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[iron_general]

From a programming perspective that would be quite simple, one variable (creature_size) would be substituted for another (effective size) when said creature attacks, i.e. in the damage calculation equation. If effective size was the same as creature size by default in the raws there should be no problem, the effective size of the attacking creature would be use instead of its creatue size.

[Evil One]

At any rate, I'm not sure what the "max strength" is, or why you think that wouldn't be sufficient, especially since right now that isn't even implemented as a significant factor.

In addition to iron_general's post, the max strength is 5 time the normal strength, 1000 is the average and 5000 the max... If you wanted a creature to be 10 times stronger than default, it isn't possible with the current system.

So even if Toady did tie strength and skill to combat power, you still wouldn't be able to create some creatures.

[iceball3]

Speaking of such, how many times is your strength multiplied when enraged? It seems I can send a monkey soaring for quite the distance when throwing it when enraged. High strength on a human.

[Evil One]

Speaking of such, how many times is your strength multiplied when enraged? It seems I can send a monkey soaring for quite the distance when throwing it when enraged. High strength on a human.

I have no idea, but I intend to test it by cranking up the [PERSONALITY:ANGER:X:X:X] stat on my new modded race.

[G-Flex]

From a programming perspective that would be quite simple, one variable (creature_size) would be substituted for another (effective size) when said creature attacks, i.e. in the damage calculation equation. If effective size was the same as creature size by default in the raws there should be no problem, the effective size of the attacking creature would be use instead of its creatue size.

Combat is complicated; I doubt there's a single "damage equation". Many aspects of damage and combat would still require calculations based on the real size.

the max strength is 5 time the normal strength, 1000 is the average and 5000 the max... If you wanted a creature to be 10 times stronger than default, it isn't possible with the current system.

So even if Toady did tie strength and skill to combat power, you still wouldn't be able to create some creatures.

That's a good point, but that's still a failing of the attribute system in general. What if you want a creature who's more than five times as willful or agile as the default, or is more than five times as good at remembering stuff? I don't think kludging in a solution for strength is a good idea when there's an obvious underlying issue with a more general solution at hand. If attribute maxima are insufficiently high, then they should be higher.

[iron_general]

The game can aready determine if a creature is attacking or defending and which values need be placed where for the seize of both creatures, thus it would be simple to use effective size value for the attacking creature and creature size for the defending creature. This would be a very simple change in the code, the value of a single integer is changed. In general this is an elegant solution that is easily implimented within the current system.

[G-Flex]

The game can aready determine if a creature is attacking or defending and which values need be placed where for the seize of both creatures, thus it would be simple to use effective size value for the attacking creature and creature size for the defending creature.

No, it wouldn't, because DF combat is more complicated than you think. The size an attacking part affects the size of the surface area of the attack, for instance: Does it make sense for a super-strong human-sized creature to make claw wounds two feet wide? Does it also make sense for someone with normal-sized fists to be able to hit someone in the torso and both arms at once, as if he had fists the size of a person? No, it doesn't.

My point is that there would be absurdities like this where the size of a creature and its body parts affects more than just the amount of damage done, and that a more general solution to the problem is available and wouldn't be so problematic.

[iceball3]

The game can aready determine if a creature is attacking or defending and which values need be placed where for the seize of both creatures, thus it would be simple to use effective size value for the attacking creature and creature size for the defending creature.

No, it wouldn't, because DF combat is more complicated than you think. The size an attacking part affects the size of the surface area of the attack, for instance: Does it make sense for a super-strong human-sized creature to make claw wounds two feet wide? Does it also make sense for someone with normal-sized fists to be able to hit someone in the torso and both arms at once, as if he had fists the size of a person? No, it doesn't.

My point is that there would be absurdities like this where the size of a creature and its body parts affects more than just the amount of damage done, and that a more general solution to the problem is available and wouldn't be so problematic.

I guess I would have to agree with this, because looking at it, almost every aspect of size  used for combat will have to be changed in some way. Things like contact area and material thickness etc.

[Jacob/Lee]

I support this idea. It would be very useful to create powerful supernatural creatures (like you stated) but have them the size of a person or smaller even. Such as a creature the 3/4 the size of a human, but being twice as strong as them.

[iceball3]

I support this idea. It would be very useful to create powerful supernatural creatures (like you stated) but have them the size of a person or smaller even. Such as a creature the 3/4 the size of a human, but being twice as strong as them.

Actually, the strength attribute isn't that severely limited. You can already get something like that.

[Evil One]

The game can aready determine if a creature is attacking or defending and which values need be placed where for the seize of both creatures, thus it would be simple to use effective size value for the attacking creature and creature size for the defending creature.

No, it wouldn't, because DF combat is more complicated than you think. The size an attacking part affects the size of the surface area of the attack, for instance: Does it make sense for a super-strong human-sized creature to make claw wounds two feet wide? Does it also make sense for someone with normal-sized fists to be able to hit someone in the torso and both arms at once, as if he had fists the size of a person? No, it doesn't.

My point is that there would be absurdities like this where the size of a creature and its body parts affects more than just the amount of damage done, and that a more general solution to the problem is available and wouldn't be so problematic.

The Effective_Size token only affects direct combat attacks made by or against the effectively larger creature, it doesn't affect a creatures actual size (nor weight, but does affect the damage a creature does or takes) a vampire would still be human sized and would still be able to wear human sized clothing, but in combat although it still has human size it'd be able to attack with 10 times the effectiveness causing an enemy to fly away.

As I've stated in the original post, a creature with an altered effective size, still has the same physical size as denoted by the size token... That was the entire point, if it were going to affect their physical size as well, you might as well just use the existing creature size token.

[G-Flex]

The Effective_Size token only affects direct combat attacks made by or against the effectively larger creature, it doesn't affect a creatures actual size (nor weight, but does affect the damage a creature does or takes) a vampire would still be human sized and would still be able to wear human sized clothing, but in combat although it still has human size it'd be able to attack with 10 times the effectiveness causing an enemy to fly away.

As I've stated in the original post, a creature with an altered effective size, still has the same physical size as denoted by the size token... That was the entire point, if it were going to affect their physical size as well, you might as well just use the existing creature size token.

You're missing the entire point. That point is: It's not obvious where in the combat calculations to consider the creature as being its "actual" size and where to consider it as being its "effective" size, especially since the way combat works now, the actual size of the creature matters in ways beyond how "powerful" its attacks are. You cannot, in the current system, separate between "this body part is big, so it's powerful" and "this body part is big, so it leaves a wider puncture wound".

At any rate, absolutely none of this is necessary; much simpler and less problematic changes to attributes and their limits would solve this problem, solve problems much more general than this, and lead to none of their own.

[Evil One]

The Effective_Size token only affects direct combat attacks made by or against the effectively larger creature, it doesn't affect a creatures actual size (nor weight, but does affect the damage a creature does or takes) a vampire would still be human sized and would still be able to wear human sized clothing, but in combat although it still has human size it'd be able to attack with 10 times the effectiveness causing an enemy to fly away.

As I've stated in the original post, a creature with an altered effective size, still has the same physical size as denoted by the size token... That was the entire point, if it were going to affect their physical size as well, you might as well just use the existing creature size token.

You're missing the entire point. That point is: It's not obvious where in the combat calculations to consider the creature as being its "actual" size and where to consider it as being its "effective" size, especially since the way combat works now, the actual size of the creature matters in ways beyond how "powerful" its attacks are. You cannot, in the current system, separate between "this body part is big, so it's powerful" and "this body part is big, so it leaves a wider puncture wound".

At any rate, absolutely none of this is necessary; much simpler and less problematic changes to attributes and their limits would solve this problem, solve problems much more general than this, and lead to none of their own.

Do you have any idea how many things the attribute system is tied to?

Personality, learning capabilities, crafting capabilities, skills, combat effectiveness, emotional characteristics, ETC... redefining the limits of the attribute system and then recalculating the entirety of all these things would be a lot more work than adding the proposed token.

There is a clear distinction in how a creatures size affects its combat capability evidenced by the fact that attributes don't do anything to how far a creature can hit another creature, only its size does at the moment... but the proposed token doesn't actually modify a creatures size, it simply applies an effective modifier to what it's size would do in combat.

So if the calculations were that a creature that had a body size of 70000 and a fist rel_size of 40 would hit for 10 damage and knock the creature back one square, the effective size token would not affect the first two arguments but would alter the next two, so the creatures physical size and relative sizes remain the same and all calculations regard those sizes also remain the same (IE how easy the part is to hit based on its size, is it easy to remove,ETC), but the combat effects normally associated with those sizes (how much actual damage a creature takes to the bodypart, how vulnerable is the bodypart to being severed or broken, how far a creature is thrown by the impact of the bodypart and what damage is done by it) are instead recalculated by the effective size token.

[G-Flex]

Do you have any idea how many things the attribute system is tied to?

Personality, learning capabilities, crafting capabilities, skills, combat effectiveness, emotional characteristics, ETC... redefining the limits of the attribute system and then recalculating the entirety of all these things would be a lot more work than adding the proposed token.

Huh? What are you talking about? I never said that anything about that would be necessary except for changing how high the attributes can go. This should not result in any qualitative changes to the system, and if the system is designed remotely competently, allowing "memory" to go up to 10x instead of x (where x is whatever the maximum is now) should not cause problems.

So if the calculations were that a creature that had a body size of 70000 and a fist rel_size of 40 would hit for 10 damage and knock the creature back one square, the effective size token would not affect the first two arguments but would alter the next two, so the creatures physical size and relative sizes remain the same and all calculations regard those sizes also remain the same (IE how easy the part is to hit based on its size, is it easy to remove,ETC), but the combat effects normally associated with those sizes (how much actual damage a creature takes to the bodypart, how vulnerable is the bodypart to being severed or broken, how far a creature is thrown by the impact of the bodypart and what damage is done by it) are instead recalculated by the effective size token.

You're forgetting that a lot of these things would be handled by the same mechanisms. How wide a hole your spear (or a pointy claw on the end of your hand, or a horn on your head) makes, and how deeply it penetrates, is very much tied to how much damage it can do. The simulation is enough of, well, a simulation that you can't expect things to work reasonably, as there's just no way to simulate how much damage a minotaur's horn would do when he gores you without also changing how wide or deeply it penetrates, and other things directly related to actual size that you couldn't treat differently.


Again: Allowing attributes to reach higher values shouldn't really mess anything up. The only reason that would happen is if the game uses fairly bizarre methods that make assumptions about the maximum attributes and fail to function properly above those maxima, which should not be, and probably is not, the case. The game should be able to scale well as attributes increase.

[Bohandas]

I don't know if this has been proposed but I'd like to see an effective size token that would read exactly like the [BODY_SIZE] token, but would only be used for combat related effects, so...

A human has [BODY_SIZE:12:0:70000] but if you wanted to create a vampire you could add the following [EFFECTIVE_SIZE:12:0:700000]

So a Vampire would have 10 times the combat strengths of a human of the same age but due to having the same body size, would still be able to wear human sized clothes and/or armour.

This'd be a good token for supernatural or artificial creatures like golems, because you could use it to give a man-sized golem incredible strength.

EDIT - Alternatively (or perhaps additionally) a multiplier such as [EFFECTIVE_SIZE_MOD:X] might be useful as well.

Oh and I suppose it wouldn't hurt to add an [ITEM_THEFT_PREF:X] token, to allow creatures to steal specfic items, although this doesn't have anything to do with making stronger creatures, it would be entertaining.

I Really like both of these ideas!