>You misunderstand my point of view.I tried to figure damage derived from mass
>only, and i think that tramplingdamage comes mostly from mass not strength,
>so this was a good occasion.
But Hero Wars doesn't assign damage based on mass or strength, but on the character's ability levels. The damage an elephant causes is related to his trample rating, possibly augmented by large, or anything else going.
>So for my calculation it was necessary, that the target will not dodge,
>etc.Thats why i assigned a default of 6(no skill/helpless).Even if the real
>default is 14- is doesn�t matter, because, for my example i want the target
>to fail anyway.
>I just tried to figure out how much edge an elephant would gain from his mass
>to calculate his mass....:-)
My point is if you change the numbers, or how you are telling the story, then you change the edge needed. Make a ruling that 'the human is totally helpless, no need to roll, he's goo' and no ability is needed by the elephant at all. Allow the elephant a coup de grace action, and the edge could be small, or non-existent. Hero Wars allows the GM almost complete control over how to run contests - extrapolating from one set of results is largely meaningless.
You also have problems when the next edition drops edges totally...
><>12-Mouse-Sprint5
><You've obviously never tried to catch a mouse!
>
>We are talking about Sprinting....the difficulty to catch a mouse comes from
>it�s Small and it�s Agility, i would say....
Mice run fast - I've tried to get enough of them out of the house after the cats bring them in.
><The HW scale is logarithmic - if you are going to assign numbers, <doubling
><somewhere between every +10 and +20 works quite well. In <other words, if
><24kmph is sprint 15, then 48kmph is somewhere between sprint <5W and sprint
>15W.
>
>I don�t think so and if it�s true, the supersprinter could catch a gepard, no
>?!
?! Indeed. The scale is logarithmic. There has been general agreement on this list before that between a +10 and a +20 represents a doubling, based on the odds of various simple contests. Personally I don't believe that 'sprint' ability levels have anything to do with kmph, but your scale doesn't really make sense.
>Whatever is true, it seems very clear, that it can�t work this way.
>So the question is still: how to design creatures, other than in context of
>the story????
Use a game other than Hero Wars? Creatures are designed in Hero Wars to tell a story. In fact, this is true of all rpgs, so the distinction is not real. Many games pretend they are simulating something real, but its at such a crude level you might as well not bother. All roleplaying is about telling stories, only the rigidity of the framework differs.
If you want a rational basis for designing creatures, try this as a basis. Think of a number of animals that represent points on a scale of some ability you want to measure. For sprint you might want :
snail, human, horse, cheetah
Add more until you have a level of detail you are happy with. Including human in all scales is good, as you know the human is always going to be the focus of your stories.
Then realise that a good human (not exceptional) will have about 5W in that ability - a starting character's best skill - and that an exceptional human will have 5W2 - a character played regularly will fairly easily get to this sort of level. This won't work for all skills - humans have no 'fly' skill, and humans by definition (in Anaxial's) have Large and Small of 6. (It's never come up, but perhaps treat all other size skills ('fat','tall','skinny','petite') as automatic augments to Large or Small, or for use between human like creatures only.)
Now you just need to decide what order your creatures go in, and how comfortably they would beat each other. If the defeat is comfortable, you need about a mastery difference in abilities. If one creature has a small advantage, but not enough to guarantee victory, then only a few points will be between the abilities. How you decide this is up to you - it's your story - but try to think in terms of challenges, not numbers. A cheetah is faster than an antelope, flat out. But antelope outrun cheetahs every day. Therefore, you need to either give the cheetah only a small advantage, or give the antelope some other advantage to explain this (say, 'sense danger' which it can use to augment its 'run fast').
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Graham
-- Graham Robinson graham_at_... Albion Software Engineering Ltd.
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