fall a bit easier, but then it's level 1 so you featherfall, or just use a rope.

[Kaelik]

not just movement speed over land then,

No not in movement speed over land. In movement speed over land bigger things are faster in the mechanics. You are completely wrong. Stop being wrong.