On the constant overestimation of animals in rpgs

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
And in most of these systems, the wolf will take a bullet that would put a man down and keep coming and then eviscerate you even if you also happen to be wearing chain mail.

I think part of the issue may be that the developers are always looking for encounter balance, they never look for the alpha predator that simply scares other animals away encounter. To look at it in reverse, in most of these systems a man will take a bullet that would put a man down and keep coming and then eviscerate you even if you also happen to be wearing chain mail.

I definitely agree that there is an overestimation of the abilities of animals. Most people don't really know a lot about animals and the amount of research required might be prohibitive if you have a book full of animals that you know the PC's are going to murder hobo their way through anyway.

Personally I would love to see more exciting encounters with mundane animals that are challenging, but maybe not in the way that you get eaten by a single wolf.

One of my pet peeves is that horses are never given their due, they are way tougher than almost any human and capable of causing horrendous injury and death.
 
Yeah, I've been saying that animals are overrated in RPGs for years now. And yes, I know of quite a few accidents where wolves attacked and got strangled by and lone human:thumbsup:.
Now a pack would be a different matter. But then the human having actual arms and armour would have almost nullified that advantage, especially if he can put his back to a tree or something:shade:.

Yeah, a single wolf should be, and is, a scary thing for an ordinary unarmed human to have an encounter with. Similarly a pack of wolves should be a frightening experience for an armed human who is a veteran of combat. And an angry brown bear should be a scary thing for even a small group of spear armed men. But when things get pushed up a notch, or even more notches, things get out of whack. It reminds me of tv writers for superhero shows who can't seem to get it through their heads that "a guy with a gun" isn't going to be scary to someone with heavy duty superpowers.
 
To be fair, the wolf probably just wanted to die instead of having to deal with the grappling rules.
If the wolf didn't want to deal with grappling it shouldn't have kept its jaws on after biting. Fucking wolves, it's all "oooh, look at my bite" until someone decides to counter grapple, then they just flip the table.
 
Tabletop RPGs overestimate animals because a combat heavy game needs lots of different enemies to fight and animals are instantly comprehensible to the players, even if that comprehension is inaccurate. They're also cheap for game designers to throw in compared to creating something wholly new and paying for groundbreaking concept art.

Consider this monster from a video game:
YXaW16W.png


Remember that we are playing games of words and imagination. How would you describe this thing? Also remember, according to Wizards of the Coasts research, you have about 18 words to describe any one thing in-game before the average player's attention wanders. The visual description for this thing will take you paragraphs to get through before you even begin to communicate its movement and behavior.

On the other hand, you say a pack of wolves attacks and you're good to go. If you want you can quickly gussy them up with a few more words.
They're oversized black wolves with red eyes!
They're wolves with spiky ice instead of fur!
They're wolves with two heads each and fiery breath!
They're wolves who walk and talk like men!

Because we're in a low-budget verbal hobby we need animals and animal references the way our storytelling ancestors did.
 
Another thing I would add to the conversation is that unless the game has rules for creatures being able to intimidate the characters or instil fear or terror in them, creatures only have the options of hide, flight or fight. Only the last one has much in the way of drama attached to it.
 
Tabletop RPGs overestimate animals because a combat heavy game needs lots of different enemies to fight and animals are instantly comprehensible to the players, even if that comprehension is inaccurate. They're also cheap for game designers to throw in compared to creating something wholly new and paying for groundbreaking concept art.

Consider this monster from a video game:
YXaW16W.png


Remember that we are playing games of words and imagination. How would you describe this thing? Also remember, according to Wizards of the Coasts research, you have about 18 words to describe any one thing in-game before the average player's attention wanders. The visual description for this thing will take you paragraphs to get through before you even begin to communicate its movement and behavior.

On the other hand, you say a pack of wolves attacks and you're good to go. If you want you can quickly gussy them up with a few more words.
They're oversized black wolves with red eyes!
They're wolves with spiky ice instead of fur!
They're wolves with two heads each and fiery breath!
They're wolves who walk and talk like men!

Because we're in a low-budget verbal hobby we need animals and animal references the way our storytelling ancestors did.
This is probably a good reason why the popular monsters from the original Monster Manual were usually the ones with illustrations. So, how would I describe that thing? I'd show the picture. Never has this been easier than today when I can easily google up the creature in question and find an image without say an accompanying statblock. Then I can just show everyone my phone, or if we're playing online send the picture to them.
 
Honestly, it's less a matter of overestimating their abilities (although that may occur) than they are often written in adventures as being much more hostile and aggressive than they usually are in real life.
Absolutely. As a rule, predators are risk-averse. They get hurt taking prey and it could become their last meal. It's easier and safer to prey on the young and the very old, neither of which fight back as readily or as effectively.

In my estimation, making mundane predators dangerous in the game rules is fine; they can be deadly to people, and the rules should reflect that. The problem isn't their stats, in my experience; it's their behavior. Absent some sort of magical compulsion or whatnot, wolves and bears shouldn't be attacking groups of adventurers; they should try to separate and pick off livestock, like a pony or a donkey, or perhaps even a gnome or a halfling. They could also be dangerous to wounded adventurers, especially if they're alone or at some distance from the rest of the party. Determined resistance should be enough to put off most mundane predators.

That said, I recall reading an abstract for a paper about conserving the population of Asiatic lions in the Gir Forest in India, In a totally deadpan scientific voice, the abstract author noted that 'local support for lion conservation efforts was poor, due to occasional predation of residents in and near the forest.' I also remember accounts by National Geographic photographers and videographers placed in an iron cage out on the tundra amidst the polar bear migration through Churchill, Manitoba; all of them commented on how patient and relentless the bears were at trying to find a way into the cage to get at the 'meat.'

And I've seen autopsy photos of mountain lion victims, and was on-scene following a near-fatal mountain lion attack. One night I was getting ready to head home when I received a message on the park answering machine reporting a mountain lion in one of the canyons. Policy was to check out ever sighting, so I jumped back in the patrol truck and drove up the canyon to the point where the truck trail turned into single-track. I hiked the rest of the way as the sun set and day became night. I found the tracks quickly - tracking by flashlight is actually easier than tracking in sunlight - and knelt down to measure the size of the pad and the animal's stride. It was then I realized I was doing everything I could to look like prey: crouching down, looking small, dressed in the same colors as rocks and bushes.

A cold chill went down my spinae as I knew with crystalline certainty that in that moment, I was no longer the top of the food chain.

I stood up as tall as I could, turned around and walked purposefully back to my truck, leaving the canyon to the cat. If giving mundane predators stats which can induce that feeling, then I'd argue the game is doing it right.
 
Couple things I will note - I was going to mention Mythras wolves but my fine Swedish friend mentioned it already.

I’ll also note that Mythras bears in the book are the big bears - grizzly, Kodak, polar. Those will mess you up quite nicely. Very lethal sort of thing. I have read literally hundreds of pamphlets warning me about this from spending summers in national parks with bears very regularly. Many stories.

As for instilling fear, Mythras has the Intimidation trait, and it is on bears.

honestly I think it comes to many systems don’t have enough granularity, or just feel like they need to have minimum dice or something. The devotion to the mechanics is getting in the way.
 
I think in fantasy games animals are probably lu portrayed a little too aggressive, particularly towards groups.

however, as far as “toughness” hues in ability to withstand injury, in generalpretty believable.

As a hunter,from firsthand experience wild animals are tough. There is no “quit” in them. They have been in a constant struggle to survive every day.
 
Absolutely. As a rule, predators are risk-averse. They get hurt taking prey and it could become their last meal. It's easier and safer to prey on the young and the very old, neither of which fight back as readily or as effectively.

In my estimation, making mundane predators dangerous in the game rules is fine; they can be deadly to people, and the rules should reflect that. The problem isn't their stats, in my experience; it's their behavior. Absent some sort of magical compulsion or whatnot, wolves and bears shouldn't be attacking groups of adventurers; they should try to separate and pick off livestock, like a pony or a donkey, or perhaps even a gnome or a halfling. They could also be dangerous to wounded adventurers, especially if they're alone or at some distance from the rest of the party. Determined resistance should be enough to put off most mundane predators.

That said, I recall reading an abstract for a paper about conserving the population of Asiatic lions in the Gir Forest in India, In a totally deadpan scientific voice, the abstract author noted that 'local support for lion conservation efforts was poor, due to occasional predation of residents in and near the forest.' I also remember accounts by National Geographic photographers and videographers placed in an iron cage out on the tundra amidst the polar bear migration through Churchill, Manitoba; all of them commented on how patient and relentless the bears were at trying to find a way into the cage to get at the 'meat.'

And I've seen autopsy photos of mountain lion victims, and was on-scene following a near-fatal mountain lion attack. One night I was getting ready to head home when I received a message on the park answering machine reporting a mountain lion in one of the canyons. Policy was to check out ever sighting, so I jumped back in the patrol truck and drove up the canyon to the point where the truck trail turned into single-track. I hiked the rest of the way as the sun set and day became night. I found the tracks quickly - tracking by flashlight is actually easier than tracking in sunlight - and knelt down to measure the size of the pad and the animal's stride. It was then I realized I was doing everything I could to look like prey: crouching down, looking small, dressed in the same colors as rocks and bushes.

A cold chill went down my spinae as I knew with crystalline certainty that in that moment, I was no longer the top of the food chain.

I stood up as tall as I could, turned around and walked purposefully back to my truck, leaving the canyon to the cat. If giving mundane predators stats which can induce that feeling, then I'd argue the game is doing it right.

There's a huge difference between "can be deadly to people" and "will mop the floor with two or three trained soldiers with spears", and there is no reason to make animals be the second because one wants them to be the first. If the average human has 1d6 hit points, then something doing 1d3 damage on a hit is definitely lethal. Many games seem to push wolves into the spot that brown bears (grizzlies, kodiaks and the smaller European browns) should have (very lethal to unarmed humans, still very dangerous for a single armed human) and then push the bears into being something like a rampaging elephant or worse. These games then also almost inevitably promote something else up to the level where wolves should be (dangerous to children and frail or elderly adults, dangerous in packs even to healthy adults), like giant rats or the like.
 
I think in fantasy games animals are probably lu portrayed a little too aggressive, particularly towards groups.

however, as far as “toughness” hues in ability to withstand injury, in generalpretty believable.

As a hunter,from firsthand experience wild animals are tough. There is no “quit” in them. They have been in a constant struggle to survive every day.
I think that generally holds for humans as well, especially in any setting where most people do not lead or modern sedentary lifestyles.
 
As a hunter,from firsthand experience wild animals are tough. There is no “quit” in them. They have been in a constant struggle to survive every day.

very true. Constant fear and survival. There is some great science that shows how this affects animals and a comparison of domestic with wild. Fascinating stuff. Imagine living on a hair trigger every day, not knowing where your next meal was. You are always on the hunt because you have no security in one of the most basic things for survival. They are constantly developing skills to allow that to happen.
 
very true. Constant fear and survival. There is some great science that shows how this affects animals and a comparison of domestic with wild. Fascinating stuff. Imagine living on a hair trigger every day, not knowing where your next meal was. You are always on the hunt because you have no security in one of the most basic things for survival. They are constantly developing skills to allow that to happen.
Link to a comparison of domestic and wild, please? Haven't read one, and I need something fun to read!

To be fair, the wolf probably just wanted to die instead of having to deal with the grappling rules.
Especially since they invariably favour the creature with higher Siz stat:devil:.

Yeah, a single wolf should be, and is, a scary thing for an ordinary unarmed human to have an encounter with. Similarly a pack of wolves should be a frightening experience for an armed human who is a veteran of combat. And an angry brown bear should be a scary thing for even a small group of spear armed men. But when things get pushed up a notch, or even more notches, things get out of whack. It reminds me of tv writers for superhero shows who can't seem to get it through their heads that "a guy with a gun" isn't going to be scary to someone with heavy duty superpowers.
A single wolf should be scary, yes. Totally survivable, too, when the suffocation damage comes into play:thumbsup:.
Angry brown bears have been hunted by small groups of peasants using farm implements*, and men-at-arms have been considering them "noble sport" from time immemorial, BTW.
And I have second-hand account (from the brother of the guy in question) how just such a bear was thrown in a precipice by a single unarmed human after encountering him on a narrow mountain path, somewhere in the 30ies of the past century:grin:.
Humans are scary:tongue:!

*Amusingly similar to the Chinese "tridents", though:shade:.
 
Link to a comparison of domestic and wild, please? Haven't read one, and I need something fun to read!


Especially since they invariably favour the creature with higher Siz stat:devil:.


A single wolf should be scary, yes. Totally survivable, too, when the suffocation damage comes into play:thumbsup:.
Angry brown bears have been hunted by small groups of peasants using farm implements*, and men-at-arms have been considering them "noble sport" from time immemorial, BTW.
And I have second-hand account (from the brother of the guy in question) how just such a bear was thrown in a precipice by a single unarmed human after encountering him on a narrow mountain path, somewhere in the 30ies of the past century:grin:.
Humans are scary:tongue:!

*Amusingly similar to the Chinese "tridents", though:shade:.

Oh sure, just saying, facing down a wolf for an unarmed man? That's scary, even if the likeliest outcome is that the human survives and the wolf runs away. Even the guys I linked to news stories of who killed the wolf attacking them didn't get away unscathed. I've commented on the bear hunting myself before earlier in the thread, just saying that it would probably be a scary moment when the bear comes at you, even if its you and two friends and you all have spears. Doesn't mean the humans don't have the edge, but shit happens.

On the topic of humans are scary, here's a clip of a Swedish man getting attacked by a bear when out looking for his dog.
 
I tried softening up real-life animals once, but then my group complained they felt too weak, so I stopped bothering. Real life is unrealistic and all that.
 
Link to a comparison of domestic and wild, please? Haven't read one, and I need something fun to read!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4096361/ is some of the research. A lot of evolutionary traits linked to domestication. He one that comes to mind for me is adrenaline and breaking the constant condition of being in fight or flight. Dealing with a wild animal is like dealing with a human in a high state of stress, only you don’t have language and they aren’t already bred to not be in flint or flight as a constant state.

video, I saw a good one on domestication of foxes and it went into a lot of the hormonal changes.

On a related front, there is also good work on how stress (abuse and other survival insecurities) can influence the hormonal makeup of humans and cause developmental delays. I’m going to leave that for an exercise for the reader because it is veering pretty far off topic and skirts closer to anti-pub
 
A cold chill went down my spinae as I knew with crystalline certainty that in that moment, I was no longer the top of the food chain.

This was pretty much my reaction last year when I heard a wolf howl for the first time. I was in Algonquin National Park, it was the end of the tourist season and all the other lakeside houses had been shut up for winter. It was dark, moon was shining on the lake, mist was rising from the water in the cool air. Then we heard it. Cold chill down the spine, hair standing on end and the surrounding forest falling deathly silent. The GF decided retreat was the better part of valour and went indoors. I almost followed, my feet certainly wanted to leave, but I knew I would probably never get another chance to hear a wolf howl. It howled twice more. On the third occasion it sounded really close, though I figured it was still on the other side of the lake. I went inside. I told my GF that its ok, its at the other side of the lake. She pointed to a picture on the wall I hadn't noticed before. A pack of wolves swimming across the lake.

Back to gaming

I think both developers and gamemasters need to think about how better they could present mundane animals. Its all well and good having random encounter tables but if the gamesmaster only sees them as something different to fight, the player characters will soon have more fur in their collection than a big game hunter.

In my adventure, The Witch's Daughter there is an encounter with wolves. The PCs are trying to rescue a child shacked to a monolith. The child is dying and the wolves know its only a matter of time before they get a free lunch. Then the PCs show up trying to get between the pack and the lunch they have been waiting on. The PC will have likely engaged in some combat getting to this point and the encounter suggests that the wolves determine which of the PCs is the most badly injured and try and isolate that character, bring them down and drag them off. Thin the herd. The wolves are allowed a certain tolerance for damage before they are considered driven off.
 
This was pretty much my reaction last year when I heard a wolf howl for the first time. I was in Algonquin National Park, it was the end of the tourist season and all the other lakeside houses had been shut up for winter. It was dark, moon was shining on the lake, mist was rising from the water in the cool air. Then we heard it. Cold chill down the spine, hair standing on end and the surrounding forest falling deathly silent. The GF decided retreat was the better part of valour and went indoors. I almost followed, my feet certainly wanted to leave, but I knew I would probably never get another chance to hear a wolf howl. It howled twice more. On the third occasion it sounded really close, though I figured it was still on the other side of the lake. I went inside. I told my GF that its ok, its at the other side of the lake. She pointed to a picture on the wall I hadn't noticed before. A pack of wolves swimming across the lake.

Back to gaming

I think both developers and gamemasters need to think about how better they could present mundane animals. Its all well and good having random encounter tables but if the gamesmaster only sees them as something different to fight, the player characters will soon have more fur in their collection than a big game hunter.

In my adventure, The Witch's Daughter there is an encounter with wolves. The PCs are trying to rescue a child shacked to a monolith. The child is dying and the wolves know its only a matter of time before they get a free lunch. Then the PCs show up trying to get between the pack and the lunch they have been waiting on. The PC will have likely engaged in some combat getting to this point and the encounter suggests that the wolves determine which of the PCs is the most badly injured and try and isolate that character, bring them down and drag them off. Thin the herd. The wolves are allowed a certain tolerance for damage before they are considered driven off.
Looks interesting, does it have any particular setting? Do you think I could easily adapt it to my Rome in 1560 campaign?

Overall, in my opinion (and a lot of actually great military thinkers) one of the most important aspects of a fight is morale. It is a damn shame that morale rules were seemingly so unappreciated that they eventually fell by the wayside almost entirely. Having morale stats and rolling for morale changes up the dynamics of battles in gaming immeasurably. In the above scenario, if the wolves try to harry one character they think looks the most wounded and a wizard lets loose with a fiery bang, the wolves may just decide to cut and run right then. Enemies that always fight to the death are boring.
 
Looks interesting, does it have any particular setting? Do you think I could easily adapt it to my Rome in 1560 campaign?

Overall, in my opinion (and a lot of actually great military thinkers) one of the most important aspects of a fight is morale. It is a damn shame that morale rules were seemingly so unappreciated that they eventually fell by the wayside almost entirely. Having morale stats and rolling for morale changes up the dynamics of battles in gaming immeasurably. In the above scenario, if the wolves try to harry one character they think looks the most wounded and a wizard lets loose with a fiery bang, the wolves may just decide to cut and run right then. Enemies that always fight to the death are boring.

Its very generic. It would fit within a roman setting, but not in Rome itself. Its set during the winter in a mountainous region where there are three opposing armies preparing for a spring offensive. The PCs are trying to get to a village, but discover it has been quarantined by force currently holding the mountain pass. Its a murder mystery set in an isolated area with plenty of scope for the PC to make allies and enemies. The only thing I can think off the top of my head that would take a bit of conversion is that the village is quarantined because the forces holding the mountain pass think a curse has been placed on the village and a banshee is roaming the streets at night. You would probably need to find something from roman mythology as a substitute. As long as its something mythical that makes a wail or howl it doesn't matter, for it doesn't actually exist. The theme of the adventure is as much about superstitions as anything else.
 
From Wikipedia

Predatory attacks may be preceded by a long period of habituation, in which wolves gradually lose their fear of humans. The victims are repeatedly bitten on the head and face, and are then dragged off and consumed unless the wolves are driven off. Such attacks typically occur only locally and do not stop until the wolves involved are eliminated. Predatory attacks can occur at any time of the year, with a peak in the June–August period, when the chances of people entering forested areas (for livestock grazing or berry and mushroom picking) increase. Cases of non-rabid wolf attacks in winter have been recorded in Belarus, Kirov and Irkutsk oblasts, Karelia and Ukraine. Also, wolves with pups experience greater food stresses during this period. The majority of victims of predatory wolf attacks are children under the age of 18 and, in the rare cases where adults are killed, the victims are almost always women. Indian wolves have a history of preying on children, a phenomenon called "child-lifting". They may be taken primarily in the summer period in the evening hours, and often within human settlements.

Cases of rabid wolves are low when compared to other species, as wolves do not serve as primary reservoirs of the disease, but can be infected by animals such as dogs, jackals and foxes. Incidents of rabies in wolves are very rare in North America, though numerous in the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and Central Asia. Wolves apparently develop the "furious" phase of rabies to a very high degree. This, coupled with their size and strength, makes rabid wolves perhaps the most dangerous of rabid animals. Bites from rabid wolves are 15 times more dangerous than those of rabid dogs. Rabid wolves usually act alone, travelling large distances and often biting large numbers of people and domestic animals. Most rabid wolf attacks occur in the spring and autumn periods. Unlike with predatory attacks, the victims of rabid wolves are not eaten, and the attacks generally occur only on a single day. The victims are chosen at random, though most cases involve adult men. During the fifty years up to 2002, there were eight fatal attacks in Europe and Russia, and more than two hundred in southern Asia.


1) Huh, 200 in southern Asia.
2) Why mostly adult men?
 
This is what I've done for my game, which is based on OD&D/S&W:WB . . .



ANIMALS
In general mundane animals tend to avoid humans and aren’t a threat to a party of armed and dangerous PCs, especially those with access to magic. As such the majority can be treated as non-combatants (AC10 HP1 no attack). Of course, in some circumstances, apex predators, hungry pack animals, panicked herds, or animals at bay or defending cubs, can be dangerous. (AC12 to 15 HD1 to 3, Attacks 1, 2 or 3 at 1d6 to 1d6+2). The referee should use their own experience and judgment to decide what stats suit animals in their campaigns. Some may even have special attacks like the monsters if you wish. On the whole, though it’s unlikely that mundane animals will have much of an impact on a Wulfwald campaign.

I tried to keep it simple and mostly keep animals out of the picture, but figured as it's an Anglo-Saxon based setting the odd wolf, bear, or boar might be around so I oughta have some sort of entry in the Bestiary section..
 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4096361/ is some of the research. A lot of evolutionary traits linked to domestication. He one that comes to mind for me is adrenaline and breaking the constant condition of being in fight or flight. Dealing with a wild animal is like dealing with a human in a high state of stress, only you don’t have language and they aren’t already bred to not be in flint or flight as a constant state.

video, I saw a good one on domestication of foxes and it went into a lot of the hormonal changes.

On a related front, there is also good work on how stress (abuse and other survival insecurities) can influence the hormonal makeup of humans and cause developmental delays. I’m going to leave that for an exercise for the reader because it is veering pretty far off topic and skirts closer to anti-pub
Thank you!

From Wikipedia

Predatory attacks may be preceded by a long period of habituation, in which wolves gradually lose their fear of humans. The victims are repeatedly bitten on the head and face, and are then dragged off and consumed unless the wolves are driven off. Such attacks typically occur only locally and do not stop until the wolves involved are eliminated. Predatory attacks can occur at any time of the year, with a peak in the June–August period, when the chances of people entering forested areas (for livestock grazing or berry and mushroom picking) increase. Cases of non-rabid wolf attacks in winter have been recorded in Belarus, Kirov and Irkutsk oblasts, Karelia and Ukraine. Also, wolves with pups experience greater food stresses during this period. The majority of victims of predatory wolf attacks are children under the age of 18 and, in the rare cases where adults are killed, the victims are almost always women. Indian wolves have a history of preying on children, a phenomenon called "child-lifting". They may be taken primarily in the summer period in the evening hours, and often within human settlements.

Cases of rabid wolves are low when compared to other species, as wolves do not serve as primary reservoirs of the disease, but can be infected by animals such as dogs, jackals and foxes. Incidents of rabies in wolves are very rare in North America, though numerous in the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and Central Asia. Wolves apparently develop the "furious" phase of rabies to a very high degree. This, coupled with their size and strength, makes rabid wolves perhaps the most dangerous of rabid animals. Bites from rabid wolves are 15 times more dangerous than those of rabid dogs. Rabid wolves usually act alone, travelling large distances and often biting large numbers of people and domestic animals. Most rabid wolf attacks occur in the spring and autumn periods. Unlike with predatory attacks, the victims of rabid wolves are not eaten, and the attacks generally occur only on a single day. The victims are chosen at random, though most cases involve adult men. During the fifty years up to 2002, there were eight fatal attacks in Europe and Russia, and more than two hundred in southern Asia.


1) Huh, 200 in southern Asia.
2) Why mostly adult men?

The part about the spread of rabies might account for the higher number of incidents (and the attacks on adult men, which would presumably be more likely to leave the settlement).
Also, "child-lifting" was mentiond...from within a settlement.
If I do this, my players would probably accuse me of playing the villagers unrealistically for not having a fence:shade:.

And I just found this:
60-year old man, wolf attacks and bites him on the face. Then the wolf is, surprise, strangled to death:devil:!
Grappling rules, the bane of smaller-than-human predators...and all predators that encounter trained grapplers.

I find rats are constantly under-estimated in games.
Especially in Warhammer-based ones, right:thumbsup:?

Oh sure, just saying, facing down a wolf for an unarmed man? That's scary, even if the likeliest outcome is that the human survives and the wolf runs away. Even the guys I linked to news stories of who killed the wolf attacking them didn't get away unscathed. I've commented on the bear hunting myself before earlier in the thread, just saying that it would probably be a scary moment when the bear comes at you, even if its you and two friends and you all have spears. Doesn't mean the humans don't have the edge, but shit happens.

On the topic of humans are scary, here's a clip of a Swedish man getting attacked by a bear when out looking for his dog.

Sure, if you mean "scary" as in "this is going to hurt even if I win", then yes. But then the same might be said about battles with blades, and our PCs engage in those on a semi-regular basis:grin:!
 
Sure, if you mean "scary" as in "this is going to hurt even if I win", then yes. But then the same might be said about battles with blades, and our PCs engage in those on a semi-regular basis:grin:!
Indeed, and I think most real people, even people trained to use a sword, would be justified to be scared if they actually got into a no shit swordfight. People mention above that they realized they were in danger and decided (wisely) to vacate the area. Smart decision, I would probably feel scared too. But I would also be scared of a robber coming at me with a knife, and that robber would probably just have the stats of an average human plus a knife with not much extra skill with it than I have. In most traditional RPGs, with perhaps high level D&D and similar systems being exceptions, getting into a swordfight is going to be a high risk thing to do. You can utilize good tactics and teamwork, but at the end of the day you might just find yourself (or rather, your PC) face down in the mud. Put me in a situation where I have say a 10% risk of dying and that's going to scare me enormously, even though the most likely outcome is that I live. But my adventurer PC might jump into that kind of situation without thinking twice. In that case a wolf probably wouldn't scare him either.
 
Doesn't DnD have this weird issue where a first level Magic-User has a better than even chance of being killed by a housecat?
 
Doesn't DnD have this weird issue where a first level Magic-User has a better than even chance of being killed by a housecat?
Depends on the edition. In 5e the magic user definitely has the advantage. Not so much in some earlier editions.
 
There's a huge difference between "can be deadly to people" and "will mop the floor with two or three trained soldiers with spears", and there is no reason to make animals be the second because one wants them to be the first.
Games are imperfect abstractions. Water (checks notes) also remains wet.

I can't recall a game which effectively models a sabre-toothed 'cat,' frex. Those honkin' canines may have served a very specialized purpose, to damage large blood vessels in their prey's soft tissue at the neck or belly; they suggest that a sabretooth's strategy was to induce massive blood-loss with a single bite, not to rip its prey to pieces. This goes back to the idea of risks to predators: biting once then waiting for your prey to die from exsanguination is less likely to result in injury than, say, grabbing it by the throat and holding on in order to asphyxiate it, or trying to break the bones of the neck. This is particularly true in the case of the sabretooth as those big canines could break against bone, making it harder to hunt effectively and putting the animal at risk of a deadly infection.

If we're modeling that correctly, the sabretooth should cause damage from its bite, then there should be a significant chance of the wound continuing to bleed, round after round, while the cat stalks the dying victim. I can't recall a game which does that.

The best thing, in my opinion, is to offer guidance to referees on behavior, not just the 'rawrr!' numbers.
 
We used to joke that in the old FASERIP Marvel Super Heroes game, a cat did Good damage. There was also a tactic called the "Fastball Special" where if you threw an attacker at someone, their damage was increased by one rank, thus a thrown cat did Excellent damage, same as a handgun.
 
Games are imperfect abstractions. Water (checks notes) also remains wet.

I can't recall a game which effectively models a sabre-toothed 'cat,' frex. Those honkin' canines may have served a very specialized purpose, to damage large blood vessels in their prey's soft tissue at the neck or belly; they suggest that a sabretooth's strategy was to induce massive blood-loss with a single bite, not to rip its prey to pieces. This goes back to the idea of risks to predators: biting once then waiting for your prey to die from exsanguination is less likely to result in injury than, say, grabbing it by the throat and holding on in order to asphyxiate it, or trying to break the bones of the neck. This is particularly true in the case of the sabretooth as those big canines could break against bone, making it harder to hunt effectively and putting the animal at risk of a deadly infection.

If we're modeling that correctly, the sabretooth should cause damage from its bite, then there should be a significant chance of the wound continuing to bleed, round after round, while the cat stalks the dying victim. I can't recall a game which does that.

The best thing, in my opinion, is to offer guidance to referees on behavior, not just the 'rawrr!' numbers.

at the risk of repeating myself, I give you the Mythras natural weapons table, note the Teeth, Incising entry.

BFCBD8AE-5BE1-499E-B31C-7B5F0A921DCD.png
http://skoll.xyz/mythras_eg/enemy_template/723/ has the stats all done up.
 
So, in Traveller 5, Horns inflict C1 (Strength) Pen dice of damage. Now, a large animal, like say, a moose will have 5d damage. Pen damage is doubled against armour. So a moose can concievably do 60d damage against armour though 30d is more common. In a battle between an M1 Abrams and a Moose always bet on the moose! Now T5 has two solid updates in which this known issue has not been fixed so we can only assume that Marc Miller firmly believes Moose are the ultimate anti-tank weapon.

ultimate very heavy fusion cannon pen 15 burn 4, assuming I added up the damage types in the right columns.
 
Last edited:
So, in Traveller 5, Horns inflict C1 (Strength) Pen dice of damage. Now, a large animal, like say, a moose will have 5d damage. Pen damage is doubled against armour. So a moose can concievably do 60d damage against armour though 30d is more common. In a battle between an M1 Abrams and a Moose always bet on the moose! Now T5 has two solid updates in which this known issue has not been fixed so we can only assume that Marc Miller firmly believes Moose are the ultimate anti-tank weapon.

ultimate very heavy fusion cannon pen 15 burn 4, assuming I added up the damage types in the right columns.
"We have no other choice! Cry 'Havoc', and let loose the moose of war...oh, and pray to the Stars to have mercy on their souls!"
 
Games are imperfect abstractions. Water (checks notes) also remains wet.
Yes games are imperfect abstractions, but in these games it is almost always possible to have enemies whose danger level is less than "an armed and armored human", since that is typically the standard danger. Basically, if a wolf is more dangerous than a bandit with a sword in your game, you've abstracted wrong.

I can't recall a game which effectively models a sabre-toothed 'cat,' frex. Those honkin' canines may have served a very specialized purpose, to damage large blood vessels in their prey's soft tissue at the neck or belly; they suggest that a sabretooth's strategy was to induce massive blood-loss with a single bite, not to rip its prey to pieces. This goes back to the idea of risks to predators: biting once then waiting for your prey to die from exsanguination is less likely to result in injury than, say, grabbing it by the throat and holding on in order to asphyxiate it, or trying to break the bones of the neck. This is particularly true in the case of the sabretooth as those big canines could break against bone, making it harder to hunt effectively and putting the animal at risk of a deadly infection.

If we're modeling that correctly, the sabretooth should cause damage from its bite, then there should be a significant chance of the wound continuing to bleed, round after round, while the cat stalks the dying victim. I can't recall a game which does that.

I mean, I know a bunch of games that model bleeding. GURPS does it with an optional rule, many varieties of BRP do it with specific damage types, several of the more complicated Swedish games with origins in the 90s do it, any OSR game or variant of TSR D&D can simply have it added in as an extra effect of the Sabre-tooth's attack, etc. But even if your game doesn't run with bleeding rules, that has an equally negative effect on attacks by humans.


The best thing, in my opinion, is to offer guidance to referees on behavior, not just the 'rawrr!' numbers.

Guidance on behavior is also key, and in my experience the games do usually note that wolves don't generally attack groups of people. But in many fantasy games wolves aren't just found in packs roaming the wild. They may be controlled by an evil vampire lord, or under the thrall of a werewolf, or be summoned by spells etc. And in that case, getting the numbers close to reflecting a more real-world outcome is better than not, in my opinion.
 
That's what reaction rolls, numbers appearing, intelligence, morale checks, tools, etc. are for. Common humans may have lower HP (or equivalent), but are smart, determined, ranged-capable tool-users who also travel in packs. White room arena theory crafting doesn't do the threat of common humans justice.

Which is my personal medieval fantasy pet peeve: lack of human restraining & ensnaring technology. It's how we dominated and tamed animals several times our size. Nets, tarps & sacks of various sizes and makes, barbs, hooks, cages, pots, lassos, mancatchers, leather guarding & gloves, and the like made easier work of all these threats. Throw in venins, toxins, smokes, fires, and other tricks and there is no real contest.

I think the real issue is in the underestimation of common humans by context-less programs.
 
Last edited:
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top