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Sniccups
2016-10-28, 05:05 PM
So, I've been trying to develop a set of rules for sizes and the scale of real-world creatures. This is the best I've done so far:



Size Class
Space
Real World Example


"Hyperfine"
1x1 in
Fly


"Superfine"
3x3 in
Beetle


Fine
6x6 in
Dragonfly


Diminutive
1x1 ft
Mouse


Tiny
2.5x2.5 ft
Chicken


Small
5x5 ft
Most dogs


Medium
5x5 ft
Human


Large
10x10 ft
Horse


Huge
15x15 ft bipedal, or 15x20 ft quadrupedal
Elephant


Gargantuan
20x30 ft
Right whale


Colossal
30x40 ft
Blue whale



What do you think? These can all be rearranged to whatever makes sense for the monster. I would personally halve the width and double the length for a whale or something similar, so a blue whale is 80x15 ft.

There are still problems, though. I personally am very interested in making stats for things from other franchises. How do you plot, for example, the size of a thousand-foot-long snake, a turtle the size of an island, or an elephant big enough to carry buildings? It gets much stranger when looking at anime, too. I'm having trouble coming up with enough words for large things to make more size classes.

Mith
2016-10-28, 05:25 PM
Terrain might be the next step. Once you are building structures on top of it, fighting it is more about causing sufficient structural damage then bleeding it out.

pwykersotz
2016-10-28, 05:47 PM
For particularly large creatures it might be more useful to note weight as opposed to size. Since this is taking place in imagination, all creatures that make you crane your neck seem similar after a while. Weight in tons is a decent way to have things scale from there. 2 tons vs 20 tons vs 200 tons is a lot more understandable than Huge/Gargantuan/Colossal (to me anyway).

So if that snake is 180 tons and the turtle is 210 tons, that gives a kind of relative proportionality to them. The turtle is probably smaller and more dense, and that snake is incredibly long and can swallow houses easily.

Edit:

Of course another way to do it is to find relation to real life things and call them that-sized.

So that legendary jungle cat the Nundu? It's large house-sized.
That titanous Umber Hulk? It's castle sized.
That beast from beyond with a thousand heads? It's niagra-sized.
The manifestation of Jubilex in his ultimate form? It's grand-canyon sized.

MaxWilson
2016-10-28, 06:34 PM
There are still problems, though. I personally am very interested in making stats for things from other franchises. How do you plot, for example, the size of a thousand-foot-long snake, a turtle the size of an island, or an elephant big enough to carry buildings? It gets much stranger when looking at anime, too. I'm having trouble coming up with enough words for large things to make more size classes.

I just call it Gargantuan II, III, IV, etc., with each doubling of linear dimension denoted by an increase in number. Ditto for Tiny II, III, etc.

Sniccups
2016-10-29, 06:32 AM
I'm thinking of calling the next size up "Titanic" and using MaxWilson's idea of numbering it, but I still want it to be specific, so;



Size Class
Space


Titanic I
40x60 ft


Titanic II
60x90 ft


Titanic III
80x120 ft


Titanic IV
100x140ft


Titanic V
120x180 ft


Titanic VI
150x225 ft


Titanic (n+3), where n>=3
50nx75n ft



The length is always 1.5 times the width here.