alright this took me NO JOKE almost 3.5 hours to figure out. i recalculated the PHM timeline and therefore the timeline for my Eridian Shifter AU (and also the Pebble Shifter AU).
WARNING: while I did plan on studying astrophysics, i havent actually done math beyond like "how much will these supplies cost" and "whats the most efficient use of this paper" and math for my framing job at michaels in YEARS. like i understand complex math but like. thats sooo much work. so i bs'd the whole thing.
the numbers i got for the relativity stuff is literally this: grace experienced 4.7 years on his way to tau ceti, traveling at 92% of the speed of light. earth experienced 12.852 years while he did that. i took that ratio of time and then made a calculator figure out the equivalents between tau ceti and erid and erid and earth. its probably wrong but like. andy weir fucked up the astrophage calculations for the hail mary in the book. if he can keep his 2mil kg number, i can keep my probably incorrect relativity math. (yes i did attempt to actually calculate the time dilation. i will reiterate: i am not an astophysics major. i switched from that to fucking book arts. i do printing presses and bookbinding, and study physics and astronomy and astrophysics for fun. so i decided it was too much work and gave up on actually calculating it all by hand)
i also calculated out how old Grace is in my AU(s), so expect that below!
Grace's Age
I have decided that he graduated high school 2 years early! I actually was going to do this but ended up not doing it because that's so much work and I hadn't decided what I wanted to study yet (I was in between comp sci and physics/astronomy at the time). So Grace graduates American high school at 15 years old (just go with it).
It takes him 4 years to get through undergrad (double major in microbiology and molecular biology. pretend whatever college/uni he went to will let him do that even though the courses would be way too similar and they wouldn't let him double dip everything for the requirements). 2 for grad school. I do not have a PHD, and based on my research, it on average takes someone 5 years to complete two PHDs at the same time. I headcanon that Grace has two PHDs - one in microbiology and one in molecular biology. this is to cover for the fact that the movie changed his doctorate for some reason. he's smart but PHDs fuckin suck and even a smart cookie like him couldn't do it faster. So by the time he gets both PHDs, Grace is 26 years old.
I imagine the UNESCO incident happened pretty soon after, during his postdoc. Like within the year. (I did zero research on postdocs for either of his fields, sorry). So he's just about 27 when this happens!
It takes somewhere between 6 months to a year for him to get his teaching certification in the state of California (yes I know it typically takes at least a year, if not more. but pretend he took teaching classes for some of his electives throughout his college/uni days and that helped speed things along). So he's 27 1/2 when he starts teaching.
I think he honestly wasn't teaching for very long when he gets kidnapped by Stratt. My guess is 2.5 years. This is entirely guesswork and kind of based on his energy cause as someone who's not only taught kids that age (and is currently doing so, just not in a traditional classroom) and has multiple friends who are teaching that age range (in a traditional classroom), Grace has not yet hit the exhaustion state of teaching that hits after a few years of being in the classroom lmfao. this is again entirely based on both personal and my friends' experiences. just go with it. he's 30 when Stratt nabs him!
I honestly do not remember if the book lists how long the taskforce takes to build and launch the Hail Mary. The movie implies its stupid fast, like a few months. I have decided that's stupid and would result in even more explosions and that I want to go with 4 years. Maybe a little less. but roughly that much from the moment Grace is grabbed from his classroom to when the Hail Mary Launches. I went with 4 years because that's with the best minds on the planet, no one keeping track of a budget, and them speedrunning designing and building the ship from scratch. normally that takes like 10 years for a manned ship. but they cut it down to 4 years. Grace is 34 when he is launched into space.
Grace experiences 4 years, 8 months (4.7 years) on his way to Tau Ceti due to time dilation. He's roughly 39 when he wakes up.
Timeline of PHM itself:
This is based on my own math and again, as stated previously, is not perfect. I 100% made up the timeframe that Grace spends at Tau Ceti, and how long he's heading back to Earth before the Leak. I don't remember what the book says and I'm too lazy to go digging for it. Everything else I tried to keep semi accurate lmao. I did not pick a year for PHM to take place in. honestly, I don't really care. I know the movie has his arrival at Tau Ceti set in 2032 but like. I don't wanna do that lol. So imagine the Hail Mary was set roughly in the mid 2020s. Like right now. idk.
This will be split into several timelines since yknow. time dilation, relativity, all that fun stuff! Earth experiences WAY more time than Grace does.
Most of the numbers are gonna be in decimals. because i didnt feel like calculating exactly how many days. its mostly years with some months. ill have the proper numbers on the pretty timeline im gonna make this week. like im drawing it out and color coding it on a huge piece of paper rather than in my sketchbook cause it did NOT fit in there.
Time units are also in Earth units for now. I'll do another version where it's Eridian units in the future!
Grace's Timeline
Earth -> Tau Ceti = 4.7 years (he's 39 years old physically)
Tau Ceti = 0.34 years
Tau Ceti -> Taumoeba Leak = 0.0834 years
Taumoeba Leak -> Blip-A = 0.167 years
Blip-A -> Erid = 4.01 years
From Earth to Erid, Grace experiences 9.3004 years
Beatles arrive on Earth 1.723 years after Grace and Rocky get to Erid
Sol's light returns to normal 16.3 years after that point.
Now for the AU parts!
The Songbird construction = 1.85 years
Erid -> Earth = 6.44 years
In the Eridian Shifter AU, Grace spends 19.873 years on Erid. From the launch of the Hail Mary, they experience 35.6134 years. He develops his shifting ability a couple of weeks after the Adrian incident, before he and Rocky split ways. From that point to when the Songbird makes it to Earth, Grace spends 31.1 years as an Eridian. That's 87.33% of their life since developing the ability. They are technically 69.6134 years old when the Songbird reaches Earth, but due to spending 31.1 of those years as an Eridian, their human body appears to be about 40, maybe 41. Ish. They physically appear younger, since while their human body did age (just slower), they weren't putting stress on it, so it didn't experience as much pain and wear and tear as literally every other human, so they still look younger than their physical body appears to be.
Rocky's Timeline
Erid -> Tau Ceti = 4.01 years
Solo @ Tau Ceti = 46 Years
Meeting Grace + at Tau Ceti = 0.34 years (Rocky is physically 291 years old)
Tau Ceti -> Leak = 0.0834 years
Leak -> Grace's arrival = 0.167 years
Grace's arrival -> Erid = 4.01 years
Beatles arrive on Earth 1.723 years after Rocky and Grace get to Erid
Sol's light returns to normal 16.3 years after that point
AU time!
Songbird construction = 1.85 years
Erid -> Earth = 6.44 years
Rocky's mission, from departure of Erid to return to Erid, takes 54.6104 years (experienced). He is 315.4734 years old when he leaves on the Songbird, and 321.9134 when they get to Earth.
Earth's Timeline
This is the time experienced by humans on Earth. So while I say "Earth -> Tau Ceti", that is how long Earth experienced from when the Hail Mary launched to when Grace reaches Tau Ceti, etc etc.
Earth -> Tau Ceti = 12.852 years
Tau Ceti = 0.34 years
Tau Ceti -> Leak = 0.0834 years
Leak + Beatles Launched!
Beatles Launched -> Earth = 12.852 years
From the Hail Mary's launch to the Beatles' arrival back on Earth, Earth experiences 26.1274 years.
Alternatively:
Leak + Beatles Launched -> Blip-A = 0.167 years.
Blip-A -> Erid = 10.962 years
From the Hail Mary's launch to when Grace and Rocky arrive on Erid, Earth experienced 24.4044 years. (Yes, that does mean that Grace and Rocky beat the Beatles by 1.723 years, but that's space travel for you)
Grace and Rocky on Erid = 19.873 years
Songbird Launch -> Earth = 17.604 years
From the Hail Mary's launch to when the Songbird arrives, Earth has experienced 61.8814 years.
Erid's Timeline
...I just realized I forgot to update my math for the time experienced by the Eridians.
I will update this post with the timeline/numbers tomorrow. I've been doing this for 4 hours now (yes it took me 30 minutes to type this post out). So don't reblog this if you care about the math for the Eridians being included lol
Pebble Specific Math
Again. I didn't finish updating this math lol. It's mostly just me comparing Grace's human age to the average Eridian lifespan and showing his age in pebble form. He's about 39, but for a pebble, that's still small and young. I'd have to redo the math but that's still about equivalent to a human 4 year old. ish.
On Carrying Capacity - A Critical Role Math Problem
I’ve been getting kind of annoyed (read: extremely anxious about the m9′s survival) every time Matt doesn’t let a polymorphed giant eagle or giant owl carry three party members (one of which is Veth) without their speed being halved, so I wanted to do some digging on the rules for carrying capacity and see if Veth’s weight was actually pushing the party over the max the creature could carry at full speed. After I did all of this I really felt the need to share it so... Here you go...?
I’ll go into specifics of things under the cut but for those who just want to know the answer, technically a giant eagle’s max carrying capacity is 480lbs and a giant owl’s is 390 lbs. Based on some math and some guessing of some character weights, the party, excluding the polymorphed Caleb and Jester, can be split with Yasha and Fjord on one bird and Caduceus, Beau, and Veth on the other and have their total weights be 386lbs and 380lbs respectively.
Even if they were playing with the variant encumbrance rules (explained under the cut) their speeds would only drop by 20 feet rather that be halved, so the eagle would still be going 60 feet/round and the owl would be going 40 feet/round rather than 40 and 30. Heck, if they’re eagles, as long as Veth is on the bird with three people, they would both be able to do 60 feet/round. But I SERIOUSLY doubt they’re using encumbrance because, if they were, heavily encumbered creatures (like the birds would likely be when Matt halves their speed) would have disadvantage on all Dex, Str, and Con ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws. So, really, if they aren’t playing with encumbrance, either they should be half speed when only carrying two people, or they should still be at full speed when carrying three people.
TL;DR: Matt, please, either let them fly faster, or tell me what the rules you’re using are.
I broke this up into sections so that if you already know the rules of carrying weight, or don’t care how I got character weights, you don’t have to read that bit.
Carrying Weight Rules
Ok, so, first things first, how much are these birds supposed to be able to carry? Well, the player’s handbook says a medium creature’s max carrying weight is 15 times their strength score, and twice that amount for a large creature (which is what the birds are) so we get
Giant Eagle (STR: 16) : 16 x 15 x 2 = 480lbs
Giant Owl (STR: 13) : 13 x 15 x 2 = 390lbs
If they are using the encumbrance variant rule, they either become “heavily encumbered” at 10 times their strength score, or 20 times, depending on whether you interpret the rules to say that this value is doubled for large creatures or not. This doesn’t really matter for us because, either way, even just two party members usually means they would be considered heavily encumbered, meaning their speed would decrease by 20 feet, and they would have disadvantage on all Dex, Str, and Con ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws.
Important to note: I couldn’t find any rule that had a creature’s speed cut in half due to carrying weight, but if someone knows of one, let me know, as if it exists, it’s likely what Matt is using, though I suspect he is just making it up (WHICH IS 1000000% VALID)
Character Weights
Some character weights were much easier to find than others, and honestly, all but one is an estimation, but in general, I followed the same process.
1. How tall are they? - While some characters have their exact heights, others are guesses, and a few are basically me saying “I swear I remember so-and-so saying they were this tall in-game”
The exact heights (from Crit Role Stats) are:
- Yasha at 5′11″
- Veth at 3′6″
The “I swear I remember so-and-so saying they were this tall in-game” ones are:
- Caduceus at 7′0″ (the fandom wiki backs me up on this one)
- Beau at 5′5″ (It’s either this or 5′4″ I think, but I went with this)
The only true guess:
- Fjord at 6′0″ (Fjord thinks he’s not very big but Ashley insisted on Talks once that Yasha was shorter than Fjord so this is the best compromise I had)
I didn’t bother with doing Caleb or Jester because, well, they’re the owls usually.
Shoutout to Crit Role Stats for existing and having like, half the character’s heights. If a height or weight seems off, I’m sorry, I did what I could to get a good guess. If there is a CONFIRMED height/weight that I don’t have here, let me know! But if you think Jester is an inch taller or shorter than what I have, I don’t know what to tell you other than “sorry???”
2. What is their race’s average weight for their height? - This is the most math intensive part of all this, but it’s not too bad. Each race has a base height, base weight, height modifier, and weight modifier. The base height and weight are just numbers, so for humans their base height is 4′8″ and their base weight is 110lbs. The modifiers are determined by rolling dice associated with the race, so for humans their height modifier is 2d10 and their weight modifier is 2d4. Your final height would be the base height plus the number you rolled for your height modifier in inches. Then, your final weight would be the base weight plus your height modifier times your weight modifier. By knowing the base heights of each character’s race, and having their height, we can find their height modifier, and use that to determine their maximum and minimum weights, and use those to get their average weight. This is a lot of information, so I made a chart for it
A note on Halflings: Turns out, Halflings are one of the races (others being Gnomes, Goblins, and Kobolds) that don’t multiply their height modifier by anything when applying it to their weight.
3. Adjusting for body type - Based on what we know about these characters, some of the average weights just don’t feel right, so I ended up changing some of them.
- Veth: I left hers as is because Halflings always have a weight modifier of one.
- Yasha: I left hers alone as well because it feels pretty good for a buff barbarian. She’s all muscle.
- Beau: I took her weight down because, as a 5′5″/5′6″ ish woman, I really don’t think someone built for speed and agility is going to be 155 pounds. I guessed roughly 130lbs, though it could be closer to 140lbs, I have never been the owner of a six pack, so I don’t entirely know how much weight that much muscle adds.
- Caduceus: Once again I’m going to mention that the fandom wiki backs me up here by saying that Caduceus is “not necessarily healthily thin” so I took him down to 210lbs. I probably could’ve gone down even a bit more but opted to play it safe to balance out any issues with Beau’s weight.
- Fjord: He’s a notoriously small dude, no way he’s 238 pounds, and given how large his possible weight range is, and his less than impressive strength score, I bumped him down to 195 which seems fair for a guy that’s 6 feet tall, but when you compare it to Yasha, either hers is too high, or his is, but since all of my adjustments are decreases from the average, I’m hesitant to lower either any more.
4. Final Weights - After all that, we’ve got the party sitting at the following weight approximations:
Yasha - 185lbs
Beau - 130lbs
Caduceus - 210lbs
Fjord - 195lbs
Veth - 46lbs
Putting It All Together
As it turns out, based on these weights, Fjord and Yasha combine to be just six pounds lighter than Veth, Cad, and Beau combined at 380lbs versus 386lbs. In fact, this combination is the only way both groups stay under the girant owl’s maximum carrying capacity of 390lbs. So effectively what this means is if Caduceus has ever been on a giant owl with Fjord or Yasha, the owl shouldn’t have been able to move. That is important. Because if Caduceus has ever been on an owl with Fjord or Yasha, it means that the determining factor of whether or not a giant bird can fly is not the total weight it is carrying, rather it is the number of people it is carrying.
Personally, the best part of this whole thing is knowing that they combination they used at the start of c2e124 was one of only a few that wouldn’t allow both eagles to move at full speed.
Also, when it comes to encumbrance rules, all of the combinations still only reduce speed by 20 feet per round, so even with those rules they would be going faster than Matt is allowing.
And One More Thing
I did this because I found it interesting, not because the way Matt is doing things is “wrong” or something. He gets to decide. End of story. But in the case that Matt doesn’t know (lol Matt Mercer not knowing every DnD rule ever? wild) what the rules “technically” are, then I’d love it if he found out and changed how he ran things.
Basically I’m saying don’t start fandom discourse with my fun DnD math problem. I did it for me and anyone else that cares, and Matt can do what he wants. For all I know I’ve gotten a character weight wrong and it completely ruins the entire thing.
So while Requiem stands exist, how about this concept: Remix stands.
It sounds weird, but hear me out. Remix stands are stands that have had their stats switched around.
For example:
Crazy Diamond’s stats are
Power: A
Speed: A
Range: D
Durability: B
Precision: B
Potential: C
There are two possible ways the stats can be changes. The most simple, which is swapping the ranks of each stat (such as replacing range’s D with Speed’s A), or a more “bizarre” way if you will. Think of this as like allocating S.P.E.C.I.A.L. points at the beginning of Fallout 4.
Each rank grants a certain amount of points. A, B, C, D, and E would be +5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 respectively. Some stands will have more total points than others. (I suppose this can also be used as a way to tell if a stand is “overpowered” or not based on their stats?)
So going back to Crazy Diamond’s stats, his set of points would be 5, 5, 2, 4, 4, and 3, giving him a total of 23 points. As for giving which thing what, it was difficult for me to find a way that would work, but I managed. Now here comes a very long and number-laden explanation.
Tip: I made a little chart/grid to help me out. 6 rows by 5 columns. Each point is just a colored in box or a tally.
Since the lowest stat is E, that means each Remix Stand would have at least 1 point in each category. So whatever the stand’s total points are, you’d subtract 6 points at the beginning (CD Ex: 23 - 6 gives us 17 points to work with.)
Now for the next step, I used a random number generator set from 0 to 4. Going in order of each category, whatever number you get from the RNG, you’d subtract from the points you have (17 - 4 = 13, 13 - 2 = 11, etc). This is where it can get tricky. If you’re doing this with the chart, then whatever number was generated equals a tally or filled in box for that category. If you’re just doing the math by itself, then each number generated you’d add a 1 to (because we removed 6 points earlier.) You’ll generate and subtract a number 5 times, and whatever remains at the end is what you’ll add to your final stat category.
This can work for all stands (evolving stands will have to have each ACT done individually, I suppose? But those are a special case for a different day.) However, weak stands with low total points (Tohth and Cheap Trick have 10) will still have weak Remix Stands.
This is a long post. I think I figured it out. But obvious disclaimer: I could be wrong.
If you don’t care about how I got the answer, here are the final results:
Engie: 5'7"
Pyro: 5'10"
Scout: 5'11"
Soldier: 6'0"
Spy: 6'1"
Medic: 6'1.5"
Demo: 6'1.5"
Sniper: 6'2.5"
Heavy: 6'5"
If you want to know how I got these measurements:
We see this photo from Ring of Fired: the mug shots of Spy and Scout with the height charts behind them. For this, I noticed that Spy appeared to be standing straight (good posture). Scout is obviously posing, and it looks like he’s leaning backwards, slouching like one would against a wall. So, I used Spy’s apparent height of 6′1″ to compare to the reference chart Valve has of their mercs:
This chart is grainy, but that’s okay; all I needed was a pixel conversion factor. I figured out how tall Spy was in pixels in this image (309 pixels) and divided his height in inches (73 inches) by that number to get the conversion factor: each pixel is about equal to 0.236246 inches. Or, each inch is about equal to 4.232877 pixels.
After that, I measured the heights of all of the mercs in pixels and multiplied by the conversion factor. If I messed up the pixel height, I messed up the final heights, but I think I did a good job. If anyone wants to double-check, go ahead.
The important result was Scout; even though he wasn’t standing up perfectly, if the number isn’t at least close to what the mug shot showed (about 5′10″) then this math isn’t reliable. Scout’s height came up as 5′11″. I think that his slouch and position with the camera is enough to take off about an inch or so in the mug shot.
Hey there! Not sure how many people are interested, but I have a few little life updates:
Firstly, if you haven’t noticed from the new url (I used to be @the-engineering-girl) I changed my major! I only took a few engineering classes, but I was never super excited about them. I had an amazing calculus professor this semester that really made an impact on me and encouraged me to major in math instead! I just changed my schedule for the fall (3 math classes!) so we’ll see how that goes. If anyone’s interested in hearing a little more of why I changed majors and my future plans, I can make a separate post.
Also, I was not nearly as active on this account as I wanted to be (honestly I forgot it existed a few times lol) but I am officially done with my freshman year of college! I was hoping to go back and post some old stuff this summer, but I unfortunately left all my notes in my dorm when I went home. I’ll probably be doing some reading though, so you might still get something.
I think that’s everything. Good luck to anyone who still has finals! And have a good summer!
