Death to all Cat People!!

[Frostmarrow]

Cat races are the racial equivalent of the kewl ninja, a dumping ground for what I guess you'd call cat fanboyism. Cats are graceful so let's give them +2 Dex. They're pretty so let's give them +2 Cha. Sometimes they stare at the wall after licking their butts so they must have some really deep sixth sense, +2 Wis. Also they should always land on their feet, slow fall 10'. And a bite attack, and a claw attack, and hey, how about some natural armor? Cats are mildly active in the 6 hours a day they aren't sleeping so let's give them +2 to all physical skills.. etc., etc.

You forgot to mention cats have nine lives.

:horror:

 

[JustKim]

What if he says it mockingly after you foolishly called him "catboy" and right before he tore your body asunder with deadly magic?

Demiurge out.

What I was saying in not so many words is that even the "good" cat races like rakshasa can be ruined by someone who plays them as they would a "bad" cat race. A rakshasa who purrs when it's happy and pounces on bits of string is a terrible waste, and for that I would key your car. Fair warning.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Spoiler

I like Litorians.

Hm, but then I *heart* Arcana Evolved - or whatever the latest netspeak is for loving it - so yeh. Natch.

I've known (and known of) people who've hated catfolk, fey, elves, gnomes, halflings, dwarves, humans (er, in fantasy that is, though I do wonder. . .), half-elves, gnolls, centaurs, orcs, half-orcs, 'giant'-types (e.g., as found in AE or Dark Sun), anything with wings, planetouched races. . . I lose track, actually.

It baffles me, quite honestly. To each their own though, and all that.

 

[Sejs]

Meh, I don't mind anthropomorphic races as long as I can find a reasonable place for them to exist in the game world, rather than just having to wedge them in simply because.

Example: My current campaign is set in a modified version of the Forgotten Realms. One of my players wanted to make a Catfolk (from RotW / MiniHB) Ranger. I said sure - you know the Shaar? Big, huge open grassland area in the south? You know the Wemics that live there? Tribal, semi-nomadic tauric lion guys? Those ones? Yeah, replace them with Catfolk. Bam, there you go. As an added bonus, one of the primary type of Local Marauding Humanoids out on the Shaar are Gnolls. Sometimes this stuff just writes itself.

I can certainly agree with the general annoying state of "OMG squeeee!" fanism. It's annoying no matter what it applies to. Cat people. Elves. Ninjas. Whatever. That grows old quick. But that's more a function of the fan than of the material.



On a seperate note - along the lines mentioned by Just Kim. Rakshasa are not cute fuzzy cat people. Ever. Rakshasa are evil, lie-weaving, misery-spreading, flesh-consuming goddamn demon shapeshifters. They don't play with friggin' balls of twine, they eat your children while making you watch. No, wait, scratch that. They steal your face, kill your children, then dominate you and make you eat them.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

 

[BaldHero]

wow, that picture is disturbing...but oddly satisfying in a death to cat people kind of way.
And its good to see that someone else was able to say what i was thinking. JustKim nailed it for me. The races ive seen are all so uncat like.
Other anthros i can sort of tolerate, maybe even learn to appreciate, but the cat people...
I also like AU. A good setting that doesnt suffer from the inclusion of cat people.
As for the cat people that show up in anime...they are not cool either. What is that about? Who thinks thats interesting?

 

[Psion]

I don't hate anthropomorphic races in general. I'm a huge fan, for instance, of gnolls and their variants. And I like cats IRL; I have two, and I wish I had room/money for more.

I'm just the opposite. I find cats to be annoying little self-proclaimed nobles IRL, but I think cat people in fantasy are cool.

I guess I just don't watch enough anime to identify cat-people with stupid hypersexed catgirl archtypes. And I think people who insist on doing so really need to just relax.

By the by, Litorians are okay, but I am not much of an AE-head (though I am tiring of typical D&D archetypes, so it is seeming more and more appealing to me these days). I really like the Artathi in FFG's Mythic Races. A book with weaknesses, yes (don't get me started on the lameness that are the rules for the faeries), but some things from the book I really dug.

 

[Psion]

Cats are graceful so let's give them +2 Dex. They're pretty so let's give them +2 Cha.

Someone used to have a quote in their sig that said that if cats had looks to reflect their personalities, they would look like toads. Since Cha is not supposed to directly reflect appearance, I think that suggests a Cha penalty...

 

[Klaus]

I have my own version of 'cat-people', the Kathos, which I posted on these very boards not long ago. I wrote it up because I always hated all the approaches to making cat-people that have all the quirks of a housecat (catnip attraction or whatever). Humans don't have monkey quirks, do they? I also hate the approach of 'let's have cat-people, and have subraces for lions, tigers, leopards, ocelots, lynxes, anything from the Felidae family...'. And I went through lots of pains to make the race balanced out, so it's no more powerful than, say, a halfling or human.

BTW, I used to have dogs when I lived in a house, but now I have a cat (7 years now), since I live in an apartment.

There are also cat-people in Oathbound (Tiny or Small, look like upright cats) and in the brazilian Oriental-style setting Mítica (Small).

 

[Dark Dragon]

Cat Folk in games...well, in Master of Orion you may encounter or play the Mrrshan (a cat folk race with a "slight" touch on warfare).

There was also a novel describing the Kzin, who are space traveling cat folk (heck, what was the name of that novel ??).

I don't have problems with cat folk as (playable) races. I used them as an NPC race in my last campaign. They were space traveling traders, strongly lawful aligned with a tendency towards intrigues, confident in their abilities and knowledge, intelligent and swift, but frail (comparable to sun elves in their abilities). Earning a cat folk's friendship IMC was not easy because of the very formal behaviour of this cat folk race.