New Size Scale Discussion

Karbo wrote:

Actually there is a logical explanation why preds are attempting to swallow their prey whole. Can't really tell anything about it though, that would be a huuge spoiler for things to come ^^;
As for breasts, well honnestly I wouldn't go really out of my way to explain this one. I mean explaining thing is good , it's what give a solid foundation for a world,
but explaining too much may look as trying to find excuses..

Anyway I worked a bit on that size chart. I'll post it tonight with colors and so :

Huge image is huge:

So there we are. We can see that most pred break the 100 feet indeed. In that configuration, Aurora become the old size of Crisis ^_^ ( confirmed by Kiki )

Ah, awesome, this looks really helpful o:

I have a question regarding Anko, though. I always thought Mermaids were measured head-to-tailfin, since they don't really stand up like a naga does, I don't think. Any reason for why on;y half her tail is included? ^^;

no no it's just a question of placement on the picture ^^ the measurement will be from head to tips of the tail indeed

Karbo wrote:

no no it's just a question of placement on the picture ^^ the measurement will be from head to tips of the tail indeed

Does that mean she'll be placed higher on the finished picture?

Damn, that is some good work. Keep it up, Karbo!

when I look at the lines of the picture it looks more like the human is closer to 7 ft tall than 6, though that could just be human in particular, or the soil might have some particular effect that makes humans slightly taller.

either way, it was a little difficult to find out exactly where they stood on that height chart, I had to take a sheet of paper and follow it along to the individual.

However I trust you to make things a bit more clear/refined in the finished version. After all that is done, you could also make the height chart a sticky somewhere, or a reference on the wiki because of how important it is.

Sean Okotami wrote:

Even if you take it that way, shredding a human to pieces would be impractical since the pieces would be minuscle.

Depends on how you're "shredding" them, really. Recall that merely cutting a person in halves is still leaving what'd approximate to a five inch large chunk. You cut them into approximate quarters, that's still two-inch chunks (though if breaking into quarters, more probably you're going leg, leg, torso-half A, torso-half B, so more like five inch strips now instead of five inch tenders).

If you start cutting them akin to my "chunky salsa" analogy, however, it would be a bit too small: Harpies lack the beaks for precision, and bloody chunks the size of a typical meat-patty don't exactly pick up well with talons. Rubbing their face in the ground is an option, but not exactly "civil".

The only real "problem" comes in when trying to eat a human whole, or in very small chunks. Small chunks for the reason addressed above (lack of hands and beak, claws not exactly the best for precise finger-lickin' meals, etcetera), whole because you're not going to keep them small unless you apply one of three things:
1) Additional height. Considering the point of the harpies is that they're smaller than the rest, it doesn't particularly help to make them only ten feet shorter and say "done and done!".
2) Abnormally large / stretchable mouth. Doesn't exactly work with the current size, being akin to 10" subs means that large mouths are still not going to fit them. Stretching the jaw and throat works slightly better, but it's still a 10" meal. Furthermore, current size means they aren't going to be eating more than, at most, one person a hunt: It'd be like one of us trying to scarf down several footlongs in a single sitting, and that has some obvious drawbacks when you don't pride yourself on your stomach capacity.
3) Shrinking Magic. However, that only negates the "fit in mouth" problem. Furthermore, it seems a bit odd to just slap on "Shrink Magic" to a being just so that it can eat humans.

A combination of #1 and #2 would be best, but there's still going to be some limitations from each. A seventy foot Giant Predator / Harpy is still going to be eating a human akin to a six-inch sub, meaning barring the most gluttonous of them you're only seeing maybe one or two eaten per hunt. They're going to need some sort of mouth and throat adjustments to gobble at that size, as well, since otherwise it's almost akin to trying to shove a six ounce steak down your throat in one go.

If you're trying to maintain humans in their diet, you're going to have a lot of trouble while keeping them small. It's just that simple: It doesn't work that great for Soft Vore. You're either going to have to apply a bunch of new traits to them, make them much larger than they currently are (that 70' example would be a 75% size change, and it's still in need of additional traits to make it work), drop the human part of the diet, or start implementing Hard Vore to some degree.

wouldn't it be more like trying to shove a large (non-baby variety) pickle down your throat than a steak? Steaks are wide, and humans are thinner. Though trying to shove that down your throat would still make you cough up a lot of fluids probably while that happens. (There are some people who can do that, the rare few. I've been able to swallow an ice cube whole, but that's it. I don't suggest it though, it hurts the brain ).

If harpies are a little smaller than normal, that makes their feeding on the poor human...worse or better I guess depending personal opinion, though it'd still suck

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Does that mean she'll be placed higher on the finished picture?

That would not do us any good though. If she were placed so high up on the chart, it would be hard to accurately compare her human half to other giants, to get an idea of how big she is, and how big the other preds, and humans would be in relation to her. If the tip of her tail were on the floor of the chart, she'd be taller than Cypress, which isn't accurate, since her human half is a decent amount smaller. The current placement lets us more easily compare her human half to other hybrids. Either way, Anko is freaking huge. The part sticking up from the ground of the size-chart is 130ft tall...and when you tack on her tail, she is easily 200ft long or more. Her TAILFIN is almost as big as Nikita's whole body, lol.

She's 231 according to the picture, which strikes me as odd, because until now, Cypress was the tallest canon character recorded.

Sean Okotami wrote:

She's 231 according to the picture, which strikes me as odd, because until now, Cypress was the tallest canon character recorded.

Cypress is still the tallest. There's a difference between height and length. Crisis is over 300ft long, and Fiona would be close to 400, but most of that is tail. Her human half is of a much smaller scale than Cypress'. That is what determines who is the largest more than anything. Eventhough Anko is 231ft long, her human half is nowhere near as by as Cypress'. Anko's equivalent height (how big she would be if she were a giantess) would probably be around 140-150ft by the look of things. Mermaids are kind of like Nagas, due to their body structure, their measurements are a bit different than someone with legs.

It's going to make things more difficult to properly evaluate how long a mermaid should be now.

Sean Okotami wrote:

It's going to make things more difficult to properly evaluate how long a mermaid should be now.

It never was easy to properly evaluate how long a mermaid should be; it was very vague and undefined, because we were shoehorning length concepts that work fine with bipedal humanoids on to a creature that is not a bipedal humanoid. Now light is being shed on the subject, and we are beginning to realize that we are going to need specially designed measurements, which of course are difficult in their own way.

I hope we don't need a measurement for the animal half and the humanoid half separately X_X we've never needed to do that before.

Well at least with a good size of Anko, we now know that whatever length characters had should be at least doubled if you take her as the average. Which means that Leviathans are now longer than Supercarriers.

Oldman40k2003 wrote:

It never ways easy to properly evaluate how long a mermaid should be; it was very vague and undefined, because we were shoehorning length concepts that work fine with bipedal humanoids on to a creature that is not a bipedal humanoid. Now light is being shed on the subject, and we are beginning to realize that we are going to need specially designed measurements, which of course are difficult in their own way.

Indeed, measuring mermaids is very hard. It's like a special case in itself.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

After all that is done, you could also make the height chart a sticky somewhere, or a reference on the wiki because of how important it is.

Yes that's a good idea

About the whole "eating whole" thing:

If the creature is big enough, it doesn't need to rip it's prey to shreds. If it's a ravenous beast, unless specified otherwise, it will rip and tear.

Can we just agree on that? Please?

Let's talk about the Lamina Harpies. I decided that Meiramines will be longer, since Mermaids are pretty long, but only about around 80' or 90' ft long at the very most, and the Svila dridders will be kept at around the same range as them jumping spider ladies. They just won't be able to consume humans, nekos and such since they're too large. The Lamina Harpies are a different stories though. Since their creator won't be coming back, we'll have to decide ourselves if we make them around Aurora's height, or if we keep them around 40 feet in height.

Pendragon wrote:

About the whole "eating whole" thing:

If the creature is big enough, it doesn't need to rip it's prey to shreds. If it's a ravenous beast, unless specified otherwise, it will rip and tear.

Can we just agree on that? Please?

Agreeing? In this community? Oh, I just literally lol'd.

I said steak as a human might be "lean", but they can still have broad shoulders too as well as open arms and legs to struggle.

The average firefighter has (note: this was the main "average shoulder width" I could find) a 20.8" average shoulder, if male, and 18.9" if female. At 6' tall, the width is practically 28.89% the body height (if a male). Or, to go back to the 6oz. steak, take two decks of cards and put the bottom of one deck to the top of another. You take away about two eights of an inch to the width (not height), and you have the humans' size there, and that is with arms closed and pinning yourself to be eaten.

The example is also somewhat off, in that it should be at least three of the decks of cards long (so even making a comparison to a 9oz. steak might be possible).

Pendragon wrote:

About the whole "eating whole" thing:

If the creature is big enough, it doesn't need to rip it's prey to shreds. If it's a ravenous beast, unless specified otherwise, it will rip and tear.

Can we just agree on that? Please?

We can agree that there are things big enough that they don't need to eat things in pieces, yes, as well as the Ravenous Beast thing (since you tacked on the "unless specified" clause).

However, that's not the issue here. The issue here is what do we do when something doesn't meet the "Big enough" factor, but still is intended to be capable of eating people whole. Of course, looking back on it now, there was already a problem with the Lamina Harpies (since at 40' tall, there is no point wherein they should be able to "gobble" up a person that isn't the size of a garden gnome), so even if the scales weren't changed we'd need to find a solution here.

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and the Svila dridders will be kept at around the same range as them jumping spider ladies. They just won't be able to consume humans, nekos and such since they're too large.

Umm, remember that Dridders DO have an alternative way to eat things. That is why Dridders of all sizes are so dangerous. They don't need to swallow something, or even cut it up. They can just bite, inject their venom, and suck out the delicious milkshake that the insides of the prey turns into. Spider venom is very specialized, it isn't just for self-defense like snake venom.

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The Lamina Harpies are a different stories though. Since their creator won't be coming back, we'll have to decide ourselves if we make them around Aurora's height, or if we keep them around 40 feet in height

That might end up being the case, yeah. All we can do is try and note him or something on DA and make the best judgement. Like I said before, the height increase really opens up a new size-range or preds, those that are around 40-50ft tall. Big enough to be powerful and dangerous, but generally small enough to not be able to eat humans...unless its a Dridder or Naga, since they can both get around that.

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so even if the scales weren't changed we'd need to find a solution here

Not necissarily. Chibi-Preds (named in honor of Jumping dridders =P ) Would generally be too small to eat humans, but more than large enough to be powerful and dangerous. It opens up room for a whole new kind of pred, one that HAS to survive on animals, fruit and the like.

Keep in mind, nearly all of the giant predators (except for fairies, nagas and dridders because they cheat around it =P ) go through that size-range on the way to adulthood. They all go through a phase where they cannot eat humans, and have to learn to survive on other things, on fruit, and on harder to catch game. It just doesn't get much attention.

rcs619 wrote:

Spider venom is very specialized, it isn't just for self-defense like snake venom.

Cliff, you dun goofed.

I assume you refer to the fact that venom can't be defensive?

Yeah, just to be pedantic - a venomous creature is one that hunts with its venom. A poisonous creature is one that uses it for defense, being dangerous if touched/ingested.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

rcs619 wrote:

Spider venom is very specialized, it isn't just for self-defense like snake venom.

Cliff, you dun goofed.

Yes, yes. Fine, to clarify.

Spider venom is much more specialized in function. Its main function is to liquify the insides of a spider's prey so that it can eat. It can also make other creatures very ill, as well as have some nasty necrotic effects. Its main function is still to prepare the spider's prey for eating.

Snake venom is really just about killing or serverely impairing whatever it bites. This can be for hunting (since a thrashing, live prey could very easily hurt the snake while its eating), or for self-defense against larger animals.

Just saying, spider venom has a very specialized function, while snake venom is a bit more broad in its application.

Well, now that the chart is up... Let's see.

Crisis' height has been corrected from 75 feet to 103. A 37% increase. Anna likewise (from 75 to 104). Subeta, from 80 to 109: a 36% increase. Menyssan, from 80 to 116 - making her proportionally taller than she was. Drayla, from 130 to 143: just a 10% increase. Vivian from 85 to 116: + 36%, the same as for the other nagas.

On the whole, then, nagas and fairies (and presumably also giantesses) need to go up by about 36 or 37%. That makes it easy enough.

While we're on the issue of size, though... What about tinies? The wiki says they're three inches tall on average. That's about 8 centimetres. If we consider nekos to be 6 feet tall on average (183cm; though presumably women's average would be shorter than that), that would mean nekos are just under 23 times taller than tinies. While Crisis is... 17 times taller than a human.

Which means... The size for tinies is fine as it is. Even if we assume a female neko who's 1m70 tall, she'd still be 21 times taller than an average tiny.

If we're looking for the "prey" species to be about as tall as the index finger of their "predator", 7 to 8cm seems about right for a tiny.

Now... Off to correct my characters' sizes in the wiki.

What about everyone else's? Should this thread be used for people to indicate what size they now want their characters to be, so that we can then fix it in the wiki?

Edit: Question. The wiki says a fairy can grow to "about 100 feet, although this range varies from one fairy to another". When I created Lucilya, I used this range to give her a maximum height of 94 feet. With the new proportions, this would give her a maximum height of 130 feet. Is that still ok? If so, the page on fairies should probably be amended to say that some fairies can grow up to 140 feet.

mhh 130 might seem a little big thouh ? ^^