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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ajanders" data-source="post: 2339114" data-attributes="member: 3271">Strengths...The pounce.Sweet merciless gods, the pounce as a night attack is vicious death.Step 1: Tiger sneaks up on encamped PC's.  Tiger has a +11 move silently and a +7 Hide score...more if you factor in undergrowth bonuses and darkness.  Tiger only needs to get within 100 feet of the camp to make the charge.Step 2: Tiger charge/pounces on any sleeping PC it wants: wizards and clerics die easiest, there's more meat on paladins.  The tiger is probably smart enough not to pounce on anything in metal armor.The pounce does, on the average, 55 points of damage, killing most 10th level wizards instantly: this will also finish off 10th level thieves and bards.  If the characters still have hit points left, they can take their massive damage saves.If the tiger gets lucky and does maximum damage, it hands out a whopping 72 points of damage in the round, probably killing the average monk, ranger, cleric, or druid as well as the wizards, sorcs, thieves, and bards.  And again, if you have hit points left, take your massive damage save.Being fiendish is even worse: combining the Smite Good attack with the pounce adds another 16 points of damage, virtually guaranteeing a character will need to make a massive damage save and now slaying the paladins and fighters of the party on the initial pounce.Step 3:  If the victim is dead or unconscious, the tiger picks the victim up in its mouth and runs off to devour it privately.  With a strength of 27, a dire tiger can walk off with a weight of 200 pounds and never notice, fleeing the camp at 200 feet a round.An hour later, the tiger is no longer hungry and the victim will need a true resurrection.  Kiss goodby to any magical items the victim had as well: a meditative dire tiger can probably gnaw metals up very neatly as a form of relaxation.Using this technique makes a tiger an effective ECL of 10 easily, and maybe 12.  The limiting factor is the stealth of the tiger: if your guard detects it coming in and rouses the party, you have a good chance of causing it to go seek easier prey.Like the party mounts or henchmen.And now you know why Kipling gets so excited about tiger hunting.(Being fiendish doesn't count much: the smite is icing on the massive damage death cake and the average dire tiger doesn't make fine moral judgements or detect good, so it might be wasted anyway.)The tiger's biggest weakness is a relatively low armor class: being fiendish and getting DR and energy resistance is a big compensation for this.  Nevertheless, a dire tiger wants to avoid getting sneak attacked and full attacked.A hypothetical dire tiger trainer could compensate for this with mage armor or barkskin, but they're far better off casting spells of concealment and stealth on brother Stripes: if he approaches undetected, he won't hang around long enough to recieve attacks.</blockquote>[/QUOTE]

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