How to do very small creatures?

[Grail Quest]

Does anyone have a good system for handling things when creatures are very small? Sometimes we can handwave things, but what happens when two small creatures fight (say, two witchs' familiars)? How can stats be written up when they really have fractional values compared to even 1 PD, for example.

[schir1964]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

Does anyone have a good system for handling things when creatures are very small? Sometimes we can handwave things' date=' but what happens when two small creatures fight (say, two witchs' familiars)? How can stats be written up when they really have fractional values compared to even 1 PD, for example.[/quote']

I have a document that delves into this subject and a method for handling different size character in a relative manner.

 

I can email it do you if you want. Just contact me at schir1964 @ netzero.com address.

 

- Christopher Mullins

[prestidigitator]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

For the specific example, how about something like:

+4 PD; Not vs. Larger Creatures (-1);

I gave the Limitation a -1, but it would really depend on how small the character is, whether they have Shrinking or Growth, how common small opponents are in the game, etc. You could also make it incremental, like:

+4 PD; -2 PD Per Doubling of Character's Height in Attacker's Height(-1/2);

(this Limitation also being subjective in value).

 

EDIT: Reworded second Limitation for clarity.

[Mister E]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

I would totally stat the creatures out as if they were normal human sized beings... then Shrink them down to whatever size you want them to have. Whenever they fight beings their own size, you use the normal stats, ignoring the shift from being shrunk. It's kind of an informal "Micro-Scale" Dimension Shift effect...

 

I'm pretty sure this is the method suggested from "Villainy Amok"... the new source book that discusses odd situations like this. I don't actually have this book, and am just gleaning this information from the HERO Boards.

[Grail Quest]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

For the specific example, how about something like:

+4 PD; Not vs. Larger Creatures (-1);

I gave the Limitation a -1, but it would really depend on how small the character is, whether they have Shrinking or Growth, how common small opponents are in the game, etc. You could also make it incremental, like:

+4 PD; -2 PD Per Doubling of Character's Height in Attacker's Height(-1/2);

(this Limitation also being subjective in value).

 

EDIT: Reworded second Limitation for clarity.

 

Er... Sorry... You lost me from the get go. Is this for large creatures ignoring small attacks?

[Grail Quest]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

I would totally stat the creatures out as if they were normal human sized beings... then Shrink them down to whatever size you want them to have. Whenever they fight beings their own size' date=' you use the normal stats, ignoring the shift from being shrunk. It's kind of an informal "Micro-Scale" Dimension Shift effect...[/quote']

 

Basically put the whole fight under magnifying glasses, right?

It's the "obvious" solution, except there's the changing stats on the fly part, and what happens when you're mixing big and small? Like tiny sprite with mental illusion versus dumb ogre? Or rat swarm versus hapless sewer explorer?

 

I'm hoping to have a decent no-stat-change-required system, although it looks bleak so far.

 

Point costs for things will be part of the issue, too. No matter how small you are, at some point all your ranged attacks are going to cost the same: 1 CP.

Not sure what to do with that yet.

[Old Man]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

Or rat swarm versus hapless sewer explorer?

 

Swarms are critters unto themselves. The whole mass can be considered a single critter.

[MitchellS]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

The official rule is that creatures of the same size negate dcv plusses or minuses. So 2 giants gain no plusses to hit each other and two rats take no minuses. Defenses don't change due to the fact that each character is still needing to interact with a foe, even if it is a foe of the same size. There's a whole section in Villainy Amok about shrinking/small world characters and combat.

[prestidigitator]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

Er... Sorry... You lost me from the get go. Is this for large creatures ignoring small attacks?

No. This is for small creatures that you want to give defenses against each other but still allow normal sized attackers to squash like bugs. You asked about small creatures possibly having, "fractional PD." This would be one way to do that. You give them normal PD, but reduce or eliminate it against larger creatures. It is just one way to handle it.

[Mister E]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

If I was going to spend a great deal of time focusing the campaign set in cat-sized world ("Tiny", or 1/8th Human-Scale)... I'd shift most of the game stats to reflect this... an Ogre that normally only has two effective levels of Growth, would instead be given 5 effective levels of Growth.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

The official rule is that creatures of the same size negate dcv plusses or minuses. So 2 giants gain no plusses to hit each other and two rats take no minuses. Defenses don't change due to the fact that each character is still needing to interact with a foe' date=' even if it is a foe of the same size. There's a whole section in Villainy Amok about shrinking/small world characters and combat.[/quote']

Where is this official rule? Is it just in Villainy Amok (which I don't have)? I was under the impression that VA is specifically geared toward the Champions genre. Is this rule intended to apply to other genres as well?

 

I assume the DCV penalties/bonuses are based on *relative* sizes, so that when a giant with -4 DCV fights a giant at -6 DCV, the first is at -0 and the second is at -2. Is that correct? Or is it +2 and +0?

 

I've had a problem with this for a long time.

[prestidigitator]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

Where is this official rule? Is it just in Villainy Amok (which I don't have)? I was under the impression that VA is specifically geared toward the Champions genre. Is this rule intended to apply to other genres as well?

The rule was under the description of the Growth and/or Shrinking Powers in 5E. I imagine it is still there in 5ER, though I haven't yet verified this.

 

I assume the DCV penalties/bonuses are based on *relative* sizes, so that when a giant with -4 DCV fights a giant at -6 DCV, the first is at -0 and the second is at -2. Is that correct? Or is it +2 and +0?

 

I've had a problem with this for a long time.

It isn't quite relative. Your case with the -4 DCV and -6 DCV giants is correct (the -4 DCV giant hits the -6 DCV giant as if the latter had only a -2 penalty to DCV; the -6 DCV giant hits the -4 DCV giant as if the latter had no DCV penalty). If it were completely relative, smaller targets would always get a DCV bonus, but actually the only DCV bonus comes from Shrinking (not fewer levels of Growth).

 

Conversely, if one character has +4 DCV due to Shrinking, and another has +6 DCV due to Shrinking, the +4 DCV character hits the +6 DCV character as if the latter had only a +2 DCV bonus; the +6 DCV character hits the +4 DCV character as if the latter had no DCV bonus. If it were completely relative, the character with less Shrinking would in fact have a DCV penalty, which is not the case until the larger character uses Growth.

 

So it is not really that it is relative; it is that Growth can partially or completely negate another character's penalties from Growth, and Shrinking can partially or completely negate another character's bonuses from Shrinking.

[Talon]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

The rule was under the description of the Growth and/or Shrinking Powers in 5E. I imagine it is still there in 5ER' date=' though I haven't yet verified this.[/quote']

 

In 5ER it's under the "Size Powers" header at the start of the powers section.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

It isn't quite relative....

Yes. That's what I meant.

 

I still have a problem with it though: Why should a giant have an easier time hitting a bigger giant than a lilliputian has hitting someone the same proportion larger? 8m tall vs. 16m tall should work the same as 8cm tall vs. 16cm tall, it seems to me.

 

I like the way they handled size differences in d20*, and that's the way I house-rule it: each size catagory smaller grants +1 DCV, and +1 OCV, and each size category larger gives -1 DCV and -1 OCV. That way, the bonuses and penalties always stack or cancel each other out consistantly, no matter what size(s) you're dealing with. Human vs Ogre, Ogre vs lesser Giant, lesser giant vs. greater giant, halfling vs human, pixie vs halfling, brownie vs pixie, etc. all work the same way. Oh, and that +/- to OCV only applies to HtH.

 

Now don't forget that there is a significant advantage that larger creatures have over significantly smaller ones, and that is that their HTH attacks might qualify as AE. The AE effect can be applied regardless of the size of the attacker, as long as that size is significantly larger than the target. Even though humans are, well, human-sized, their hands (or feet) should be considered AE attacks vs household insects, for example. Without some kind of a rule like this, it would be nearly impossible, within the game, for a normal human to swat a fly or stomp on a bug, which would be seriously out of step with reality.

 

I forget offhand how much larger the attacker has to be than the defender to qualify for the virtual AE bonus.

 

*As much as I dislike d20, I have to admit it when they do something right.

[Rapier]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

Does anyone have a good system for handling things when creatures are very small? Sometimes we can handwave things' date=' but what happens when two small creatures fight (say, two witchs' familiars)? How can stats be written up when they really have fractional values compared to even 1 PD, for example.[/quote']

 

One of our last games a few months back, before Chad got too sick to play, involved a similar problem.

 

There were a few combats at less than human height (two "familiars," for lack of a better term), and then the heroes were shrunk and had to battle the standard bugs-come-monsters.

 

A lot of it depends on how small the creatures are. For the familiars I used pretty standard creature designs and just let them duke it out. If you were going very much smaller (house spider vs army ant) you might go the other way (this is how I warped my players into tiny people) and design monstruous versions. Let me explain. My players were shrunk down to the same approximate size as a common ant. So I built an ant that was the same size as my players. THEN I shrunk (not the power Shrinking but the plot device shrinking) everyone down. I was amazed at how well it scaled.

 

I had two choices, spend all the time shrinking all the players powers down to 1/4d6 EB etc (which was impossible to play) or just increase everything else to make them that small. A table leg goes from 3 BODY to 68 BODY etc. You can also just hand wave a bunch of things. I mean even though your brick is strong he just can't lift that box of crackers.

[schir1964]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

Not trying to derail this thread or anything, in fact I think this is one the things that Grail is struggling with:

 

Should scaling, using a relative size system, affect the power level of attacks also?

 

If one character shrinks to one sixteenth the size of a human, should his Energy Blast likewise reduce in potency?

 

Granted that in Superhero genres this may not apply, but what about in Fantasy or Sci-Fi especially.

 

Hmmm....

 

- Christopher Mullins

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

That's another important consideration. Two pixies with about -20 STR can't do any HtH damage to each other at all, without some kind of scaling method.

[MitchellS]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

That's another important consideration. Two pixies with about -20 STR can't do any HtH damage to each other at all' date=' without some kind of scaling method.[/quote']

I know I sound like I'm harping but Villainy Amok has an entire chapter on shrinking, which address both size and damage issues. Just because it's a superhero product doesn't mean it doesn't add new rules for the system. USPD did that was well.

[schir1964]

Re: How to do very small creatures?

 

I know I sound like I'm harping but Villainy Amok has an entire chapter on shrinking' date=' which address both size and damage issues. Just because it's a superhero product doesn't mean it doesn't add new rules for the system. USPD did that was well.[/quote']

But those rules are broken.

 

How do I know they are broken, because I don't have that book. All rules in any books I don't have are broken. (8^D)

 

However, for those of us who don't have the luxury of having that Supplement must create our own rules, which I've already done.

 

Yet at the time I created it, I hadn't considered the Power Level Scaling aspect.

 

- Christopher Mullins