Re: Increasing Large

From: Peter Larsen <plarsen_at_...>
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 13:56:48 -0500


At 02:39 PM 4/19/01 -0400, you wrote:
>> In a magic world, someone becoming abnormally Large is possible, no?
>
>I can't think of any stories or myths where a human grows beyond the normal
>range by normal means.

        Well, the Second Son was poisoned and grew very large (KoS). There's that giant martial artist in the East (G:IttHW). Ohorlanth grew and grew and grew until he had to leave home (TR). In the RW mythology, there is a Slavic hero who was small and sickly as a child (used to sleep on the stove, as I recall, which is not quite as weird as it sounds), but who grew to be very large (like horse-sized). There's also the Saga of Gongu(Gongr?)-Hrolf, who had to walk becasue he was too large to ride. Benkei (sp?) and Little John are large but not supernaturally so. (Not to mention some of the US folk-heroes (Mike Fink, Pecos Bill, even George Washington in some stories) plus, of course, the logging industry creation, Paul Bunyon. Anyway, there's a tradition of extra-large heroes.

>There is the hero-cult of Big Man described in Greg's story. That cult's
>central power is to grow large and strong, but at the price of limits on
>behaviour. Seems to me that no-one else should be able to get that ability
>significantly more cheaply.

        The Big Man's special power is, I think, not his size so much as his ability to increase his power on multiple attempts. Additionally, I think that Large could be used as a flaw by a GM who wanted to control its use. Rather than make special rules, I think it's better to either say "no," make the player regret (lightly, but regret) taking the ability by treating it occasionally (of often) as a flaw, or dilute its use with improvisation modifiers. I can't imagine it being that much of a problem.

Peter Larsen

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