That's just what it is: a simple summary of ways to handle this matter in character/creature design. Short and sweet.

Coming soon

EDIT 2008.04.07: Playtest over; PDF file removed.

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How do you milk a fish? A milkfish, of course, the semi-aquatic Yrth mammal that offers meat, oil, and milk to its medieval domesticators. The brief description in GURPS Banestorm suggests a cross between a seal and a manatee. Plausible enough... but how do you get the milk out?

Some time back, D. Weber offered an interesting alternate suggestion for ST cost. It was a good idea when originally shoehorned into 3e's ST rules, and works even better under 4e. Take a look:

I'm glad that 4e now incorporates something as simple and basic as a size for characters! SM, what took you so long?

My friendly little quibbles with SM as s/he stands (Basic Set p 19) are as follows:

Ogres. Hulking Trolls. Tree-sized Giants. Mountain-sized Jotun. If they're defined by a size bigger than us, then for this article, they're all Giants. Because whatever the specifics, they all have one thing in common: "TARG SMASH PUNY HUMAN!"

I'm liberating the Big Games notes on gaming Giants from my old GULLIVER rules for GURPS, to give them a proper new home within the Diner (with a little freshening-up too, including a pinch or two of content from other sections).

Although I've got some GURPS 4e-specific notes at the end, the general overview is useful with any game system. Yet it's all pretty brief; sorry, I haven't witten The Complete Guide to Gaming Giants. I'd love to add your notes and ideas here, if you too have played oversized PCs, NPCs, or even just "monsters".

Up the beanstalk we go, then:

"Uhn... too weak... passing out..."

That's fine for battle-battered heroes, but do we want dumb monsters conked out in combat? Here's a simple way to have beseiged beasts raise bloody hell – and then properly die – like good monsters should.

BS 431 offers a nice table for putting falling distance together with velocity. But did you know you've already got a tool for generating those numbers? You guessed it: that ever-handy Size and Speed/Range Table. It'll even tell you how long it takes your PC to plummet off a cliff. Or calculate spacecraft travel statistics. And other fun stuff.

This rules nugget looks at two separate but complementary items: the very simple interaction between a shield and its wielder's size, and the more involved matter of letting shields provide cover instead of a DB bonus.