Disclaimer: I'm friggin' exhausted, so bear with me on the low quality of this post.
Souvarine wrote:From my experience, most mmporgs that have size as a customizeable feature (DAOC, COH and COV, shadowblade, ryzom...i didn't play world of warcrap so i don't know) most players would take the tallest size, except those who wanted a "sneaky" character...which made them harder to target (i.e. click on) or be the "funny midget" sort.
Almost all mmorpgs are 'PG' and 'munchkin' based. You won't have a lot of that in a roleplay-based PW.
Basing height off STR and CON is silly - but it might be nice to see a guidline for calculation of *weight* Based on height+str+con.
I agree it is silly. Okay, pulling out a resume'... having studied the martial arts (and fitness) over the past 29 years now, i can tell you with confidence that strength holds many variables, not the least of which is intrinsic knowledege of leverage/torque. It would be a waste of time for me to try and quantify D&D's stupid characteristics, mainly because they're stupid. But, strength in D&D does not merely cover the clean & jerk, or even weightlifting. In D&D, strength is primarily a determinate of the ability to use mass in combat. Effective use of mass is mostly a learned thing, but levels in D&D do not reflect this. Instead levels reflect accuracy, accelleration, technique(s), and similar.
Thus, we must take the leap that D&D has taken, and assume strength is a measure of 'mass control.' What this means, at least to me, is that although a character could be massive, and could lift a Hummer, if he is not able to wield his mass in combat (or in bashing doors down), because of a lack of body control or a supreme lack of understanding of body dynamics (leverage, torque, center of balance, etc), he won't have a high 'combat' strength.
Even if you wish to dismiss what i just presented, consider that a 'short' arm has less torque than a long arm, and thus is capable of lifting more, albeit at a shorter range. Joints in the body act as pulleys, while limbs are extendors, or levers from the pulleys. The longer these levers, the lower the pulley multiplier provided by the muscles (damn, so much harder to describe this in words), and thus the weaker a person may seem.
For those who watched and participated in full-on competitions, you'll note that some large persons can present tremendous damage when they strike, but so can some small persons. In fact, for the first 10 UFCs (after that, they foolishly made weight classifications), most of the fights in which a large person went against a smaller person, the smaller person won. That has a lot to do with large people becoming dependent on their mass, yet never obtaining the skills necessary to utilize that mass to greater effect, but also because smaller people have less mass to work with, and are thus better able to 'control' that mass.
So there it is. A big guy, having greater upper body strength, may be able to wield larger weapons that could do more damage just because of the mass of those weapons, but the amount of 'their own' mass they can put behind those strikes, is dependent on a character's strength. We already know this, but it serves to illustrate the obvious.
Constitution, in D&D, is also a silly measurement. Its primary focus is in how 'tough' someone is, with a secondary factored in as healing properties and immune system (how healthy). Being physically tough is not as much dependent upon muscle mass, but on bone mass (to note, heavy-duty weightlifters generally gain more bone mass), and on a person's ability to 'roll' with impact. It also is on whether a person's blood vessels rupture easily. D&D reflects the latter by providing more hps as a character levels, so this 'roll' with impact thing is not part of D&D's constitution.
As is it is measured in D&D, constitution is far more a 'mental' characteristic than a physical one. Its the ability to avoid going unconscious, even though your mind says to just lay down and die. It's the ability to take a beating without crying, "foul!" And, in being able to do so, absorb more damage.
STORYTIME
Before i learned how to kick the crap out of a garbage can, i got in some tangles as a youth. I was really small as a child, and thus any fights i got into were against larger guys. But, being small didn't prevent me from being strong... which i was. I didn't look strong, but i had great control over what little mass i had. I never lost any of my tuffles as a youth, although i do recall one person holding me down, fearing to release me should i punch him again. And as i grew older, after studying judo and wrestling (and other things irrelevant to this example), i would regularly wrestle people much larger than me... with much greater ease than it was to wrestle someone the same size or even smaller than me.
So while being physically strong may help to 'restrain' an 'untrained' combatant, it will not help all that much in being able to 'do the damage,' and it won't work well against a trained combatant. Problem is, someone who is physically strong has a 'hard time' learning the physics. Brute strength helped them to open a can of pickles, but until they are willing to relinquish control of their body to the mind, they have no friggin' chance of learning how to effectively wield their mass.
In closing, the D&D characteristics of strength and constitution should have 'no' bearing on height or weight, just as D&D's intelligence and wisdom should have no bearing on the dimensions of the skull and forehead. D&D characteristics are 'combat' measurements, and not Mr. Universe measurements.