Intra-racial resizing?

[Mulu]

Not sure if this is possible, but after reading OP's review of NWN2, I remembered missing the hinted at resizing ability too. I wonder if we could do intra-racial size differences ourselves? I've seen them done for NPC's in NWN2. It would be nice at PC login after creation to have an OOC area with a widget to adjust appearance (and a starting store), as a part of the base mod.

[Souvarine]

That'd be particularily useful for drow females, who are supposedly bigger than the males.

Otherwise i'm not too sure i that'd be terribly useful: i assume most people would take the "increased" size 8 times out of 10.

[Mulu]

Oh, I don't know about that, plenty of people play smaller than average PC's. It's not like it affects your stats.

[Souvarine]

From my experience, most mmporgs that have size as a customizeable feature (DAOC, COH and COV, shadowblade, ryzom...i didn't play world of warcrap so i don't know) most players would take the tallest size, except those who wanted a "sneaky" character...which made them harder to target (i.e. click on) or be the "funny midget" sort.

[TennysonBull]

personally, i'd like to see PC scaling set as a formula based on the character's STR and CON.

While yes there are plenty of examples of shorter people with lots of STR, this would make it a general rule that if the PC you're looking at is taller than you in an obvious in game way that he is probably stronger than you.

Note that I set 100% at an ability score of 13 as that is the average in the creator for a new PC.

"See that tall brute in the corner? He's the fellow who crushed an orc's skull with his bare hands..."

Something like this:

STR sets height
CON sets width (and depth)

ABILITY SCALE
06 065%
07 070%
08 075%
09 080%
10 085%
11 090%
12 095%
13 100%
14 105%
15 110%
16 115%
17 120%
18 125%
19 130%
20 135%

[Audark]

I'd agree with you TennysonBull if those percentages wouldn't result in horribly malformed looking characters. Playing around in the toolset you can make NPCs look very stupid if their size it out of whack vertically compared to horizonally.

Any system that takes control out of the hands of the creators of the PC is a poor option in my opinion, since str has little effect on height, and con may not necessarily have anything to do with ones girth. Plenty of broad and tall people who are wimps.

I just think that's limiting and a poor idea to have as 'mandatory' now if those percentages were used as a 'suggested' build and then players could adjust from there, I could probably agree

[HEEGZ]

I agree Halrin. It's a good idea but after having tried the adjustments it really is best to leave it in the hands of the creator as it is too easy to mess up the proportions.

- HEEGZ

[Orcpaladin]

There has to be a way to rescale, eh? Has your PC met the HO pirate at Highcliff? I play a HO PC, and my character only comes up to this guy's shoulder. There is another NPC in game that is significantly taller than others of the same race, but I can't remember which one.

[Souvarine]

The enlarge person spells shows that it's possible to resize characters.

The % ratio linked to stats would be ideal, but i would remove the threat of ridiculous proportions by taking out the constitution from the equation. Constitution doesn't have anything to do with size anyways. Some small folk are very resistant to deseases or cold or whatnot, while big fat people may be incapacitated by completely different ailments.

So, basically, i would make characters scaled to strenght only. That would also make elves much less disproportionated (since they very often have lower constitution than strenght)

Also i'd only go out on a range of (+ or -)20% rather than 35%.

I would end this in mentioning that they already have done the resizing between the elven subraces and half-elves.

- Drow Females (bigger than males)
- Svirfneblin (i think they are smaller than usual gnomes ?)
- Halfling Strongheart (bigger than usual halfling i guess?)

what other cases do we have?

Apart from those, it's really humans who would need the option, because they are the ones who should be extremely varied.

[AcadiusLost]

Adding a rescaling dialogue should be fairly trivial, I can look into making one for the basemod start area. Not sure how best to correlate the abstract scaling of NWN2 to the stats from the sourcebooks, but I think we could find something workable.

Anything I make is likely to be a bit clodgy, like a dialogue with "taller" and "wider" options you can continue to click until you're satisfied or you reach a maximum. Anyone with GUI skills might be able to do a much snazzier job.

re: shorter PCs: while the preference will doubtlessly be for tall PCs, this is not exactly a standard MMORPG. I'd have made my PC shorter than average, I know a few others who likely would have as well.

[Ronan]

Subrace-based resizing is not necissary. As I've said, I've resized the appearances of all (sub)races to be based on FR sizes instead of standard D&D ones.

Gender-based and preference-based (ie, just making your PC taller or shorter than is normal) resizing is currently not possible, but yeah we hope to add it with scripting. The later would be based off of the range of heights allowable in canon, if someone wants to do it. Some testing of how EffectSizeDecrease/Increase() effects stack is of course necissary.

[Mayhem]

Basing height off STR and CON is silly - but it might be nice to see a guidline for calculation of *weight* Based on height+str+con.

[White Warlock]

Disclaimer: I'm friggin' exhausted, so bear with me on the low quality of this post.

From my experience, most mmporgs that have size as a customizeable feature (DAOC, COH and COV, shadowblade, ryzom...i didn't play world of warcrap so i don't know) most players would take the tallest size, except those who wanted a "sneaky" character...which made them harder to target (i.e. click on) or be the "funny midget" sort.

Almost all mmorpgs are 'PG' and 'munchkin' based. You won't have a lot of that in a roleplay-based PW.

Basing height off STR and CON is silly - but it might be nice to see a guidline for calculation of *weight* Based on height+str+con.

I agree it is silly. Okay, pulling out a resume'... having studied the martial arts (and fitness) over the past 29 years now, i can tell you with confidence that strength holds many variables, not the least of which is intrinsic knowledege of leverage/torque. It would be a waste of time for me to try and quantify D&D's stupid characteristics, mainly because they're stupid. But, strength in D&D does not merely cover the clean & jerk, or even weightlifting. In D&D, strength is primarily a determinate of the ability to use mass in combat. Effective use of mass is mostly a learned thing, but levels in D&D do not reflect this. Instead levels reflect accuracy, accelleration, technique(s), and similar.

Thus, we must take the leap that D&D has taken, and assume strength is a measure of 'mass control.' What this means, at least to me, is that although a character could be massive, and could lift a Hummer, if he is not able to wield his mass in combat (or in bashing doors down), because of a lack of body control or a supreme lack of understanding of body dynamics (leverage, torque, center of balance, etc), he won't have a high 'combat' strength.

Even if you wish to dismiss what i just presented, consider that a 'short' arm has less torque than a long arm, and thus is capable of lifting more, albeit at a shorter range. Joints in the body act as pulleys, while limbs are extendors, or levers from the pulleys. The longer these levers, the lower the pulley multiplier provided by the muscles (damn, so much harder to describe this in words), and thus the weaker a person may seem.

For those who watched and participated in full-on competitions, you'll note that some large persons can present tremendous damage when they strike, but so can some small persons. In fact, for the first 10 UFCs (after that, they foolishly made weight classifications), most of the fights in which a large person went against a smaller person, the smaller person won. That has a lot to do with large people becoming dependent on their mass, yet never obtaining the skills necessary to utilize that mass to greater effect, but also because smaller people have less mass to work with, and are thus better able to 'control' that mass.

So there it is. A big guy, having greater upper body strength, may be able to wield larger weapons that could do more damage just because of the mass of those weapons, but the amount of 'their own' mass they can put behind those strikes, is dependent on a character's strength. We already know this, but it serves to illustrate the obvious.

Constitution, in D&D, is also a silly measurement. Its primary focus is in how 'tough' someone is, with a secondary factored in as healing properties and immune system (how healthy). Being physically tough is not as much dependent upon muscle mass, but on bone mass (to note, heavy-duty weightlifters generally gain more bone mass), and on a person's ability to 'roll' with impact. It also is on whether a person's blood vessels rupture easily. D&D reflects the latter by providing more hps as a character levels, so this 'roll' with impact thing is not part of D&D's constitution.
As is it is measured in D&D, constitution is far more a 'mental' characteristic than a physical one. Its the ability to avoid going unconscious, even though your mind says to just lay down and die. It's the ability to take a beating without crying, "foul!" And, in being able to do so, absorb more damage.

STORYTIME
Before i learned how to kick the crap out of a garbage can, i got in some tangles as a youth. I was really small as a child, and thus any fights i got into were against larger guys. But, being small didn't prevent me from being strong... which i was. I didn't look strong, but i had great control over what little mass i had. I never lost any of my tuffles as a youth, although i do recall one person holding me down, fearing to release me should i punch him again. And as i grew older, after studying judo and wrestling (and other things irrelevant to this example), i would regularly wrestle people much larger than me... with much greater ease than it was to wrestle someone the same size or even smaller than me.

So while being physically strong may help to 'restrain' an 'untrained' combatant, it will not help all that much in being able to 'do the damage,' and it won't work well against a trained combatant. Problem is, someone who is physically strong has a 'hard time' learning the physics. Brute strength helped them to open a can of pickles, but until they are willing to relinquish control of their body to the mind, they have no friggin' chance of learning how to effectively wield their mass.

In closing, the D&D characteristics of strength and constitution should have 'no' bearing on height or weight, just as D&D's intelligence and wisdom should have no bearing on the dimensions of the skull and forehead. D&D characteristics are 'combat' measurements, and not Mr. Universe measurements.

[Stormseeker]

He he he size does matter if you have the strength and mass to match. Aint nothing like powering out of a move with pure strength.
I would like to be able to change the size of my pc...if nothing else being able to take the halforc body...drop a couple of inches of him...and add a human head. Or do the exact opposite of a dwarf.

[Ronan]

I've looked at many PC descriptions in ALFA, and I have not seen an over-abundance of "tall" PCs. Adventurers are exceptional people, who would tend to be bigger/tougher, so more of them being tall than normal doesn't seem like a problem to me. With all this in mind, the planned system will be a scaling chosen by the PC after creation, within canon bounds. The player only has the opportunity to chose it once, though DMs could alter it at any time.

Does anyone know of canon sizes for drow females compared to males?