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Too often we get into discussions about various issues without fully understanding what the numbers mean. It’s one thing to say that the wizard is awesome because he can cast Fly at level 5, but what does it mean in real world terms? What about a barbarian that has a raging Strength score of 26? How big is that Magnificient Mansion? How far can a fireball fly before exploding?
That’s what I hope to answer with this thread. I appreciate a lot of input. Most importantly to make sure my math is correct but also with other examples. Just because I can visualize an olympic size swimming pool (roughly 16 x 8 ten-foot cubes not stacked) doesn’t mean that others can as well. I’m also open to other benchmarks. Power of an explosion or pressure references is something I think would be interesting.
Speed
Let’s start with speed. It’s easy and there are lots of benchmarks we can compare it to quickly. So the base speed for most characters is 20 or 30 feet. How fast is that? I’ll put the speeds in order of Walk, Hustle, Run (x3), Run (x4), and Run (x5).
A dwarf moves at 20 feet per round. 2.2mph, 4.4mph, 6.6mph, 8.8mph, 11mph. What does that mean though? What else moves at those speeds? Well the average hiker walks at about 2 mph uphill and 6 mph downhill. The average walker walks at 3.5 mph. A liesurely bike ride is about 8 to 10 mph.
Humans move at 30 feet per round. 3.4 mph, 6.8 mph, 10.2 mph, 13.6 mph, 17 mph. So we’re a little faster but how fast are we? Well we already know the average human walks at 3.5 mph so that’s a good start. A hustle is a little slower than that bike ride we mentioned earlier. The triple speed run is about the same as the bike ride. 14 mph is the speed limit in the Disneyland parking lot, which is probably about how fast those trams move. 17 mph is how fast this lady is running
50 feet per round is 5.6 mph (speedwalker), 11.2 mph (leisurely bike ride), 16.8 mph (a little faster than is needed to meet the 4-minute mile), 22.4 mph (the fastest swimming bird is the gentoo penguin and it hits this speed), and 28 mph (Usain Bolt and Carl Lewis were clocked at these speeds, they were professional athletes).
60 feet per round is 6.8 mph, 13.6 mph, 20.4 mph, 27.2 mph, and 34 mph (a tiger runs at this speed).
90 feet per round (a 18th level monk) is 10.2 mph (car in parking lot), 20.4 mph (driving in a school zone), 30.6 mph (driving on main road), 40.8 mph (zebras run at this speed), and 51 mph (we’re approaching freeway speeds for the elderly).
Distance
Let’s take a look at distance. It’s one thing to say that something is 10 feet away or 100 feet away, but how far is that? Let’s look at the most common distances we’ll encounter. 5 feet is about 2 steps away (the game has a 5-foot step but I don’t think it must be a single step). 10 feet is across the bedroom. 15 feet is about the length of a full-size car. 20 feet is how wide a two-car garage is or the distance between you and the eye chart your doc wants you to look at. 30 feet is how far you need to go for a 1st down in football.
We’re getting into close range spells so let’s look at: 40 feet is is a 4-lane highway width. 50 feet is the width of a high school basketball court. 60 feet is roughly the distance between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. 75 feet is the width of an Olympic sized swimming pool. 90 feet is the distance between 1st and 2nd base in baseball.
Now we’re up to short range spells: 100 feet is about the width of 8 lanes of traffic. 150 feet is half a football field. 200 feet is the length of a hockey rink. 240 feet is the width of a soccer field. 300 feet is 100 yards, which is a football field length without endzones.
Here are some long range spells: 450 feet is a football field from goalpost to goalpost. 500 feet is 1.5 football fields. A par 3 hole on a men’s golf course is 750 feet. this man is 800 feet above the ground. The roller coaster at the top of the Space Needle in Las Vegas is just over 900 feet high. The Eiffel Tower is 1000 feet tall. Once we start getting to 1200 feet, we are close to ¼ of a mile. 1200 feet is the maximum distance (without feats) that a long range spell will have.
Weight
Weights are something that many people think they understand but really don’t. Here are some weights for common objects (If you ever want to get frustrated, try to look up common weights. I swear people should be slapped for some of their answers. I know that a 5-pound barbell weighs 5 pounds.):
1 pound = a Guinea Pig
1.5 pounds = a dozen Krispy Kreme glazed donuts
2 pounds = a rack of baby back ribs
3 pounds = an average human brain
4 pounds = an ostrich egg
4 pounds is a half gallon of milk
5 pounds how much a full grown chihuahua weighs
7.5 pounds = an average newborn
8 pounds = a human head
11 pounds is the combined shipping weight of your Core Rule Book, Bestiary, and Advanced Players Guide
11 pounds = an average housecat
15 pounds is about the size of 3 small bags of potatoes
20 pounds is about the weight of an average 1 year old child.
20 pounds = an automobile tire
24 pounds = a 3-gallon tub of super premium ice cream
25 pounds = an average 2 year old
33 pounds = a cinder block
36 pounds = a mid-size microwave
40 pounds = a 5-gallon bottle of water or an average human leg
50 pounds = a small bale of hay
55 pounds = a 5000 BTU air conditioner
70 pounds = an Irish Setter
77 pounds = a gold brick
90 pounds = a newborn calf
100 pounds = a 2 month old horse
117 pounds = an average fashion model (and shes 5'11")
118 pounds = the complete Encyclopedia Britannica
130 pounds = a newborn giraffe
144 pounds = an average adult woman (and shes 5'4½")
150 pounds = the complete Oxford English Dictionary
187 pounds = an average adult man
200 pounds = 2 Bloodhounds
235 pounds = Arnold Schwarzenegger
300 pounds = an average football lineman
400 pounds = a Welsh pony
Volume
Now it’s time to look at volume. This is probably something that many people have a hard time visualizing.
1) Let’s start with the basic 10 foot cube. It’s the size of a small bedroom.
2) A 10’x20 ‘ room is about the size of a large moving van. This truck should give you a good visual
3) A party tent is 20’x20’x10’ so if you stack them (which is not advisable), you get a 20-foot cube. That’s 8,000 cubic feet.
4) 30 foot cube is about the 200,000 gallons of water. That’s as much water as the central tank at the New England Aquarium. This tank holds several sharks, turtles, and many other fish.
5) 40 foot cube is about the volume of a 747 which can hold about 17 million ping pong balls.
6) A 10 foot sphere is the size of one of those giant rubber balls you can roll down a hill in
Putting it all together
What does this all tell us? Well let’s look at a few spells to get some ideas. These first looks at spells are at the minimum of what they can do.
Level 0 Spell: Mage hand at 1st level can pick up a Chihuahua just outside a two-car garage if you are on the other end
Level 1 Spell: Magic Missile can strike 5 targets that are inside a full size car that is on the other side of 8 lanes of traffic
Level 2 Spell: Enthrall can be cast from the top of the Christ the Redeemer statue (in Rio de Janeiro) and affect people on the ground.
Level 3 Spell: A fireball can be thrown to the other end of a football field and it will explode affecting vehicles that are on opposite sides of a 4-lane road.
Level 4 Spell: A druid casting control water can control all the water in an Olympic size swimming pool
Level 5 Spell: A wizard can stand at one edge of a hockey rink and use transmute rock to mud on the opposite end and can turn 18 ten foot cubes worth of rock to mud. That’s the size of the Harmony Node 2 on the International Space Station. That’s about half the space of the cargo hold of the space shuttle.
Level 6 Spell: Mass Inflict Moderate Wounds can affect 11 creatures that are on the opposite side of a high school basketball court (width) and no two are 10 to 12 steps apart.
Level 7 Spell: Druids can cast a fire storm on the other side of a soccer field and affect 26 ten-foot cubes. That’s enough to fill the cargo hold of a 747.
Level 8 Spell: A wizard standing on the pitcher’s mound can shout loud enough to stun and deafen creatures at home plate. Interestingly enough, that’s also enough to destroy a strong wooden door which is common in dungeons. It exceeds 130 dB since it can cause hearing loss and actual damage. Imagine someone yelling at the volume of an artillery weapon.
Level 9 Spell: A storm of vengeance can create a cloud above the Eiffel Tower that is a two football fields in diameter. This storm is above 85 db but less than 130 since the sound won’t actually deal damage. The acid rain is strong enough to burn through rope in 6 seconds. The lightning bolts will destroy most wooden doors but have the potential to blast through an inch of adamantine. The hail stones strike with enough force to destroy most wooden vehicles like carts and wagons. The rain is as thick as a strong sandstorm (I’ve been in them and you can’t see very far at all) with winds as strong as a tropical depression. Scroll through those pictures to see what this spell is capable of doing. They are all from Hurricane Irene.
So that’s an idea of some benchmarks. What do you think? Any other benchmarks to help players and GMs visualize the action?
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I have nothing to add to this except to say that I love you.
I look at speeds in real life terms and weight and once I did the math I just realized the game is not realistic. This was in the days before old age caught up to me, and I could move pretty well.
Average NFL receivers run about a 4.5 40 yard dash.
That is about 50 yards in 6 seconds, which is 150 feet in one round.
So if you take the run feat which lets you run up to 5X your normal speed you can wear a lot of gear and keep up with world class athletes when the NFL receiver is not tied down by such things.
Even taking the run feat out you are still really fast considering all the stuff you are carrying.
I'm not really trying to bring realism as much as I would like to help people understand what some of the numbers mean. Quite often we see people touting this spell or that to show how powerful a character can be but they really don't take the time to understand what the numbers mean. Just because someone can cast telekinesis doesn't mean that they can lift anything. They are limited to something the size of a pony or so. It's not meant to be perfect. Just to give an idea of what's going on.
Just as an aside, I would love to see a football game (American NFL football) with monks as the players.
Master Arminas
I find that, when it comes to volume, people like to include a lot of empty space for some reason, thereby making their assumptions WILDLY inaccurate. I think that this stems partially from the fact that they DO tend to default to real life benchmarks when thinking it through.
Say I used shrink item, for example. When my wizard first obtains this spell, he can shrink an item of 10 cubic feet. Humans can have a volume of as little as 1 cubic foot, and never more than 3. Let's assume the middle-ground and say your average person has a volume of about 2 cubic feet. You could shrink an object the size of FIVE people! Imagine what you could do with it at higher levels.
Five cubic feet could easily shrink your car and then some (since volume accounts for the actual car itself, not the hollow interior and empty spaces between all those engine components).
I find a good way to determine what you could or could not effect where volume is concerned, is to take whatever object you are imagining, then picture grinding it up into dust or a paste (thereby eliminating much of the excess empty space). The result is very close to the object's actual volume. Knowing this, you might realize that a high level caster could easily shrink a small sailing vessel (which is mostly empty space).
A lot of people underestimate what stone shape can do as well. When my wizard first gets this spell, he can shape up to 15 cubic feet.
That makes a pillar that is 1x1 feet wide and 15 feet tall. It could also create a barrier in a 5x5 passage over 6 inches thick. Woop-de-doo, right?
Now, what if I told you it could also create a field of 45 right cone spikes 5 feet long with a base 6 inches across. Spring that up on the charging cavalry with a readied action and see what happens. Impressed yet?
What if you tried to collapse a ceiling onto an opponent by turning it into spheres? Most people would take a guess as to how many spheres might come tumbling down and get on with the game. Some might even calculate the volume of X amount of spheres of Y diameter. But what if you didn't turn the stone into spheres? What if you simply used stone shape to move the stone IN BETWEEN the spheres? Suddenly, a 5th-level caster went from dropping 229 six-inch wide boulders on an enemy to dropping about 500.
Now what if you didn't shape the stone ceiling into a massive falling block trap that is nearly 2.5 feet on a side, but instead moved an inch of stone from around a block that was 10x10x5 feet? Since you are ONLY shaping the stone AROUND the massive block and moving it elsewhere, you ONLY count the stone you are moving. The fact that it leaves behind a large heavy block that is no longer supported by the ceiling is inconsequential to the rules themselves. The resulting falling block trap would cover more area, weigh a crap ton more, and do far more damage, don't ya' think?
This is a GREAT thread.
This thread brings to mind gaming with physics majors in the days of 1st ed and figuring out all the terrible things setting off a fireball in a dungeon hallway would do (fireball used to have a volume that would conform to the area it was in)
Ah, yes. Mine still do. Muhahahahahahahah. Squishy wizards don't cast fireballs in tight spaces in my game. And if lightning bolt doesn't do enough damage to break through a wall or door, it bounces until it has gone the full length.
Master Arminas
RD, just remember that most of the spell volumes are in 10 foot cubes. Stone shape can do what you describe but other spells aren't written that way. This is exactly what I was hoping to see with this thread.
I remember taking a fireball in 2nd Edition and making it 5 miles wide, but it was about an inch thick (the spell squaring the circle was pretty cool). Cool looking but that's about it. I just wanted to see what I could do. I remember clearing out tunnels with fireballs. Can't do that anymore :(
A friend of mine actually programmed his graphing calculator with the volume algorithm for fireball. With only the ceiling height he could figure out how much space a fireball would fill in about three seconds.
So I was in a discussion with someone about the temperature of a red dragon's breath weapon and I realized that we have another benchmark. The CR 15 red dragon can turn rock into lava. Lava is 1300F to 2200F. To turn it to lava, the breath must be at least the same temperature (it actually should be much hotter because of how vast it happens). So if we look at the breath weapon, we are looking at 14d10 damage. That's about 77 points on average. So 77 points of fire damage is enough to turn rock to lava. We can extrapolate that is equal to 22d6 fire damage.
What does 22d6 fire damage? An intensified fire snake cast by a 17th level wizard. A wall of lava qualifies too. A fire storm is at least that hot too.
Should those also turn rock to lava, I don't think so. I like the idea that the red dragon has some feature in his breath that will do that. It just can give us an idea of how hot it really is.
So now that we know this, what does this tell us? It tells us that every 1.5d6 is about 100F. That's interesting to note. Is that consistent with what we know? We know that the real world kindling point of wood (the point where it ignites) is 375-500 depending on species. We're looking at 3d6 damage to burn wood. That's 10 points of damage. A simple wooden door has 10 hit points and hardness 5. It's been treated and could have moisture and reinforcement. Seems reasonable. The better the reinforcement and treatment the more heat it can withstand. A small chest would be destroyed. This is consistent and reasonable.
Bumping a fantastic thread.
this thread is amazing.
I find that, when it comes to volume, people like to include a lot of empty space for some reason
I don't know if the RAW is supposed to include empty space. This can get silly; a physicist would argue that everything is 99.9999999999% empty space. A different physicist would say that the space isn't empty; it's full of air. Or photons and virtual particles. Speaking as a GM, I'd be quite happy to allow you to shrink a pavilion which is packed up into a 10 cu ft bundle, but not so happy about shrinking it when it's erected even though it's the same thing.
Humans can have a volume of as little as 1 cubic foot, and never more than 3
A cubic foot is 28.3 litres. So 3 cu ft is 85 litres, meaning about 85kg. That's only 187 lbs which exactly Bob's Average Man. 1 cu ft is 62 lbs, probably about the size of a 10-year-old. Big fat people can easily get to 5 cu ft. The record, according to wikipedia, is 22 cu ft.
A lot of people underestimate what stone shape can do as well.
As for Stone Shape, the range is Touch. One might argue that 15 cu ft might be a stick 1" by 1" by 2160 ft, but that would be a bit extraordinary for a 3rd-level spell. The only limit on this is the "no fine detail" phrase, without which one might claim a stick 0.001" x 0.001" x 2000 miles ending in a 2" thick wall 5 ft by 7 ft. Which is silly. I'd rule that you have to be able to touch (or at least manually circumscribe) the entire volume of the thing you're shaping.
I look at speeds in real life terms and weight and once I did the math I just realized the game is not realistic. This was in the days before old age caught up to me, and I could move pretty well.
Average NFL receivers run about a 4.5 40 yard dash.
That is about 50 yards in 6 seconds, which is 150 feet in one round.
So if you take the run feat which lets you run up to 5X your normal speed you can wear a lot of gear and keep up with world class athletes when the NFL receiver is not tied down by such things.
Even taking the run feat out you are still really fast considering all the stuff you are carrying.
Except you can't run while encumbered. As to people being too fast, the 30ft speed is just representing what average people are capable of, not how fast they move under anything less than life and death situations. Even an unfit person is capable of moving very quickly, it's just that they get tired fast and can't keep it up.
NFL players are special because they have good physical stats, invested a skill point in Profession (Athlete) and took the run feat, not because they are a higher level than 1st.