Minotaur and Natural Cunning

[Cthulhudrew]

While reading over the Minotaur entry, I noticed this part of it's "Natural Cunning" ability:

"This... enables them to track enemies."

Shouldn't Track be a bonus feat, then, due to their Natural Cunning, and not a chosen feat?

 

[Zzyzx]

Whoops, I posted an answer but then realized that I had misunderstood the question.

I don't know

 

[EP]

We came across that same problem when working on our first PDF, Campaign Options: Mazes...along with finding a game term for "never getting lost." We turned natural cunning into a general category of abilities, one of which was the Track feat as a bonus feat, and a few other things as well. Just give it to them as a bonus feat, I'd say. It only makes sense.

 

[frankthedm]

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=2911992#post2911992

Natural Cunning (Ex): Although minotaurs are not especially intelligent, they possess innate cunning and logical ability. This gives them immunity to maze spells, prevents them from ever becoming lost, and enables them to track enemies. Further, they are never caught flat-footed.

The 3.5 MM entry for the minotaur list the minotaur as having the track feat, but looking over the Natural Cunning extraordinary ability, it looks like they might not even need the feat for most uses a minotaur would put tracking to, since natural cunning “enables them to track enemies.”

In the MM 3.0 write up, Minotaurs did not posses the track feat, just natural cunning. My current suspicion is that when 3.0 went to 3.5 the extra feats monsters got went to feats that the upgrade team felt ‘made sense’, though in this case they may have overlooked one of natural cunning’s benefits.

On the other had minotaurs are very solid for their CR and even their level adjustment, perhaps requiring the feat for tracking enemies is not unfair.

Plus how does one draw the distinction between track a creature in general and tracking enemies? I could see just about anything being the “enemy" of a minotaur, though limiting it to invaders of the minotaur’s labyrinth /cavern and those it already recognized as enemies also make sense.

Since no one else has decided to tackle this, I figured I would give it a try. By RAW, they don't need the Track feat to track enemies. That's clear. Determining what an enemy is, by RAW, would almost certainly use the same rules as determining an 'enemy' for a spell...which...does not...seem...to have a clear RAW definition in the SRD.

Hrm.

Okay, moving on (and ignoring that little inconsistency), I would still rule 'enemy' as having the same definition as for spells, whatever that happens to be.

*cough*

The point! Yes. The point. That I was going to make. --Was that I noticed in reviewing the minotaur that survival is not listed as a class skill for minotaurs, and they get no bonuses to survival whatsoever, either through a wis boost or a skill bonus. They also get a whopping -4 (!!!) to intelligence, which means that they are usually going to get 1 skill point per level, and rarely more than 2.

Keeping all that in mind, I hardly think it's overpowered to allow minotaurs to track enemies. Even if they take a class like ranger/druid (ha!!!)/barbarian, they still have 'wasted' 8 levels where survival was not a class skill, and are unlikely to catch up soon. In short, their survival check is probably going to suck anyways, and RAW is unclear, so why not give it to them?

Heck, just to avoid arguments over what exactly defines an "enemy", I'd probably give them Track anyways; it's hardly unbalancing imo and good flavour. Helps keep the minotaur from being a complete "KROK FIGHT!!!" type of character.

 

[frankthedm]

Anybody got input on this one?

 

[nittanytbone]

Perhaps they did not give the track feat because the intent is for the minotaur to be able to track anyone in its lair, regardless of survival DC. How? Its a mythical beast of legend!

If you add the Track feat in now players will run to the table in the PHB and ask how a stupid minotaur with low intelligence and wisdom is following their carefully concealed trail.

 

[DrNilesCrane]

Has anyone seen an official answer to this question? (I have a PC running a Minotaur and am curious if this has been clarified).

 

[Wycen]

A have an anecdotal story, related but not directly to tracking. My players found themselves in a demiplane, one part acting like a huge tesseract. One party member, the rogue, scouted ahead and found himself "stuck", lost. The party wizard polymorphed into a minotaur and thanks to the Extraordinary ability Natural Cunning was able to navigate to the rogue and then out of the maze. I should have given him bonus xp...

 

[ElectricDragon]

Don't forget that the minotaur also has the Scent ability, which along with the Track feat and the Natural Cunning ability should allow them to track anything anywhere even without any ranks in Survival. Their non-adjusted Wisdom score is all that is needed for a Tracking check; and Scent negates poor visibility modifiers and surface conditions. DC is 10, +2 per hour old. Natural Cunning should give some sort of bonus to this check IMHO (+4 or +6) or allow them to track at normal speed with no penalty.

Ciao
Dave