"How Much Did You Say He Weighed?"
Corrected Weights & Measures (and Why They’re Useful) for Characters in FASA’s Shadowrun, 3rd Edition

By Patrick Goodman (pgoodman13@cox-internet.com)

Trolls. Everybody knows about trolls, right? They’re big, they’re bad, and they’re ill tempered. What else do you need to know?

How about this, then, my chumlies: They’re seriously, perhaps even dangerously, underweight. The same goes, to a lesser degree, for orks and elves. Dwarves, on the other hand, are a bit heavier than they should be for their size. This article is going to offer one solution to this problem.

This article saw its genesis back in 1990. Shadowrun (SR1) didn’t have any edition numbers yet, and it was all still new and cool. The average weights for the player character races were way off base, though, a situation that persisted into Shadowrun 2nd Edition (SR2). In SR1 and SR2, trolls weighed in at 120 kg, or about 265 pounds. That’s right. The average troll, according to the original rules, only weighed 265 pounds. If that seems a bit light for someone who averages a height of 280 cm (about 9’2"), it should. To put it in perspective, I stand approximately 193 cm (6’4", more or less), I’m not particularly muscular, and I weigh in at 104.3 kg (230 pounds). Quick, someone tell me what's wrong with this picture. By contrast, dwarves weighed in at 72 kg (159 pounds), in the neighborhood of three times what a human of that height would weigh.

One of the first things I noticed when I started playing Roscoe, my troll rocker, was how light a troll really was and thinking, "Something ain't right." It was terribly distracting, and as a result I didn’t play to the top of my form and poor Roscoe nearly got scragged in a barroom brawl of epic proportions. This, as you might imagine, didn’t make me particularly happy. With this in mind, I began to look over the other player races and discovered that trolls weren’t the only ones with weight problems. The situation has been aided somewhat in Shadowrun 3rd Edition (SR3); all the races have had their weights modified at least slightly, with dwarves and trolls getting major changes that bring them much closer to realistic body weights. A few minutes with a calculator showed me where the remaining problems were, and a few more minutes yielded the tables that accompany this article. According to SR3 rules, the original five player races have the official heights and weights given below in Table 1 (which are shown in both English and metric measures). In addition, the Shadowrun Companion (SRC) and Cyberpirates offer a variety of player race variants; their official heights and weights, where mentioned, are shown here as well. Where specific items aren’t mentioned, I tried to extrapolate it from the available information in both SRC and other books (for instance, some information on ogres and minotaurs came from Paranormal Animals of Europe (PAoE), page 122). In a few cases, I took the plunge and just made something up. This extrapolated (or created) data is shown in the table in red.

The tallest human being on record, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, was Robert P. Wadlow. At the time of his death, Wadlow stood 8’11" (272 cm) tall and weighed 439 pounds (199.1 kg). At his heaviest, a few months before his death, Wadlow weighed just over 490 pounds (222.3 kg), about the same weight as the average troll. He wasn’t particularly muscular, and the proportions of his body were normal (he was, in fact, a bit slender; proportionately, he would have weighed around 110 pounds had he stood 5’7"). Clearly a troll, with his massive musculature and heavier skeleton, should weigh more than a human of the same approximate height.

The figures that follow are based on simple proportional mathematics and solid geometry; an object’s weight is proportional to the product of its linear dimensions. If you change one of these, you have to change the other two by the same percentage to maintain proportion. To figure the new weight, determine what percentage of the original’s size the new object is. For example, on average a human female is approximately 92%, or 0.92 times, the height of a human male, and her other dimensions have been scaled down by a similar amount. To figure her weight, you take this percentage, cube it (multiply it by itself once for each of the three dimensions, or 0.92 times 0.92 times 0.92), and multiply this number by the male’s body weight.

They’re also based on what a human would weigh at that height, with specific modifiers applied based on the physical attributes of Body and Strength, and the racial bonuses to those stats. After all, in our world we don’t have elves and orks to measure, but we do have humans. Humans were the common denominator in the Awakening, which Unexplained Genetic Expression (UGE) and Goblinization played upon to produce the other races of humanity.

The figures shown are approximations, and are rounded to the nearest centimeter or the nearest inch, as appropriate, for height. Likewise, they’re rounded to the nearest tenth of a kilogram or the nearest pound, again as appropriate, for weights.

Humans

Since humans were the one common denominator before UGE and Goblinization created the various sub-races of humanity, it seems logical to start this discussion with them.

The SR3 rules place the average human at 170 cm, about 5’7" tall, with a weight of 70 kg (or 154 pounds). Though this is about right for human males, human females are typically several centimeters shorter than males. This article assumes that there’s a size difference between genders of eight percent, which is a bit larger than normal but a bit smaller than what most games provide. This gives a female human a height of 156 cm. Taking the official weight of 70 kg for a human male as a base would give the female a weight of 54.5 kg on the average.

Elves

Of all the Awakened, elves (well, your garden-variety elves, anyway) are the most like humans in terms of general appearance. Two of the subspecies, dryads and wakyambi, still look mostly human save for their size; the Night Ones still look mostly human if the humans you know are midnight blue and fuzzy. All the elven species also display as great a difference in overall size between genders as do humans, with the exception of dryads, who only appear as females.

Officially, an elven male at 190 cm weighs 72 kg, slightly more than a human male. The Night Ones really differ from normal elves only in their coloration and the velvety fur covering their skin, so they have the same height and weight figures. Likewise, the enkanto and enkantada of the Philippines are virtually identical to normal elves, so they too use the same height and weight figures. (“Enkanto” is masculine, and “enkantada” is feminine; unless gender is important, I’ll use “enkanto” as the plural form.) The wakyambi of Africa are as tall as trolls, around 280 cm; no official weight is given that I’ve been able to uncover, but extrapolating from normal elves and doing simple multiplication, the “official” weight would probably be in the neighborhood of 100 kg to 110 kg. Dryads are a little harder to figure, since they stand at just over a meter tall. I put them at 120 cm, since there’s little canonical guidance, and figured their “official” weight at 45 kg.

Although elves are traditionally gaunt by human standards, 72 kg is dangerously thin. An elf this gaunt would probably not be able to handle weapons or any kind of heavy equipment, simply because they lack the necessary muscle mass. The primary reason for their gauntness is genetic. Their skeletal structure is thinner and lighter. Their muscles are smaller and flatter than a human’s are, though they’re just as powerful, and their bodies are relatively free of fat. Despite this, an elf weighing only 72 kg seems rather low.

Proportionately, a human male standing 190 cm tall would weigh about 97.7 kg; a human as tall as a wakyambi would weigh in at 312.8 kg. Elven males, both standard-issue nobilis and Night Ones, with their thinner skeleton and their smaller, flatter muscles, would probably weigh about 80% of this, putting them at approximately 78.2 kg. Wakyambi are even thinner than normal elves, so I put their multiplier at about 75%. With this in mind, a male wakyambi elf weighs in at 234.6 kg. This is still quite slender, but no longer emaciated.

Elven females, like human females, are about eight percent shorter on the average than males. This places elven females at 175 cm, still taller than the average human male, with a proportional body weight of approximately 60.9 kg. A female wakyambi would be about 258 cm tall, and weigh about 182.7 kg.

Dryads

Dryads are the only elven species too heavy, proportionally, for their height. A female elf scaled down to 120 cm would weigh 19.6 kg, or about 43 pounds. Dryads take a penalty to both Body and Strength of -1 each. This would put a typical dryad at 88% of that weight, or 17.2 kg; this is about 70% of what a human would weigh at that height. This is an extremely light body weight to be running the shadows with, but the available data are so limited that it’s almost impossible to justify any increase in weight.

Orks

Orks are the Awakened counterparts of the elves. Standing at the same 190 cm as an elf, an ork is stockier, more muscular, and heavier. They weigh in at 95 kg, which is just a little bit shy of what a proportional human would weigh at that height (about 97.7 kg). They’re more powerful than humans, though, and should weigh more as a result.

It can be argued that an ork’s muscle-to-body fat ratio is a good deal better than a human’s, as the character generation rules allow orks a Strength bonus of +2 and a Body bonus of +3. Muscle mass is proportionately heavier than fat mass. Taking these things into consideration, I used the Strength and Body modifiers found later in this article to modify the 97.7 kg human just mentioned and make him an ork. The total modifier became 1.28, which gives us a male ork weighing 125.1 kg, or 276 pounds. This places them firmly in the bounds of many modern-day human professional athletes. The oni of Japan have the same modifiers as ordinary orks, and weigh the same.

While orks show a difference in size between genders, it is not as severe or as noticeable as that shown by humans and elves. Those two races show a difference between genders of about eight percent, while orks only show a difference of four percent. This gives ork females an average height of 182 cm, somewhat taller than a human male. Ork females are substantially heavier than human males, though, weighing in at 110 kg. Female oni are the same height and weight as female orks.

Orks and trolls both show a remarkable diversity in size and shape among their variant types. Closer in general to humans than the typical robustus are the hobgoblins, which have a shorter and thinner stature than their cousins do; however, not much else was said. I gave them an average height of 180 cm, since there was little canonical guidance. A human at 180 cm would weigh 83.1 kg. A hobgoblin has a Body bonus of only +2, and a Strength bonus of +2, for a total modifier of 1.24, for a final weight for a male hobgoblin of 103 kg. A female hobgoblin stands about 4% shorter than a male, for a height of 173 cm and a weight of 91.4 kg.

Satyrs

The satyrs of the Mediterranean area are considerably smaller than their more common cousins, standing only about 160 cm in height. They also have a slighter build than orks do, though they’re huskier than a human of the same height. Their slight stature is an illusion, since they have the same bonuses to Body and Strength that orks do; their muscles are flatter and denser, and their bodies are exceptionally free of fat. A human of 160 cm would weigh about 58.4 kg. With the final modifier of 1.28 in place, a satyr weighs in at 74.8 kg. Unlike the other ork subspecies, satyrs don’t appear to have a significant difference in size between the genders.

Ogres

Ogres present a little bit of a problem. The scant information available in SRC and PAoE indicates that they’re shorter and stockier than regular orks, but it’s never mentioned how much shorter or stockier they actually are. Therefore, as with many of the metaspecies variants in this article, I had to wing it. I placed them at 170 cm, approximately the same height as a human. An ogre gets the same Body and Strength modifiers as an ork, for a total modifier of 1.28. Multiplying this times a normal human’s body weight yields 89.6 kg. However, SRC and PAoE both also state that ogres have the same approximate body weight as orks, which is stocky and broad-shouldered indeed; to do this would take a modifier of more than 1.7, almost the same modifier used for a dwarf (see below). So, the same 70 kg multiplied by 1.7 yields a weight of 119 kg for a male ogre. Ogres exhibit the same 4% variance in gender size that most other orks species do; this puts the height of a female ogre at about 163 cm, with a body weight of 104.9 kg.

Trolls

And now, here we are, back at the beginning again. We’ve arrived at the biggest, baddest, most dangerous members of Awakened society. Trolls and their variants are, quite understandably, feared and respected by the other races. They are large, incredibly strong, and capable of taking enough damage to fell a company of Marines and still keep coming at you. We have already shown, though, that they are dangerously underweight. A normal human built to a troll’s size specifications would weigh in at an impressive 312.8 kg.

Trolls have more going for them, physically, than any of the races, even the orks. The basic troll’s Strength modifier of +4 is higher, as is their Body bonus of +5. In addition to this, they have their bony dermal plating going for them. Bone is heavy, and the additional bone of their armor makes up a sizable portion of their total weight. Their arms are disproportionately long for their bodies. All this adds up. I used the modifiers in the next section to take all this into account, and arrived at a modifier of 1.57 times the weight of a proportional human. This gives the average troll a weight of 491.1 kg. Unlike humans or elves, trolls show negligible size differences between genders, giving female trolls the same stats as males.

Giants

The giants of the Nordic regions of Europe are even more impressive, standing at 350 cm. No official weight was given, but given the track record for the other races, it probably wouldn’t have been more than about 150 kg or so in SR2, and probably about 285 kg in SR3. A human as tall as a giant would weigh 610.9 kg. Even without the dermal armor of their smaller cousins, the giants have an impressive weight multiplier of 1.6, brought about by their +5 bonuses to both Strength and Body. This puts a male giant’s weight at 977.4 kg. Unique among the troll variants, however, giants show the same 8% difference in average size between genders that humans do; this is probably related to their tendency towards genetic reversion, though scientists are still debating the matter. A female giant stands around 322 cm, and weighs 761.1 kg.

Fomori

The fomori of the Celtic isles stand as tall as an ordinary troll does, but they’re not as massively muscled, nor do they have the bony dermal armor of their cousins. Their Strength and Body bonuses are lower, giving them a final weight multiplier of 1.4. Multiplied by the 312.8 kg that a normal human would weigh at 280 cm gives a typical fomor a normal weight of 437.9 kg. There is no appreciable difference in size between male and female fomori.

Cyclops

The Mediterranean basin gives us two troll sub-species, Cyclops and minotaurs. A cyclops is the more massive of the two, standing an impressive 310 cm tall. Their bonuses of +5 to Body and +6 to Strength combine for a total modifier of 1.68. A human 310 cm tall would weigh 424.5 kg; multiplied by their 1.68 stat modifier, this gives a cyclops an average body weight of 713.2 kg.

Minotaur

The minotaur is shorter and stockier than any other troll sub-species, standing (according to PAoE) a mere 230 cm. However, again according to PAoE, they also weigh the same as their taller, more common cousins. It would require a multiplier of around 2.8 to accomplish that, though, and that’s just not happening; a minotaur weighing as much as a troll would be more or less cube-shaped, if he wasn’t spherical. A minotaur’s bonuses of +4 Body and +3 Strength give him a normal modifier of 1.4. To take his broader dimensions into account, I boosted that up to 1.6. A human standing 230 cm would weigh in at 173.4 kg; a minotaur, therefore, weighs 277.4 kg.

You might have noticed that the various troll races are heavy. I mean, they’re really heavy. How can their skeletons support this much weight? It shouldn’t be possible, since even trolls are basically human in proportions, and the human skeletal structure simply can’t support the mass without some kind of help. Structural strength is a product of two dimensions (width and depth), while weight is a product of three dimensions (length, width, and depth). Genetics provide a part of the explanation; the troll skeleton is, proportionately, a bit heavier than a human skeleton, but it’s still not strong enough to support upwards of half a ton (and in the case of giants, that’s considerably upwards). At the heart of it is the only real explanation: magic. UGE, at its very heart, is a magical phenomenon. Many experts in the field of thaumaturgic medicine have said that there is a mystical “energy field” that helps the Awakened races at least partially ignore some of the more mundane physical laws. Others explain it not as an “energy field” per se, but a magical “recoding” of the DNA. There’s not a general consensus in the medical field, and there’s not really an easy answer to this one.

Dwarves

Last, but by no means least, we come to the reversal of the above paradoxes. Unlike the rest of the player races, which were unaccountably light for their size, dwarves are unaccountably heavy for theirs. While dwarves are strong and very massive, a dwarf standing 120 cm and weighing 72 kg, as SR2 had them listed, was rather drastic. A human that tall would weigh a mere 24.6 kg; a dwarf as tall as a human would weigh 199 kg. Clearly, there’s something wrong with that. Even at the 54 kg given them in SR3, they’re a little more chunky than they should be.

While not as powerful as a troll or an ork, a dwarf’s +1 Body modifier and +2 Strength modifier are nothing to scoff at. Trolls and orks are essentially human in proportion, though, while dwarves aren’t. Placed next to a human the same height, a dwarf is over twice as broad across the shoulders and chest, and almost twice as thick through the chest. His skeleton is the opposite of an elf’s, being nearly twice as thick and heavy. His muscle tissue is similarly very dense. The modifiers for Body and Strength only give a weight modifier of 1.2, however, for a body weight of 29.5 kg. This doesn’t take a dwarf’s off-kilter body proportions into account, either. Even a troll’s body weight modifier of 1.57 doesn’t yield what would seem a proper body weight for this particular branch of humanity. With a modifier of 1.57, a dwarf only weighs 38.6 kg, still not quite heavy enough for our purposes.

A modifier of 1.8 was used to take into account the great breadth and thickness of a dwarf in comparison to his height, as well as his dense skeleton and musculature. This yields a more satisfying 44.3 kg, more than heavy enough for running the shadows without being freakishly high. Like the trolls, dwarves show almost no difference in size between genders, so these figures are accurate for female dwarves as well as male.

Unlike some of the other racial variants, the various dwarf subspecies don’t offer much in the way of size variation. The koborokuru of Japan and the menehune of Hawaii are both a little shorter than dwarves are; both races average about 110 cm, at which height a human would weigh 19 kg. The koborokuru, in fact, use the same 1.8 multiplier that ordinary dwarves use, which gives them a body weight of 34.2 kg. The menehune, while having a better Body bonus than an ordinary dwarf, is actually a little bit lighter because his body proportions aren’t as off-kilter as a dwarf’s. Menehune only receive a 1.6 multiplier; while not as blocky as a dwarf, he’s still a lot bigger than a proportional human is. Menehune weigh in at 30.4 kg.

Gnomes

Gnomes, while receiving the normal Body and Strength modifiers for dwarves, are both shorter and slighter than their cousins are. Like the other dwarven races, I placed their height at about 110 cm, since there wasn’t anything more specific in SRC. At a height of 110 cm, a human weighs 19 kg; with the stat modifier of 1.2, this gives a gnome a body weight of 22.8 kg. Unlike the other dwarves, gnomes are essentially human in proportion, and don’t get any additional modifiers to increase their weight. Like that of the dryads we dealt with earlier, this is an extremely low body weight to be running the shadows with. Such light bodies would have trouble with the recoil of most modern weapons simply because of the limited body mass; how this is handled is left to the individual GM.

All of these revised figures are shown in Table 2, on the next page.

Note that these are for average adult members of the species. There are shorter giants and taller gnomes than those shown, for instance. Variation in height can be as much as 35% either way in most species, with a proportional gain or loss in weight. To get a proportional weight, determine the new height as a percentage of the average height, convert that to a decimal number, cube that figure, and multiply it by the average weight. If the character is taller or shorter than average, and has stat bonuses or penalties, figure the appropriate weight for her height first, and then come up with a multiplier based on exceptional physical stats or cyberware (see Table 5).

For example, let’s say we have a really big male giant (which is redundant, I know, but bear with me). Say he’s 380 cm tall, and we want to determine what his weight should be. The new height is about 109% of the giant’s average height of 350 cm, or 1.09 times that height. The cube of 1.09 is approximately 1.3, which we now multiply times the average weight of 977.4 kg. This gives us the thoroughly impressive figure of 1,270.6 kg, or 2,801 pounds. This is certainly not someone (or something) you’d want pursuing you down a corridor with a large axe of some sort, by any means.

Youngsters are going to be smaller and lighter than an adult, though the same theory as above holds true for figuring their weight. Simply figure out what percentage of the adult height the youth is, and you can figure his weight.

The figures given are guidelines; if you want to run an obese character, for instance, use the figures shown as a guide and add on another 15 or 20 kg, or whatever figure seems appropriate. Emaciated characters would subtract several kilograms. Just try not to overdo it.

Exercise, Cyberware, and the Weight-Conscious Shadowrunner

A word that’s been seeing a lot of use in this article is “average.” All the figures shown are for an average member of that species. What if your character is above average? Or below average? How does this affect body weight within the game system? What the frag is “average,” anyway? Good questions, all. Let’s take a look and see if we can find some answers.

The two character statistics that bear on the question of body weight are Body and Strength. The SR2 rules define Body as “general health and resistance to injury and pain,” while Strength is “the ability to lift, carry, and cause physical damage.” The SR3 definitions are longer but essentially the same. Both Body and Strength are aspects of physical fitness. Body represents overall conditioning and muscle tone, and Strength is muscle mass and physical power. The average values of these two stats for each race are shown in Table 3.

Body is associated with a character’s general good health, muscle tone, and muscle-to-fat ratio. Characters with higher Body scores are going to have a higher muscle-to-fat ratio, and thus a higher body weight, since muscle is heavier than fat. Characters with lower Body scores are going to have a lower muscle-to-fat ratio, and will tend to be lighter. Note that they’ll be lighter only if their bodily proportions stay the same as the average character, since characters with lower Body scores quite often tend to be obese couch potatoes. It is left to the individual GM’s discretion as to how to handle these cases, though, as the scope of this article is on those characters with average proportions, not extremely skinny or extremely obese characters. For each point of Body above average, add an extra 4% of the basic weight shown in Table 2 to your character’s weight. Note that this does not cover Body-enhancing cyberware, which will be dealt with in the next part of the article. This also works in reverse. For each point of Body below average, subtract 4% from the basic weight.

Strength is concerned more with raw muscle mass and bulk than Body, and is therefore going to have a much greater impact on a character’s body weight. For each point of Strength above average, add an extra 8% of the basic weight shown in Table 2 to your character’s weight. This includes exceptional Strength due to muscle replacement; for more details, see the next section. As with Body, this works in reverse, too. For each point of Strength below average, subtract 8% of the basic weight from your character’s weight.

As an example, say we have an average human male. Normally, he stands at 170 cm and 70 kg. However, he has Body 6 and Strength 6 (and speaks in a Teutonic accent, but that’s not important right now). Average scores on these two stats for humans are threes, so he has Body +3 and Strength +3. For the Body, he gets to add an additional .12 to the base weight, and for the Strength he gets .24, for a combined total of 36% additional weight. Taking the base weight and multiplying it by 1.36, we get (70 x 1.36 =) 95.2 kg. This puts him in the same class as a competition bodybuilder of today. (The Teutonic accent? It’s phony; this razorguy idolizes Senator Schwarzenegger, that’s all.) Weight modifiers for Body and Strength, as well as for a variety of cyberware, can be found in Table 5 at the end of this article.

What about cyberware or bioware? What effect do they play on body weight? For the most part, they don’t. Most cybernetic replacement parts, especially cyberlimbs, are specifically engineered to weigh about the same as the meat component they’re replacing, so that the recipient’s sense of balance won’t be wildly thrown off. Ditto for the bulk of your biological enhancements. Things like retinal modifications and the vast majority of headware are virtually weightless, consisting at the most of a couple of optical chips and a few ounces of wire. Even a radio implant or a cranial cyberdeck weighs less than a kilogram. Most of your cyberweapons are going to weigh the same as their non-cyber counterparts, less than 5 kg total in most cases. Some modifications, though, are hardly that considerate.

One of the heaviest alterations your character is likely to get is dermal plating. This consists of composite fiber plates placed under your skin to provide protection from things like sword thrusts and assault rifle bullets. They’re also heavy. For each level of dermal armor your character has, add 5% of their basic weight.

Similar to dermal plating is dermal sheathing, which provides the same benefits without being as obvious, or as heavy. Dermal sheathing adds 3% to a character’s base weight per level.

Note Orthoskin, the bioware approach to personal protection, thickens and strengthens the skin, interweaving it with fortified collagens and cartilage. While not as heavy as the other armoring alternatives, it does add a little bit to the character’s weight. For each level of orthoskin, add 1% to the character’s base weight.

Muscle replacement is almost a tricky matter. If muscle replacement is already a part of your archetype, you don’t have to do anything; just figure weight modifiers based on Strength as you would above. If he decides to add on some muscle replacement after play begins, simply add 8% of the base weight from Table 2 for each level of muscle replacement.

Muscle augmentation, as presented in Shadowtech, works in a similar manner, but isn’t as massive as muscle replacement. It gains its benefits more from increasing the tensile strength of the existing muscle fiber, rather than laying on the bulk, as muscle replacement does. For each level of muscle augmentation, add 4% to the character’s base body weight. It should be noted that Man & Machine changed the presentation of muscle augmentation, splitting out the Quickness and Strength increases into two different pieces of ware, muscle augmentation and muscle toner. Muscle augmentation is going to be the heavier of the two modifications, adding 3% per level to the character’s base body weight, with muscle toner adding 1% per level.

A new piece of ware introduced in Man & Machine was the balance tail. Another of the weighty options, it presented a bit of a problem, since it never mentioned how much one of the things weighs. Winging it once again, I estimated a balance tail would probably weigh about 5% of a person’s body weight. The other issue was length; it made sense to me that a tail meant to improve a human’s balance would be longer than one needed for dwarves, and shorter than one for trolls. The official length for a balance tail is about a meter. Assuming this is for an average human, you can figure the length for the different races by dividing their height by the height of an average human (170 cm); the result is the length of the tail in meters. For instance, an average troll (280 cm) gets a balance tail. It’s going to be (280 / 170 = ) 1.65 m long, and it’s going to add 24.6 kg to his weight (491.1 x .05 = 24.55, rounded to 24.6). To make life a little easier, I’ve listed the standard weights and lengths of off-the-shelf balance tails, in Table 4. Custom tails, of course, will have to be measured on a case-by-case basis.

One bit of cyberware that can significantly alter a character’s weight is bone lacing, which introduces extra materials into the bones in order to strengthen them, and of all the pieces of cyber in the game, this is the only one that I can recall that mentions a specific weight. Unfortunately, the weight it mentions is just plain messed up. The Shadowtech sourcebook states that plastic bone lacing weighs 5 kg, to be used against a character’s load. It goes on to say that aluminum bone lacing weighs 10 kg, and titanium bone lacing weighs 15 kg. As with plastic lacing, these weights are meant to count against the character’s load. This presents a couple of problems. The first is the actual weight of the bone lacing itself. Doesn’t it make sense that bone lacing on a gnome is going to weigh less than bone lacing on a troll? By the same token, given the difference in size between genders found in most metaspecies, wouldn’t bone lacing in a male weigh more than the same bone lacing in a female? With that in mind, I took a calculator and came up with Table 5 below, using the figures in Shadowtech as a base, and multiplying them by the ratio of the target race’s height compared to a human’s, and multiplying that by the weight multiplier used for each race earlier in this article (see Table 2). For example, I want to figure how much plastic bone lacing would weigh for an average male wakyambi’s skeleton. I use the formula (280/170) x .75 x 5 kg, which gives you, approximately, 6.2 kg.

As with the body’s weight, the weight of bone lacing will be greater for taller members of a species, and lighter for shorter members. As with the body’s weight, find the percentage difference between the character’s height and average height, cube that, and multiply it by the average weight listed above. For example, a human male standing 180 cm gets Kevlar bone lacing. His height of 180 cm is about 6% higher than average, or 1.06 times average. Cubed, that 1.06 becomes 1.19, which when multiplied by the 5 kg that Kevlar bone lacing weighs for an average human, yields a weight of 5.95 kg, which is added to the character’s base weight after all other modifiers are taken into account.

The second problem presented with bone lacing is that the weights are supposed to count against a character’s load. My uncle’s left femur (the bone in the thigh) has an aluminum shaft permanently attached to it, the result of a rodeo accident. The chunk of aluminum weighs about a pound and a half, if I remember correctly. Uncle Charlie tells me that it threw off his balance for about four months or so once he was finished healing; after that, except for the twinge he gets in cold weather, he barely notices it’s there. That’s bone lacing, at least on a primitive level. While it really does add to the character’s weight, one of the local house rules is that it only adds to the character’s load for a while as the character’s body adjusts to the new weight. This adjustment usually takes several months; I use the formula 24 / [(Body + Willpower) / 2] (round up) to determine how many months, since healing is as much a process of a character’s will to get better as it is that character’s level of fitness. For purposes of this calculation, you should use the unaugmented values for Body and Willpower.

Under normal circumstances, such replacement items as cyberlimbs and even cybertorsos aren’t going to adversely affect a character’s body weight. Such replacements are normally designed to match the rest of the body, and are balanced so that, as far as the body’s equilibrium is concerned, they’re the real things. However, if the limbs are equipped for increased Quickness or Strength (or both), or if the torso and/or limbs are armored, all bets are off and character weight can increase dramatically in short order.

Cyberlimbs are designed with Strength, Quickness, and Body (which Man & Machine refers to as Integrity when dealing with cyberlimbs) equal to the racial averages for the race of the character in question. At this rating, they’ll weigh about the same as the meat limb that they’re replacing. Each limb can have different ratings for each of these physical attributes, though. For Body/Integrity increases beyond the average rating, add 2% per point, per each limb so enhanced. Likewise, add 2% per limb for each point of Quickness above average added. For above average Strength ratings, add 3% per point for each enhanced limb. Some GMs may allow these attributes to be lowered so that they match the body they are being attached to; in such cases, it’s easier to simply assume that the limb weighs as much as its original flesh counterpart, and that the character weighs what he did before the limb was attached.

It should be noted that Man & Machine added a wrinkle by making cyberlimbs default to a different rating for each Attribute, which means that all off-the-shelf cyberlimbs from Man & Machine weigh more than their pre-Man & Machine counterparts. How this is handled is up to each individual GM; they can either rule that the basic limbs from Man & Machine weigh the same as limbs from earlier editions, or they can add the appropriate modifiers to the average ratings to determine the new weight. I’ve found it easier to take the former route, but for those wishing to take the latter, Table 6 offers the new base ratings for the three Attributes as described in Man & Machine.

Cybertorsos and cyberskulls can have either soft or hard armor plating added to them, which adds to the amount of weight you’re carrying around. For soft armor on a cyberskull, add 1% per point, and for hardened armor add 2% per point. Soft armor on a cybertorso is going to weigh about 4% per point, with hardened armor coming in at 8% per point. Cyberlimbs can carry armor plating, too. Soft armor on a cyberarm is going to add 2% per point, with hardened armor adding 4% per point; soft armor on a cyberleg is going to add 3% per point, and hardened armor will add 6% per point. These additions for cyberlimbs are on a per-limb basis.

All of these modifiers are collected in Table 7. There are likely to be other things that will affect body weight, but these are the primary considerations. With that in mind, and the tables provided, it should be easy to determine changes that need to be made. Enjoy.