BRP Animal Fight - Great Cats, Bears, Horses and more!!!

[icebrand]

RQ 3 Stats:

Bear, Brown: 3D6+15

Bear, Grizzly: 3D6+18

Bear, Polar: 3D6+21

Cattle: 4D6+24

Gorilla: 6D6+15 (4D6+12 SIZ)

Horse: 4D6+18

Lion/Tiger: 5D6+12 (4D6+12 SIZ)

BRP Stats:

Bear, Black: 3D6+10

Bear, Grizzly: 4D6+10 (3D6+12 SIZ)

Bear, Polar: 5D6+10

Horse: 3D6+18 (4D6+12 SIZ)

Lion/Tiger: 2D6+12 (3D6+6 SIZ)

I don't like how values interact with each other. The BRP BGB tuned down the horror somehow (i don't have basic creatures). The cattle having more STR than a polar bear, and the gorilla beeing friggin king kong kind of bothers me... Also, i liked bears more on RQ.

What you think?

Edited June 27, 2011 by icebrand

[rust]

Cattle do have more strength than polar bears, at least I very much doubt that

two polar bears could pull a wagon as well as two oxen.

[icebrand]

Cattle do have more strength than polar bears, at least I very much doubt that

two polar bears could pull a wagon as well as two oxen.

The cattle has 2D6 less str and 2D6+6 less str than a friggin elephant!!! Also, dogs can pull a retarded ammount of weight

(and that's not even a sled dog!!!). I like to see cattle pull a wagon with no wheels!

Plus, a gorilla with 6D6+15 weights 500 pounds, a polar bear with 3D6+21 (which is the most powerful land predator) weights 1500 lbs :S

[Smoking Frog]

You really have to distinguish the stats of cows and bulls, at a minimum. Bulls are a lot bigger and meaner than cows. There are plenty of bulls that would be more massive than a polar bear, and probably most are a lot meaner.

When I was about 10 years old, I visited my great uncle's ranch, and a Black Angus bull charged across his corral and slammed into a gate to scare my brother and me. It was almost like having a small car slam into the gate. We almost peed our pants. That bull was immense (I know I was 10, but still, it was freaking huge) and it was incredibly mean. There are plenty of cows, on the other hand, that aren't particularly huge or mean.

[rodney418]

Yeah, I've been up close to Spanish fighting bulls and they are truly scary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Fighting_Bull

On average about the same weight or slightly heavier than the polar bear. If one of those rams into you you're in big trouble.

[Guest Vile Traveller]

Aurochs!

I actually prefer a lot of the characteristic ranges for animals in RQ2, I think they were munchkin'd up a bit too much in RQ3. Especially horses, everyone was soon saving up for a warhorse and getting tooled up with lances.

But I don't like the 3D6-CON-across-the-board that RQ2 had.

Edited June 28, 2011 by Vile

[icebrand]

Ok, the gorilla went down to 4D6+12 STR and 3D6+12 SIZ.

The cattle went down to 4D6+18 STR and SIZ.

Also, deer have 2D6+6 STR and 3D6+12 SIZ, which makes the animal likely to have less than 1/2 SIZ as STR. Ideas?

[rust]

I like to see cattle pull a wagon with no wheels!

Oxen were and are used to draw sleds, felled trees and especially ploughs.

[pansophy]

The thing really bothers me is all these Attributes are not worth a dime during play. They are either so high that a player character stands no chance (which one could say is realistic) or the attributes do not influence combat that much.

BRP is more about the skills; and if you are unlucky enough to get hit by a huge beast you are toast anyway (for sure if you use the Hit Locations option).

All in all I found BRP an extremely deadly system where the action should focus on other things than combat. Unfortunately combat plays a big part for many players, so there sometimes is a bit of frustration. But this is a topic for a different thread.

[rust]

The thing really bothers me is all these Attributes are not worth a dime during play. They are either so high that a player character stands no chance (which one could say is realistic) or the attributes do not influence combat that much.

Historically big game was trapped, hunted with missile weapons from chariot (e.g.

lion), horseback (e.g. buffalo) or elephantback (e.g. tiger) or hunted by big hun-

ting parties which included lots of dogs (e.g. bear), even a boar was considered

too dangerous to be hunted on foot by a single person. In almost all pre-gunpow-

der cultures the idea to hunt dangerous big game in "roleplaying character style"

would have been considered as being more suicidally stupid than heroic. Today

we tend to overlook this and consider big game hunting easy, because with fire-

arms it indeed is easy, but before their invention something like a wild bull was

the equivalent of a main battle tank.

[icebrand]

The thing really bothers me is all these Attributes are not worth a dime during play. They are either so high that a player character stands no chance (which one could say is realistic) or the attributes do not influence combat that much.

BRP is more about the skills; and if you are unlucky enough to get hit by a huge beast you are toast anyway (for sure if you use the Hit Locations option).

All in all I found BRP an extremely deadly system where the action should focus on other things than combat. Unfortunately combat plays a big part for many players, so there sometimes is a bit of frustration. But this is a topic for a different thread.

Hopefully you will like RetroQuest Creatures then. Animals come pre-generated (but with stats you may roll on the fly!) and although some have very big stats, they are more mundane. Stats directly influence skills) how good an animal does something depends directly on stats and it has a bonus to certain skills. Of course, certain stuff (6 meter crocs, elephants, etc) is still immune to melee combat!

[pansophy]

That's ok, only thing is BRP does not use Attribute values that often as other RPGs do. It is not a problem, but I do not see the issue of arguing over the difference of 5d6 and 5d6+6 in Strength - as it will not likely make a difference in a combat situation. The character is toast anyway ...

[pansophy]

Hopefully you will like RetroQuest Creatures then. Animals come pre-generated (but with stats you may roll on the fly!) and although some have very big stats, they are more mundane. Stats directly influence skills) how good an animal does something depends directly on stats and it has a bonus to certain skills. Of course, certain stuff (6 meter crocs, elephants, etc) is still immune to melee combat!

Really, I do not use Attributes very often during a game ... It's all fluff to me and rarely makes a difference.

Even player characters do not use their ststs a lot. skills are the thing that more or less rule the game.

[Smoking Frog]

Today we tend to overlook this and consider big game hunting easy, because with fire-

arms it indeed is easy, but before their invention something like a wild bull was

the equivalent of a main battle tank.

I'm simply amazed when I stop to think about stone age people hunting an aurochs with bows and spears. Talk about Epic level characters! But that was the equivalent of a normal day at the office.

The problem with fantasy games is that when you have dragons, behemoths, demons, and so forth, the "mundane" creatures start to pale in comparison. It's easy to think "it's just a lion." But historically, people would have thought about killing a lion the way fantasy characters think about killing a dragon. I don't know that there's a good way to balance this out: you probably need to have fantasy monsters at the top of the "pecking order," so to speak, but having normal or even heroic level characters easily dispatching a boar (truly a nasty beast) or lion is just unrealistic.

[icebrand]

I'm simply amazed when I stop to think about stone age people hunting an aurochs with bows and spears. Talk about Epic level characters! But that was the equivalent of a normal day at the office.

The problem with fantasy games is that when you have dragons, behemoths, demons, and so forth, the "mundane" creatures start to pale in comparison. It's easy to think "it's just a lion." But historically, people would have thought about killing a lion the way fantasy characters think about killing a dragon. I don't know that there's a good way to balance this out: you probably need to have fantasy monsters at the top of the "pecking order," so to speak, but having normal or even heroic level characters easily dispatching a boar (truly a nasty beast) or lion is just unrealistic.

F**K fantasy creatures!!! Want a dragon? Go to the nile to fight gustav... With a sword...

[Guest Vile Traveller]

That's ok, only thing is BRP does not use Attribute values that often as other RPGs do.

That's right, in fact BRP uses characteristics!

I don't have a problem with keeping 'real' monsters as tough as their fantasy counterparts. If a dragon is tough to kill, it doesn't make a grizzly any weaker.

[Smoking Frog]

I don't have a problem with keeping 'real' monsters as tough as their fantasy counterparts. If a dragon is tough to kill, it doesn't make a grizzly any weaker.

Herakles, who killed the hydra among other super-monsters, wore a lion skin to show how tough he was, so at least old school mythology goes along with this view of things.

[Atgxtg]

The thing really bothers me is all these Attributes are not worth a dime during play. They are either so high that a player character stands no chance (which one could say is realistic) or the attributes do not influence combat that much.

BRP is more about the skills; and if you are unlucky enough to get hit by a huge beast you are toast anyway (for sure if you use the Hit Locations option).

All in all I found BRP an extremely deadly system where the action should focus on other things than combat. Unfortunately combat plays a big part for many players, so there sometimes is a bit of frustration. But this is a topic for a different thread.

I think the difficulty lies in the way the damage bonus works. With most ofthe big anmals getting +3D6 or so they wind up doing enough damage to take out a character with nearly every hit. While big animals can certainly kill a man with a single hit, usually people can survive one hit.

Plus claws aren't a big as most weapons, so they can only benefit so much from the extra force.

[Al.]

But but but Polar Bears can punch though ice to get to the yummy aquatic mammals beneath (can't remember if the ballpark figure is 7x or 10x a human's strength but its lots).

I agree with all the other points though.

[icebrand]

But but but Polar Bears can punch though ice to get to the yummy aquatic mammals beneath (can't remember if the ballpark figure is 7x or 10x a human's strength but its lots).

I agree with all the other points though.

Polar bears PUNCH seals and the seal FLIES THOUGH THE AIR 20+ ft; the bear kills it while its stunned from the hit/fall. Its the closest thing to a marvel vs. capcom air combo in nature!

[pansophy]

Be aware animals do not always use their full strength when hitting or ripping apart something. Main purpose for them is to kill the prey while conserving as much energy as possible - otherwise they would burn more energy than they would get back from eating the prey.

Unless you really make an animal angry, block it's escape ways and such, they will use only enough force to drive you away. So in a RPG, you could rule the Damage Bonus is the maximum damage the animal could do from it's strength - and it can vary that strength to inflict lesser damage.

[rust]

Besides, most of the big predators prefer to avoid any unnecessary fight, becau-

se being wounded could severely reduce their chance to hunt and make prey. As

a result the big herbivores (buffalo, elephant, hippo ...) usually are far more like-

ly to seriously attack, and therefore also far more feared than the big predators,

and they indeed kill far more people each year. For example, the hippo, which is

rarely ever depicted as a dangerous animal in roleplaying games, is widely consi-

dered to be the most dangerous big animal of Africa.

[Al.]

For example, the hippo, which is

rarely ever depicted as a dangerous animal in roleplaying games, is widely consi-

dered to be the most dangerous big animal of Africa.

Indeed. Used to be it killed more peeps per year than all of the other big game* combined. Not no more. The message has finally sunk in amongst tourists and they (we) have learned not to get between daddy hippo and his calves. Its a bit sad though that Rhinos got the blame for a long time (even down to the RQII rulebook).

Much good sense has been typed already about big predators being cautious, something (like cavalry charges) which BRP-style rules haven't yet captured. Although I'm sure that it will be argued that that is the GM and players' job.

* but not insects, obviously

[Atgxtg]

Be aware animals do not always use their full strength when hitting or ripping apart something.

That is just it. In BRP (as in most RPGs) animals (and people) are almost always hitting at full STR. Maybe it would be more realistic to have animals use half thier damage bonus until they get hurt or aggravated?

[icebrand]

That is just it. In BRP (as in most RPGs) animals (and people) are almost always hitting at full STR. Maybe it would be more realistic to have animals use half thier damage bonus until they get hurt or aggravated?

You friggin carebear!!! Animals do full str damage, and HALF AGAIN when hurt, unless they have the "berserk" skill, then its 2x and +50% to hit!!!