Hauling the load, Is cyber the answer? Options

[Necro Tech]

This one comes from a fellow player. Under the section Hauling the Load, the various benchmarks for carrying stuff is spelled out. The question becomes, if you are carrying between (STR X 5) and (STR X 10) you take a light stun every BOD in combat turns. If you have a Trauma damper, does it take care of the light wounds?

[sidartha]

In the words of one Immortal "Ha fragin ha." :grinbig:
Seriously to answer your question, Yea probably, but you'll find the general consenus around here is that the wight tables were written while on some mind altering substance and thus are not to be used.
If you use them let us know how well they work as you may just change our minds about them.

[Raptor1033]

off topic post but where's your sig from sid? it screams Hitchhiker's Guide but i'm not so sure.

[mmu1]

Ah, yes... The "An average man carrying 33 lbs will fall unconscious from the strain in 81 seconds" rules. I always wondered about those.

[Cray74]

[durthang]

[TheScamp]

[Hague]

Uh, wait a second here.

SR uses the metric system, so that 33 'pounds' should be 33 kilograms, or 72.6 pounds.

Reading some of the posts on this board, I'm wondering how many of the people here have actually GM'ed, and how many have just been rules lawyers.

Come on, if you think something isnt right, CHANGE IT. Its your game. Heck, I've ignored rules completely when I was GMing, because it was in the best interest of the game to do so. If it advances the plot for that supersmart SAM to not hit the player's home-built-from-a-kit Cessna prop plane with no ECM, chaff, whatever, then guess what, it misses. Also, some of the rules just slow things down. If rules or dice rolls can be ignored in order to quicken the pace and advance the plot, do so. I have. It works.

In this case for instance, I have let players try to give me a reasonable explanation for how they managed to carry everything they wanted. If they couldnt provide that explanation, they didnt carry it all. Write down on a seperate sheet of paper what you've got on you RIGHT NOW, and we'll take it from there.

This applies to concealed items, too. If the player wants to use a donut box to show me how he's gonna conceal a cyberdeck, fine. Someone wants to show me how they're going to conceal that Ares Predator, here ya go, here's a 1911, its about the same size I'd imagine a Predator to be.

Anyway, the point....dont rely so much on The Book. Being the GM means you have 'phenominal cosmic power' (but no itty-bitty living space to go with it), and pretty much anything you say, goes. Dont be a munchkin, though.

I think the reason that I managed to pull that off is because munchkins were promptly banished from any and all groups that I took part in.

[mmu1]

[Luke Hardison]

Yeah, but you don't start taking damage until you hit Str X 10 kgs. It's worded quite funny, but you can carry right up to Str X 9.999999999 kgs without penalty, as per SR3.

Edit: You can carry up to Str x 5 kgs "without appreciable effort", but you don't start taking stun damage until you carry twice that for (Body) combat turns. p.274

This post has been edited by Luke Hardison: Aug 23 2004, 04:14 AM

[Edward]

I being weaker than most people I have measured my strength against have carried 45kg for 8 hours with only short breaks every few hours. In SR terms my strength is defiantly not 4.5 thus I deem the carrying limits stupid. It took 3 days before I couldn’t walk because of the chafing from the denim shorts I was stupid enough to wear on a hike.

Edward

[TheScamp]

Which it's generally better to try and get players do describe where exactly they're carrying all their stuff rather than just adding up the weight totals. Technically, an average person can carry around 5 bows and 50 arrows with plenty of weight left over for armor and other goodies. There's no other mechanic for how awkard it's going to be to actually maneuver around with all that, let alone to try and use one of those bows.

[Kagetenshi]

[JaronK]

I have to agree about going with the rules. If you just run freeform and make the rules fit to your story at all times, then what the runners do means nothing... they just follow your cute little story. The rules give the runners things to do that the GM cannot predict, which gives them flexibility, and it gives a certain sense of consistancy. Maybe you hadn't thought about the fact that the runners could astrally project and check out security ahead of time... if you turn around and say "oh well you can't do that right now" then you stifle their creativity.

I'm not saying rules should be always be followed even when they can be exploited, but don't throw them out all the time either. Give the runners something to work with!

JaronK

[Voltage]

I agree with Scamp. It's usually not the weight of a load that causes you to be unable to carry it, it's the manner in which it is distributed around your body. If you could disperse the weight of your possessions to your entire body, then you'd be able to carry more than if you were to try to put it all on your person and still be able to move.

[Lucyfersam]

For carrying loads in a backpack, the recommendation I was given at Philmont Scout Ranch several years ago was that a reasonably fit person should carry about 1/3 their body weight for a comfortable long hike. You can easily carry more than this, especially for a few days or a week, but for several week trips the 1/3 seems to be a safe estimate.

[Kurukami]

Which means my Seoulpa muscle troll, weighing in at 730 Kg (based off of the rules here, can carry 243 kilos for most of the day. Great for medical evac, I guess. :D

So on the subject of weight, has anyone come up with a more reasonable "maximum" lifting ability? I once put together a theory for max lift, based on body weight and Strength, but I'm not sure it works too well. It went something like this:

Take the sum of the numbers up to your Strength. That is, if you have a Strength of 4, the sum is (4 + 3 + 2 + 1) = 10. Multiply that sum by 10%, and that product by your body weight. The result is how much you can lift above your head in kilos, full out.

Thus:

Average office worker (STR 3 human, 70 Kg). Sum = 6, product = 60%. This person can lift at most lift 42 kilos (~92 lbs) above their head.
Amateur bodybuilder (STR 6 human, 100 Kg). Sum = 21, product = 210%. Maximum lift: 210 Kg (432 lbs).
Olympics-class weightlifter, world-record holder (STR 9 human, 125 Kg). Sum = 45, product = 450%. Maximum lift: 562.5 Kb (1237.5 lbs).

Currently (thank you Olympics!) the world record for lifting is held by Hossein Rezazedah, a 350-lb Iranian weightlifter. At the finals of the Sydney games, he hoisted 1,042 lbs. The formula I threw together is a bit off from that, admittedly, but not so far as to make it unuseable.

But let's take some metahuman examples:

Lean elven street sam (STR 6, 94 Kg). Sum = 21, product = 210%. Maximum lift: ~197 Kg (434 lbs).
Ripped dwarven ganger (STR 8, 53 Kg). Sum = 36, product = 360%. Maximum lift: ~191 Kg (422 lbs).
Ork muscle (STR 8, 150 Kg). Sum = 36, product = 360%. Maximum lift: ~542 Kg (1193 lbs).
Cybered troll enforcer (STR 15, 730 Kg). Sum = 120, product = 1200%. Maximum lift = 10,200 Kg (22,440 lbs.)

There are several problems here, though -- first off, that the dwarven player will be bitching about being just as strong as the ork, kilo for kilo, but that the ork can lift three time what he can. Secondly, of course, there's the top of the scale -- the troll enforcer looks like he can bench-press a limousine and hardly break a sweat. So clearly the upper end of the scale's a bit off.

Anyone have constructive criticism?

[Austere Emancipa...]

Theoretically, if you're already factoring in Strength (and even more so when factoring in Body), your weight shouldn't matter much. If you're heavy, you have to be strong just to haul your own weight around. You could even say that lifting and carrying around shouldn't have anything to do with body weight, just like how much damage you do in unarmed combat or how much punishment you can handle does not.

I suppose there's good reason to use an exponential scale for Strength and the weight limits, especially when figuring out the absolute maximums. However, maybe it doesn't make as much sense when you think about the minimum weights that would cause a significant decrease in performance. Maybe it's OK for a person with STR 6 to only be able to carry twice (instead of 3.5x) the load of a STR 3 person before fatigue really hits in.

If you really want the big guys to be capable of carrying more, you could use something like a straight 2x modifier for trolls (depending on metatype, maybe).

[Necro Tech]

Anyone play Dark Eye, aside from me? I like the load rules there. Long term, you get fatigue points. This means you have to rest a couple of times a day hauling heavy loads and days of this will wipe you out. Short term, you get a modifier depending on how far over your limit you get. In SR, hauling over 5 X STR would leave you at a light wound but never get any higher. On up the scale lets you carry and pretty much pay the bulky penalty with out passing out (which is ridiculous) after 5 minutes. Sure you can hike with a full pack but it would make dodging, shooting, running and moving stealthy real hard.