Notes: Scale, Shrinking and Size (Transformer characters in Dinobots Strike Back)

Scale, Shrinking and Size

Summary:

•The Dinobots are all Huge

•The Autobots are scaled (approximately) to their alternate modes

•The Decepticons are scaled to the Autobots

•Only the Insecticons shrink upon transformation

Across all Transformers media and continuities, scale is completely FUBAR. For the purposes of this adventure, all Transformers characters fall within a size category which is intended to roughly correspond to how their scale is portrayed in the source material. The Autobots are approximately scaled to the sizes of their alternate modes, which creates a few oddities for longtime Transformers fans. Notably, Seaspray (should he come into play) is enormous and transforms into a destroyer (not a hovercraft) capable of transporting the Dinobots as this is how is described multiple times. Likewise, Bumblebee is not the smallest of the Autobots even though most other media portrays him this way; specifically Skids is smaller (because a Honda City Turbo is smaller than a VW Beetle).

The titular Dinobots are roughly the same size as one another, with Swoop being a bit smaller than the others, even though their alternate modes should vary significantly. They are also just slightly larger than other “large” characters like Optimus Prime.

The Decepticon jets, meanwhile, are just a bit larger in size than the “medium” size Autobot cars, making them wildly out of scale with the actual vehicles they represent. For that reason, characters observing these robots in their alternate modes may have a chance to recognize that they are actually robots in disguise rather than earth vehicles if they are able to observe them in a context that provides a sense of scale (and perhaps succeeding a Perception check).

Finally, some characters are portrayed in the source material as shrinking when transforming into their alternate mode. In Dinobots Strike Back this is only seen with Bombshell (though he doesn’t shrink to the correct size for a terrestrial rhinoceros beetle). For the purposes of this adventure, any Insecticons encountered shrink to the same size (size rank -4 or about 1 foot). Megatron, Soundwave, and his Cassette Warriors do not change size upon transformation (and probably have no reason to).