New and Super Complicated size categories (Advice and Suggestions welcome)

[Doc_Pippin1]

So I have grown to dislike the standard Fine, Diminutive, Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge, Gargantuan, and Colossal setup because it seems far to broad in most places so I have written up a new and more unnecessarily complicated chart for all the possible size categories.

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Infinitesimal - Atomic level
Imperceivable - Bacterium or microbot size
Granular - The size of a grain of sand
Fine - the size of the tip of a pen
Minute - the size of a lego person's head
Lilliputian - the size of a match stick
Minuscule - the size of a normal index finger
Teeny - the size of a normal hand
Tiny - around the size of a normal cat
Little - about as big as a basset hound or spanial
Small - a halfling or gnome
Bantam - dwarf size things
Medium - average adult humans
Sizable - for those races that are bigger than medium but not THAT big like neanderthal, Goliath, and half-giants
Large - the size of a horse or hill giant (2 squares on a battle mat)
Immense - giants and other hulking creatures that can occupy 2-4 spaces (one tangent on this... this was one of the reasons I did this a horse and a fire giant are the same size category but adult horses range from 800 to 2000 pounds and the average fire giant is listed as weighting around 7000 pounds and being roughly 9 feet in girth)

Massive- the size of a larger giant (like storm giants) or an elephant
Huge - around the size of a T-rex
Tremendous - a purple worm
Gargantuan - a good sized sailing ship
Monumental - around the size of a duplex
Titanic - a Great Wyrm
Colossal - the tarrasque
Epic -

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http://cromoart.de/wordpress/wp-cont...cz-d424veo.jpg

Astronomical - a turtle with a small country on its back
Wumbo - its first grade sponge-bob
Planetary - the size of a non gaseous planet
Vast - the size of a solar system
Galactic - The size of a galaxy
Immeasurable - beings that are so big they could count as planes of existence (looking at you movie dormammu)

To explain more, this started when I was cutting out cardboard for tokens and I realized how varied the sizes were for creatures that belonged in the same size categories (Such as the horse and fire giant) or (the cloud giants and titans), these also have some variety in size but not nearly as much as before, anyway these categories are more for the GM than the players and I find it useful for tokens as well as understanding how a monster would move as well as facing, sweeping range, and other seemingly unnecessary detail most people wouldn't care about but still... here it is

[Knaight]

There comes a point where it's just better to have size as a number, this is past it. For instance, Fudge uses Scale, where a characters scale is calculated based on log_1.5(Mass/Base_Mass), where base mass is generally human sized but can be changed if you're running Watership Down or something. So if you have 150 lb as scale 0, scale 1 is 225 lbs, scale 2 338 lbs, etc. Generally rounding to the nearest one is expected, but this still produces a scale that can stretch indefinitely without problem.

For something D&D like I wouldn't use the same base logarithm - it's calculated to try and fit a particular curve pulled from real life, and D&D tends to favor having size be more minor. Still, the same general concept could work, with something like each scale being 2.5 times the mass of the previous one. The 2.5 value also puts humans and halflings about two apart, so it fits the middle of your scale pretty well.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Still, the same general concept could work, with something like each scale being 2.5 times the mass of the previous one. The 2.5 value also puts humans and halflings about two apart, so it fits the middle of your scale pretty well.

I'd advocate 4 times. The standard size categories are based on each step being 2 times bigger, which should mean 4 times stronger (but D&D is incredibly inconsistent in this, valueing good gameplay over scientific accuracy, bunch of barbarians) and 8 times heavier. If you add one extra step between each current step you get a system based on each step being root(2) as big (rounded off to 1.5 for gameplay purposes), twice as strong and 4 times as heavy.

Another alternative somewhere in between would be based on root(3), which is almost the same as 3rdpowerroot(5), meaning one step up is ~1-2 times as large, 3 times as strong and 5 times as heavy, two steps up is 3 times as large, 9 times as strong and 25 times as heavy, four steps 5, 25 (~27), 125 etc.

All in all, in D&D it's probably not worth it, the base stat mechanism barely supports what they have now.

P.S. An African elephant is if anything a little stronger and heavier and all around bigger than a T. rex. Just a tad more compact in design. Elephants and T. rexes are pretty much the perfect example of two things that should absolutely be in the same size category.

[Satinavian]

For something D&D like I wouldn't use the same base logarithm - it's calculated to try and fit a particular curve pulled from real life, and D&D tends to favor having size be more minor. Still, the same general concept could work, with something like each scale being 2.5 times the mass of the previous one. The 2.5 value also puts humans and halflings about two apart, so it fits the middle of your scale pretty well.

There are planets, solar systems and galaxies in the list above. I don't think a simple exponential scale with such a small factor is enough.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

There are planets, solar systems and galaxies in the list above. I don't think a simple exponential scale with such a small factor is enough.

Yeah, sure, but that's because that part of the scale is pretty ridiculous. If it doesn't matter if something is a single lightyear of several million lightyears across, why even have a size category for it? What, they get a -2 penalty to fitting through a door? It's the part close to humans that has the potential to be interesting, and there this scale seems to aim at details, going as far as to put Neanderthals in a different size category than us.

Although I guess there are mathematical formula's that would draw a similarly crooked scale that becomes less detailed the further you go out, especially if we're allowed to use separate functions for below and above medium size.

Or, since D&D already doesn't do a lot of math with the size categories, you could just use a list of descriptive size categories, in which case the list is fine. That's just not my specialty.

[Knaight]

There are planets, solar systems and galaxies in the list above. I don't think a simple exponential scale with such a small factor is enough.

Sure it is - you're using a numerical scale and don't need to have words for everything. Assuming that scale 0 is human sized (call it 75 kg at the center of the scale), and picking some arbitrary numbers:
Mass of Planet: 10^25 kg (a very large rocky planet), Scale: 58
Mass of Solar System: 10^30 kg (a bit smaller than our solar system), Scale: 71
Mass of Galaxy: 10^43 kg (about twice the size of the milky way), Scale: 103

Yes, the numbers get huge, but they get a whole lot less huge with an exponential scale, and if you're just using the numbers anyways that works out fine.