Half-Giant Inventory

[Sephiroto]

I think that the number of things that you can carry should be based on size (strength), and not just agility. A human should be able to carry -maybe- two large chunks of obsidian ore, while a half giant may be able to carry one or even two in each hand.  Why should I be limited to picking up eight feathers (or two in a half-giant's case) when I can carry a fistfull?

I can see where there would need to be a limit, but as the code is,  a human could very well pick up eight empty wooden chests, while a giant can grab only two or three.  I'm sure you can see the conflict there.

[Xygax]

If you want your half-giant to be able to hold lots of things all at once...  buy a container, and "hold" it.

[Carnage]

If you want your half-giant to be able to hold lots of things all at once...  buy a container, and "hold" it.

That's the worst answer I've heard so far, even more so than the "Deal with it" on page 1.

Nobody's asking to hold "lots of things all at once" unless you consider more than two a lot.

[EvilRoeSlade]

Carrying a bag around won't let you make a campfire.

[Forest Junkie]

Carrying a bag around won't let you make a campfire.

*bows*

[Xygax]

Carrying a bag around won't let you make a campfire.

I've actually had human characters that didn't have the agility required to make a campfire.

[Forest Junkie]

Carrying a bag around won't let you make a campfire.

I've actually had human characters that didn't have the agility required to make a campfire.

All the more reason to fix the modifier, ay? Ay!?  :roll:

[EvilRoeSlade]

I've actually had human characters that didn't have the agility required to make a campfire.

And I've never had a half-giant character that did.

[gfair]

There are certain things I can understand why an HG would have trouble grasping - a pebble, for example. What is a pebble to a human is one quarter the size, at least, to an HG, so it becomes that much harder for them to pick such small things up.

But there is a reasonable limit of large items that an HG should be able to hold - the bare minimum should be two, one per hand. Some HGs don't have even that amount of holding capacity.

Campfires are another issue - you don't hold wood when you make a campfire, you stack it up on the ground, and carrying twigs ought to be simple enough since they are all long and slender. However, once again a Half-Giant's hands are far bigger than a human's, and they're fatter and less nimble, so carrying twigs is made more difficult by the fact that an HG has to pick them up, pinch them up off the flat ground, etc.

I'd just like to see an HG be able to hold two reasonably sized (Not too small, not too big) items, no matter what.

Just a request, not taking sides, definitely capable of dealing with it. The bag holding idea is a good one for certain functions for sure, thanks.

[Manhattan]

Yeah, it's a real code issue here.

[Cenghiz]

I would consider playing a h-giant merchant for curiousity's sake.. Just to see what would happen.
And for the campfires... Not all campfire making characters are Krathi. You have to hold some flint and some hard surface like granite (virtual or real if you could buy real flint strike kits) then strike the flint on the granite, or hold something glass and oval to focus the lights of Krath (I did it once, I guess it'd work in short time thinking about the cloudless sky). Would your half-giant be able enough to do that?
Just because code tells us twigs and branches turn to campfire, it does not. To light the campfire we need to use virtual and real items. I don't think except the exceptional, a h-giant would be able to do that.

[LoD Snarf]

Everyone seems to be conveniently passing over the half-giant's mentality.

I think everyone completely understands all of your examples about the mass of a HG's hand, the mechanics involved in simply picking something up and the belief that everyone should have a minimum number of items that can linger in one's inventory regardless of agility, strength or size.

Whether the Imms intended it to be a safeguard or not, I enjoy a HG's limitation in handling objects.  It encourages players to keep in line with the role that I see HG's filling when played correctly.  There are plenty of factors that can go into why HG's cannot handle more than a couple objects:

1. Infamously Stupid.

HG's are not smart.  They are not problem solving creatures.  They probably have trouble even recognizing cause and effect relationships.  The arguement about them being able to "craft" a campfire seems moot to me, because I honestly don't see any HG being able to focus long enough or think through that many steps (pile the wood, gather kindling, strike the flint, use oxygen to grow the flame, keep the fire tended with larger pieces of wood).  The best they could do would be to imitate the "motion" of a human starting a fire, but they wouldn't have any idea what the motion is trying to accomplish.

HG's can handle simple movements and thoughts.  One-steps.  That's how they should be played, IMHO.  Everything should be one step.  If it's more than one step, they should really have a lot of trouble handling it.  They can guard a door.  They can haul someone to jail.  They can swing a club.

I don't see HG's doing anything above a certain degree of difficulty.

2. Slow and Bulky.

Some of you have discussed friends of yours that are 6 feet, 250 pound agile beings.  Well, guess what - they are humans.  Humans with powerful brains capable of handling complex thoughts, movements and actions.  Let's leave any RL examples completely out of this arguement because you're comparing apples to garbage cans.

HG's aren't 6 feet tall, they're twice that.  Any tool they use is going to be made for a human, elf or dwarf.  That's like you trying to build something with a hammer you could barely grip, a screwdriver you can barely hold onto and turn at the same time, etc...  They aren't creatures of finesse.  They can't think that far ahead.  For them, holding onto a small tool and using it efficiently would likely take their entire life.

As HG's aren't smart enough to make their own tools for these things, I think you can rule out any of your arguements for crafting.  I agree that HG's should have a minimum of 2 available slots in inventory for making some basic food, but I don't believe there's a need for anything more than 2 slots.

3. But it's a code issue, not an RP issue!

I disagree.  What may have started as a code issue with inventory being dictated strictly on one's agility, I think that the HG limitation is right on par with how it should be played.  Not only does it force HG's to operate within certain guidelines, it helps promote and encourage people to think in those 1-2 step patterns to further help their character.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to believe that an average half-giant could only handle simplistic movements, and that the limitation brings more good than harm in keeping HG's true to their nature.  Having them hold a bag and bend down to pick up things one at a time to put inside is a classic example of how they should be to me.  They aren't smart enough to realize that if they scoop it all in their hands it will take less time unless they see someone else do it first and just copy them.  Even still, they won't make the connection that it's faster, they'll just do it because the other guy's doing it and it's their nature.

My vote - keep HG limitations the same with the exception of allowing a minimum of (2) inventory slots or very simple food crafts.

-LoD

[Larrath]

A half-giant should be able to mimick a weaponsmaker by taking a small baobab trunk, a large block of stone, and a thick rope, and make some crude hammer thing.
That would require three items in the inventory, and I don't think it doesn't make sense.

To be blunt, I'm absolutely against this entire notion of anyone not being able to hold less than five items at once.  When I'm trying to make a salad, IRL, I will hold a knife and cut one fruit at a time, and then put them in the bowl.  I am only using two items.
In game, if I had to make a salad, I'd need to hold a tomato, a cucumber, a pepper, some lettuce, and a pinch of spices, AND hold a knife in my other hand.
Having to have X items in your inventory while you're crafting is a mechanics issue, and low agility shouldn't limit people from making four and five-ingredient items, even if some of them are delicate things that a half-giant wouldn't be able to make.

Hell, you can make intricate jewelry using only one or two objects.

Everyone should be able to have five items in their inventory as a minimum, or it should be possible to craft using objects that are lying on the ground in the room.

Seriously.  Come on.

[Anonymous]

LoD, I don't believe the documentation supports your notion that a half-giant couldn't focus long enough to go through the steps to build a campfire.  Though I do agree completely that a half-giant probably doesn't understand why they are mimicing that behavior.

http://www.armageddon.org/rp/racial/halfgiantsocial.html[/url]"] But in most situations, this kind of single-minded attention will be very obvious. It is easy to picture a half-giant peering at the ground, their brow furrowed as they speaks very slowly, picking out each word carefully to get their thoughts across. Of course, this is a stereotypical example, but it depicts the general idea. The same kind of thing will occur for all variety of tasks - whether hunting or fighting, bargaining or talking, maybe even while drinking a cup of mead.

So a half-giant is not like a child or a primitive humanoid, but rather, simply a very stupid person, although this is a much more subtle concept.

I imagine a very stupid person could build a fire.  A half-giant played as a blithering idiot or a mindless beast are both equally off the mark, if you ask me.

3. But it's a code issue, not an RP issue!

I disagree.  What may have started as a code issue with inventory being dictated strictly on one's agility, I think that the HG limitation is right on par with how it should be played.

Tell that to a half-giant who can't carry four branches, flowers, feathers or rocks.  No matter how you try to justify it with a half-giant's lack of manual dexterity, those big hands should be able to hold onto a human's armful of branches without requiring nimble fingers.

[My 2 sids]

I think people who argue HGs should be able to hold more are using the logic that dexterity and agility are not actually the same thing.  HG's dexterity (able to control hand movments) are what allow HGs to become master crafters or even function in a world filled with tiny barrels of ale and elves that could snap like twigs if not held correctly.  Bottom line, an HG could figure out how to pick up something when they are already holding something else.

[LoD Snarf]

CRW -

LoD, I don't believe the documentation supports your notion that a half-giant couldn't focus long enough to go through the steps to build a campfire. Though I do agree completely that a half-giant probably doesn't understand why they are mimicing that behavior.

The first factor could be described as "attention resources." Because of their dim wits, half-giants will have to focus very hard on one thing to get it right. When panicked or rushed, this kind of concentration breaks down, and half-giants will tend to make all sorts of blunders.

That paragraph is taken from the same documentation as yours.  So, you're telling me that a half-giant would have not only the dexterity, timing and patience necessary to strike flint and position it close enough to kindling/grass to actually light, but that this process which includes physical and mental agility and focus is within their bounds?  I don't.

I think a HG could make fire only if it were an accident or if he already had some form of fire on hand (i.e. lantern, torch)

As for your frustration at a HG not being able to pick up multiple small items in his gigantic hand, the problem with the system is that items are only classified by weight with regard to how much can be carried, and not by type or size.  

For example, 1,000 pebbles may weigh the same as a large chunk of steel.  The code will let you carry the steel, but not the 1,000 pebbles.  In game, they would need to carry the pebbles inside of a bag to handle this sort of distribution.  I've played a HG with 1 inventory slot and it didn't stop me from enjoying the role.  There's already a vehicle in the game that allows a HG to carry around multiple items, it's called a bag.

I imagine a very stupid person could build a fire. A half-giant played as a blithering idiot or a mindless beast are both equally off the mark, if you ask me.

Could they?  As someone pointed out in the recent Survivor episodes, quite intelligent people had a lot of problems building a fire.  Now, if these highly intelligent men and women were incapable of starting a fire with TOOLS, how could you expect a HG to do anything of the sort?

As I said, the most they could hope for would be to mimic the "motion" but not the intent of another's movements.  It'd be like them watching someone play baseball.  They'd step up to the plate and probably swing the bat, but wouldn't realize they were supposed to hit the ball.  They recognized the motion, but not the intent.

Clearly, you believe HG's to be profoundly more adept and intelligent than I'll ever believe them capable of being.  I don't believe them to be children or primatives incapable of speech or thought.  I do believe that they are only capable of handling the simplest of tasks at one given time and anything that has more than one step, or requires them to concentrate or have good hand-eye coordination is going to be near impossible to accomplish.

Once they opened a few doors, I think they'd be able to open almost any door they ever came across without much trouble.  I highly doubt any of them would ever be able to pick a lock, however.  They'd be able to cut skin away from an animal's flesh, but I don't think they'd ever be able to memorize a pattern for boots, cut it out, line up the edges and sew them.

The other issue is that the people pushing this thread are likely NOT complaining because the limitation disallows them to play the role, they are complaining because it's inconvenient to some action they want to take.  And I further the notion that if you find the code specific to a certain race inconvenient because you can't simply type "get flower, put flower bag, get flower, put flower bag" then I can't agree to make the change.

Besides having a minimum of 2 things in hand, provide me with something more than inconvenience as a reason to make a change.  Crafting, in my opinion, is not a valid point because HG's wouldn't have the ability to make anything above cooked food or something extremely simple.  They may mimic the movements of a weaponsmith, but they'd never come up with anything useful - which is what the coded result in the game 'is'.

If you want to mimic a human making a club and come up with a mish-mashed result, then RP it.  You don't need the code to support it.

-LoD[/quote]

[Larrath]

Okay, here's an example that was once proposed as an idea.

It goes like this: > craft log log log log rope into small wooden barricade
Sure, a Half-Giant can just get four logs and a rope and drop them all with a custom desc, but try as you like, fancy emotes aren't going to stop a tembo (or even some players) from running through that barricade.
Taking four logs and tying them together is a simple action that a half-giant, whose mimcry skills far outshine our own, should be well able to copy.

Half-giants are big, clumsy, stupid and maybe not very proportional, but they don't get everything wrong all the time.

Saying that a half-giant is too stupid to craft anything is silly.  Half-giants are stupid, but they're perfectly able to mimic someone they saw crafting and, assuming it didn't require too much manual dexterity (chopping down logs and breaking down rocks comes to mind), even succeed in it.
A five-ingredient object isn't inherently more difficult than a one or two-ingredient object.  Just compare polishing a diamond or making a silk dress to, again, making a salad or stacking together a few rocks.  If I played a half-giant, I know I wouldn't want to keep wishing up every time I had to take two rocks and bang them together until all that was left was some powder.

If crafting allowed you to only need to manipulate two items at a time, then I'd agree that half-giants shouldn't be able to hold that many things in their clumsy hands.  But because crafting is unrealistic in this, half-giants (as well as everyone else with very low agility) should be able to hold a minimum of five objects.

If you want to mimic a human making a club and come up with a mish-mashed result, then RP it. You don't need the code to support it.

I once said the exact same thing.  The answer?  My RP'd club isn't going to impress that scrab whose head I was going to smash with it even if realistically, a twenty-stone boulder to the head should be enough to kill one on the spot.

[Selie]

Wouldn't operating a bag (presumably it closes somehow) require at least as much manual dexterity as carrying two things in one hand? It's really hard opening a pull-string bag and putting things in it if your hands are frozen and numb, which is the closest thing to lack of manual dexterity that I have personally experienced.

Just a thought...

[Anonymous]

LOD wrote:
If you want to mimic a human making a club and come up with a mish-mashed result, then RP it. You don't need the code to support it.

I once said the exact same thing. The answer? My RP'd club isn't going to impress that scrab whose head I was going to smash with it even if realistically, a twenty-stone boulder to the head should be enough to kill one on the spot.

First, it wasn't a question.  Second, you should be able to RP and pickup lots of would-be weapons out in the wilderness, but they aren't objects.  Why aren't you campaigning to have all of these objects made real as well?  I mean any HG that picks up a rock, or snaps off a tree limb should be able to smash in a scrab's head right?  So realism isn't really your issue.  Your issue is that you don't get to craft with your HG.

Perhaps a better direction is to allow crafting to be activated without the items being in your physical inventory.  Perhaps you should be able to label a container that holds the items as well, such as:

>look in bowl

In a wooden bowl, you see:
some green leaves
some red seeds
crumbling yellow cheese

>craft leaves seeds cheese in bowl into a leafy green salad.

You begin crafting.

That would allow people to gather ingredients within a bowl, bag, cart or any container and use the craft command to make something using the ingredients contained within.  And you wouldn't have to change how many things characters can hold.

Many of you also seem to think that "mimic" means repeating a motion with a relatively high degree of success.  You can mimic someone putting on a shirt, drinking water, walking, gesturing or completing simple actions with a high rate of accuracy.  To mimic someone that's doing something involving any high degree of detail, skill, dexterity or understanding such as fashioning weapon, piece of armor, jewelry, clothing, etc...isn't going to be nearly as effective - perhaps so little as not to allow an object to even be made because of its ineffective approach.

Mimic is also not "teaching".  If you are doing something you saw someone else do, humans may be able to reason out why the step was important, to what degree to complete a motion, how much of something to add or take away and to problem solve when they hit a snag.  I don't see HG's having the capacity for such mental excercise.

And lastly, I think that the group of people who respond to concerns such as these with, "just suck it up and do it" are the kinds of people who have played with these kinds of limitations and weren't so severely challenged or inconvenienced that they needed to head to the board and call for change.  While I don't think that is the appropriate response, a part of me is included in that mindset.  I've played a character that was only able to pick up 2 things at once and it didn't stop me from having fun, playing a good role or interacting with the world.

It's just as fair for me to expect you to raise your threshold for inconvenience and imagination as it is for you to ask me to lower mine to yours (not you, Larrath, just whomever may complain about this).

-LoD

[Bestatte]

The whole Survivor example is ridiculous. You're talking about people who have lived with electricity and gas-powered fireplaces all (or most) of their lives. Of COURSE they'd have difficulty staring a fire.

But in a world where electricity and gas-powered things don't exist, it is not even remotely a stretch that even a 5-year-old would be able to figure it out, if given the proper instruction.

Also remember, RP-wise, a no one is really HOLDING those twigs and lighting them on fire while they're holding them. Because, well, that would be really stupid. It's just that the code requires them to be in your inventory. RP-wise, you'd be setting a bunch of twigs on the ground. The only thing you're holding, is a piece of flint, or an ember box, or some other source of friction/heat, and its opposite, a single stone. So that's ONE step. Each part of building a small fire is a single step.

1) Grab a bunch of twigs. That takes zero dexterity, it takes only a big enough hand to hold them, and the ability to curl your fingers. Period.

2) Place the twigs together on the ground. This takes a very minimum amount of dexterity and an equally minimum amount of intelligence. The same amount it takes to get a piece of food to actually land in your mouth when you're hungry. Half-giants do -not- need to be fed. They can manage just fine on their own, or their race would've ceased to exist within the first month of appearing in the world.

3) Hold the stone against a twig, and bang the flint against the stone. This might take awhile, if you're a half-giant. Even a dexterous one might not be all that coordinated. But I'm sure they'd manage "if they aren't rushed or panicked" as it suggests in the official docs. Do that enough times, and bingo - we have fire, Captain Kirk!

A half-giant has the attention span of a gnat, for the most part. But even a gnat will obsess with flitting around someone walking by, if that person stands still long enough. The same would apply to a half-giant. As long as there's nothing ELSE showing up to change their focus of attention, they might easily be found spending hours doing nothing but banging a flint against a rock. They might even forget why they're doing it. That would make sense.

[Anonymous]

The first factor could be described as "attention resources." Because of their dim wits, half-giants will have to focus very hard on one thing to get it right. When panicked or rushed, this kind of concentration breaks down, and half-giants will tend to make all sorts of blunders.

I'm wondering how that contradicts anything I said.  All that it is saying rushed Half-giant isn't going to be able to focus and complete a task.

Your interpretation seems to be that a half-giant mimics only and has no grasp of the outcome.  I interpret the inclusion of the barter skill and other tasks listed in that documentation to mean that a half-giant can understand the 'how' of accomplishing a task, just not the 'why' which is where the mimicking comes in.

A half-giant makes a fire and puts meat on it for 2 minutes because that's what you do when you are hungry, not because he understands why you cook your food.

That paragraph is taken from the same documentation as yours.  So, you're telling me that a half-giant would have not only the dexterity, timing and patience necessary to strike flint and position it close enough to kindling/grass to actually light, but that this process which includes physical and mental agility and focus is within their bounds?  I don't.

Which is more complex, 'expressing your thoughts', as the half-giant document we are quoting states, or striking flint close enough to the fire to light it?  Gorillas can use tools on a complexity level near to striking flint but you are saying it's incorrect to play a half-giant that can rise to a gorilla's aptitude?

What you are outlining here sounds like a mindless beast capable of little more than combat and standing around waiting for more combat.

For example, 1,000 pebbles may weigh the same as a large chunk of steel.  The code will let you carry the steel, but not the 1,000 pebbles.  In game, they would need to carry the pebbles inside of a bag to handle this sort of distribution.  I've played a HG with 1 inventory slot and it didn't stop me from enjoying the role.

I understand the code limitations to item sizes are why the current HG on-hand inventory situation is the way it is and I can still have fun with the role, but that doesn't mean it's the best way to translate a HG's lack of manual dexterity to the coded game.

There's already a vehicle in the game that allows a HG to carry around multiple items, it's called a bag.

There's a vehicle for communicating over long distances in game, it's called walking there and talking but that doesn't mean it's realistic or a good implementation versus the Way.  Thanks for the lesson on what bags were for, I've been having my characters shit in them and wear them on their heads.

Could they?  As someone pointed out in the recent Survivor episodes, quite intelligent people had a lot of problems building a fire.  Now, if these highly intelligent men and women were incapable of starting a fire with TOOLS, how could you expect a HG to do anything of the sort?

Sounds like an argument about the current implementation of the fire code in the game.  Rather than continue this little meta argument, looking at it from the broader scope it is my interpretation that a half-giant is capable of, through observation and repetition, many tasks that require focus.  So long as they are able to focus.

As I said, the most they could hope for would be to mimic the "motion" but not the intent of another's movements.  It'd be like them watching someone play baseball.  They'd step up to the plate and probably swing the bat, but wouldn't realize they were supposed to hit the ball.  They recognized the motion, but not the intent.

I take it a step further.  They'd realize they should be hitting the ball just like they realize they should be hitting the gortok in front of them.  They just wouldn't understand the 'why'.

I don't believe them to be children or primatives incapable of speech or thought.  I do believe that they are only capable of handling the simplest of tasks at one given time and anything that has more than one step, or requires them to concentrate or have good hand-eye coordination is going to be near impossible to accomplish.

Employing this logic, a half-giant player should not engage in roleplay beyond all but the most basic of instincts because once you deviate from basic instincts you are talking about a more than one-step process on a subconscious level.  Hungry->Eat.  Thirsty-Drink, etc.

They'd be able to cut skin away from an animal's flesh, but I don't think they'd ever be able to memorize a pattern for boots, cut it out, line up the edges and sew them.

Have you emailed the staff regarding half-giant elementalists?  Your Half-giant concept certainly seems impossible to reconcile with a half-giant Elementalist, especially one who is coming up with the spell words for newly branched spells.

The other issue is that the people pushing this thread are likely NOT complaining because the limitation disallows them to play the role, they are complaining because it's inconvenient to some action they want to take.  And I further the notion that if you find the code specific to a certain race inconvenient because you can't simply type "get flower, put flower bag, get flower, put flower bag" then I can't agree to make the change.

I've always found the idea that a half-giant is a mindless, action-repeating beast as a concept best left for NPCs.   Secondly I've always been irritated by the half-giant inventory situation not because it's limited my ability to do something in game but because it seems needless and unrealistic.  I don't know why you feel the need to cast dispersions on the motives of everyone posting their dislike for the half-giant inventory implemntation though.

[EvilRoeSlade]

I don't think that a limited inventory is the correct method for imposing coded limits on what a half-giant can and cannot do.

It has already been concluded that inventory limits are arbitrary and non-sensical.  Being able to choose between carrying two pebbles or two chair-sized hunks of obsidian doesn't make any sense in the slightest.

Furthermore, it has already been stated that a half-giants low attributes limit their success to a large degree.  For example, I once had a half-giant who had recently joined a clan wander into a crafting hall.  He noticed a VNPC take a shard of rock out of a chest and carve it into a spear-head.  My half-giant then proceeded to do the same (he had the appropriate skill).

A few days later one of his superiors walked into the hall and noticed that there were barely any shards of rock left while my half-giant cheerfully grabbed another out of the chest and smashed it into powder.  Hastily, he took my character away and bought him a spear.

Lastly, arguing that because you've played characters that were fine with an inventory limit of two items is completely nonsenical.  For example, I'm currently playing a character that makes no use of coded skills.  The fact that I do not use coded skills hasn't hampered my character or detracted from my enjoyment of him in the slightest.  Should I proceed to conclude that coded skills are an unnecessary aspect of the game and should be removed?

It's just as fair for me to expect you to raise your threshold for inconvenience and imagination as it is for you to ask me to lower mine to yours (not you, Larrath, just whomever may complain about this).

-LoD

Spare us your arrogance, thank you.  Just because you're clever in your wording doesn't make it anything other than a veiled insult.

[Larrath]

LOD wrote:
If you want to mimic a human making a club and come up with a mish-mashed result, then RP it. You don't need the code to support it.

I once said the exact same thing. The answer? My RP'd club isn't going to impress that scrab whose head I was going to smash with it even if realistically, a twenty-stone boulder to the head should be enough to kill one on the spot.

First, it wasn't a question.  Second, you should be able to RP and pickup lots of would-be weapons out in the wilderness, but they aren't objects.  Why aren't you campaigning to have all of these objects made real as well?  I mean any HG that picks up a rock, or snaps off a tree limb should be able to smash in a scrab's head right?  So realism isn't really your issue.  Your issue is that you don't get to craft with your HG.

It was a statement.  Statements can be answered.
In the wilderness, you can forage for rocks or bits of wood and use one as a weapon if you found one suitable.  And if they're not, you can typo them and ask that they're made usable.  (Example?  A half-giant could be using a blocky piece of granite as a weapon, or he could throw it).

Perhaps a better direction is to allow crafting to be activated without the items being in your physical inventory.  Perhaps you should be able to label a container that holds the items as well, such as:

>look in bowl

In a wooden bowl, you see:
some green leaves
some red seeds
crumbling yellow cheese

>craft leaves seeds cheese in bowl into a leafy green salad.

You begin crafting.

That would allow people to gather ingredients within a bowl, bag, cart or any container and use the craft command to make something using the ingredients contained within.  And you wouldn't have to change how many things characters can hold.

Yep.  I am fully in favor of this.

Many of you also seem to think that "mimic" means repeating a motion with a relatively high degree of success.  You can mimic someone putting on a shirt, drinking water, walking, gesturing or completing simple actions with a high rate of accuracy.  To mimic someone that's doing something involving any high degree of detail, skill, dexterity or understanding such as fashioning weapon, piece of armor, jewelry, clothing, etc...isn't going to be nearly as effective - perhaps so little as not to allow an object to even be made because of its ineffective approach.

To mimic means to copy.  A half-giant's ability to accurately mimic someone is unrivalled.  Given time (maybe five years), a half-giant can learn to be thoroughly arrogant and humiliating without ever realizing it.  A half-giant isn't all one-twos, they also make connections.  Unfortunately, not all of these connections really make sense.  Mimicking two people at once, a half-giant could swear at a little human girl that stepped on his toe and then inch away from her saying he's sorry his foot was there and that he doesn't want any trouble.

Mimic is also not "teaching".  If you are doing something you saw someone else do, humans may be able to reason out why the step was important, to what degree to complete a motion, how much of something to add or take away and to problem solve when they hit a snag.  I don't see HG's having the capacity for such mental excercise.

No, half-giants don't have a lot of whys.  But they have a lot of hows, and these connections are often very intricate.  They're not automated machines, after all; they're extremely stupid, but in a different way.

And lastly, I think that the group of people who respond to concerns such as these with, "just suck it up and do it" are the kinds of people who have played with these kinds of limitations and weren't so severely challenged or inconvenienced that they needed to head to the board and call for change.  While I don't think that is the appropriate response, a part of me is included in that mindset.  I've played a character that was only able to pick up 2 things at once and it didn't stop me from having fun, playing a good role or interacting with the world.

It's just as fair for me to expect you to raise your threshold for inconvenience and imagination as it is for you to ask me to lower mine to yours (not you, Larrath, just whomever may complain about this).
-LoD

I've played plenty of characters that barely used any unique skills at all...meaningfully, anyway.  It's possible to play without ever leaving the walls, but it doesn't mean the current sandstorm code should be made harsher.

Finally, imagination has absolutely nothing to do with this.  Armageddon is, through the various levels of power one can find between the Vivaduan and the defiler, still balanced.  I don't think the item cap in relation to crafting was taken into consideration when half-giants were being figured out, and this makes them underpowered in this aspect.
Even more finally, nothing is taken or intended to be personal.

[Revelations]

How about making the amount of items you can carry dependant on how much weight you can carry? I don't really think you need all that much dexterity to be able to hold things in your hand...and with the cases like building a fire, the items would theoretically be on the ground. Your inventory would be like a virtual bag, and the amount of items you can place into your virtual bag dependant upon how much weight the virtual bag can hold, which is your inventory.

Also, aside from the topic, I think trying to think positively would help solve this dilema. It seems to me that some of the points being made against certain ideas aren't contributing very much to the discussion as a whole, rather making it tedious.

[Xygax]

How about making the amount of items you can carry dependant on how much weight you can carry?

It is.  Buy a bag.

Folks:  Please watch the flaming, this thread has definitely had its highs and lows.

As a side-note, I'm pretty happy with the limitations half-giants have, considering the enormous power they can exhibit, in other coded ways.

-- X