Giants have a pretty rough deal when it comes to domestic arguments in TROS! All one giant has to do is slap the other with a measly 1pt success margin and the second giant takes a level 5 wound! 20 ST -3 for a punch +1 for the extra success total of 18. compare with the giants toughness of 13. Ouch! Not to mauch husband/wife beating goes on is my guess!

And what about all those little pesky humans using defencive grapple! Just a couple of 6's and one mighty giant finds himself thrown hard to the ground or propelled through the air!

Another one to watch for is not to trip! A 40 foot giant falls along way when he trips over and as he takes a wound every 10' even if falling onto a soft surface. Thats one might case of skinning his knees if you were so terribly unlucky to trip on a hard surface!!


Just joking around with those guys. But it would make sense that it would be harder to throw someone who is significantly bigger and someone alot tougher would probably be able to fall a bit further without hurting himself.

Heres the home rule I use for falling
A characters base falling distance is equal to their toughness.
They will take damage depending onto what they fall.
Soft would be 2*(toughness +2).
Hard would be half toughness.
Mixed would be toughness +1.
Add 1 to effective toughness if wearing any armour.
This is very similar to the current damage, which will work out to be the same for an average, Toughness 4, character. Round down.

An this one is for chucking around those big guys.
To determine how far or how hard the opponent lands do not use the margin of success. Compare the results of all your successful rolls to your opponent’s knockdown trait. Treat each one that is higher than your opponent’s knockdown trait as a success for determining the result. Add one to the opponent’s knockdown if he is more than a foot taller. Add 2 if he is half as tall again. Add 4 if he is twice as tall or more. Add one if he weighs twice as much. Add a further 1 for each doubling after that. I.e.4 times, 8 times, etc.
This will probably make the required roll to throw a giant somewhere around 20+.
If the grappler’s STR is higher than the targets adjusted Knockdown trait then each success on the original roll is considered a success for the effect of the throw.
If none of the successes are of a high enough value then the opponent isn’t thrown. In the next phase both fighters suffer a range penalty on their attacks as if their opponent were armed with a “hand” range weapon and was at their preferred range. Both fighters may attempt a grapple with the reduced CP activation cost.

Sorry about the length of this post, just thought I'd share
Aaron
(no answer for the first point though! Thats just what happens when the scale of the stats expands to such a degree)

Well to handle to first one (if you really want to since its a waste of time)
to calculate damage take the attacks total damage, subtract armor, divide by toughness, subtract 1, and then multiply by 4.

So in your example the 1 success punch would be a 1.54 wound so you could round it to 2.

This is normalized for Toughness 4 people, so a damage 7 attack against a toughness 4 person still does 3 damage.

I dont suggest doing this, i suggest having the marrital spat end in exploding giant heads. (thats what you get with strenght much higher than toughness)

What's interesting about this problem is that it is, in a lot of ways, brought about because TROS models reality so well (i.e. the squared vs. cubed problem with giant animals). OTOH, I don't really want giants battling other giants (if it actually happend) to be merely one-hit affairs, so I'd probably user svenlein's solution. Although for consistency's sake, damage against giants probably ought to be modified this way from everyone, not just other giants (then they get even scarier).

Steve

Actually, the square/cube law would indicate the opposite. That is, strength increases at the square of length, while the mass of the creature, which I assume is what toughness is at least in part based on, increases at the cube. IOW, larger creatures should be able to deal out less and less damage with respect to their mass. That said, there are other considerations. See GULLIVER for an explanation, but essentially as mass increases the creature converts from doing damage with pure strength to doing it by throwing it's mass into the attack. Also, TO can't be all about mass, given cutting weapons and such, so it should not be quite so high. So, IOW, these things balance out a bit.

For a creature like a giant, it's ST and TO should probably be rated about the same, or with TO a little higher. Which puts the wifebeating all back in place. :-)

OTOH, small creatures should have ST's higher than TOs to represent this shift. BTW, I've been thinking. Anything wrong about rating small creatures with negative STs and TOs? I can't think of anything wrong with it mathematically just now.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote:
OTOH, small creatures should have ST's higher than TOs to represent this shift. BTW, I've been thinking. Anything wrong about rating small creatures with negative STs and TOs? I can't think of anything wrong with it mathematically just now.

Mike

For the ST rolls how about you get to roll one die, but you have to add to the TN the difference between one and the negative ST rating. So, if I'm a -5 against a TN of 7 I get to roll one die to get an 13.

Works for any stat, and manages to extend the scale down below zero. Makes it possible to differentiate your ferrets from your mice. FWIW. I like the idea of a ferret rolling 2 successes, then adding his -5 ST, and then subtracting the mouses -7 TO, and getting a level 4 wound.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: For the ST rolls how about you get to roll one die, but you have to add to the TN the difference between one and the negative ST rating. So, if I'm a -5 against a TN of 7 I get to roll one die to get an 13.

Works for any stat, and manages to extend the scale down below zero. Makes it possible to differentiate your ferrets from your mice. FWIW. I like the idea of a ferret rolling 2 successes, then adding his -5 ST, and then subtracting the mouses -7 TO, and getting a level 4 wound.

Mike

Well, the giant doesn't have to use his full strength when beating his wife. Imagine if we had to use full strength when swatting mosquitoes on ourselves!?

As for falling, do you actually include the creatures height? So a six foot guy falling off a horse doesn't have 6 feet to fall, it should be 12? Not sure about that one.

As for the grapple throw, well if its visualised like a throw on a human, its pretty silly. I think it'd be more like when you stumble into a low table in the dark, lurching forward a bit with a scraped shin. To the giant, your grapple is his inconvienent furniture. Not to mention the reach on just his arms making this hard to do anyway.

Noon wrote: Well, the giant doesn't have to use his full strength when beating his wife. .

Noon wrote: As for falling, do you actually include the creatures height? So a six foot guy falling off a horse doesn't have 6 feet to fall, it should be 12? Not sure about that one..

Hmm. I would normalize falling for weight added toughness. That is, the old addage, "the bigger they are..." is, to an extent accurate. In general this effect tends to cancel out a bit again, but in general and realistically speaking, larger creatures are actually more suscptible to damage from falls. This is easlily visible when looking at small creatures who tend to be able to withstand falls from quite a height.

(ants and other creatures on that scale don't count; at that point air resistance starts to overcome mass effects like gravity. Hence the reason that small creatures like that can't even break water surface tensions and can stick to walls.)

OTOH, being a fantasy world, one can just say that Giants and such are parially Fey or something, and as such don't have to adhere to physical laws as we understand them.

Brian, what about a fairy vs. a pixie? PCs? I'm suggesting that, perhaps it would be useful to extend the scale on the low end so that we can get a bit more fine granularity there. Also important for those attacks by rabid badgers against normal humans. Essentially the negative stats make them as susceptible as you'd think a small creature would be. :-)

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Brian, what about a fairy vs. a pixie? PCs? I'm suggesting that, perhaps it would be useful to extend the scale on the low end so that we can get a bit more fine granularity there. Also important for those attacks by rabid badgers against normal humans. Essentially the negative stats make them as susceptible as you'd think a small creature would be. :-)

we had a character the size of a small cat, with a ST of 1, I think. By my figuring pixies in the stories can do things like move keys (their own size in metal) and the like, so I'm willing to say that they're a lot stronger than they look, though still weak in comparison to us.

Another option is to have a ST TN "ceiling," where you have a ST 1 but that one die can never go over 6, or something.

Jake

This is a little different from the ideas presented so far, but Chivalry & Sorcery: The Rebirth sort of addresses this issue in an advanced rule called Absolute Strength. Basically, the initial Strength score is made relative to the overall size of the person or creature, and then there is a formula to compute the character's absolute strength. To make it even more realistic, you could start setting limits on the Relative Strength score due to the height of the creature due to the lever action involved in lifting weights (shorter/smaller people can lift a larger percent of their body weight). Finally, you could apply the same rule to the Toughness score with no such height limitation thereby insuring that as the creatures become larger, their Toughness should always be greater than their Absolute Strenght.

It would be a little more paperwork in the Chargen portion of the game, but shouldn't slow down play any, plus this had a fairly negligible effect on most Human sized characters.

I'd have to look at home for it, but I think I worked out some House Rules for this a while back. I seem to remember calculating the stats for a Middle-earth Black Troll that was around 10' tall, weighed around half a ton or more and had an Absolute Strength of 15 or 16 and a Toughness of 17 or 18. If anyone is interested and I can find them, just send me a pm, and I'll be happy to share what I've come up with.

Sounds cool. Post the Troll here. He's pertinent to the subject matter.

Mike

Aaron wrote:

Noon wrote: Well, the giant doesn't have to use his full strength when beating his wife. .

I was thinking more for the poor male giant..! I dont know about you, but my girl seems to hit me more than I her..I'm probably just more annoying.

Noon wrote: As for falling, do you actually include the creatures height? So a six foot guy falling off a horse doesn't have 6 feet to fall, it should be 12? Not sure about that one..

You probably wouldn't include the height of the person falling. Bad example on my behalf. The point is simply that I believe the tougher you are the further you would be abel to fall without it hurting so much

quote="Noon"]As for the grapple throw, well if its visualised like a throw on a human, its pretty silly. I think it'd be more like when you stumble into a low table in the dark, lurching forward a bit with a scraped shin. To the giant, your grapple is his inconvienent furniture. Not to mention the reach on just his arms making this hard to do anyway.

Noon wrote:

As for falling, I thought you did add toughness. It doesn't seem to suggest otherwise. Essentially I thought you'd have to fall a fair way, then be unlucky enough to not 'tumble' it out, ie not spread it over several locations, just land on one part HARD (ouch!).

Huh, so TO as size is already acounted for. Neat. Doesn't allow for creatures that would be better at taking a fall, but then that's probably not often a consideration.

Mike

I'm not finding any of my old House Rules pertaining to this subject so I'm going from memory and rewriting them. I'll post them up here when I get them finished in a few days.

Sorry,

Just a quick WARNING to those who are not looking for serious detail in the RPG or who are mathematically changed: THESE HOUSE RULES ARE NOT FOR YOU! Personally I use MS Excel for all of my calculations, but a decent scientific calculator would work as well.

The way I look at the Strength and Toughness attributes is that they are relative to the overall size of the character whether they are a PC or NPC and many humanoid type creatures such as Orcs and Trolls. The campaign that I am currently working on at this time is highly modeled after Tolkien's Middle-earth, so the various species that I refer to in examples contained in this write up are going to be my interpretation of those found there and not in Wyerth.

Because these attributes are dependant on size, it is very important to utilize a realist way to determine an "ideal" weight based on height. This I have done with the following formula:

Weight = 10 x e^(0.04 x Height in Inches)
Where "e" is the base of the natural logarithm and equal to 2.71828182845904

There are many factors that you can have that would adjust this "ideal" weight up or down. I use such things as species, sex, and frame, as well as TRoS's Relative Strength (rST), and EN. These adjustments are in increments of 5% rarely totally below -20% or above +30% and never going below -40% or above +75%.

The next thing that I had to change was TRoS's lifting capacity table. Due to the fact that the initial ST score is relative to the character's weight, the amount that they could lift to the three listed positions had to be listed in percent of body weight as follows:
[code]
ST AOGL ATCL AOHL
1 50% 30% 10%
2 70% 50% 30%
3 90% 70% 50%
4 110% 90% 70%
5 130% 110% 90%
6 150% 130% 110%
7 170% 150% 130%
8 190% 170% 150%
9 210% 190% 170%
10 230% 210% 190%
11 250% 230% 210%
12 270% 250% 230%
13 290% 270% 250%
14 310% 290% 270%
15 330% 310% 290%
16 350% 330% 310%
17 370% 350% 330%
18 390% 370% 350%
19 410% 390% 370%
20 430% 410% 390%
[/code]
AOGL is the Automatic Off the Ground Lift
ATCL is the Automatic To the Chest Lift
AOHL is the Automatic Over the Head Lift

To lift an amount of weight to a certain position, a number of dice are rolled equal to the character's rST. The TN is determined by the percent of body weight of the weight and the attempted position. Weights up to and including the percent listed have a TN of 1, which is considered automatic. The TN increases by 1 for every 5% increase of body weight of the weight. Example: A person weighing 140 lbs with a rST of 4 can automatically lift 154 lbs off the ground. His TN increases from a 1 (or automatic) to 4 if he attempts to bring the weight up to his chest, and the TN increases to 8 if he attempts to lift the weight above his head. The number of successes determines how long the weight can be maintained in that position as it is in the rules book.

Once the final weight has been determined, use the above chart along with the final weight and the following formula to determine the character's Absolute Strength (aST).

aST = 1/3 x SQRT(ATCL x Final Body Weight + 5)

To determine the Absolute Toughness (aTO) use the following formula:

aTO = SQRT(rTO) x SQRT(Final Body Weight/140)

Using these formulas, I have come up with an Olog with the following Absolute Strength and Toughness scores:

His height is 9' tall (111"). This puts his ideal weight at ~848 lbs, which I have adjusted by 135% to 1187 lbs. His rST is 6 and his rTO is 5. Calculated out, this puts his aST at 13, and his aTO at 13.

I have tried to incorporate as much of the Squared-Cubed Law and other natural laws of physics such as lever action that I deemed pertinent to this subject. This is the reason why I would be hesitant to create humanoid creatures any bigger than 15' or smaller than 2' unless they are highly magical and can use that magic to defy those natural laws previously stated.

As always if there are any suggestions or complaints about my work to this point, I welcome them at my email address.

I remember Jake saying TO is subtracted from falling damage.

I found that dividing the square of the ideal weight by Pi(e+5) whil;e controlling for the variable of the quazi modem modulator.... OOOOOOOOWWWWWW AAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAG MAKE THE HURTING STOP!!!!!

Ashren Va'Hale wrote: MAKE THE HURTING STOP!!!!!

mathematically challenged yeah maybe, but there should have been a mention of the sane as well dangit :)

"TROS, everything you need in one core rule book, a scientific calculator, and a calculus class!"

I've never taken any calculas, and I'm only talking about a single button on a $10.00 calculator or a single function on a spreadsheet. Besides that, if you don't like my ideas, please feel free to continue using what ever you used before my post and disregard any future posts by me on this subject or most other subjects for that matter.

gosh, dont take it hard, I am just having some fun with you.

Lets keep it nice, guys...

And hey, Ashren... a Modem Modulator? You do know what MODEM stands for, right? :-)

Don't get me wrong, there's no hard feelings; I'm just saying you can take it or leave it. Earlier on in this topic, I said that I've been messing around with some house rules that came up with a tough looking Black Troll Middle-earth style, and a few people emailed me asking to post what I had so I did.

yes. Quazi modem modulator was a joke my electronics teacher used when he was spouting gibberish at the students who weren't paying attention. and come on guys, it was all in good humor.