Cloverfield - The Immortal's Handbook 4E to 3.5 Conversion

[Upper_Krust]

Hey there Khisanth!

But most of that strength just goes into supporting its body. It won't be that much stronger *functionally* - won't be able to *apply* that much strength.

But thats the point, it is that strong. Megasaurs are as proportionally strong as humans.

Smaller things are stronger for their size. Ants can lift 50 times their own body weight - but they're actually pretty weak. A human scaled down to ant-size could lift *more* than that; an ant scaled up to human-size would be too weak to move, or close to it - it would need major redesign to survive at even cat-size, much less man-size.

Godzilla is going to be weaker proportionallythan a T. rex.

I disagree. Godzilla is going to be as proportionally strong as a human scaled up. He's not going to be weaker.

While an ant can lift 50 times its own body weight, while a human struggles to lift its own body weight, Godzilla will also be able to lift his own bodyweight or slightly better (and we have seen him lift and throw other Megasaurs).

Also, I'd say your Dire templates' HD increases (x2 / size category) are correct for Dire-type creatures, which are supposed to be not just bigger but nastier/tougher, but not for generic size increases. A creature's HD shouldn't go up with size quite that easily. That's the equivalent of an increase in HD proportional to the increase in linear dimension (both double each size category). The MM/SRD porpoise is 4 to 6 feet long and has 2 HD. A whale 100 feet long, x20 times longer, shouldn't really have 40 HD - realistically, the biggest whales probably shouldn't have more than 15 HD, probably less; they really were fairly easy to kill. A 40 HD whale would make whaling nearly impossible.

For non-Dire size increasing, I'd say x1.75/size category, rounded up - so a Colossal whale comes out as 19 HD. Since the tail isn't supposed to be included in determining the size category, a Colossal whale's pretty huge, so that's acceptable.

With that rule...

a Colossal lion = 26-27 HD
a Gargantuan rhinoceros = 24-25 HD
a Colossal rhinoceros = 42-43 HD
a Gargantuan elephant = 19-20 HD
a Colossal elephant = 33-34 HD
a Titanic elephant = 58-59 HD
a Macro-Diminutive brown bear = 172-173 HD

...which all sound reasonable.

I think you may be adding a layer of confusion to something that doesn't need anymore math applied.

--- (Godzilla biomechanics stuff, ignore if you don't care about it) ---

The 500 tons thing just might be plausible, let's see. If one were to go straightforwardly from a 6 ton T-rex, a 500 ton T-rex would be cube root of (500/6) = 4.36 times larger in linear dimensions.

But AmeriGodzilla isn't built like a T-rex; a 60 meter tall T-rex would be about 150 meters long, and I don't think AmeriGodzilla is. It's probably more like 6 times larger in linear dimensions, adjusted for the different shape. (If you ignore the really tall back spikes, which are not going to weigh much, it's probably skinnier than a big T-rex would be, anyway.) So a 6x linear size T-rex will be 1296 tons. Reducing it to 500 tons gives AmeriGodzilla a density of 0.385 - insanely low, but maybe possible if AmeriGodzilla has a crazy air sac system (like a bird's) and highly pneumatized bones. (As far as I know, the lowest suggested for any real-world critter is a little above 0.5 - some pterosaurs may have been that air-filled.)

If its 10 times bigger then its 1000 times heavier, but only 100 times as strong (normally).

Zilla is probably 16 times bigger which means its 4096 times heavier (about 25,000 tons), but only 256 times stronger.

Godzilla is about 8000 times heavier than a T-Rex but is also at least 8000 times stronger.

Basically Zilla's bones, muscle and tissue need to be 16 times stronger than a T-Rex. I'll need to go back over Mike Wong's initial artical to determine exactly how much stress they should support and what materials they are equal to.

The interesting question is - could a 500 ton biped walk? I'm not sure.
This study's powerpoint (by an actual paleontologist!) suggests that a 10,000 ton Godzilla would not be able to support its weight, even standing.

It couldn't support its own weight because of the stress put upon its bones. But that assumes its bones are not super-strong, which they obviously need to be.

But a 500 ton G. is a different matter. Using those methods, if 500 ton AmeriZilla had articular area of 4 square meters per leg (seems quite reasonable, those legs are huge), the stress is actually less than on a big sauropod dinosaur. The trick is allometric scaling - the legs need to be ridiculously huge, bigger than AmeriZilla's even, in proportion to the body.

Which they aren't for Classic Godzilla, which tells us his bones are tougher than steel.

So, contra Mike Wong, I'm not willing to rule out a 500 ton biped as impossible in principle as a product of normal Earth biology. Dinosaurs didn't evolve one in reality - but given 100 million years or so of continual evolutionary pressure to get bigger, and near-infinite food supplies, the necessary biomechanical innovations are probably plausible.

I think its possible, but probably not as a biped.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hiya.

Hey Pssthpok mate!

Well, how many inches of skin must you presuppose to have this bouncing effect?

Depends on the munitions used against him.

Sure his arms are thick, but 90% of that tissue is soft meat and inner bone.

Its not going to be 'soft' at all. Proportionally, his skin, muscle and everything else will be stronger as well...and thats before we factor in how much thicker it will be...and that he's scaly too.

And by tank shells, I must suppose that you don't imply armor piercing shells or high-explosive anti-tank weapons.

The effectiveness of Armour Piercing Shells would have to be determined. High Explosive munitions would depend on the yield.

A nice place to start might be to scale up Kevlar (or better yet the new 'Dragonskin' armour the US Military have.

9mm pistol = 6 ft.
5.56 mm rifle = 12 ft.
12.7mm rifle = 24 ft.
25mm machine gun = 48 ft.
50mm cannon = 96 ft.
100mm Tank Shell = 192 ft.
8 inch guns = 384 ft.
16 inch Battleship Guns = 768 ft.

Judging simply on the above, Scaling up Godzilla's skin to be akin to Kevlar, it would protect him against 100 mm Tank Shells. 8 inch or better guns would be needed simply to break the skin.

Note that his muscles will be harder than his skin, and his bones will be stronger than his muscles.

 

[Khisanth the Ancient]

But thats the point, it is that strong. Megasaurs are as proportionally strong as humans. ...
While an ant can lift 50 times its own body weight, while a human struggles to lift its own body weight, Godzilla will also be able to lift his own bodyweight or slightly better (and we have seen him lift and throw other Megasaurs).

Japanese Godzilla (=Real Godzilla ), yes. American Godzilla... I don't think so.

I think you may be adding a layer of confusion to something that doesn't need anymore math applied.

Almost certainly. It just bothers me that even "small" Macrobes have more hit dice than Time Lords.

Basically Zilla's bones, muscle and tissue need to be 16 times stronger than a T-Rex.

But elephant bones/muscles/tissue aren't any stronger than mouse bones/muscles/tissue. It's just that their legs etc. are thicker.

A "real" AmGodzilla would be shaped somewhat differently than the movie shows (thicker legs, otherwise thinner), but it could work, I think.

It couldn't support its own weight because of the stress put upon its bones. But that assumes its bones are not super-strong, which they obviously need to be.

To jump and be as agile as it's shown in the movie, yes, but not as strong as is assumed. Bone is tough - the numbers in my last post were for cartilage, and bone is tougher. So AmGodzilla couldn't be as agile as shown - but it's his cartilage that would probably be limiting, not his bones.

Which they aren't for Classic Godzilla, which tells us his bones are tougher than steel.

Real Godzilla is a whole other ballgame. There's no way he works with anything resembling Earth biology. From the sort of attacks he survives, I think steel isn't even close to the toughness of his bones, scales, etc. I think he took Orichalcum Body as an esoteric ability

I think its possible, but probably not as a biped.

Oh, as a biped it's ludicrously unlikely, granted. But it's not as impossible as Mike Wong thinks. Allometric scaling is powerful!

 

[Khisanth the Ancient]

Note that his muscles will be harder than his skin

Why? I always figured those creatures would have really well-armored scales - probably some supermaterial we can't make yet.

 

[Belzamus]

It just bothers me that even "small" Macrobes have more hit dice than Time Lords.

Bear in mind that good ol' Gargillan (Nexus Dragon adventure seed) a 3036 HD Macrobe Human is likely around CR 150, at most. His whip ought to eat him alive. Even with his absurd number of feats, what is he really going to gain?

Fast Healing
Damage Reduction
Natural Armor
Energy Resistance
Attack Bonus

Any other stackables I'm forgetting?

So he has +1500 to hit, a base damage that is TRULY negligible (32d4? Come on. Or is it 32 x his new base damage? 320d10 is a little nicer, but hardly egregious), a massive natural armor, likely less than 100,000 hp, +1500 saves...a Time Lord would CURBSTOMP this guy, even with his pet snake.

His CR would be nowhere NEAR 800 or whatever it's supposed to be.

Now...if he was wielding a compliment of artifacts that tricked him out with Cosmic abilities, sure, he might be decent, but then, the challenge isn't coming from his 3036 HD, or at least not directly.

Sorry for going off-topic, I just find the Macrobe template a little silly. Size-increases alone aren't nearly enough to justify that CR increase, and I REALLY hate big, slow, dumb creatures with single-digit Touch ACs.

Now, if it gave d1000 HD and massive (and I mean like 100/-- per HD) DR, than maybe it might be closer to weighing in at its CR.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hello again!

Japanese Godzilla (=Real Godzilla ), yes. American Godzilla... I don't think so.

The American Godzilla was still able to jump. That means it clearly had some sort of 'super' strength.

Almost certainly. It just bothers me that even "small" Macrobes have more hit dice than Time Lords.

Thats 3E for you.

But elephant bones/muscles/tissue aren't any stronger than mouse bones/muscles/tissue. It's just that their legs etc. are thicker.

Precisely, thats why animals the size of Godzilla don't exist. But if they did exist they would need to have bones/muscle/tissue far stronger than normal animals.

A "real" AmGodzilla would be shaped somewhat differently than the movie shows (thicker legs, otherwise thinner), but it could work, I think.

I don't think it would work. Have a look at documentaries about huge sauropods, those size dinosaurs could barely walk, let alone run, and they were quadrupeds.

To jump and be as agile as it's shown in the movie, yes, but not as strong as is assumed. Bone is tough - the numbers in my last post were for cartilage, and bone is tougher. So AmGodzilla couldn't be as agile as shown - but it's his cartilage that would probably be limiting, not his bones.

It simply couldn't exist with normal animal bones/muscles. Wong proved that.

Real Godzilla is a whole other ballgame. There's no way he works with anything resembling Earth biology. From the sort of attacks he survives, I think steel isn't even close to the toughness of his bones, scales, etc. I think he took Orichalcum Body as an esoteric ability

Oh, as a biped it's ludicrously unlikely, granted. But it's not as impossible as Mike Wong thinks. Allometric scaling is powerful!

Not powerful enough I suspect.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Why? I always figured those creatures would have really well-armored scales - probably some supermaterial we can't make yet.

...because muscles are stronger than skin.

According to my latest calculations Godzilla's bones/muscles/skin would have to be 90 times stronger (pound for pound) than normal human bone/muscle/skin.

That means the yield strength of Godzilla's bones must be approx. 10,000 MPa

Kevlar's Yield strength is 3620 MPa.

The skin of a crocodile is probably 2-4mm thick. Scaled up (no pun intended), lets say 3mm, thats about 192 mm for Godzilla. Probably 2-3 times that for scalier areas.

So you have a minimum of about 20 cm of Kevlar to get through before you even start to hurt Godzilla.

So I stand by my earlier assessment, I think 8 inch guns, or the equivalent will just about break Godzilla's skin.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hiya mate!

Bear in mind that good ol' Gargillan (Nexus Dragon adventure seed) a 3036 HD Macrobe Human is likely around CR 150, at most. His whip ought to eat him alive. Even with his absurd number of feats, what is he really going to gain?

Fast Healing
Damage Reduction
Natural Armor
Energy Resistance
Attack Bonus

Any other stackables I'm forgetting?

So he has +1500 to hit, a base damage that is TRULY negligible (32d4? Come on. Or is it 32 x his new base damage? 320d10 is a little nicer, but hardly egregious), a massive natural armor, likely less than 100,000 hp, +1500 saves...a Time Lord would CURBSTOMP this guy, even with his pet snake.

His CR would be nowhere NEAR 800 or whatever it's supposed to be.

He can always exchange feats for divine, cosmic, transcendental abilities.

Now...if he was wielding a compliment of artifacts that tricked him out with Cosmic abilities, sure, he might be decent, but then, the challenge isn't coming from his 3036 HD, or at least not directly.

See above. He'll have about 800 feats, thats potentially 133 divine abilities, 22 cosmic abilities etc.

Sorry for going off-topic, I just find the Macrobe template a little silly. Size-increases alone aren't nearly enough to justify that CR increase, and I REALLY hate big, slow, dumb creatures with single-digit Touch ACs.

Now, if it gave d1000 HD and massive (and I mean like 100/-- per HD) DR, than maybe it might be closer to weighing in at its CR.

Possibly. But I am just chuckling to myself how much easier this sort of thing will be in 4E.

He's a Giga-sized Level 40 Solo Brute...

 

[Belzamus]

Hey.

Okay, then. Only thing is, a Macrobe ignores Esoterics? I was under the impression that bereft of a divine/sidereal/eternal template, you could only go one category higher, i.e. divines for Gargy. (Does he mind if I call him Gargy?)

I can see how 4E would be better in this case, too. I've never been too big a fan to crazy-big characters/opponents, so the problems with super sizes never really showed up for me in 3E.

 

[Khisanth the Ancient]

I don't think it would work. Have a look at documentaries about huge sauropods, those size dinosaurs could barely walk, let alone run, and they were quadrupeds.

That's ... highly questionable. Sauropods were perfectly competent, nowhere close to "could barely walk" - they were incredibly successful animals.

It simply couldn't exist with normal animal bones/muscles. Wong proved that.

I don't think he's right, though. Remember the history of pterosaur sizes. "Oh, nothing bigger than a condor could fly." Then they discovered Pteranodon ingens, with a 7-meter wingspan (bigger species of Pteranodon have been found since). "Oh, this is the biggest animal that could ever fly." Then they discovered 11-12-meter wingspan Quetzalcoatlus. "Oh, this is the biggest... etc, etc." - and at first, apparently due to incredulity at the thought of a 250kg flying animal, ludicrously low mass estimates were suggested. Then they discovered Hatzegopteryx which probably massed nearly 500kg (and even that puts its density below 0.6 g/cu cm!).

Anyway, doing the math, normal bone *is* strong enough if allometric scaling and pneumaticity is used right. It just needs thick legs, and lots of air sacs. A 500 ton AmeriZilla's cartilage can maybe survive (look at how thick its legs are!), and if its cartilage can, bones aren't even at risk.

I concede that its ludicrous athletic ability requires tougher-than-normal tissue; but its size alone probably does not. Most of the improvement would need to be in cartilage. The bone would need to be stronger, but not by high-tech-alloy levels.

Anyway, no large animal in Earth's history has ever had *reason* to be athletic. If there was sufficient selection pressure, you could probably end up with a lot more agility in big animals than Earth's ever seen. The only group of land animals ever to exceed 20-25 tons were the sauropods, and they were locked into slow-moving body forms long before they got that large. The other essays in really big (10+ tons) land animals in Earth's history were the proboscideans (elephants, mammoths, etc.), rhinoceroses (specifically the indricotheres), and the hadrosaurs. The first two again were slow-moving long before they got big; the hadrosaurs' body plans didn't get particularly 'elephantine' even at 20+ tons. (One carnivorous dinosaur, Spinosaurus, may have exceeded 10 tons, and it was actually fairly lightly built.)

...But I think we're a bit off the original topic of the thread. I'll put up my idea of AmeriZilla stats in General Monster Talk, though, when I get the chance.