Putting some ideas together for a game, and some of the PC options I allow might include a change in silhouette to either 0 or 2. What are the mechanical pros and cons to being smaller or larger than the default silhouette of 1? I saw that for every 2 points in difference in size a smaller creature has an easier time of hitting a larger creature, and a larger creature has a harder time hitting a smaller one. Is there anything else? Like carrying capacity, soak, healing rates, wound threshold, bonuses/penalties on sneaking? It would be easy enough to simply add or subtract boost and challenge dice, but I'm just curious if there would or should be other mechanical effects for either size.

Per RAW, the only mechanical effect is the change to difficulties to hit larger or smaller targets, as you noted. Any other benefits or drawbacks for silhouette are entirely up to the GM and players to handle. Some may simply be narrative, like a silhouette-0 intelligent mouse being able to scurry into a house through a drainpipe, but not being able to use human-sized weapons. Or like a silhouette-2 centaur being able to reach a tall button, but not being able to easily navigate a typical inn.

Other benefits and drawbacks might grant boosts or setbacks, but, again, it'd be up to the GM and players to figure out how. For instance, that same mouse might get +2 boots on a Stealth check to hide from an enemy, but the centaur might get -1 or -2 on the same roll. I'd also upgrade any attempts the mouse made to use equipment intended for humans (especially weapons), and I might give the centaur some social penalties to Charm when dealing with smaller creatures, but bonuses to Coercion for the same reason.

TL;DR: Only real game effect is when attacking +/-2 silhouette creatures. All the rest is narrative, situational, and up to the GM and players to figure out.

Thanks for the input, makes sense.

actually, there are some specific rules regarding silohuette in weapon qualities

knockdown - requires extra advantage to be spent based on target silohuette in order to actually knockdown the target (pg 88 genesys)

I feel like there were more along similar lines, but I can't find them easily now...

Well that's definitely a plus in the large sized column. That was basically my goal, was to have reasonable advantages and drawbacks to both. Being harder to knockdown is pretty good. Thanks.

On 5/8/2018 at 3:03 PM, qcipher said:

Putting some ideas together for a game, and some of the PC options I allow might include a change in silhouette to either 0 or 2. What are the mechanical pros and cons to being smaller or larger than the default silhouette of 1? I saw that for every 2 points in difference in size a smaller creature has an easier time of hitting a larger creature, and a larger creature has a harder time hitting a smaller one. Is there anything else? Like carrying capacity, soak, healing rates, wound threshold, bonuses/penalties on sneaking? It would be easy enough to simply add or subtract boost and challenge dice, but I'm just curious if there would or should be other mechanical effects for either size.

One thing I want to point out is that it's not a ± 1 for each 2 silhouette difference but a ± 1 for a two or more silhouette difference.

A silhouette 4 creature only increases the difficulty by 1 when attacking a silhouette 0 creature, for example.

OK thanks. It's getting trickier to make this work, and I don't want to go outside of rules guidelines. Going to Star Wars, even Wookies were still Sil. 1. Hmmm...ok thanks. Talents and perhaps unique abilities for the race will probably have to showcase this. I think I still will allow small (Sil. 0) characters though.

On 5/10/2018 at 3:16 PM, qcipher said:

OK thanks. It's getting trickier to make this work, and I don't want to go outside of rules guidelines. Going to Star Wars, even Wookies were still Sil. 1. Hmmm...ok thanks. Talents and perhaps unique abilities for the race will probably have to showcase this. I think I still will allow small (Sil. 0) characters though.

So I've thought a lot about this.

The differences in Silhouettes is roughly an order of magnitude increase in size. The book gives Cars a silouhette of 2 (and a car is roughly 10x heavier, larger than a person), and a fighter jet as silouhette 3 (roughly 100x more massive than a person).

So, if we assume that Encumbrance is already a cubic measurement, than a S2 creature should have 15+3xBrawn Encumbrance.

Similarly, any damage from Brawn based attacks would be base 3xBrawn, with each success adding 3 damage.

If this seems too high, remember that Planetary Scale typically starts at Silouhette 3, and that multiplies everything by 10.

@Zenferno except we know that your maths isn't accurate or true. We have several silhouette 2 monsters that just do Brawn + damage on an attack, not 3x that. And while your math may hold true for human to car, single-engine aircraft are also silhouette 2 and weigh a lot more than a person or your average automobile. Heck, if your maths held true then our silhouette 0 species (the gnome) would have would have a lower encumbrance threshold and do less damage—but they don't.

I just fear that you're making a lot of erroneous assumptions about scale, silhouette and encumbrance. None of which are substantiated by what is currently published.

I second c_beck. Silhouette is not a measure of strength, hitting power, damage resistance, or any of that. It's a measure of size pure and simple. It doesn't account for weight or density, just, literally, silhouette. It's used for hitting or not hitting something (something big is easier to hit), sure. But any other effects you want to simulate, like higher damage output, need to be simulated with other stats or abilities.

If you want a bigger PC species/archetype, just follow the rules on pages 192–193, Create a Species or Archetype .

If you want them to have a higher WT, give 'em 14+Brawn for 15XP. Want them to have a higher soak? It's 20XP for that (see the Enduring talent, page 80). Want them to hit harder? Use the Claws ability as a starting point to make their unarmed attacks nastier. For other things look to talents and use that to guide the XP cost of that ability.

Just whatever you do, do not give your archetypes/species talents! It'll futz with the talent pyramid. Just give 'em abilities that do pretty much the same thing as a talent, just don't call it as such and you'll be fine.

It's pretty telling that FFG has yet to offer a Sil 2 species/archetype in either Star Wars or GeneSys. Personally, I don't think it's necessary to include them.

55 minutes ago, kaosoe said:

It's pretty telling that FFG has yet to offer a Sil 2 species/archetype in either Star Wars or GeneSys. Personally, I don't think it's necessary to include them.

If it's wanted for someone's game then I would say that's necessary ?

Necessary? Perhaps not. But at this point we're just arguing semantics.

Semantics? THIS. IS. THE INTERNET!

?

If I can control my own pedantry, I expect others can do the same.

Yeah, I don't see making Silhouette 2 an option. There's easier ways to get what I'm looking for that are well within the rules already. Thanks everyone!