One of the things I despised in 3e was the presentation of dire animals as having all kinds of spikeys. It was a mildly interesting idea at first, but the spikes getting bigger, more prominent, and less logical. I was never quite sure why Wizards felt if I wanted a gigantic bear in my game, it needed spikes. I'd rather see a bear with a face so muscled you can barely tell it has eyes, or shaggy Ice Age fur, or something. Or, failing that, just a big, scary bear.
Going by the Bestiary preview, I was hoping we would finally be spared "back antlers." But alas, looking at my shiny new Pf Bestiary, I see the dire bear thinks it needs to activate Stone Armor from City of Heroes or something. Or maybe it's one-fourth pangolin on its mother side, or part dimetrodon. Anyway.
This actually touches on something that has always, for some reason, bugged me about D&D monster books - why have normal animals in there at all? I mean sure you might need to know that a horse can bite a guy once in a while but does anyone need to know how much damage a badger can dish out? (let me guess - not much?). Dire animals were, to me, marginally more useful than regular every day animals but only just. I've used a (very) few dire animals as a DM. The lone exception to this would be wolves but that is just because I love wolves. To me if I'm playing D&D and am fighting a bear some of the magic is gone.
__________________ "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." - Samuel Johnson 18th century English author.
Last edited by Holy Bovine; 22nd October 2009 at 06:10 AM..
Hm, it's kind of traditional. Like back in the day, when I battled Bargle's pet boa constrictor and stole the change from his ashtray before confronting that villain.
Not all campaign settings are the same. If, for example, you want to run a game set in George Martin's world, animals are pretty much it for "monsters" to fight, and we don't want to exclude that kind of game. Or for that matter, read some Conan stories. Conan was ALWAYS fighting animals (usually gorillas, it seemed), and those stories were great! Personally, I think that animals make for excellent foes—we certainly used them to good extent in Dungeon's "Savage Tide" adventure path. And there's always things like gladitorial fights where the PCs have to fight an enraged rhino or tiger. And they make for nice bits of "realistic" encounters in the wilderness.
Beyond that, it's important to have stats for them for druid characters, who are always either changing into animals or summoning them or getting companions and the like.
The concept of leaving all animals out of a monster book is as much of a crime as leaving out all demons, or all dragons, or all fey. Animals are a part of the game, after all!!
As for the spikeys... we did try VERY HARD to abandon that concept. In fact, we tried to more or less abandon the concept of "Dire Animals" as a category altogether. We couldn't TOTALLY abandon it, because we wanted to maintain the familiarity and compatibility with 3.5, but what we COULD do was take the dire animals out of a dire animal ghetto and treat them like normal monsters and let them and their normal animal friends be alphabetized like everything else. And then I kind of made it my own personal crusade to treat the dire animals as basically prehistoric versions of animals... that is, after all, where all this dire nonsense comes from. The dire wolf has been in the game forever because the real-world prehistoric wolf is called a "dire wolf." Applying the word "dire" to all sorts of other animals has always been a pet peeve of mine. Better to have a sabre-toothed tiger or smilodon than a "dire tiger" I think, or a cave bear or short-faced bear than a "dire bear." And so we seeded that concept in the book as well.
Getting back to those "back antlers," you'll note that the bear IS the only one in the book that kept that feature. We quite consciously and specifically made sure to NOT have things like that on our animal art because I agree... it's silly. I killed more than a few pieces of art in the book because they had "back antlers." The bear's illo made it through because it had the right combo of having back antlers that, comparatively, were pretty unobtrusive and minor (especially compared to the ones that originally graced some of the others, like the daeodon [dire boar]). Of course, now that he's the ONLY one in the book with the stuff, they look more obvious and blatant. I probably should have killed that art as well, but each piece of art we had to kill at that stage cost us money, so I was in a place where I was having to pick and choose my fights. We decided to let the bear illo go and fix some other problems (not necessarily dire-animal related) instead. And to be honest, the fact that the bear has bony shoulders annoys me less than the silly expression he has ("A surprise birthday party? for ME?) on his face.
Hm, it's kind of traditional. Like back in the day, when I battled Bargle's pet boa constrictor and stole the change from his ashtray before confronting that villain.
Ah - but to me a boa constrictor isn't a 'regular' animal. I mean stuff like cats, beavers, horses, skunks and the like. Big freaking snakes scare the crap out of me and are iconic D&D enemies.
__________________ "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." - Samuel Johnson 18th century English author.
And to be honest, the fact that the bear has bony shoulders annoys me less than the silly expression he has ("A surprise birthday party? for ME?) on his face.
Dammit, I couldn't pull the illo out of the PDF to make a Motivational Poster of that.
And yes, it is possibly the most disappointing piece of art in an otherwise excellent looking book.
As for Dire Animals, the one I would worry about would be the Dire Cow - an aurochs was no laughing matter, aggressive herbivores are generally a heck of a lot more dangerous than predators.
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And the crew of the captain's gig...
Ah - but to me a boa constrictor isn't a 'regular' animal. I mean stuff like cats, beavers, horses, skunks and the like. Big freaking snakes scare the crap out of me and are iconic D&D enemies.
I kind of agree there. We lumped 11 or so of these boring animals into the Familiars section because wizards and sorcerers DO need stats for their critters... but the vast majority of the animals we stat up in the Bestairy are the kinds that can bite and eat you.
I'm actaully pretty proud of the fact that we narrowed the dreaded "horse statblock bloat" down from effectively 8 stat blocks to 2 (no need for light horse, heavy horse, light warhorse, heavy warhorse, pony, warpony, donkey, and mule to be all seperate statblocks, thank you very much!).
No kidding- when I first saw this thread's title, I was puzzled about why a thread about the dislike of lower-back tattoos- a.k.a. "tramp stamps" and "arse antlers"- was doing in a Pathfinder forum.
Bonespurs, horn armor and bodybarbs are fine on animals in "worlds that have moved on" like Darksun but should not be the default look on dire animals
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Originally Posted by James Jacobs
Getting back to those "back antlers," you'll note that the bear IS the only one in the book that kept that feature. We quite consciously and specifically made sure to NOT have things like that on our animal art because I agree... it's silly. I killed more than a few pieces of art in the book because they had "back antlers." The bear's illo made it through because it had the right combo of having back antlers that, comparatively, were pretty unobtrusive and minor (especially compared to the ones that originally graced some of the others, like the daeodon [dire boar]). Of course, now that he's the ONLY one in the book with the stuff, they look more obvious and blatant. I probably should have killed that art as well, but each piece of art we had to kill at that stage cost us money, so I was in a place where I was having to pick and choose my fights. We decided to let the bear illo go and fix some other problems (not necessarily dire-animal related) instead. And to be honest, the fact that the bear has bony shoulders annoys me less than the silly expression he has ("A surprise birthday party? for ME?) on his face.
Thank you, your efforts to combat bodybarbs and bonsepurs are appreciated. Sorry to hear about the money lost on those art pieces, if i understand correctly, those can eat a decent chunk of a books budget.
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Originally Posted by sjmiller
I have a silly question. Why does the creature labeled as a Tiger have shoulder spikes... ?
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Originally Posted by Inyssius
I'm pretty sure the silly "dire" thing extends back at least into 3.X.
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Originally Posted by Dire Bare
I liked the idea of the "dire" class of animals . . . but with every illustration since of a spiky bear or spiky tiger I've really started to equate the word "dire" with "stupid-looking".
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Originally Posted by lutecius
Count another vote against the bonespurs (I've never heard of anyone who liked them now that I think of it) ...
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Originally Posted by Shemeska
I don't care for the bonespurs in any edition. I immediately think of a rabbit with Shope Papilloma virus, or something similar.
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Originally Posted by Hussar
Dunno if it got mentioned, I missed it on my read through, but the Kenku is a reprint as well.
Count me in on not liking bone spurs. Ick. I wish they'd redesign the animal somewhat instead of just adding spikes.
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Originally Posted by Plane Sailing
Count me as another vote for spiky dire animals == silly.
Dire animals as bigger, fiercer versions of their normal kin is fine. Great even. But bony spikes all over just looks silly to me.
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Originally Posted by kennew142
The first thing I noticed was the lack of spikes/barbd/jabby bits poking through its skin. I am so happy I may just cry.
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Originally Posted by D.Shaffer
I noticed the lack of spikes/boney plates too. I wonder if this means Dire critters are going to look normal, again.
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Originally Posted by Benimoto
it's definitely cool that the "dire" versions of a creature a just bigger, and don't have the funny spikes and etc that they had in 3rd edition. I can see what the designers were trying for with those, I just didn't like the results.
The concept of dire animals was flawed from the get-go, in my opinion. The "dire wolf"---the real-life fossil from which that concept came, isn't a "wolf." It's a completely different animal. It's Canis dirus and the wolf is Canis lupus or Canis rufus if you mean the red wolf. That's a little bit like saying that wolf itself is a "dire coyote" or something.
This actually touches on something that has always, for some reason, bugged me about D&D monster books - why have normal animals in there at all? I mean sure you might need to know that a horse can bite a guy once in a while but does anyone need to know how much damage a badger can dish out? (let me guess - not much?).
Dire animals were, to me, marginally more useful than regular every day animals but only just. I've used a (very) few dire animals as a DM. The lone exception to this would be wolves but that is just because I love wolves. To me if I'm playing D&D and am fighting a bear some of the magic is gone.
Because Badgers, etc animals can be summoned with Nature's Ally or Summon Monster.
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Because Badgers, etc animals can be summoned with Nature's Ally or Summon Monster.
Now we get the real reason. To clutter combat with useless creatures that make the druid or wizard take 5x longer for their turns. God I hated summoners.
__________________ "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." - Samuel Johnson 18th century English author.
This actually touches on something that has always, for some reason, bugged me about D&D monster books - why have normal animals in there at all? I mean sure you might need to know that a horse can bite a guy once in a while but does anyone need to know how much damage a badger can dish out? (let me guess - not much?). Dire animals were, to me, marginally more useful than regular every day animals but only just. I've used a (very) few dire animals as a DM. The lone exception to this would be wolves but that is just because I love wolves. To me if I'm playing D&D and am fighting a bear some of the magic is gone.
Animals in D&D can be pretty dangerous......generally, I have more success killing PCs in my games with ordinary wildlife than with other creatures like Tanar'ri. I've either killed, or taken to death's door, PCs with cattle, bison, bears, pythons, packs of wolves, and tigers.
I've never liked the whole spiky thing either.....I agree with the other poster that a dire wolf or dire bear could be a huge, muscled beast, rather than a spiky, armor plated horror. True to life "dire" animals were probably nasty enough on their own.....smilodons, cave bears, dire wolves, etc.
Wildlife makes the game more rooted and gritty IMO....but I guess everyone gets their own thing out of it.
The concept of dire animals was flawed from the get-go, in my opinion. The "dire wolf"---the real-life fossil from which that concept came, isn't a "wolf." It's a completely different animal. It's Canis dirus and the wolf is Canis lupus or Canis rufus if you mean the red wolf. That's a little bit like saying that wolf itself is a "dire coyote" or something.
I think the important thing is that D&D basically rules that they're similar to a wolf, but bigger and stronger.....which seems to coincide with what we know of them. Were they the same? No. They had smaller brains, but they were much heavier bujilt than modern wolves....averaging 130-190 lbs vs. 85 lbs. But spiky they were not. I still don't think that it would be fun to tangle with one.
From that perspective, the way they did Dire Animals in Frostburn seemed a little more rooted in reality....instead of having a dire tiger or whatever, they used the "Dire" appelation to stat out the smilodon.
Overall, I don't know if wildlife is made dangerous enough in D&D. The speed with which animals can rip a human apart is frightening. But, I guess if you're comparing an animal's stats to those of a lvl 1 commoner with no armor, yeah, the animal is going to be dangerous.
But then, even with something like a Marine......if he doesn't have a firearm, and you put him in a room with a Siberian Tiger, I don't think he'd be walking out at the end....even if he had a knife.
Well, a Siberian tiger is CR 4. I'll bet an unarmed Marine could probably go unarmed against a cougar, though, and that's a more fair CR. It's not that a human can't take a lot of animals, even without weapons, it's that we're not powerful enough to do it without risking death ourselves. As primates go, we're pretty wussy, but we are still primates. It's certainly within a human's capabilities to literally pull an arm or a jaw off a small predator.
Animals in D&D can be pretty dangerous......generally, I have more success killing PCs in my games with ordinary wildlife than with other creatures like Tanar'ri. I've either killed, or taken to death's door, PCs with cattle, bison, bears, pythons, packs of wolves, and tigers.
"Beat down" creatures don't get excess abilities, just damage output and HP to deal out that damage. There are lots of ways to deal with them, but underestimating them or taking a head on approach can get ugly quick.
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