How many 1 inch cube's of flesh can one medium sized humanoid corpse make?

[ZippoMoon]

I ask because the BBEG in a game I'm run (First Ever!) is a necromancer using the Clone spell to turn one body into many, an then animate them all to quickly build an army. Yes I am an evil bugger.

[Shining Wrath]

Pretty easy, actually. A human body is mostly water. A cubic foot of water under standard conditions weighs about 63 pounds. So figure 3 cubic feet for a big guy, and therefore 3*12*12*12=5184 one inch cubes.

If you want to have some waste (e.g., blood lost) drop it down to 4000 or 4500.

[ZippoMoon]

Awesome! Thanks a ton!

[CIDE]

A bit I read in a text book (can't seem to find it now) listed the average volume taken up by an average American male was 1.7 cubic meters. Just throwing that into a conversion calculator gives 103,740 cubic inches. Which...seems to be a bit much and doesn't account for fluid and such.

[Shining Wrath]

A bit I read in a text book (can't seem to find it now) listed the average volume taken up by an average American male was 1.7 cubic meters. Just throwing that into a conversion calculator gives 103,740 cubic inches. Which...seems to be a bit much and doesn't account for fluid and such.

A meter being roughly 40 inches, that's 5'8" on a side. Most men being not too much taller than 5'8", you are talking about cubical people. As opposed to cubicle people, which describes far too many of us out here in office land.

EDIT: BRAIN SEIZURE. 1.7 cubic meters is not the same as a cube 1.7 meters on a side. However, 1.7 cubic meters is almost 60 cubic feet, so still a 3600 pound person.

[ZippoMoon]

OK so, which number should I use? Math isn't my strong point which is why I made the thread.

[Shining Wrath]

OK so, which number should I use? Math isn't my strong point which is why I made the thread.

I will stand by mine. Here is a web page supporting 63 pounds (roughly) per cubic foot: Link!

Unless you wish to argue that human beings are much less dense than water, the rest follows.

[DementedFellow]

Isn't flesh just muscle tissue?

I honestly don't know.

[karkus]

You're probably not going to be hand-chopping the bodies, keep in mind.

Make either a spell or a magic item that chops them all up and half-freezes them (just enough to keep the blood inside), then throw them all in an industrial-sized cloning pot (I think professor Farnsworth on Futurama had one...) and let 'em grow!

If you're having trouble logic-ing the price for the pot down, just keep in mind that you're not using it to make actual clones and automatically coming back to life, but rather to simply make the inert bodies. Design it as a body-duplicator, maybe?

[ZippoMoon]

I was going to use Walkniar's Magitech system to make a machine that used knifes mounted on arms to do the the cuting on a still living suspened man in front of the rest of the "raw matrials", so thay can watch...and lisen as the cubes rode away on a conver belt.

As for the cloning part your right about the whole inert part (hadn't realy thought about that) and I like the pot idea I'm going to have to steal that thanks!

[Maquise]

On a tangentially related note, questions like this are exactly what makes this hobby so awesome.

[Axinian]

Ah, D&D forums: the only place where you can ask a question like this and not seem at all suspicious.

Edit: ninja'd by a lot

[ZippoMoon]

Ok, new one: How many 1 inch cube's of flesh can one Gargantuan TRUE Dragon corpse make? Can you say air support (blame Green Ronin's "Secret College Of Necromancy" for this one)?

[Kazyan]

Ok, new one: How many 1 inch cube's of flesh can one Gargantuan TRUE Dragon corpse make? Can you say air support (blame Green Ronin's "Secret College Of Necromancy" for this one)?

AFB, but find the weight of the dragon in pounds, and multiply by 12*12*12/63. Then multiply by, like, 0.7 to account for waste bone and stuff. There you go.

[Shining Wrath]

Ok, new one: How many 1 inch cube's of flesh can one Gargantuan TRUE Dragon corpse make? Can you say air support (blame Green Ronin's "Secret College Of Necromancy" for this one)?

First: disturbing gif.
Second: max size of a Gargantuan creature is 125 tons. Minimum is 16.
16 tons = 32,000 pounds divide by 63 = 507 times 1728 (12 cubed) = 877,714 cubes.
125 tons gives 6,857,142.

Take off for waste and you get somewhere from 750,000 to 6,500,000 or thereabouts.

[ZippoMoon]

Thank you Kazyan, that should do, it if I need any more help (though with what I have in mind that's unlikely) I'll make another post.

[Talderas]

Pretty easy, actually. A human body is mostly water. A cubic foot of water under standard conditions weighs about 63 pounds. So figure 3 cubic feet for a big guy, and therefore 3*12*12*12=5184 one inch cubes.

If you want to have some waste (e.g., blood lost) drop it down to 4000 or 4500.

There's a guiness record for contortionists in a box.

Three contortionists in a box that was 26" x 27" x 22" (2.17' x 2.25' x 1.83') which is nearly nine cubic feet. That's about three cubic feet per person. However that's not the best comparison since contortionists tend to be shorter and lighter than the average populace.

[hamishspence]

Second: max size of a Gargantuan creature is 125 tons. Minimum is 16.

With the occasional exception that bends the size rules a bit. Rocs spring to mind- at a mere 8000 pounds (4 short tons).

Standard weight for a Gargantuan dragon (Draconomicon) is 160,000 pounds- 80 short tons.

[Shining Wrath]

With the occasional exception that bends the size rules a bit. Rocs spring to mind- at a mere 8000 pounds (4 short tons).

Standard weight for a Gargantuan dragon (Draconomicon) is 160,000 pounds- 80 short tons.

If you take the mid-point (16+125)/2 you get 70.5 tons, so that's pretty reasonable. Therefore using 62.5 pounds per cubic foot we have 2560 cubic feet of water, and 4,423,680 cubic inches of draconic flesh. BUT ...

I'd argue that dragons are denser than humans. All that armor plating on the outside, don't ya know? So 3,000,000 might be a good number after waste.

If OP needs more than 3,000,000 dragon clones to accomplish their evil schemes they are just out of luck.

[hamishspence]

I'd argue that dragons are denser than humans. All that armor plating on the outside, don't ya know?

Maybe not. The sample sizes in Draconomicon are pretty tigerish- 10 ft long from nose to rump, of which 5 ft is body- and 4 ft high at the shoulder- this is typical for a Medium dragon- yet it weighs only 320 pounds.

(Dragons are portrayed as having a rather catlike body, aside from long neck, thick tail and wings)

A tiger, even before accounting for wings, longer neck, and thicker tail, would be more like 500 lb.

(It would also be Large rather than Medium, but that's neither here nor there.)

This suggests that dragons tend to be less dense than other creatures of similar proportions.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Is anyone else getting a mental image of the most macabre ice-trays ever?

[Ravenica]

A bit I read in a text book (can't seem to find it now) listed the average volume taken up by an average American male was 1.7 cubic meters. Just throwing that into a conversion calculator gives 103,740 cubic inches. Which...seems to be a bit much and doesn't account for fluid and such.

I think you misread, the volume of a human is around .07 m3 which is 2.47203 cubic feet

[ZippoMoon]

Is anyone else getting a mental image of the most macabre ice-trays ever?

Can I sig that?

Edit: Screw it; doing it anyway that's to good to NOT sig!

[Daftendirekt]

How many 1 inch cube's of flesh can one medium sized humanoid corpse make?

This is one of the few environments where this question wouldn't get you worried looks and/or a call to the cops.

[Phelix-Mu]

So, I didn't read everything, but here is the thing.

Ever carve a chicken? Most of the chicken is actually not solid flesh. The torso cavity of most critters takes up a good bit of the volume, and it is full of organs (and a bit of inter-organ space), and not all the organs are suitable for cutting into one-inch cubes (I guess you could count the liver and kidneys, maybe parts of the lungs and heart). Unless there is some kind of life or membrane holding the pieces together, fluid quickly flows out of most of the soft tissues, leading to further loss of volume. Volume filled by blood (measured in a few quarts for human-sized creatures, as I recall) is lost almost immediately (you are dicing the body, after all).

In short, I'd suggest that less than half of the total volume is "flesh" that is solid. Not sure what the spell calls for, but "flesh" usually refers to muscle tissue, which makes up only so much of a humanoid's volume (especially when you remove the blood and some portion of other liquids lost during dismembering).

Yay. I got to use "dismembering" in an academic discussion. I think that counts for something.