Feeding/watering mounts and beasts of burden (or a 12,000 lb lizard?)

[Arravis]

Hey guys, I'm running a modified Darksun campaign and a question has come up that I'm not sure how to rule on. The party has a number of beasts of burden and steeds with them now, and I'm trying to find out the food/water consumption on them as they travel. The huge 25' long, 12,000 lb mekillot (massive domesticated lizard) is of particular interest.

I know that small creatures eat and drink half as much as a medium character... but does that mean that a large creatures needs twice as much, and a huge eats four times as much? Or would it be that each square the creature takes up equals that much food? Thus a large creature needs 4x as much food, and a huge eats 9x as much? Of course, that's not even counting their height... so would a large be 8x and a huge be 18x? Any advice on this?

 

[lukelightning]

Do whatever feels right. Different species have different dietary needs; I wouldn't make it so that the whole game is about trying to get food for this beast (though that could be a pretty funny adventure...feed the beast before it's too late!).

Feed per day for a horse is 5 cp and weighs 10 pounds. For a huge herbivorous beast make it 1gp and 20 pounds (twice as heavy, but more expensive since you're paying for more nutritious stuff). I'd allow grazing, though I think Darksun is pretty desertish, right?

 

[Arravis]

Well, the fact that daily horse feed is 10 lbs is pretty telling... that's 10x more than a person needs. As I recall from my basic biology, carnivores get considerably more from a pound of meat than a herbivore gets from a pound of plant. How much more, I have no idea though...

And yeah, Athas it's pretty much a flat, nearly barren rock with sand on top.

 

[lukelightning]

Presumably this creature is adapted for those situations. Yeah, most herbivores have to eat a lot more mass than carnivores, but it also depends on exactly what sorts of plant the animal is eating; fruits have lots of sugar, nuts and beans have fat and protein, and who knows what nutrients are in some special fantasy world's plants.

How about saying that this creature stores a lot of fat, like a camel, so eats massive quantities and then can go for a while without food? Also cold-blooded creatures require les food than warm-blooded (since they don't burn calories producing body heat).

 

[Arravis]

A lot of stuff in the air though... how much less food does a carnivore need? Is it 1/2 as much or 1/10th as much? How much less food does a reptile need? How about water, do carnivores need more or less? Do reptiles need more or less? Wish I had been more attentive in school... .

 

[lukelightning]

Reptiles need less food and water; that is one of the reasons they are so successful in deserts (there are lots of lizards, snake, and tortoise species that thrive in deserts). Since they don't sweat they don't loose much moisture out of their skin.

Again, this is a fantasy world, you don't need to be too "realistic." I'd still suggest the "camel" effect; reptiles eat relateively infrequently; a large python may eat only once a year!

How about saying this lizard needs to eat a horse-sized amount of meat every month or so. As for water, I'm not sure; there are lizards in Australia (the thorny devil) that have this amazing skin that can condense water out of the air at night, which runs in microscopic grooves on the body to the lizard's lips. Nature is pretty cool, huh?

 

[Arravis]

Yeah, my feeling was something along the lines of figuring out monthly consumption and using a simple method from there.

1 Medium human (weighing an average of 150 lbs, as a gender average) eats 1 lb of found a day. That's 30 lbs a month, or roughly one Small size creature a month. So an omnivore requires a creature one size category smaller than itself per month.

Thus a Huge creature would need 1 Large creature per month... or extrapolating the Swallow Whole computations:
Either 1 Large, 4 Medium, 16 Small, 64 Tiny, or 256 Diminutive. Using the same method, a mammalian omnivore would need 16 gallons of water a day (again using the swallow whole equation, 1 Huge=4 Large=16 Medium).

Since desert reptiles require less food and water, do they require sustenance as a creature one size category smaller, or perhaps simply half as much food as other creatures of their own size?

The skin thing is pretty freakin cool btw

 

[Rothe]

Arravis,
I wish I had the numbers here at work but you might be able to cobble an answer together from the internet. The dietary needs of almost all mammals can be found from the concept of the Animal Unit (AU), as you might imagine farmers have this stuff down pat. For a herbivore 1 AU = 1000kg (about 1 steer or goodly cow+calf), Edit 7/17/2006 so not to artificially bump thread, error in AU 1 AU=1000 lbs NOT kg your lizard is about 6 AU edit 12 AU . I know you can find info on the internet on how much food you need. Remember this is typically dry matter and good nutrition stuff like, hay, fodder, etc.
On meat eating vs plants, grain actually has more calories than meat (ratio of about 1000 to 750) but you can probably use the AU numbers for a carnivore just as well.

As others pointed out, the biggest difference is that this is a reptile = cold blooded, which has many disadvantages (rarely reflected in RPGs) but one big advantage is they require much less food. You can probably find this info on the internet by searching for cold blooded vs. warm blooded dinosaurs debates. One key piece of information they use is the ratio of predators (by mass) to prey (by mass) to determine if meat eaters were warm blooded. That ratio can be taken as the difference in food intake. I have this somewhere at home as well. I'll try to find it tonight but no promises.

Of cousre this is barring the lizard having some adaptations like bears or camels where they can store up large food and water reserves respectively. If this is a desert world, I would suspect many creatures would evolve the camel strategy and also not sweat or move about in the heat of the day. Another strategy is the Elan which just lets its body temperature rise (to a point) to levels that would cook the brains of most species.

My personal suggestion, let the lizard stock up on water not needing much for a week or so. Rule the food intake is 6 AU worth because the lizard needs extra energy to cool off and to carry all the stuff, etc.

 

[Rothe]

Yeah, my feeling was something along the lines of figuring out monthly consumption and using a simple method from there.

1 Medium human (weighing an average of 150 lbs, as a gender average) eats 1 lb of found a day. That's 30 lbs a month, or roughly one Small size creature a month. So an omnivore requires a creature one size category smaller than itself per month.

...

Not a bad approach. But your humans must be on the super model thin side. An average for humans is about 2000 calories per day, smaller size, and inactivity can lower to 1,500. Larger size and activity can raise to 3,000 calories per day. A kg of grain contains about 2,000 calories. So you are looking at 2.2 lbs (34 ounces) of food per day barring high energy foods.

Water is always the big problem, water requiremetns in heat and desert can be very large but even at the low of 1 liter a day (2.2 lbs) you are talking a lot. You can go weeks without food, your dead within the week without water.

 

[frankthedm]

Do whatever feels right. Different species have different dietary needs; I wouldn't make it so that the whole game is about trying to get food for this beast (though that could be a pretty funny adventure...feed the beast before it's too late!).

Actualy Darksun campaigns [that adhere to the original fluff] are heavy on resourse managment. So much so Create water spells produce a lot less water and the "What would this alignment do" section was about who would do what with the last of the party's water.

I'd allow grazing, though I think Darksun is pretty desertish, right?

Land blasted to desert by an arcane magic system that leeches life force from the planet and turns plant life to ash, to be specific.