Characteristics for New Monsters

[Baconjurer]

I'm trying to make a spreadsheet that will assign reasonable and consistent characteristics to new monsters I invent. I want to imagine the new monster in my mind and convert that into game characteristics. My idea is to imagine the new monster and translate it using answers to the following dropdowns. Then I'll have the spreadsheet automatically give the new monster a proper range for the characteristics.

Strength - Can drag as much weight as...a mouse, a cat, an average man, a wolf, a horse, a grizzly bear, an elephant, a mammoth, a brontosaurus

Dexterity - Can dart and weave as quickly as...a tree, an elephant, a bear, an average man, a horse, a cat, a squirrel, an insect

Constitution - putting 1 cubic centimeter of lead on top of it would crush it, putting 10 cubic centimeters of lead on top of it would crush it, putting 1 cubic meter of lead on top of it would crush it, putting 10 cubic meters of lead on top of it would crush it, putting 100 cubic meters of lead on top of it would crush it, putting 1000 cubic meters of lead on top of it would crush it, putting a town sized cube of lead on it would crush it, putting a city sized cube of lead on top of it would crush it, putting a country sized cube of lead on top of it would crush it

Size - As big as...an ant, a cat, a dog, an average man, a horse , a grizzly bear, an elephant, a mammoth, a brontosaurus, a skyscraper

Intelligence - Unable to learn or think in anyway, able to be trained to not pee in the house, able to be trained to do basic tricks, able to speak, able to pass high school maths, able to pass college maths, able to work as a theoretical physicist, able to see the matrix

Power - ??

Appearance - As good looking as....a pile of dung, an insect, an ugly human, an average human, a good looking human, a supermodel human, inhumanly good looking?

I'm thinking size alone can be used to assign the characteristics of STR, CON, and SIZ. I have no idea how to think about power, and appearance is a tricky one to think about too. I'm looking for help in polishing these out so that my spreadsheet can output new monsters with characteristics that are internally consistent and logical, and any other general advice out there. Thanks

Edited May 4, 2017 by Baconjurer

[Atgxtg]

SIZ alone can't quite do it. It can get you in the right ballpark, but there are differences between different types of creatures. As a general rule a 50 pound monkey is going to be stronger than a 50 pound human.  Generally speaking the smarter an animal is, the lower the percentage of muscle mass and the lower it's STR. The reason being that more brain power requires more brains (and those require more energy to feed) and leaves a bit less room for muscle.

A couple of us were working on an RQ 3 bestiary that did much of what you are trying to do. You picked what you wanted to write up, then found a similar creature to get baseline stats from, and then scaled it up or down using the square-cube law. For instance, if I wanted to get RQ3/BRP stats for Megalodon, then I'd start with the large (Great White) shark stats in RQ 3, and then scale it up to Megalodon SIZ (assuming a average length of 17m and average mass of 59mt, that would be about SIZ 89). Since 89 is 44 points larger, and STR (and CON) scale at the 2/3 power (I can explain that if you want me to, or you can just take my word for it) then STR And CON would increase by 30 points. 

That would give you a pretty good start. There were a few minor details: I had something in there that would shift the bite damage a little as SIZ changed, and adjust the armor, DEX would probably drop a point or two and POW go up, but that's the basic approach. We had a few working spreadsheets and a couple of databases. 

 

If you are interested I can send you some of the stuff we used. One thing that we did was try to give each type of creature a set of modifiers for STR, CON, DEX etc. and then simply applied those to the defaults we would get from mass (SIZ). The finals numbers might need to be tweaked a bit, but overall the spreadsheet STATs were close enough that you could use them in play without any problems. 

In our experience we found that POW increases gradually with mass. Probably in part so that players can take down big monsters too easily with spells. DEX probably decreases a bit as SIZ increases. STR tends to drop as creatures get smarter. APP is tough, since it mostly subjective. Unless you are taking about humanoids it ends up being more a case f how we find furry animals to be cute and cuddly. 

[Baconjurer]

Sure Atg, I'll take whatever you got 

Did you guys have a way of visualizing what the characteristics meant? I've been basing it off of 10 = average human and also that they grow linearly, so if the monster I'm making is twice as strong as an average human, it would have a strength around 20. Here's my revised thoughts:

STR = visualize how much weight they could push or pull

CON = visualize how much weight you could stack on their back before they are crushed (this may be problematic for amorphous creatures e.g. the gelatinous cube, I guess that would just mean they would have infinity CON and couldn't be killed by hitting them)

SIZ = visualize how big they are

DEX = visualize how easy would it be for an average human to grab them with their hand when they wanted to avoid being grabbed

POW = visualize how much spirit do they have, for most living beasts this will just match a human range, otherwise you have divine beings on one end of the scale and soulless zombies on the other

APP is always between 0-21, only relevant if players are the same species

[Atgxtg]

We were mostly working on starting up real world animals and dinosaurs so we had a bit more to go on, including some illustrations. But we did have the SIZ table to help. In fact I kinda used it as the basis for everything. 

The SIZ table in BRP is the one from Call of Cthulhu, which in turn is based off the SIZ table in RQ3, but has some errors. The RQ3 SIZ table was in turn based off of the one from the Superworld Boxed Set, with some modifications at the high and low end. 

Anyway, in the SIZ table, SIZes from 8-88 follow a doubling progression, where each doubling of mass is worth +8 SIZ . Note that this is by mass, not height. So if you magically grew a man to twice his normal height, you'd actually raise his mass to eight times his norm, or +24 SIZ. We used the same progression for the other attributes (mostly STR and CON) so as to have everything working on the same scale.  We even did that with toxins using the LD50 value to determine the POT. 

 

So for us, we looked at it as follows:

STR was the amount that could be lifted 50% of the time (per the SIZ table). Some creatures might not be able to lift things. Realistically most creatures can push or pull much more weight than they can lift, so that figure should be higher than their STR. STR was based on SIZ and equal to 2/3 SIZ plus a modifier  based on the general type of creature. THe 2/3rds is because in real life muscle power is proportional to mass^(2/3). There might have been ad addtional modfier for the creatures's diet, but I'd have to check, it's been so long. 

CON for us was strictly stamina, health, immunity and recuperative ability. How much weight you can stack on a creature is more a function of SIZ (well technically tensile strength, but STR in game is mostly about muscle, not bone. It takes quite a bit of weight to crush a person, so by that measurement human CON would be a lot higher than 10. CON was also based on 2/3 SIZ plus a modifier. 

Oh, and we matched poisons against Hit Points rather than CON, since SIZ plays a major factor in real life. 

SIZ was the creature's mass (weight in most cases =, too). For creatures made out of flesh and blood, SIZ was also a good measure of the creatures volume. But there were some exceptions-mostly magical stuff. For instance, if we wanted to do up a bronze figure like Talos from Jason and the Argonauts, we'd apply a modifier to SIZ based on how heavy the material used was (in this case bronze has a specific gravity of about 7.4-8.9 depending on type, so we'd be looking at a modifier in the 23-25 range).

INT was on the same scale used in RQ3. However as a rough guideline (meaning I hadn't worked out a good way to factor it into the STR calculation yet) the  creatures average INT reduced STR. So, generally speaking,  a SIZ 16 Gorilla would be stronger than a SIZ 16 human

 DEX was mostly agility, and reaction speed. This was mostly determined by body type, with a modifier for SIZ. Generally speaking the bigger the creature got, the lower the DEX, snce it would take that much longer for it to react. The modifier was fairly slight though.  

POW was spirit, since that's what it's defined as. This was mostly determined by INT, the body type, with a modifier for SIZ (bigger critters tended to have a higher POW in game-probably to keep the PCs fron taking them out too easily with magic)

We didn't bother with APP, since we mostly weren't working on sentient species that PCs might find attractive. 

 

Edited May 6, 2017 by Atgxtg

[Atgxtg]

On 5/4/2017 at 7:20 PM, Baconjurer said:

Sure Atg, I'll take whatever you got 

 

I'll starting hunting for the files. I know I got them, just have to figure what hard drive they are on.

What I think you really want is the "Critter Fitter" scaling spreadsheet. 

Edited May 6, 2017 by Atgxtg

[soltakss]

On 5/4/2017 at 8:32 PM, Baconjurer said:

I'm trying to make a spreadsheet that will assign reasonable and consistent characteristics to new monsters I invent. I want to imagine the new monster in my mind and convert that into game characteristics. My idea is to imagine the new monster and translate it using answers to the following dropdowns. Then I'll have the spreadsheet automatically give the new monster a proper range for the characteristics.

 

That is what I do when creating new creatures. I say "Big as a horse, quick as a tiger, strong as an ox " and so on, taking the characteristics from those creatures, then fiddle with Traits, hit locations and so on until I have something that works.

My spreadsheet has Hit Points, Damage Bonus, Movement and Hit Locations, but not Characteristics, for a number of RQ-style systems.

[Atgxtg]

That's interesting, but what do you do if you want something that doesn't match up with an existing creature? 

[soltakss]

7 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

That's interesting, but what do you do if you want something that doesn't match up with an existing creature? 

Make it up.

Unles it is a really odd creature, I can usually say that some part of it is like another creature.

[Joerg]

13 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

That's interesting, but what do you do if you want something that doesn't match up with an existing creature? 

I would like to challenge you to describe a creature that doesn't match up with some BRP system's game stats for a creature. Unless you bring up a creature that can be described as topology or Greater Old One or upscale, stats for some of the most abstruse creatures have been published.

[g33k]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

I would like to challenge you to describe a creature that doesn't match up with some BRP system's game stats for a creature. Unless you bring up a creature that can be described as topology or Greater Old One or upscale, stats for some of the most abstruse creatures have been published.

Is there anything like a "dirigible whale" -- huge size in X/Y/Z axes, but hollow & very-very-low-mass -- that might live in a gas-giant atmosphere?

[soltakss]

2 hours ago, g33k said:

Is there anything like a "dirigible whale" -- huge size in X/Y/Z axes, but hollow & very-very-low-mass -- that might live in a gas-giant atmosphere?

Same STR/CON/SIZ as a whale, DEX whatever you want, POW whatever you want. Has the power of Flight. Hollow on the inside would be a description rather than a trait.

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

Same STR/CON/SIZ as a whale, DEX whatever you want, POW whatever you want. Has the power of Flight. Hollow on the inside would be a description rather than a trait.

Except it wouldn't have the same SIZ as a whale, since it would be a lot lighter. Hollow is more than just a description.

[Atgxtg]

5 hours ago, g33k said:

Is there anything like a "dirigible whale" -- huge size in X/Y/Z axes, but hollow & very-very-low-mass -- that might live in a gas-giant atmosphere?

I'd probably go with what we know about dirigibles and use that as a basis. For instance an airship will have a volume about 1000 times it mass (since hydrogen and helium are so light, you need a lot of it to get enough lift to counteract the weight of the creature.). So if you wanted a dirigible whale, that had the same mass as a whale, you'd want to give it about 1000 times the volume (that would be about +80 to size for purposes such as being hit), and make it about ten times the length, width, and depth (X/Y/Z) of a whale. 

 

Scientifically, I'm not sure if such a creature could exist. I suspect that the high gravity and pressure of a gas giant would probably destroy such a creature. But it's interesting enough to try and rationalize. 

[g33k]

29 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Scientifically, I'm not sure if such a creature could exist. I suspect that the high gravity and pressure of a gas giant would probably destroy such a creature. But it's interesting enough to try and rationalize. 

There isn't a steep gravity GRADIENT -- that would certainly be problematic!

And pressure is just a matter of relative pressure (inside vs outside).  Someone who has a large-enough air supply with them, and takes the time to pressure-adjust, can scuba to depths that, in a rigid submarine, would cause instant implosive death if the hull ruptured.  I was envisioning something that lived in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, not down low.

Relative mass of He (or H, in the absence of O/O2) vs. the gas-giant's atmosphere would also be relevant !

 

[Joerg]

Talking about gas giant atmospheres - a normal density whale might very well float in gas giant atmosphere, which may easily surpass densities of water.

[Atgxtg]

10 hours ago, g33k said:

There isn't a steep gravity GRADIENT -- that would certainly be problematic!

And pressure is just a matter of relative pressure (inside vs outside).  Someone who has a large-enough air supply with them, and takes the time to pressure-adjust, can scuba to depths that, in a rigid submarine, would cause instant implosive death if the hull ruptured.  I was envisioning something that lived in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, not down low.

Relative mass of He (or H, in the absence of O/O2) vs. the gas-giant's atmosphere would also be relevant !

 

Yeah. I think it would be sudden shifts due to winds and such that would probably do it in. Basically what I am thinking of is how fragile an airship would be in an atmosphere that is that much denser, and with higher gravity. If something goes wrong, things wouldn't be very forgiving. Frankly I think the submarine model might do better than the airship model. Something with a strong outer shell and bone structure that could "dive" into the gas giant. 

[Atgxtg]

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Talking about gas giant atmospheres - a normal density whale might very well float in gas giant atmosphere, which may easily surpass densities of water.

Probably not. If the gravity is strong enough to compress hydrogen to the point where it is denser than water, then the whale would also be subject to that gravity and wind up compressed down into a denser ball of matter. That why I think that a lifeform that evolved in such an environment would probably be a dense, heavily reinforced creature that could withstand the heavy gravity. 

 

I think what we need to make the "flying airbag" thing work is a smaller (lower gravity) planet with a dense atmosphere. Something like Kelpler-138b. But then we don't really have to go that far to use it in a RPG. 

[Baconjurer]

In my interpretation size is proportional to the volume of the creature, and Con is proportional to the mass, so a balloon whale would have a high size characteristic and a low Con characteristic. Strength would depend on how you imagine they work I suppose, but most likely also low due to their low density.

[g33k]

The thing is:  any planet with a substantive atmosphere will have the atmospheric pressure vary from nearly-vacuum (at the outermost reaches) down to whatever-is-max-pressure (down near the surface); also realizing that some gas worlds may not have a conventional "surface," of course

Pressure is always *RELATIVE*.  So -- here on earth -- a balloon inflated on the surface, then taken down to 1000' below the surface of the ocean, would be essentially flat, with only a tiny amount of (very compressed) air inside.  But attach it to a 800psi scuba tank, and the balloon will readily inflate again.  And, if not restrained, float upward (expanding as the pressure lessens, until (long before it reaches the surface) it bursts).

Similarly, on another planet, so long as the pressure inside a float is sufficient to keep that float inflated, then it becomes a question of the relative masses of the gas inside vs the ambient atmosphere... and how much lift that generates.

 

[g33k]

6 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah. I think it would be sudden shifts due to winds and such that would probably do it in. Basically what I am thinking of is how fragile an airship would be in an atmosphere that is that much denser, and with higher gravity. If something goes wrong, things wouldn't be very forgiving. Frankly I think the submarine model might do better than the airship model. Something with a strong outer shell and bone structure that could "dive" into the gas giant. 

Remember that there's material inside the airship; it's actually at a HIGHER pressure than the outside, to stay inflated.  So I'm not at all sure the "wind" issue IS an issue -- the strength of the structure is based at least as much on that overpressured inflation, as the material resisting outside winds.

I would expect the "rigid outer shell" model to be less-successful as a flying form on a high-G planet, because it's a high-mass solution.

Edited May 7, 2017 by g33k

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, Baconjurer said:

In my interpretation size is proportional to the volume of the creature, and Con is proportional to the mass, so a balloon whale would have a high size characteristic and a low Con characteristic. Strength would depend on how you imagine they work I suppose, but most likely also low due to their low density.

Well that's your interpretation, but I'm not sure how well that will work in play. One problem with it is that your balloon whale is sickly for no good reason, as would be most avians. Realistically volume and mass are related. 

Oh, and I finally found the stuff from the bestiary!

Edited May 7, 2017 by Atgxtg

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, g33k said:

Remember that there's material inside the airship; it's actually at a HIGHER pressure than the outside, to stay inflated.  So I'm not at all sure the "wind" issue IS an issue -- the strength of the structure is based at least as much on that overpressured inflation, as the material resisting outside winds.

Sure it is. When wind or some other change hits the airship the frame and outer "skin" have to absorb the impact. Otherwise it would pop and leak. This works both ways, too, if the pressure inside gets too much higher than the outside pressure that can also break it. Thats why real world airships have a pressure ceiling that they can't operate above. Now I'd expect a creature would be able to equalize pressure somehow, but just how much and how fast would depend on how strong it is.

4 hours ago, g33k said:

I would expect the "rigid outer shell" model to be less-successful as a flying form on a high-G planet, because it's a high-mass solution.

Well most theories on life forms on a high-G world go with the idea of a squat, thick lifeform. It depends a lot of how great the gravity and pressure are, but the shape can make a difference too. A creature shaped like a pressure spekere, made of a steel like substance could probably do fairly well. 

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, g33k said:

Pressure is always *RELATIVE*.  So -- here on earth -- a balloon inflated on the surface, then taken down to 1000' below the surface of the ocean, would be essentially flat, with only a tiny amount of (very compressed) air inside.  But attach it to a 800psi scuba tank, and the balloon will readily inflate again.  And, if not restrained, float upward (expanding as the pressure lessens, until (long before it reaches the surface) it bursts).

Pressure is relative but only to a point. That is on Earth is will only get to be so great. On a gas giant it can get to be much greater. I'd also suspect that the ballon brought down to 1000' below the surface of the sea would pop from the pressure on the way down, and could not be filled up with a scuba tank. I also think that if a flat balloon were brought down and then inflated the sudden difference in pressure would break it.

[g33k]

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

i'd also suspect that the ballon brought down to 1000' below the surface of the sea would pop from the pressure on the way down, and could not be filled up with a scuba tank. I also think that if a flat balloon were brought down and then inflated the sudden difference in pressure would break it.

The balloon would just "deflate" (shrink, getting loose & floppy) as the water pressure overcame the rather mild over-atmosphere pressure inside the balloon.  Air is VERY compressible (hence scuba-tanks!).  To inflate a balloon under water needs pressurized air at a higher pressure than the water-pressure at that depth (OTOH, you need equalized pressure to breathe, or your lungs collapse (or explode)...  ;-) .   Given the pressurized air, the balloon will inflate just fine!

But if you fasten that "fully inflated" balloon closed, I'd be surprised if it could survive even a 100' ascent...  Whether that's 100' under water going to the surface, or 1000' under water going to 900' ... I don't think that actually matters:  POP!

[g33k]

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Well most theories on life forms on a high-G world go with the idea of a squat, thick lifeform.

This is based on a walking (I won't say "terrestrial" because not Terra!) life-form.  Falling over in high-G is a much-worse risk than on Earth, so this structure is most-resistant to tipping, and has less-far to fall if it DOES tip.

Airborne creatures are subject to entirely different constraints; swimmers to yet others.

 

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

... the shape can make a difference too. A creature shaped like a pressure spekere, made of a steel like substance could probably do fairly well. 

The sphere is of course the "best" shape -- strongest, best surface/volume ratio, etc.  Evolution might drive less "perrect" shapes for other considerations -- eating, avoiding being eaten, reproducing, etc...