Large Size and Lifting Strength

[Mr. Bambu]

The question this thread poses is simple: do we scale large sized characters to their own weight? It has been brought up increasingly of late, and I believe it warrants discussion.

For my own opinion: I believe they should scale, with some requirements. For example, a character unable to move shouldn't be assumed able to support their own weight. For another, I believe this should only be done in the void of other lifting strength feats. If we do come to the conclusion that large sized characters should scale to their mass, we must:

• Establish what, if any, requirements must be had to qualify
• Alter our Large Size and Lifting Strength pages accordingly, as well as any others that may be potentially impacted
• Adjust profiles that would benefit from this change

So, please, discuss.

 

[Antvasima]

@DontTalkDT @Executor_N0 @Spinosaurus75DinosaurFan @Therefir @DMUA @Damage3245 @DemonGodMitchAubin @Jasonsith @Wokistan @Armorchompy @KieranH10 @Migue79 @Psychomaster35 @Amelia_Lonelyheart @DragonGamerZ913

I would appreciate your input here.

 

[Damage3245]

Well, in my mind Lifting Strength isn't about just whether you are capable of moving/standing, what you are capable of lifting beyond that.

Almost every human IRL who is capable of standing/walking IRL could do so, but may not necessarily be able to lift a set of weights that is equal to their own total body weight.

So I believe that Large Sized characters need other Lifting Strength feats beyond simply having a lot of body weight.

 

[KieranH10]

I'm pretty much in agreement with Damage. Lifting Strength should be what a character can lift, a human does not 'lift' their body weight constantly, their body is just naturally capable of sustaining itself upwards, else we would collapse...

If we had a person who weighs 500lbs then that person is not necessarily capable of lifting 500lbs...

If a large sized character manages to move, knock down, or generally contend with another large sized character then obviously that would be valid. But they should not scale to their own weight.

 

[Armorchompy]

I think if a giant character is very acrobatic, scaling their weight to their LS should be fine. If they can jump around with their weight, control it well enough to perform complex movements and maybe even support it with one leg or both arms, I think it's fine to assume that they can lift an amount comparable to their weight. But I'm fine with changing my mind on that

 

[Jasonsith]

If the large size can stand up by itself, honest it is reasonable and shown in a lot of media one large size character can lift its own weight - or at least half its own weight as reasonably athletic human can lift such and most large monsters are shown to lift far more.

And if we accept LS calc from "jump good", why not a LS derivative from "stand up"?

(I want to say if that character can move exactly like a scaled up suit actor - which happens in most tokusatsu - the LS should be scaled up to 3rd or even 4th power of LS of the suit actor.)

 

[ZillertheBucko]

not sure if I'm meant to be talking here or not (this is the only message I'll leave on the thread) but I agree with what damage is saying, I pretty much had the same argument on another thread and yeah lifting your own body weight is something you do at all times, so you're always gonna be restricted by that, and the LS you get from that would never be applicable due to your body weight being a constant factor at all times

 

[DontTalkDT]

Large Size Calculations

In fiction, there are many characters of Large Size. When it comes to tiering them their size alone can be an indicator of their statistics. This page explains which statistics can and can't be calculated from size alone. The physical attack potency, and with it the durability, can be estimated...

vsbattles.fandom.com

^We already have an official stance on the subject. Just mentioning it in case people didn't know it.

 

[Damage3245]

^We already have an official stance on the subject. Just mentioning it in case people didn't know it.

Yup. Pretty much lines up with my thoughts on it too.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

I dislike the stance that colossal size does not scale to lifting strength on the basis that, just to use an example I mentioned previously, this would potentially lead to us claiming a Godzilla-sized creature could have no lifting strength feat to speak of, despite being larger than a skyscraper. On some level I think it is fair to scale to size, I would just like a consensus as to what exactly people feel is reasonable.

 

[KieranH10]

Godzilla sized monsters typically have feats of wrestling with others who are their size, or have actual feats of pushing skyscrapers, etc. It is very rare a large sized character would not have feats which actually correspond with their size.

However if they do not have feats of moving or affecting similarly sized objects, then I believe that there is no reason to assume that they can move objects similar in size to themselves.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

So, to take this a step further using the words of another in this thread

Let's say this same skyscraper-sized, LS feat-less character moves adeptly, athletically, and acrobatically. You feel there is no reason whatsoever to assume they are capable of moving things of relatively similar size to themselves?

 

[KieranH10]

If they have feats of actually lifting up their body then sure.

If they're just jumping, running, etc then unless lifting strength can apply to just the legs of a character then no. I believe they should not scale to their own weight.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

If they have feats of actually lifting up their body then sure.

If they're just jumping, running, etc then unless lifting strength can apply to just the legs of a character then no. I believe they should not scale to their own weight.

Interesting. I disagree, but that is an interesting opinion.

 

[Jasonsith]

An average gender neutral human weighs 62 kg

Human body weight - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

and can bench press 135 pounds (61.23496995 kg) on their first try

How Much Can the Average Man Lift? – Outlift

Learn how much the average man can squat, bench press, deadlift, overhead press, and barbell curl. The numbers may surprise you.

outlift.com

98.766% lifting strength compared to weight for totally novice average human. Trained weight lifters can do better.

Should the 98.766% lifting strength over mass ratio be applied if we have nothing else?

 

[GilverTheProtoAngelo]

I'm pretty much in agreement with Damage. Lifting Strength should be what a character can lift, a human does not 'lift' their body weight constantly, their body is just naturally capable of sustaining itself upwards, else we would collapse...

If we had a person who weighs 500lbs then that person is not necessarily capable of lifting 500lbs...

If a large sized character manages to move, knock down, or generally contend with another large sized character then obviously that would be valid. But they should not scale to their own weight.

In real life Large Sized bodies would be unable to lift even their own weight, they would collapse into themselves on the ground.

Mass increases cubicaly w.r.t to length.
If an object becomes 10 times taller....it becomes 1000 times heavier for same density.
Take an eagle and increase its volume...and you will find it unable to fly. Many large birds with even lightest bodies and large wingspan struggle a lot to to even lift off of ground.
Take a human and increase its volume and they will collapse on itself.
Our biology isn't built to strengthen itself for increased size and weight. So we cannot be used as comparison to fictional characters who ignore such a concept.

As long as a large sized character can reasonably lift its own weight....fly, run, jump, etc. Its perfectly fine to scale body weight to LS.

 

[Armorchompy]

Should the 98.766% lifting strength over mass ratio be applied if we have nothing else?

At that point we might as well just ignore the multiplier and just use their own weight tbh, I don't see the point in adding an extra step if the change is so minor

 

[KieranH10]

In real life Large Sized bodies would be unable to lift even their own weight, they would collapse into themselves on the ground.

Mass increases cubicaly w.r.t to length.
If an object becomes 10 times taller....it becomes 1000 times heavier for same density.
Take an eagle and increase its volume...and you will find it unable to fly. Many large birds with even lightest bodies and large wingspan struggle a lot to to even lift off of ground.
Take a human and increase its volume and they will collapse on itself.
Our biology isn't built to strengthen itself for increased size and weight. So we cannot be used as comparison to fictional characters who ignore such a concept.

As long as a large sized character can reasonably lift its own weight....fly, run, jump, etc. Its perfectly fine to scale body weight to LS.

That is correct, but the strength of a characters bones do not equate to lifting strength, them holding their own weight is a durability feat via GPE, not Lifting Strength. A humans ability to stand up without their legs breaking beneath them is not defined by how strong the muscles in the legs are.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

At that point we might as well just ignore the multiplier and just use their own weight tbh, I don't see the point in adding an extra step if the change is so minor

I agree with this take, personally.

 

[DontTalkDT]

A horse can run and jump, yet only carry 20% of its own body weight.

There is no reason to use the human weight/lifting strength ratio, as the inverse square law makes lifting things additionally to your own body just that much harder when you get large due to your body already being so much heavier (in a cubic increase).

 

[Cryo123]

Well what about if we take the body type and proportion it out with the animal it shares the most in common with? Then if there is a giant horse like creature, we can have it lift 20% of it's weight, but if it's something like Giant Antman we can scale him to a human's lifting strength. It's more complicated and open ended, but at least it prevents a normal person from having a higher lifting strength than a skyscraper sized Kaiju.

 

[Jasonsith]

Well if fictional gods and monsters truly follow science and theory of evolution seriously, most of them will likely turn into human size or even smaller, considering we have had giant dinosaurs in prehistoric times, and they are reptiles, birds and mammals nowadays.

In fiction, giant monsters are more times than not portrayed as scaled up suit actors in rubber suits. We need to admit mot all real life science rules and theories fit into fictional verses, especially when fictional worlds have their own science rules.

Well what about if we take the body type and proportion it out with the animal it shares the most in common with? Then if there is a giant horse like creature, we can have it lift 20% of it's weight, but if it's something like Giant Antman we can scale him to a human's lifting strength. It's more complicated and open ended, but at least it prevents a normal person from having a higher lifting strength than a skyscraper sized Kaiju.

Sounds cool. I concur.
Basically apply lifting strength to mass ratio depending on which animal the giant figure is scaled upon right?

 

[HammerStrikes219]

Well if fictional gods and monsters truly follow science and theory of evolution seriously, most of them will likely turn into human size or even smaller, considering we have had giant dinosaurs in prehistoric times, and they are reptiles, birds and mammals nowadays.

In fiction, giant monsters are more times than not portrayed as scaled up suit actors in rubber suits. We need to admit mot all real life science rules and theories fit into fictional verses, especially when fictional worlds have their own science rules.


Sounds cool. I concur.
Basically apply lifting strength to mass ratio depending on which animal the giant figure is scaled upon right?

This is because it involves more theoretical science rather than set in science along with the fact that do keep in mind we nonetheless still attempting to use irl physics in a fictional setting so I don’t think that logic alone will work here.

Not a calc member, but all the same we don’t know if their full weight should always equal to LS as it does require assumptions ngl.

 

[HammerStrikes219]

Also to add onto that, the fact this does involve biology of fictional animals as well, but other than that, I have no further input too.

 

[Cryo123]

Well if fictional gods and monsters truly follow science and theory of evolution seriously, most of them will likely turn into human size or even smaller, considering we have had giant dinosaurs in prehistoric times, and they are reptiles, birds and mammals nowadays.

In fiction, giant monsters are more times than not portrayed as scaled up suit actors in rubber suits. We need to admit mot all real life science rules and theories fit into fictional verses, especially when fictional worlds have their own science rules.


Sounds cool. I concur.
Basically apply lifting strength to mass ratio depending on which animal the giant figure is scaled upon right?

Exactly.

 

[Damage3245]

Well what about if we take the body type and proportion it out with the animal it shares the most in common with? Then if there is a giant horse like creature, we can have it lift 20% of it's weight, but if it's something like Giant Antman we can scale him to a human's lifting strength. It's more complicated and open ended, but at least it prevents a normal person from having a higher lifting strength than a skyscraper sized Kaiju.

I don't understand what you mean by "at least it prevents a normal person from having a higher lifting strength than a skyscraper sized Kaiju."

 

[Cryo123]

^It was kind of a hyperbole, but I was pretty much trying to say it prevents something like "Character A who can lift 30,000 lbs is stronger than the 9,000 ton kaiju because he has no feats", even though it would in most cases be clear that Character A is not in fact stronger.

 

[Damage3245]

^It was kind of a hyperbole, but I was pretty much trying to say it prevents something like "Character A who can lift 30,000 lbs is stronger than the 9,000 ton kaiju because he has no feats", even though it would in most cases be clear that Character A is not in fact stronger.

Why would you say that Character A is stronger if the Kaiju is rated as "Unknown"?

 

[Cryo123]

^Well if we have nothing there, then technically we leave the door open for a massive lowball like that. I'm just saying we should at least attempt to give some substantial material to those larger creatures.

 

[KieranH10]

Imo that's not far from saying "The large featless bear is much more powerful than the assassin who can break through walls because its a bear and he's a human" when in fact the bear would just simply be featless, and would therefor be unknown if we weren't to make assumptions.

Saying or assuming some featless kaiju is stronger than another character just because it's bigger is not something we would do with any other stat.
It would be like saying "Fing Fang Foom should be stronger than Hulk because he's physically larger"

 

[Cryo123]

I'm not going to argue that my analogy wasn't poorly constructed lol.

On the other hand, it would be less like assuming;

Imo that's not far from saying "The large featless bear is much more powerful than the assassin who can break through walls because its a bear and he's a human" when in fact the bear would just simply be featless, and would therefor be unknown if we weren't to make assumptions.

and more more like saying "The large featless bear is much more powerful than Rick who could lift 200 pounds", even though we know off of basic intuition a bear can exert more than 200 lbs of force.

Saying or assuming some featless kaiju is stronger than another character just because it's bigger is not something we would do with any other stat.
It would be like saying "Fing Fang Foom should be stronger than Hulk because he's physically larger"

Not quite, again, my analogy was HEAVILY flawed lol, but the hulk is 2-A, which is higher than what Fing Fang Foom's weight would give him anyways, so it really doesn't relate to the argument I'm trying to make.

 

[Antvasima]

I personally agree with Bambu. If a character weighs thousands of metric gigatons, it should logically at least have lifting strength that almost approaches that scale. Maybe we could use DontTalk's mentioned 20% as a minimum in such cases, with an "At least" before it?

 

[HammerStrikes219]

I personally agree with Bambu. If a character weighs thousands of metric gigatons, it should logically at least have lifting strength that almost approaches that scale. Maybe we could use DontTalk's mentioned 20% as a minimum in such cases, with an "At least" befrore it?

The thing is we are referring to a horse and not all Kajius as well as other monsters as far as I am aware has irl comparisons to the respective animals.

Also even if they can lift their own weight, the issue being how much of it they can actually lift without it being a issue while in combat or otherwise.

 

[DontTalkDT]

Well if fictional gods and monsters truly follow science and theory of evolution seriously, most of them will likely turn into human size or even smaller, considering we have had giant dinosaurs in prehistoric times, and they are reptiles, birds and mammals nowadays.

In fiction, giant monsters are more times than not portrayed as scaled up suit actors in rubber suits. We need to admit mot all real life science rules and theories fit into fictional verses, especially when fictional worlds have their own science rules.

True, fiction doesn't follow all real-life science rules. That does the opposite of justifying making up new rules, though. Rules power-wise above real-life ones especially.

Also, when you say "giant monsters are more times than not portrayed as scaled up suit actors in rubber suits" then you probably think of one particular genre, since the countless giant monsters in comics/manga/novels/anime are not really portrayed like that.

 

[ZillertheBucko]

Sorry but I feel like I have something to say about all of this. By nature, using sheer size to have a value for lifting strength requires poor assumptions that we have no reason to follow
If an ant was the size of a human would we say it has human lifting strength? In fact, why would we use the argument of human lifting strength when
1. Humans obviously can vary a lot themselves, from the fattest ****** struggling to lift the next slice of pizza to the strongest chad who can lift the fat person with one arm
2. This logic obviously struggles to be applied to something with superhuman/creature physical characteristics, since they’re already not comparable to real life to begin with
3. Fictional species or being’s physiology being different than real life ones means that all you could use is crappy assumptions which don’t at all work in a fiction based setting the vast majority of the time

It simply makes no sense my friends

 

[KieranH10]

Giving a character Lifting Strength via moving its own mass around or supporting itself stood up would equate to most humanoid robots being defaulted to likely Class 1 via simply being made of metal so being heavier, even if they have no feats at all.

 

[Zackra1799]

I feel like this entirely hinges on how said large characters move. For example if we have a 100 meter tall giant moving incredibly slowly to the point that it takes them several minutes just to make a few steps, then yeah their Lifting Strength shouldn't scale to their own weight.

However if a similarly sized character starts doing incredibly athletic maneuvers such as flips, large jumps, or even like 1 finger hand stand push-ups then I see no reason as to why they can't scale to their own weight.

 

[Antvasima]

Giving a character Lifting Strength via moving its own mass around or supporting itself stood up would equate to most humanoid robots being defaulted to likely Class 1 via simply being made of metal so being heavier, even if they have no feats at all.

Well, I am more thinking of examples with very extreme weights by human standards.

 

[KieranH10]

Why would it be any different with smaller objects? If we are assuming characters scale to their weight via the logic "If they can support their own weight then they should scale their LS to it" then that should apply to all characters.

 

[Antvasima]

I mean that the higher lifting strength tiers are quite wide, and it wouldn't make sense for characters to be able to clearly support their body weights to an extreme degree, via flying, acrobatics, or similar, and not scale, or at least scale to a 1/10th of their body weights if they are able to move swiftly. At least for organic physiologies.