Something Awful leak.

[I'm A Banana]

Housecats could actually make interesting non-damaging creatures.

Here, I made up some stats for you:

This makes no sense. At all. So that stat block is worthless, because I can't use it in a game.

All this ignores the main point of the post, but thanks for playing.

Lacking cat stats doesn't make a game better for me. Having cat stats doesn't make the game worse for me. Assuming I have foreknowledge of how my party is going to interact with a given game element makes a game worse for me. I need rules to support whatever the party does with 'em. Which means, if not actual stats, a very quick and easy way to come up with them on the fly.

And if you think a cat poses no threat to anything above its own size, you're lucky you don't know anyone who has an artificial eye and a scarred face from when a rabid cat leapt out of a tree at her, but heck, who am I to tell you that you need cat stats just because they could conceivably hurt your characters? That isn't the threshold of "do I need stats for this?" You need stats for anything you make die rolls about. Some people are gonna need 'em for cats, even in combat, and some folks aren't. The hallmark of a 5e that fits both needs would be if the people that need them can have them without having to invent them whole cloth, and the people that don't need them don't need to worry about it.

 

[Incenjucar]

Every edition of every RPG needs a Big Book of Page 42.

 

[Halivar]

The hallmark of a 5e that fits both needs would be if the people that need them can have them without having to invent them whole cloth, and the people that don't need them don't need to worry about it.

KM, would it be sufficient to have quick adjudication tables for creating such stats (or parts of stats as needed for the situation) on the fly? As opposed to a full stat-out of a cat?

 

[KarinsDad]

KM, would it be sufficient to have quick adjudication tables for creating such stats (or parts of stats as needed for the situation) on the fly? As opposed to a full stat-out of a cat?

I don't think the words "quick" and "table" belong in the same sentence when discussing an RPG.

 

[dkyle]

I need rules to support whatever the party does with 'em. Which means, if not actual stats, a very quick and easy way to come up with them on the fly.

My stats were very quick to come up with.

And if you think a cat poses no threat to anything above its own size, you're lucky you don't know anyone who has an artificial eye and a scarred face from when a rabid cat leapt out of a tree at her, but heck, who am I to tell you that you need cat stats just because they could conceivably hurt your characters? That isn't the threshold of "do I need stats for this?" You need stats for anything you make die rolls about. Some people are gonna need 'em for cats, even in combat, and some folks aren't. The hallmark of a 5e that fits both needs would be if the people that need them can have them without having to invent them whole cloth, and the people that don't need them don't need to worry about it.

Even in that extreme case, the cat was not a mortal threat (aside from the Rabies, which would be potentially worth modeling; make the cat a trap with an attack vs Reflex or maybe Fortitude that inflicts a disease).

Anything that deals damage to a humanoid being would have to be logically a mortal threat to them. Capable of killing an able-bodied person. A cat is simply incapable of that. Even subdual damage wouldn't make sense.

There are plenty of more threatening things, with D&D stats, that could scar a face or destroy an eye in real life, that are utterly incapable of doing either of those things by the mechanics of the game. Neither a 3.5 Wolf nor a 4E Wolf can permanently scar someone's face, or remove an eye, by pure mechanics, even though "realistically", they should be fully capable of doing that, with far more frequency than a house-cat. My cat stats are just as capable of doing that as those wolves are: by pure DM fiat.

 

[I'm A Banana]

KM, would it be sufficient to have quick adjudication tables for creating such stats (or parts of stats as needed for the situation) on the fly? As opposed to a full stat-out of a cat?

Yep! Like [MENTION=6182]Incenjucar[/MENTION] mentioned, a "page 42"-style reference would be quite handy, as long as that reference was more robust.

That is, it gives me a way to find a baseline that makes sense, and that sensible baseline can than handle whatever my PC's throw at it. Given 5e's dependence on ability scores, a handy way to generate ability scores for NPC's that are appropriate for a given level (level 0 or level 1 in the cat's case, I imagine) might hit the spot perfectly, along with attacks, damages, and skill check results (lets not leave out social and exploration pillars! What happens if the druid tries to befriend the cat? And then sends it out to scout for traps?).

That's a Page 42 that's quite a bit expanded from where it is now, but I absolutely think it's within the scope of things.

And some folks would probably use that guideline to construct housecat stats from scratch just because they wanted to anyway.

But I am pretty much over other folks telling me what my games should and should not be like. I wanna have an 18-cat combat in the house of the Crazy Cat Lady? I want my wizard to acquire a cat familiar? I want a normal housecat suddenly filled with the evil influence of something (like Rabies?) to leap out of the tree at a local blacksmith and I need rules for how long that blacksmith lasts before the cat kills him? WotC needs to give me something I can use to resolve this, not tell me that I shouldn't even need stuff in the first place.

3e, for all its flawed philosophy of "a stat for everything!" wound up less than ideal, did not disappoint me in this regard. 4e, with its philosophy of "Figure out what is for combat, and what is for not-combat, and here's the combat things, and the not-combat things don't matter," was a lot more problematic for my playstyle.

 

[Incenjucar]

I don't think the words "quick" and "table" belong in the same sentence when discussing an RPG.

Aaaactually, with the right tables, this could work. Especially but not exclusively with digital tools.

Say you had a table that covered the most generic monsters for each level, for each role, and for each sub-role. Same for traps. Same for non-damaging effects.

Say you also had a table of basic concepts that can be applied to a wide variety of things, like "Movement Inhibition" and "Damage Reduction" and "Hit Reduction" and etc.

There's no reason that, with a well-balanced, structured system, you couldn't randomly generate monsters. In fact, we have Hordelings in multiple editions now. They wouldn't be as complex as fully-designed monsters, but they could still work just fine.

 

[Hassassin]

I don't think the words "quick" and "table" belong in the same sentence when discussing an RPG.

Aren't monster stats typically listed in the form of a table?

 

[Halivar]

But I am pretty much over other folks telling me what my games should and should not be like. I wanna have an 18-cat combat in the house of the Crazy Cat Lady? I want my wizard to acquire a cat familiar? I want a normal housecat suddenly filled with the evil influence of something (like Rabies?) to leap out of the tree at a local blacksmith and I need rules for how long that blacksmith lasts before the cat kills him?

Module KM1: In the House of the Crazy Cat Lady.

Nothing but cats. Rabid cats. Dire cats. Half-fiend cats. Level 10 monk cats with Vow of Poverty.

Roll for initiative, if you dare.

(Sorry, the visual was too compelling. I had to.)

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I have but one thing to dsay about the deadliness of housecats: Man airlifted after fight with cat - Your Houston News: Cleveland