Quote:
Originally Posted by Squirrelloid
So yes, there's definitely an effect of body structure and what you're good at doing. However, I'm pretty sure a human isn't any better evolved for swinging a sword or wearing armor. I mean, in reality we do it better because we have superior intelligence and capability to learn (and can have an interest in doing so for these things), but if you imagine an ape with equal mental faculty, I'd be willing to bet he gets less fatigued wearing similar armor and swinging the same weapon. This is a case where the body plans are likely similar enough relative to the activity to merely talk about relative strength.
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This is flawed. Humans made swords. Therefore swords are beautifully evolved to use humans. Not the other way around. Same with armour. Frankly, giants should have nearly zero encumbrance for armour if fighting humans if you want to be practical. The reason is that they only need leggings and groin. And if you really want to take that business all the way a giant should be using a 18 foot long great sword and therefore is killing pikemen before armour even becomes relevant. How is a 6 foot tall human with an 18 foot pike supposed to deal with a sword as long as his pike? Frankly, he can't. If I was chosing weapons for giants vs. humans I'd just pick giant scythes. Cut off all the feet of the humans with a 12 foot scythe blade and completely ignore their weapons.
And so on and so forth. Which also doesn't take into account the simple cube/square problem that the femurs of giants would be so insanely large in ratio to height that they could completely ignore attacks to their legs. A human femur is about 2" diameter. Let's apply the cube/square law of structural design. An 18 foot tall giant in humanoid form would weigh 200 lbs * 18/6 cubed = 1800 lbs. This would require a femur of 6" diameter. Introduce me to the man who could cut through a 6" bone with an axe. I'd love to meet him.
Or lets take another example. I have a big bowie knife. You are a 2 foot tall midget with a scalpel. What on earth are you going to do to the parts of my body you can even reach that I would care about? Slice off my toenails? I stick on some greaves and a groin protector and let you slice little 1/2 inch deep cuts into my thighs and just shrug it off. In the meantime, my reach is 36 inch plus the knife so I've been smacking on you when you are still 24 inch from even touching me.
Of course, someone is going to say give the midget a pike. So he's got a pike with a tip the size of a screwdriver and 6 feet long. I've a pike with a tip the size of his entire head and 18 feet long. Let's face it. In almost all melee combat, the taller guy with longer arms wins. There are exceptions but they are rare.
An 18 foot humanoid creature would have a totally different height to width shape. Mythical giants are frankly nonsense. So why bother trying to be realistic? Just balance it.
All this changes with bows but there's a really cool thread I found on the main page about that. I wonder what bow that 2 foot midget uses? It probably shoots something like 2 inch common nails.