Author Topic: Extreme Weight  (Read 2466 times)

Offline ways and means

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Extreme Weight
« on: August 19, 2011, 04:01:37 PM »
I was wondering what kind off might scores would be needed to throw a sky scraper at someone and what weapons rating people would think it should be. (For a city sized Giant Supernatural Bug)
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Offline Watson

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Re: Extreme Weight
« Reply #1 on: August 19, 2011, 04:09:01 PM »
I would say that it is a plot level thing, and nothing that neither is necessary nor something that the system could handle.

Offline The Mighty Buzzard

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Re: Extreme Weight
« Reply #2 on: August 19, 2011, 04:10:11 PM »
Honestly? I'd roll the bug as if it were normal sized as well as whoever it's fighting and treat the skyscraper as a fairly brittle (1-3 good hits) weapon:2.  No need to have 500 stress boxes or any such nonsense.
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Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Extreme Weight
« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2011, 04:41:23 PM »
The system can handle this easily.

I'd say it's difficulty 20-ish to lift.

Weapon rating 4+, affects a whole zone.

Offline mstorer3772

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Re: Extreme Weight
« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2011, 04:51:47 PM »
If you really feel the need to stat such a thing out... lets see here...

Quote from: The Rules
Something six levels below his Might could be
used as a thrown weapon.

"Huge" gives a +2 to lifting & breaking trappings.  I'd say a city sized bug has quite a few levels of huge, and probably Mythic Strength (+12 lifting) as well.

Lets say 4 Huge's & Mythic strength.  That's +20 lifting.

Looking at the Lifting Chart, I'd say each +1 doubles the weight.  For example:

+1 Most adults.  I'd call that around 150lbs.
+2 Most heavy-set adults.  Call that 300lbs. 

It breaks down in a hurry between +3 and +7, but it's at least possible that's a typeo.  But probably not.

For argument's sake, lets assume:
1)  a mid-sized car (+9) weighs 1 ton (2000lbs).
2)  Each shift after that doubles the weight.
3) A sky scraper weighs 100,000 tons (that's a very "brown" number... guess where I got it from)

So 2^x > 100,000.  Solve for x.

x = 17 (rounding up to the nearest whole number).  2^17 = 131,072 for those of you playing from home.

And you need to beat that by 6 to use it as a thrown weapon.  So 23.

And the mythic strength + (huge x 4) combo gets you to 20.  So your super-bug only needs a might of 3.

But I'd just wave my hands and say "Plot Device".

Of course the big problem with throwing things like that is that you can't really throw them.  They're hollow and designed to support their own weight while sitting on stable ground.  Imagine a 5ft tall model of the Eiffel Tower made from popsicle sticks and Elmers glue.  It's barely holding itself upright under its own weight when that weight is evenly distributed across its base.

If you grab one corner of such a building and lift, you're likely to rip that corner off and get a front row seat to watch the rest of it fall on you.

But lets say you pick it up successfully.  Now you want to throw it (a Long Way).  That means subjecting it to tremendous stress, almost certainly along an axis that wasn't meant to take it.

"Extreme consequences" just don't do it justice.  Oh, some pieces of the building would go in the general direction you wanted, but most of the building's mass would break off and go in various directions, with a fair amount dropping on the head of whatever was foolish enough to try and throw something that fragile.

Yes.  I said "fragile".  At that scale, a skyscraper is popsicle sticks and Elmers.

If you really want your giant bug to throw something huge, try ripping out the side of a mountain.  You'd still have some of the same problems, but you can at least argue the possibility with a straight face.

But I'd still go with "Plot Device".  Dues Ex Bugina doesn't have to obey trivialities like "plausibility" and "physics".


PS: Zones?  The building itself has at least one zone per floor plus one for the roof.  If you're not affecting at least that many zones with your impact, You're Doing It Wrong.
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Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Extreme Weight
« Reply #5 on: August 19, 2011, 05:06:39 PM »
I was taking the problems you mentioned into account, actually. A skyscraper  is a lousy weapon. Hence the fact that it's weapon rating is only about as good as a car.

Zone sizes are not very well defined, and for good reason. A zone can be an entire street. Which would make a one-zone area of effect quite reasonable for a skyscraper.

Offline braincraft

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Re: Extreme Weight
« Reply #6 on: August 19, 2011, 07:41:38 PM »
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Offline devonapple

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Re: Extreme Weight
« Reply #7 on: August 19, 2011, 10:34:42 PM »
If we are applying the Fate Fractal, then Zone could be defined at a macro scale. That said, we don't even need to stat out this bug using the normal rules for Might: just figure out the new scale (example: bug = car, skyscraper = house, something like that) and then re-orient the Might/Breaking/Lifting benchmarks from there.

But then you'd have to determine the scale needed for regular PCs to affect the creature.

This may be better reflected as an extended challenge with plot-level impact (heh heh).
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Offline polkaneverdies

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Re: Extreme Weight
« Reply #8 on: August 19, 2011, 10:55:23 PM »
Dues Ex Bugina
I couldn't let that slip by without comment. Fantastic!

Offline TheMouse

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Re: Extreme Weight
« Reply #9 on: August 20, 2011, 12:37:49 AM »
3) A sky scraper weighs 100,000 tons (that's a very "brown" number... guess where I got it from)
I did a quick search, and one to three hundred thousand tons seems to be a typical range (excluding the weight of the foundation, which I didn't bother to look up because it doesn't have any effect on picking the things up and chucking them). Some of the really big ones are heavier than that.

Offline Haru

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Re: Extreme Weight
« Reply #10 on: August 20, 2011, 12:58:22 AM »
But I'd still go with "Plot Device".  Dues Ex Bugina doesn't have to obey trivialities like "plausibility" and "physics".


PS: Zones?  The building itself has at least one zone per floor plus one for the roof.  If you're not affecting at least that many zones with your impact, You're Doing It Wrong.

A beast of that size would probably have several zones itself. I think it would become more of an environmental threat, than it could be a direct opponent. If you want it to throw a skyscraper, let it throw, if someone is hit, they are dead anyway, there is no need for numbers, in my opinion. If someone is in the immediate area of the destruction, you can make an environmental attack every round, depending on how close they are (6, 4, 2 for near, midrange, far, for example). If someone is in the direct hit zone, he should be taken out immediately, if not killed outright, as long as you make that clear beforehand.

If they attack the bug directly, the scene would probably be the bug itself, even though that is dangerous, being on a building that the bug can just destroy like that would be suicidal. Instead of the environmental attack, you could have them make checks against being knocked of a giant moving bug.
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