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JellyPooga
2008-01-02, 08:49 AM
I was just wondering how you guys deal with disproportionate strength, relative to size.

There are plenty of ways, whether through magical means (bulls strength, manual of exercise, etc.) or mundane (racial modifiers, war hulk PrC, templates) to get a strength score of 20+ as a medium creature and 30+ as a large creature, even at relatively low levels (talking about playable characters here, rather than monsters). This gives the potential for vastly disproportionate weight lifting.

For example; I have recently been fleshing out a Half-Ogre Entomanthrope character and calculating his maximum 'Heavy' load for encumbrance, when he's in hybrid form, it turns out that he could quite happily carry a train of wagons as a light load (and thus conceivably do this with 1 hand) and could carry multi-storey buildings on his shoulders as a heavy load...this carrying capacity only goes up when in animal form (quadrupeds getting better encumbrance values and all). This is at ECL: 11, without magical bonuses and certainly without trying to optimise Strength beyond being a Half-Ogre and an Entomanthrope.

This is clearly not the intention of the encumbrance rules as they expect that creatures of a certain size won't be getting strengths of that magnitude to make it so ridiculous (I assume anyway...). So my question is this: Does anyone impose additional rules/restrictions on weight limits, based on creature size? Or do you just leave it down to common sense or ignore it?

Cheers,
JP

Sebastian
2008-01-02, 09:52 AM
I don't see it as a big problem, after all, it is magic. If you really want you could consider other things, for example the ground he stand on starting to sink if he lift too much, or worse he falling thought the floor when it apply, or maybe you could consider the difference between weight and encumberance, just because you can lift the weight of something it doesn't mean you can lift that particular thing, it is the old superman argument that even if someone human-sized could lift i.e. a battlecruiser it is probable that it would snap under its own weight when lifted. If you want there are many ways to limit this, but I don't see it as a huge issue most of the times.

JellyPooga
2008-01-02, 10:08 AM
I don't see it as a big problem, after all, it is magic. If you really want you could consider other things, for example the ground he stand on starting to sink if he lift too much, or worse he falling thought the floor when it apply, or maybe you could consider the difference between weight and encumberance, just because you can lift the weight of something it doesn't mean you can lift that particular thing, it is the old superman argument that even if someone human-sized could lift i.e. a battlecruiser it is probable that it would snap under its own weight when lifted. If you want there are many ways to limit this, but I don't see it as a huge issue most of the times.

Oh aye, I'm not saying that it's something that's likely to come up every gaming session, but it was just something I considered and thought "hang on a minute...there's something not quite right here". I was just wondering if anyone had any rules or guidelines that they used for these situations...

The 'sinking into/falling through' floor is a fairly obvious one, I suppose. When you have that much weight suddenly moved to 2 points of fairly low surface area (i.e. your legs), you tend to create a lot of pressure at those two points...

I hadn't really considered what you call the "superman argument" much...and I suppose that by extention of this, you would have to have the consideration of how one is actually lifting said object without damaging it.

daggaz
2008-01-02, 11:42 AM
Does anyone impose additional rules/restrictions on weight limits, based on creature size? Or do you just leave it down to common sense or ignore it?

Cheers,
JP

Yeah, I do. When strength bonuses get outlandish, I will usually throw in some real world common sense too. Big objects are often far too unwieldy to be properly lifted, regardless of their weight. They are simply too cumbersome and unshapely, you cannot get the proper hold, and if you did, you probably cannot generate the leverage needed to swing the entire mass up over your head. Likewise, if the item in question does have a good place to grip it, and your magical powers are powerful enough, that doesnt mean that the item itself will withstand being lifted in this manner. Far more likely that a chunk of it rips out instead, or the ground gives out beneath you, etc..

Of course, its a balance act between realism/fantasy and fun/common sense... so I am as judicious with my own common sense as I am with my players' actions..

Prophaniti
2008-01-02, 11:45 AM
Well, I usually at least implement a sense of practicallity to it. Yes, the half-ogre Warhulk is strong enough that 4 laden wagons are a light load, but the distribution of the mass of the load prohibit him from carrying it in one hand. We've all probably experience this when we move our furniture. There are a number of things in most houses that, while not very heavy, still require multiple people to lift and move because they're awkward and bulky.

Likewise, he may be strong enough to carry 15 anvils, but until he can find a sack big and strong enough to carry them in, he can't actually carry them all at once.

daggaz
2008-01-02, 11:51 AM
yep, exactly..

Signmaker
2008-01-02, 12:50 PM
Is anyone else reminded of HH from this?

Riffington
2008-01-02, 04:15 PM
The ironic part is that Strength is the least problematic of all attributes.

Whatever difficulties you imagine here... just imagine trying to roleplay a person with an Intelligence or Wisdom more than 4 above your own. Players try it all the time. But to understand how badly they fail: just start asking a seven year old girl to explain calculus to you. Whatever difficulty she has, is like the problem you have in understanding your character's day to day decisions...

Balkash
2008-01-02, 04:45 PM
The ironic part is that Strength is the least problematic of all attributes.

Whatever difficulties you imagine here... just imagine trying to roleplay a person with an Intelligence or Wisdom more than 4 above your own. Players try it all the time. But to understand how badly they fail: just start asking a seven year old girl to explain calculus to you. Whatever difficulty she has, is like the problem you have in understanding your character's day to day decisions...

I almost cried laughing at that. As well I completely agree, high intelligence is really hard to play well. I think Charisma might be too. Ask some high school geek to go up in front of the school, make a big speech, then ask them all for money? You can role charisma and intelligence all you want, but the real question is, can you roleplay them?

horseboy
2008-01-02, 04:58 PM
Well, I usually at least implement a sense of practicallity to it. Yes, the half-ogre Warhulk is strong enough that 4 laden wagons are a light load, but the distribution of the mass of the load prohibit him from carrying it in one hand. We've all probably experience this when we move our furniture. There are a number of things in most houses that, while not very heavy, still require multiple people to lift and move because they're awkward and bulky.

Likewise, he may be strong enough to carry 15 anvils, but until he can find a sack big and strong enough to carry them in, he can't actually carry them all at once.

Kinda reminds me of those videos of those guys pulling bus loads of people with their genitals. THAT'S some absurd strength.

Fenix_of_Doom
2008-01-02, 05:04 PM
Kinda reminds me of those videos of those guys pulling bus loads of people with their genitals. THAT'S some absurd strength.

I've seen something like that happening on TV once too, it was pretty sick.

edit: they were pulling trucks or something similar:smalleek: .

Collin152
2008-01-02, 05:24 PM
I seem to recall a guy pulling some train cars with his teeth.
Trick photography, Superman in a bald cap, or somebody finally found that genie, I'll warrant.

Cuddly
2008-01-02, 06:54 PM
I have to metagame a lot when I'm playing high int characters, and take up a long time pondering through all my courses of actions.

herrhauptmann
2008-01-02, 07:44 PM
Is anyone else reminded of HH from this?

Huh? What did I do that reminds you?

Devils_Advocate
2008-01-02, 11:27 PM
I almost cried laughing at that. As well I completely agree, high intelligence is really hard to play well. I think Charisma might be too. Ask some high school geek to go up in front of the school, make a big speech, then ask them all for money? You can role charisma and intelligence all you want, but the real question is, can you roleplay them?
I think it was Eliezer Yudkowsky who once wrote that intelligence is the thing that makes it impossible to write a character smarter than you. You can't predict what a smarter person would do; if you could, you'd be that intelligent yourself!

The challenge, then, is not to portray the super-smart character acurately (which is impossible), but plausibly. Fortunately, our inability to predict the behavior of smarter people actually makes this easier than one would expect. As Scott Adams once put it, you might be surprised to learn that the smartest man in the world decided to be a garbageman; but if you think about it, obviously you'd expect the super-intelligent guy to make different decisions than you -- he's smarter! So if you don't understand his choices, the problem is probably on your end...

Superintelligent NPCs who use their mighty brains to improve the world have an omniscient morality license (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OmniscientMoralityLicense). :smallwink: