Forums » RP Discussion » How much does your character weigh?

Quite often I stumble upon characters who don't have a weight that properly matches their height and build. While, arguably, we're mostly roleplaying fiction and fantasy, it's a detail that can really 'make or break' a character for me. After all, if the player can't add a proper weight to a character's build, what else is there that doesn't make much sense? How much thought did the player bother to add behind the creation of this character?

If your male character is 6'2" tall and weighs only 135 pounds, he can't really be toned and athletic; a man of that height of a lithe, light and small build shouldn't weigh less than 155 pounds in order to look healthy, and even that is fairly light and bordering on being underweight.

Did you know that very few women weighs less than 100 pounds, even when they're not even five feet tall? I frequently see female characters who stand 5'4" tall and weigh only 95 pounds, yet are described as 'toned', 'curvy' and similarly filling terms. Even a small framed woman would at that weight only be skin and bones, literally, and most doctors will tell you it's an unhealthy weight.

Mila Kunis once weighed 95 pounds and she had nothing on her whatsoever, she said herself. In the two pictures on the article, her weight differed by 20 pounds. Did she look healthy to you in the left picture when compared to the right one?

In the end we all decide for ourselves which weight to give our characters. Not everyone looks the same and so on. But taking the reality of your char's height and weight into consideration can make people take you more seriously and help people get the proper image of your character. At 6'0" tall, a healthy weight for average women is usually around 150 to 180lbs. With men at that height, add approximately 10 pounds. And this is average and healthy, not even overweight as I've been told several times before.

A site I've found useful to give an OK indication for character height/weight ratios is the following:
http://www.healthchecksystems.com/heightweightchart.htm

It lists average estimates of healthy adults and can be a real friend is determining which weight suits your character best.

Same site I use to estimate weight. Its a pet peeve for me to see a 5'11 female character who's weight is 110 lbs, then they are described as being 'curvy' I'm 5'10, and when I was in highschool I was quite thin, probably a bit underweight, and I weighed about 135-140. I was lanky and awkward looking and flat chested. The ideal weight for my height and frame is around 160. Frame size does play a pretty big roll in weight. Another thing that irritates me personally is all the uber thin skin and bones starving themselves ribcage showing thin female characters who are described as being 'stunningly beautiful' Worse when they more or less state that 'everyone found them breathtaking.' yeah breathtaking because I started hurling.

I personally only use the term curvy when a female character has either a few extra pounds or is truly hourglass or pear shaped. Being 6'1" myself with a broad frame, 180-200 pounds would be my ideal weight (though I weigh quite a bit more than that). My sister is 6'0" tall and weighs 136 pounds, but she is also smaller framed, has no boobs or much of a rear end and her hipbones stick out. (She had a jaw surgery half a year ago and could only eat liquid foods for two months, plus she has a high metabolism) She's desperately trying to gain weight because she's too thin and only recently started getting any kind of curves after her jaw healed properly and she could eat solid foods again.

And honestly, 'stunningly beautiful' and 'breathtaking' are terms I don't like seeing in a character description period. Beauty is a personal thing. Most actresses or women considered 'hot' aren't anything special to me, but I find a lot of larger, confident women to be stunning and gorgeous! It's one thing to describe a character as 'attractive', it doesn't per say mean the viewer has to find her beautiful.

I usually use a BMI(Body Mass Index) Calculator to determine the weight of my characters. For muscular characetrs, if they come out of be a little overweight, then I kind of count it as how overweight = how muscular for the most part. It also comes in handy if you have characters taller than what would be considered a normal height.

This one goes up to 7" in hieght, but I've seen one before that would let you imput any number,and I used it to calculate the weight of an 13" creature I used to play.

I have a 6'6" man who is very toned and I usually list him as being around 260 lbs (his BMI coming out to a 28, which is overweight but not quite obese). Not sure how accurate it REALLY is but it seems to work out.
Then my 7'1" man, who is still muscular but not as heavily as the above has a BMI of 27 weighing at 280 lbs. So that's usually what I try to do

I have always found this kind of thing odd. I mean, I am quite short, and in some lights you can see my ribs while I'm just standing around, and I weigh over 100 pounds. Seeing characters many inches taller than me and significantly less my weight is really puzzling. And every time I've talked to someone about it, asking how they came up with the weight, I have always been told they picked that weight/height because it's what they are in real life. I find that so terribly suspect, and a little chilling.

Personally I'm not a big fan of the BMI thingy. Mostly because the darn thing tells me I'm morbidly obese, which I honestly don't think is true. But you seem to make it work really well! Those sound like feasible weights for the characters' builds and heights.

Exactly... I know there are women who are naturally so short and small they are healthy at weights beneath 100 pounds, but they don't exist in overly large quantities. Most women have to uphold a ridiculous diet and exercise 5-10 hours a week in order to achieve that weight and hold on to it, and that is often a disturbing result of media influence about having to be a two digit weight and a size 0 in order to be 'pretty'. I have many things to say about it, but we'd go really off-topic with it.

You're very pretty Kim. Your thinness suits you because it looks like you're built for it. The majority of the women who diet and exercise to get below the hundred pound mark are not built for it though, and they look ridiculously unattractive because of it. I don't really imagine a character to be so thin and bony when they are described as feminine and curvy.

I always check online for a human's (of course) average weight for their height and apply that accordingly, adding a little more to the weight if my characters carry extra baggage, such as ears, horns, wings, etc, or a little less if they are missing limbs.

In some cases, I think terribly underweight characters might result from lack of knowledge of pounds versus kilograms. If you're used to thinking you weigh 75 kg and you're a bit self-conscious, I can imagine it could sound frightening, knowing you weigh 165 pounds. When you're used to kilograms, and you try to translate your character's weight into pounds for roleplaying purposes, the resulting number can seem ridiculously high, especially when you're afraid that people will judge your character on its weight like some people do in real life. Something I struggled with years ago when I started playing D&D and was introduced to the concept of pounds.

Aside from that, I think it's very difficult to determine a realistic weight for a character. People vary so much individually. I have an uncle who is 6'5" and says he weighs 185 lbs. He's fit, and has developed muscles. I rather wonder where he keeps it, weighing so little, but he is definitely healthy and absolutely not underweight. I myself am 6'1" and weigh the same, I have virtually no muscle to account for my weight, yet I'm not overweight. It's puzzling. Partly because of these huge differences, I agree that BMI is mostly non-sense. I do use BMI as a loose guideline for characters, but I don't trust it too much.

Can't say I really do this as most of my characters are structured around my actually physical appearance in terms of height and weight. As for terms like 'well toned' and muscular, honestly I don't use those as it pertains to characters over all size. I use em more so to determine how muscular they appear regardless of height and weight as I have seen people as scrawny as me and scrawnier who were 'cut like diamonds' as the term goes. Kinda gross and odd looking far as I'm concerned but thems the breaks. Heh. Also I can understand people wishing others to have accurate weight to height ratios to describe the body type of their characters but me myself I keep an open mind about it. I mean yeah a human standing 5'7" and about 135lbs, like me, would be a fair guess for one who's perhaps slightly underweight and such but in the world of RP especially in fantasy, I take other things into consideration. Like hey. This guys thin as heck...but weights close to 300 lbs at only 5'9"? How? Perhaps some kind of spell. Or maybe cybernetic implants. But over all I do agree with things said here. If you just have say a normal human, or a character who seems human, such as 3 of mine, with no backstory to explain off the wall weights...then please be realistic about it. That's what makes RPing fun. Having a sense of realism.

I never put a character's weight up, mainly because I don't know what would be 'normal' for them. Since I also don't know what would be a 'normal' height. I'm kind of short, like 5'4", but I am VERY skinny. So I know how impossible it is to be 95 pounds and curvy! Lol! But on the other hand, I can never figure out what makes a character a 'toned' weight and what makes them just plain chubby.

So I'm one of the people who don't add a weight or height in my characters. I feel like I don't need to be that specific, people can use their imaginations But I find it just fine when others include the information.

H'rk... My characters are too weird for this thread.

One of my characters would probably be classified as underweight, except he's got a Slenderman vibe going in conjunction with an ultra-fast metabolism, a narrow frame, AND more efficient calorie storage. Still, I struggled at guessing his weight since he has four arms and six wings, which can unravel into... You know what? Screw it. Let's just say "the usual rules don't apply to him/it" and move on.

Another one, this one female, who literally weighs almost nothing because she's not flesh and blood, instead being latex and air (I know there are a bunch of jokes that could come to mind from this, but I've been reminded that there are people under 18 viewing this so I'm refraining from making them).

A third who has a secondary brain in her womb, as well as additional leg musculature to help mitigate its weight, which throws my guessing all to hell...

Damn, the only one I have who this can apply to is my Afghan, and he comes out on the scrawny side because all the food he eats goes into magical energy - I'm figuring his mechanical hand won't affect his weight significantly. I was aiming for just above the line between healthy and unhealthy, and hoping there'd be enough wiggle room for different interpretations of "healthy". ...I think I underestimated, and now I have to go change it...

That could be a reason, but most people who use terrible height/weight ratios seem to be Americans

And yes, everyone is different. Men and women have a different physical setup anyhow, muscle weighs less than fat and so on and so forth. The fact his weight is in muscle and yours isn't could explain the difference very well. Besides that, 6'5" and 185lbs still sounds reasonable. If he said he weighed 125 pounds I would have called BS for sure though.

BMI is mean in that it doesn't take anything into consideration. At least the quick online systems don't. Things like build, muscle or fat, long legs or long torso etc... They're neglected but vital for an accurate BMI.

If there is a good reason for what seems to be an awkward height/weight ratio, I'm all for it. Because a good reason means there is sense and thought to it! That's what matters to people like myself. One of Zhi's characters is over 7 feet tall, but even heavy for that height. It's based on much denser muscle tissue and thicker, heavier bones and so forth.

If you describe bodybuild or detail the physical appearance, weight isn't always necessary no. When in doubt, it's also always an amazing (lazy) alternative to just call the weight "Proportionate" to the height and build, problem solved!

Same to you, when in doubt, I recommend "proportionate". If you want to be specific, try Googling how much the extra limbs weigh. Like.. if you basically have a head/brain in a char's womb, figure out how much the average head weighs without body and add that.

I love methapors in roleplays, books and also use them to describe my roleplay characters.
Even if i can't stand words/phrases such as hourglass or 'puts aphrodite to shame' - a well used methapor helps visualize a character more.

Also, I would have not (and do not want) the slightest clue how to calculate the weight of an adult anthro tigress, probably with wings or maybe some extra limbs - because the bone and muscle structur is different. Male and female, additional horns, fur (imagine what a coat weights, ugh.) and so on.

There are so many attributes you have to consider and maybe add.

I have all kinds of chars, chubby, skinny, rather tall, and so on.
It would take me ages to look up the right kind of anatomy and weight and compare them with other species to get the weight nearly realistic.

Mostly people don't know how one would look with (for example 75kg) anyway in comparison with the height. Or other who don't know, have characters that are overweight but in theire desc well proportioned, hourglass shaped and so on.

So I do weight and height in methaphors - solves the problem.
If my char is extraordinary tall - she is it - period.
Helps others imagination, and helps me not to waste too much time with exact measurements.

I tend to 'cheat' in a way, and put more description into their build then label their weight as 'proportionate'. So if I state a female with a certain height as 'hourglass and voluptuous', then one can assume that for her height, she has enough weight to have that figure correctly. Same for males; mediumweight, boxer-like figure etc and so on.

I tend to take the same route as MissMonster, above, for similar reasons. I will give exact heights, but weight is not something I tend to calculate or even describe, save in rare cases, when a character's weight might be defined as somehow 'unusual' given their height and build (for instance, I've a few characters that are heavier than they look, for various reasons). Beyond that, I tend to stick to a description of their overall shape or build, and allow for the assumption that, unless otherwise stated, their weight is appropriate to said shape/build/height, et cetera.

LOL I do this for all my new characters who are not Shojah or Cresenzo, pretty much. /lazy

This works GREAT for most free form. For game systems where weight matters and is factored into certain kinds of rolls, you're kinda forced to find a number though. Luckily, most of those systems have handy charts or mechanics for figuring out what it should be.

I admit that I am not grand at height and weight-- especially weight (height I can visualize pretty well, weight I just... can't). I try to pick a number that sounds safe without going too far into "wow they're too light/heavy for that build", but it doesn't always work.

The only three instances I know for sure I've got it down fairly "right" would be my D&D copper dragon (I have supplement books to give me a really good numerical sizes to work with), Taunter (his shorter size doesn't affect his barely weighting anything), and Lauren B. (who was built, at one point, around my old weight of 117 lbs but was a few inches taller [and slimmer than I, for I have definately got some "meat on my bones"])-- I may need to adjust that last one again.

I find it easy to just look up a certain person for a height weight reference and work from there. A lot of people don't understand what is and what isn't a healthy weight for men or women. I have a theory it's related to people sometimes playing character's of the opposite sex or just a general lack of knowledge about how much certain stuff weighs, such as muscles compared to fat.

My main alt is lean muscled at around 6'8 255 pounds, due to having extra features like wings and a tail. Far too often people claim he should be slow and overweight or lumbering instead of being normal in movement speed. Research and references help if anyone is ever confused about a height and weight issue. I'm sure I have plenty of links somewhere.

I have never rped any rpg where weight was essential. Not even in DSA (a german rpg pen and paper game) tabletop .. well, but yes i had her weight there. But just because there are rules and dices .. god i do so miss them.

edit: i guess i just quoted you out of love --- D&D