Favorite actual/wished for fantasy character that wouldn't work well with D&D rules

[Garthanos]

Celebrim is normally rather insightful even when I disagree with him I would never confuse what he writes as being a simplistic take on something.

Umm why worry about house cats fighting humanoids? why have battle field stats for house cats ... 1 hit point can kill somebody(at least it can in 4e and 1e) and since at best a house cat could be exploited by mind control or really wierd luck or magic to harrass... but an active aware adult human has something approaching zero chance of anything but penalities on the performance of other actions... no hit points should ever be dealt by tabby.

 

[Celebrim]

Umm why worry about house cats fighting humanoids? why have battle field stats for house cats ...

It's a reasonable question, and you can try to answer it in alot of ways.

One way to answer it is the campaign that I'll probably run after I finish the one I just started (say in 2-3 years) has also been floating in my head for years, and the second encounter of it involves a 'crazy cat woman' and a house full of psychopathic cats. Under those circumstances, the fighting ability of a cat is important.

Another way to answer the question is that the 'house cat problem' is short hand for a number of issues that arrise in most game systems that have to do with the ability of the system to handle scaling up and down, and a particular issue relating to D&D's use of HD to track the ability to sustain damage. The 'house cat' is the most easily communicated example, but the problem is actually far more pervasive than that and in my opinion includes things like:

a) Many large creatures need artificially inflated HD. This for example results in whales being very high HD creatures, which, since everything is tied to HD, creates possibly unwanted side effects. Other creatures have ad hoc hit point bonuses. These are symptomatic in my opinion of failures to consider scale very often in the rules, particularly in pre-3e versions of the rules.
b) Arguably tangetal, but I think at least related to the cure is that Elfs are about the only creatures that have traditionally had below average constitution. I believe this is because too little emphasis has been placed on scale, and instead constitution is often treated as a relative rather than absolute value. For example, rats are 'healthy' so despite weighing 10 pounds, they get attributes implying that they medium sized and ad hoced 1/8th HD. But this implies that rats and 200 lb humans need the same dose of poison to kill them, and that a snake bite is equally lethal to the two.
c) Until 3e, being small carried no concrete drawbacks at all and being large typically was a pure penalty. In 3e, some attempt was made to deal with this and scaling in general, but the system still largely makes being medium sized an effectual penalty and being fine sized is in and of itself a huge benefit. This is potentially quite undesirable, as it suggests that not only is it likely that a housecat kill a human, but a wasp or spider has a decent chance of it as well.
d) One hit point of damage actually turns out to be a fairly large amount, but D&D has no way to scale down lower than 1 hit point of damage. This problem of not being able to scale down is actually shared by most systems.

And lastly, I'd agrue that if possible the rules should be such that a novice DM doesn't need to know about all the hidden gotchas in the rules in order to know when to not apply the rules as written. If not, why try to have versimiltude at all?

At some level I do agree that the system can be run while succesfully ignoring the issue, but I also think that the problem is not so difficult that it shouldn't be solved. If it was difficult to solve, then maybe it wouldn't be worth it. But I think I think I have largely solved it, and the solution is fairly straight forward.

 

[Garthanos]

It's a reasonable question, and you can try to answer it in alot of ways.

One way to answer it is the campaign that I'll probably run after I finish the one I just started (say in 2-3 years) has also been floating in my head for years, and the second encounter of it involves a 'crazy cat woman' and a house full of psychopathic cats. Under those circumstances, the fighting ability of a cat is important.

In 4e If I thought she ought to be combat capable I would just describe her attacks as being skinned as a swarm of cats doing the attacks ... I would make sure not to give her tons of damage even then and would rely on my own gut feeling as to whether I had made her over nasty... and if I decided after seeing in play that it seemed too potent I would leave clues around that there was really magic involved or maybe she is a servent or manifestation of the cat godesss.. and just move on.

Note I might have used a similar technique in 1e...

I realize scaleability is an issue but swarms are also a generic concept. Treat them mechanically as 1 thing...

This actually works on other things like a character getting to attack an entire army... I would be inclined to play a certain swordmage power entirely differently (I am not going to have a pc stand on a nearby hill and then launch his epic attack one die roll at a time against every member of the battalion... I am going to use percentages and I will hope fully describe it vividly enough that the player gets his uber cool factor and blood soaked leather stained nice and dark.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

This is potentially quite undesirable, as it suggests that not only is it likely that a housecat kill a human, but a wasp or spider has a decent chance of it as well. One hit point of damage actually turns out to be a fairly large amount, but D&D has no way to scale down lower than 1 hit point of damage.

You can scale to less than 1 hit point. A housecat's attacks can deal zero hit points of damage in relation to combat. Outside of combat a cat can certainly still catch a mouse, kill it and eat it, you merely treat this as an aspect of the game world outside the scope of the rules governing characters.

Edit: I was going to XP comment on this but I must spread XP before giving it to Garthanos again: And Garthanos' idea of treating the mass of cats as a swarm brings the cumulative effects of numerous scratches that would do little harm on their own back into the realm of combat to allow you to pursue your idea of the crazy cat lady with her sinister cats (a very fun-sounding encounter, btw).

 

[Deset Gled]

Seriously, how does fulfilling your request prove that something can't be done?

I can't speak for Celebrim, but the reason I don't find some of your examples particularly convincing is this: You have shown that performing a specific act is technically possible, but not how to make it fit a character concept.

For example, your answer to the "Time Travel" character concept was a 9th level spell. But this doesn't allow a player to create a character that uses time travel as a regular ability to interact with the game; it creates a wizard who may eventually get the ability to access a limited version of time travel once or twice a day while paying a hefty XP cost to do so. This wizard will actually spend most of his D+D career without access to this spell. And when he does finally gain access to it, he cannot thoroughly explore using it as a means of normal combat or conflict resolution because the cost (9th level spell slot and 1000 XP) doesn't allow it.

Also, it has been pointed out that the time travel spell you suggested has a specific warning about how it will not work in all campaigns. On a similar note, your answer of using Polymorph or Shapechange to play a morph-based character has problems, because they are the most errataed set of rules in D+D. In short, you can't use these as examples of how easy it is for D+D to model a character concept when even WotC can't come up with a solid way for the mechanics to work.

Hopefully this helps you understand the problem a little better. If not, I refer you to "A Charlie Brown Christmas" to learn the true meaning of Christmas.

 

[Celebrim]

You can scale to less than 1 hit point. A housecat's attacks can deal zero hit points of damage in relation to combat. Outside of combat a cat can certainly still catch a mouse, kill it and eat it, you merely treat this as an aspect of the game world outside the scope of the rules governing characters.

All of that may be true, but even if it is true, it wouldn't contridict my claim that mechanically D&D doesn't deal with the housecat problem well.

Look at it this way though, can you provide a simple rule to a novice DM suggesting when a cat's claws should do zero damage and when they should do 1 hit point of damage? If you can, then you can put a little sidebar beside your rules that mechanically deals with a least one aspect of the house cat problem.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Look at it this way though, can you provide a simple rule to a novice DM suggesting when a cat's claws should do zero damage and when they should do 1 hit point of damage?

I would have handled it through swarms. Explain that some creatures are too small to harm someone individually and that only in large numbers can they actually be a threat in combat. I would also have advice in the DMG talking about using common sense when dealing with mundane animals.

Other edition specific solutions?

OD&D/BD&D/1E/2E - Attacks nil.
3E - Remove the rule that an attack causes a minimum of 1 damage (a non-buffed housecat would be hard-pressed to cause 1 point of damage that way).
4E - Don't release stats for a housecat (which tey haven't - yet).

 

[Celebrim]

I would have handled it through swarms. Explain that some creatures are too small to harm someone individually and that only in large numbers can they actually be a threat in combat. I would also have advice in the DMG talking about using common sense when dealing with mundane animals.

While swarms are a possible abstraction, if you look at the rules, a swarm doesn't really apply until you start talking about like 300 house cats. While a swarm of house cats might well be a cool encounter, its also probably above the CR of my needs and its well above the 'few dozen' cats I had envisioned.

And in any event, the assertion that 'some creatures are too small to harm someone individually' doesn't apply to house cats. A house cat with a mind to do so can tear you up pretty good.

Right now, my actual rules are loosely inspired by 4e. (Something Celebrim thinks 4e actually got right? Well, kinda...) I don't think that HD should be the sole source of hit points. I don't agree with 4e's implementation of that concept, but the concept itself is on reflection quite sound. My implementation is that creatures should get bonus hit points based on size class (for example, medium sized creatures get 8 bonus hit points, tiny ones like cats get 2). This has been tested now, and for the most part works like a dream. I'm moderately concerned that single weapon blows are now unlikely to kill normal people without a critical, but on the whole that seems like a good trade off especially when considering large gains in playability over small tradeoffs in versimilitude.

The other rule that is weapon that is 4 or more size classes smaller than your own size class is automatically non-lethal (-4 penalty to do lethal damage). This means that the cat scratches are normally recovered from reasonably fast, and if the cat really wants to rip your throat out, it has to work at it. Move up to a small sized bobcat though (with diminutive claws) and that's no longer true unless you happen to be an ogre at the time.

Between those rules and the introduction of scale with respect to massive damage rules, I think I've resolved most of the scale issues I had with straight D20. Being fine sized is no longer a straight up advantage compared to being tiny, and being medium sized is no longer a penalty. I don't know that they'd work for everyone, but they are definately working for me. I'm playing around with some sort of rule to handle situations like 1d4-4 damage being no better than 1d2-4 and the other general problems with low strength mods without requiring extra die rolls, but really, that would be just gravy.

 

[Garthanos]

And in any event, the assertion that 'some creatures are too small to harm someone individually' doesn't apply to house cats. A house cat with a mind to do so can tear you up pretty good.

Feh, Never heard of one knocking somebody out..or klling

Though I might accept arguments that running in terror
can be another skinning of non lethal damage driving somebody to zero hit points Some how I doubt fans of 3e will accept it.

Who said you need to have groups of 300 to combine them? in to a single combatant sounds like an artificial concept why not drop it.. and make your cat lady a lot more usable.

By the way "cat scratch fever" could be one of the possible attacks where one/or more of the felines actually has an infection the target can catch.


As it stands sounds like you advocate making progressively more complex rules that are exactly not newbie friendly to fix the holes (which every rpg will have) instead of using a bit of common sense and narrative ability.

 

[Nonei]

Who said you need to have groups of 300 to combine them? in to a single combatant sounds like an artificial concept why not drop it.. and make your cat lady a lot more usable.

I agree - swarm rules have always bothered me, and I've found them a PITA. Would be nice if there could be some sort of generic mechanic for combining coordinated group attacks into one roll. That would also be handy to have with large NPC/monster groups.

Had a combat last session that 5 monsters with 4 attacks each were attacking, but there were a couple other larger monsters that the PCs were focusing on instead. So I ended up just saying "Heck, the avg damage they're likely to do is x, so let's say they just did (a number less than x) so I'm not rolling the die 20 times"