Hello

As many of you know, I am a 2nd edition AD&D "dyed in the wool, you'll get my DMG when you pry it out of my cold dead hands" gamer. But I play around with rules a lot so I wanted to find out what other systems/people are doing when it comes to different size opponents? Halfling vs Giant - who has the advantage?

Size of monsters vs players - what should it effect? ability to hit? damage? Should there be a chart with multiplers based on size types?

Let me know how you handle size? Thoughts, opinions and comments welcome.

...I'm not much of a DM, myself, but it only makes sense that there would be both "to hit" and "damage" modifiers to be considered where different sized opponents are concerned.

Using the example of Halfling vs Giant: The Halfling would certainly have an easier time hitting the giant (especially from range, I think) unless s/he's just a gods-awful shot. That being said, I'm fairly sure that the damage from a "halfling sized" weapon would be more or less negligible (depending on the specific type of giant, of course... that halfling weapon would do more damage to a hill giant as opposed to a storm giant, for instance).

Now, you flip that scenario around and put the giant on the offensive and you've got the complete opposite... Halflings being as small as they are, it's going to be a bit trickier for a giant to see/target them, right? So, the giant might not be as "accurate" when it comes to his attacks but, when they hit, look out! Where once stood a halfling, there is now but a quivering puddle of pudding in the footprint of a giant!

When it comes right down to it, I suppose, if you look at the halfling vs giant scenario, the giant's going to have the upper hand regardless of the modifiers (especially in a one on one situation)... In order to deal any significant damage to the giant, the halfling is going to have to expend quite a bit of energy and/or ammo... The giant, on the other hand, may pull the old "swiiing-and-a-miss" a few (dozen, hundred, thousand?) times depending on how small, agile, and/or crafty the halfling is but, when it comes right down to it, all the giant should need is one glancing blow and it's halfling hash, isn't it?

Now... take that same giant and have him lumber into a village full of li'l hairfoots and you can switch things up again... 100 halflings vs 1 Giant? Halflings stand a chance... but get ready for major casualties...

Doesn't the giant and halfling take racial penalties/bonuses to strength at least? In that way, some size is taken into account already.

...I'm fairly sure that most versions of D&D, at least, take size and stat modifiers into account to some degree, Vil.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that halflings are limited in weapon choices due to the fact that they're simply too small to wield them effectively... not sure if that would prevent a halfling from taking up a longsword and calling it a "two-handed claymore", though, but I think the mechanics are at least hinted at in a majority of the better thought out systems, anyway.

I think part of the problem, though, (and, perhaps, more of where Alacrity was trying to go with this thread) is that all of the various modifiers that can be applied can get kind of convoluted and end up as "cast offs"...

I liked the idea of some kind of table/chart that could be a "quick reference" kind of thing, to be honest... As mentioned earlier, though, I'm not much on the DM side of things and, as a player, I prefer that the rules just kind of disappear into the background where I don't have to give them much thought...

2e has weird stuff with size including that certain weapons do more damge againt large creatures while others do less...

Anyway, not looking editions, just thoughts or systems that deals with size difference.

If we break down the sizes into four, s, m, l and g, then we could work a simple 4x4 chart from X2 to X0.25 damage to +4/-4 to hit. So the halfling would be +4 to hit but x.25 on damage. The giant would be -4 to hit and X2 damage.

Still thinking.

I'm currently running a L5R4 game here in London and so far, the only benefits I see with being of larger size (they don't commonly use size categories) is that it is impossible for smaller creatures to grapple you or knock you down.

Some big creatures are stronger and not particularly accurate in attacks, but those are stats unrelated to being huge. To be fair though, the big baddies aren't normally playable.

The damage of the weapon should scale with the size of the weapon, not the size of the weapon's target. A club sized for a halfling should do less damage than one sized for a human and it should do the same amount of damage regardless of whether that halfling is using it to hit a gnome in the face, or a giant in the shin. A club sized for a giant is going to do more damage than one sized for a human, and more still than one sized for that gnome-hating halfling.

Once sizes get REALLY disparate, ie a club sized for a colossal creature used to hit something in the fine or diminutive size categories, you might throw out the 4d12 (or whatever) and just say the thing is obliterated.

Most creatures and objects start to pick up DR once they grow past the large or huge categories. That halfling sized club is still doing a d4 damage, but unless the wielder is a hulking brute, there's just do way it's going to get through the hide of, say, a gargantuan dragon to do any lasting damage.