Board Thread:Midian Ideas/@comment-4701109-20170108033644/@comment-24302820-20170110164718

Speaking of dog stats, part of the reason why there aren't write-ups for animals is that I haven't figured out exactly what to put.

Physical attributes and Speed are pretty much a given, but what about the mentals or Awareness? How about Common Sense? Do I do a full write-up for animals? Do I ignore social attributes (because that's difficult, as well as creepy, in a furry yiffy sorta way)? Combat and saving throw bonuses make sense, on a case-by-case basis as needed, but is there a unified way to determine these? Do I give elephants an armour class bonus? What about rats, or horses?

Do we concatenate attributes? That is, do we just have a single number for all physical attributes, and one for mental? For many animals, having all of the mental attributes pretty much the same makes sense. For example, a dolphin is just going to be better in all three mental attributes than a snake. Also, it's not too far of a stretch to have Stamina and Strength combined, as bigger animals would have more of both of these, but smaller animals much less. However, Agility stands out as being something more typical of smaller animals, and thus breaks the 'shove them all together' model. That is, a rhino may be very strong and very tough, but isn't very dextrous. Elephants stand out as being amazingly graceful, especially for their size (being the only mammals besides humans who can balance on one foot) but they are far from ordinary there. On a similar note, animals that run very fast are not always the same as those that have well attuned senses. That may be generally true for ungulates and carnivores, but it's far from universal. With sharks, for example, the ones with the best senses tend to be the slower ones. Plus, Common Sense--as a miscellaneous attribute--doesn't fit with the model of having all attributes the same. Hoofed mammals may be fast and aware, but are generally pretty stupid. There would certainly be other examples of stand-out attributes, like giving badgers high Willpower, even though their other mentals wouldn't be very high.

As far as attribute ranges go, ideally it would be dice plus adds, as it is with sentient folk. However, the spread should be much tighter for animals. That is, there wouldn't be as much variance in cow Agility as there is with humans. We run into scaling issues with that, however, in that the smallest die is 1D4, and that can make for a huge spread for something like the Strength of a mouse. The only workarounds that I can see either are unsatisfying (having a single number for an attribute doesn't allow for exceptional animals) or extra mathy (like dividing the rolls by some number). That said, attributes can be fractional in Midian, especially for very small animals who would have attribute scores below one.

One way to handle animal stat blocks is with traits. Most notably, we can modify maximum life point capacities with these. This way, we can still give armadillos high Stamina (those fuckers don't really stop moving until sun-up) and high Willpower (the reason why they tear up above-ground pools is a combination of being too stupid and too stubborn to just walk around them) without making them harder to kill than a Troll. Here are a couple of possible traits:

Minikin or Lilliputian: You are tiny and frail. Your maximum life point capacity is reduced by a multiple equal to the level of this trait +1. So, if you have one level, your maximum life points are cut in half. If you have Minikin x2, they are a third of normal.

Cyclopian, Collossal, or Brobdingnagian: You are big and tough. Your maximum life point capacity is increased by a multiple equal to the level of this trait +1. So, if you have one level, your maximum life point capacity is doubled. If you have Cyclopian x2, your maximum life point capacity is tripled.

Do we allow for other traits, or for backgrounds? If so, how many, and how are these determined? I can see backgrounds or traits being used to, for example, differentiate between a racehorse and a plow horse, but do we need to have a chart for these with each animal write-up?

What about animal skills? Some animals would have instinctive skills (climbing, running, et cetera) and others would be taught by their parents &/or develop skills over time. An old mountain lion is much more dangerous than a young one. Animal training can also give an animal new skills, or override natural ones. Having some way to address animal skills would be highly useful, if nothing else it would be a way to handle combat modifiers for dangerous predators or animals used in battle.

Speaking of combat, all of the other fighting numbers need to be determined. Some of these are generated from attributes or skills, but some animals are just going to be much quicker or tougher than a person. Additional initiative bonuses, armour class, and the like needs to be determined. Likewise, how do we figure the damage on a steer's horns or a tiger's teeth or claws? What about the possible incidental damage just from being too close to some animals, like porcupines or any very large animal?

There's a difference between aggression and bravery. Some animals are very willing to attack, but quickly back away from any minor threat (yappy little dogs). Others don't pick fights, but will fight to the death (some herbivores and turtles are like this). We could use some way to model this. Willpower (for bravery) and Common Sense (for aggression) are possibilities, or perhaps a Personality trait would be better for this. How about other animal behaviours, like herds versus solitary predators. For the latter, how do we distinguish (or indeed, do we distinguish) the difference between ambush predators like cats versus active hunters like canines?

That's not even addressing more corner case issues, like training animals, or necromancers or biomancers mixing and matching body parts. I do have a way to price out quite a few furs and hides already, though.