HERO System Stress Test: Homo Sapien versus Felis Catus.

[Ragitsu]

Take one ordinary human armed with a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Now, pit said human versus an average-sized housecat equipped with fangs and claws.

 

In the HERO RPG system (6th Edition is what I have in mind...but 5th Edition also works), which one of them is likely to be the victor in a "to the death" battle?

 

Edit: In order to avoid future squabbling, here are the guidelines: the scenario is supposed to be a straight up "vanilla" melee. Punches, kicks, body slams, elbow strikes, etc (any and all maneuvers the human can attempt) versus bites, slashes/rakes, etc. Improvised weapons or Presence attacks are off the table.

[Tholomyes]

Well, the bestiary has a cat with SPD 3. OCV 5. DCV 8, PD 2, BODY 5, Stun 12. It has Bite and Claws for 1 point HKA apiece.

 

A Human, according to standard normal has SPD 2, OCV 3, DCV 3, PD 2, BODY 8, Stun 16, and can do 1 1/2 HtH damage with an attack.

 

Based on this, A human will hit 9.26% of the time, while the cat will hit 83.8% of the time. The cat will do 1 BODY and 1 Stun per hit (Stun damage taken can never be lower than body damage taken), while the human will do 0.083 BODY and 3.5 Stun. Thus the cat will do about 5 BODY per turn and 5 Stun (assuming combined attack), while the human will do about 0.28 body per turn, and about 0.65 Stun, on average. Obviously, this favors the cat, even when not factoring in the cat's high stealth.

 

However, this does not factor in any environmental factors, which the human can take advantage of, while the cat cannot, due to its limited manipulation complication. If the human can use an object large enough, relative to the cat, to get an Area of Effect modifier against the cat when used as an improvised weapon, they negate the cat's high DCV, and have a 74.1% chance of hitting (approximately; it would depend on the object). From there, since the cat has +18m knockback, due to its tiny size, Ignoring any damage that might cause, it would be far enough away that it could not make it to the human in one phase, negating its higher speed. A Human, with held actions could keep the cat at bay, for the most part, from there out. The cat, being of animal intelligence, would be unlikely to have the intelligence to make tactical decisions, but even if it could, it would not be able to engage the human without risking harm. This would either cause an impasse, or the unconsciousness of the cat (presumable, a human would not kill the animal after the fact, but in a "to the death" battle, where death is the only option, it would be a simple affair). The cat could still possibly win, with unlucky rolls by the human, but it would be highly unlikely.

 

Personally, however, I find the use of a 1-point HKA for a cat ridiculous. while it is no doubt possible for a cat to potentially wound someone, the types of scratches typical of cats I would suspect would be more akin to maybe 1 point HAs. Not even enough to do stun damage on their own, with a human level of defenses. The possibility of some cat-scratch borne infection would be possible with a  linked weak, DoT drain stun or Con or Body, with an uncommon activation roll (given that not every scratch will infect, and not every infection would be mechanically relevant). 

[Alcibiades]

HERO is designed to be cinematic, not realistic, and hence this is a cinematic, action-movie cat.

[Doc Democracy]

Tholomyes, the cat needs to be able to kill to eat.  1pt HKA is what it needs to kill birds and mice efficiently (unless mice and birds have so little defence that enough normal damage leaks through from normal damage attacks).

 

Doc 

[ghost-angel]

Unless the jeans have 1rPD, the cats HKA needs a Limitation: blocked by sufficiently tough/thick clothing.... Also, I'm not the world's best combatant (my idea of a fight is to run like hell) and even I can pretty easily thwack a cat that's trying to attack me (because I have) pretty easily and I question 8DCV to begin with. That's superheroic level dodging.

 

This is where I start to disconnect from Hero, nominally the 8DCV is due to both agility and 'size' thus completely ignoring that Hero has a Size Modifier To Hit chart in it that's useful for taking care of the disparity between various sizes and that smaller things aren't always inherently harder to hit simply because they're smaller. Two cats going at it aren't finding each other particularly hard to hit, even, so the difference between OCV and DCV looks even weirder amongst Like Attackers here.

 

The cat is just built incorrectly.

[Durzan Malakim]

Aside from hunting to eat, most animals do not fight to the death except in situations where fleeing is not an option. A more realistic cat fight is one where one or the other combatant uses a PRE attack to scare the other one. Whether it's the human screaming, "Get this crazy cat away from me!" or a feline thinking, "Time to hide from this big predator" the most likely result is one or the other fleeing or being cowed by the other. I suppose a human under some external threat such as "Kill this cat or I'll kill your family" or a cat defending it's kittens might stand and fight, but I suspect such a fight would still degenerate into an exercise in cat herding more often than not.

[Ragitsu]

[chorus]Scaling rules![/chorus]

[NuSoardGraphite]

The cat should have PD 1 and less Body (maybe 3) because one good kick from the human should be able to end that cat's life.

[Ragitsu]

One cat versus a human is a curb-stomp battle. Three cats versus a human is a massacre.

[Surrealone]

All a human has to do is yell 'Here kitty kitty!' ... after having placed cat food into a Duke Small Animal Trap (Google it) with a rope tied to its handle.  When the cat (or other small animal) enters to feed, the door slams shut, and the human can then take the trap to the nearest pond and toss the trap in (keeping ahold of the rope or tying it off).  30 minutes later the human can pull the trap ashore via the rope and empty it to fed the local buzzard population -- as I doubt the cat was built with the necessary life support to deal with this.

 

I chose this approach because the human in the scenario will likely know a cat is nocturnal, can plan ahead by prepping food and a trap, is a tool user and, thus, WILL use tools -- and is an apex predator by virtue of skillful/thoughtful tool use.  We (humans) wouldn't (and tend not to) go head-to-head to kill something; we use our brains and tools...

[Christopher R Taylor]

The human puts out an empty box.  The cat jumps in.

 

Seriously though, a cat doesn't do 1 body killing.  If a cat scratches you 10 times you will not subsequently bleed to death in a matter of seconds.

[Tasha]

Hero really has problems when it tries to simulate stuff weaker than a Base Human. (ie 10's in primaries, bases in Secondaries). The system really works best in the dc 6-14 range. anything less gives weird results. So OP test isn't fair.

[Ragitsu]

D&D 3.5, GURPS 4th Edition, and HERO 6th Edition all have this problem.

 

Perhaps the creators really love cats?

[Ragitsu]

That said, I am considering putting forth more of these stress tests to see how well HERO matches up with reality (typically in combat scenarios). The last test I placed before the community was Homo Sapien versus Musca Domestica.

[IndianaJoe3]

D&D 3.5, GURPS 4th Edition, and HERO 6th Edition all have this problem.

 

Perhaps the creators really love cats?

 

A long time ago, there was a thread about, "What does every game system get wrong?" "Cats" was my answer.

[Hugh Neilson]

I think most game systems concentrate on balancing things that will challenge the player characters. Cats fall outside that ambit. I suppose we could move to the Pathfinder model, where a cat's damage is 2 claws that do 1d2-4 and teeth that do 1d3-4. There is a minimum of 1, but if that's required to get a positive number, it's non-lethal. A cat can eventually kill a rat, which has 4 hp and a single attack doing 1d3-4, but it needs to hit repeatedly to KO the rat and eventually allow non-lethal damage to become lethal.

 

The problem, as cited above, is that most game systems don't handle the low end well. People fall in the bathroom, hit their heads and die. Show me how that happens in Hero, or other game systems. The real world is a lot more random than a playable game system.

 

By the way, because normal humans battling housecats is not the typical scenario for any RPG I've ever seen, I don't consider the game system's inability to handle it accurately a "stress test". May as well ask about the "going to the bathroom" rules.

[ghost-angel]

May as well ask about the "going to the bathroom" rules.

 

What do i role to know what gender my character is, again?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Cats should have a 1d6 paw attack, normal.  You might bleed if they claw you, but that's not really body damage because its so trivial.  A normal human being is never going to be killed by 20 cat scratches.  Believe me, I know.

 

That's the problem with this entire test, the build of the cat, not the rules.

[Ragitsu]

By the way, because normal humans battling housecats is not the typical scenario for any RPG I've ever seen, I don't consider the game system's inability to handle it accurately a "stress test". May as well ask about the "going to the bathroom" rules.

 

Flex your imagination a little. Perhaps the cat is infected with a disease that makes it berserk. Maybe the cat is possessed by a malicious servant of Bastet. Heck, a shapeshifter might be in cat form when they're pressed into attacking someone that finds out their secret.

 

Point is, there are scenarios where a cat, or perhaps even a group of cats, could attack a human.

 

P.S. Your sarcasm is not appreciated.

 

P.S.S. Even if this scenario offends your sensibilities, it does point out how the rules on scaling and damage interaction with scaling are off.

[Tasha]

Flex your imagination a little. Perhaps the cat is infected with a disease that makes it berserk. Maybe the cat is possessed by a malicious servant of Bastet. Heck, a shapeshifter might be in cat form when they're pressed into attacking someone that finds out their secret.

 

Point is, there are scenarios where a cat, or perhaps even a group of cats, could attack a human.

 

P.S. Your sarcasm is not appreciated.

 

P.S.S. Even if this scenario offends your sensibilities, it does point out how the rules on scaling and damage interaction with scaling are off.

 

It also shows the weakness of 5e and earlier's Figured Characteristics.

 

Perhaps someone should write up a new 6e version. That does 1d6-5 HKA. Has a 18 dex but has OCV 6 and dcv 6 (with shrinking). 

 

Talking about scaling. One of the first times I dealt with this issue was with a PC Super who had been a Major League Pitcher. The DCV of a ball during a fastball was insanely large. Large enough that a Batter would have a high OCV with Bat just to make the 33% chance of getting a hit in the right direction.

[Christopher R Taylor]

 The DCV of a ball during a fastball was insanely large. Large enough that a Batter would have a high OCV with Bat just to make the 33% chance of getting a hit in the right direction.

So... like real life.

[Surrealone]

Flex your imagination a little. Perhaps the cat is infected with a disease that makes it berserk. Maybe the cat is possessed by a malicious servant of Bastet. Heck, a shapeshifter might be in cat form when they're pressed into attacking someone that finds out their secret.

 

As previously indicated, a human would use tools.  Perhaps one would trap the cat overnight and then drown it by submerging the trap in the morning (as previously suggested) -- affording the human time to watch his/her favourite Flash episode rather than struggle with an infectious cat possessed by Bastet.  Or, perhaps the human would simply pull out the 12ga shotgun and take one shot.  Or maybe the human, having just read about the DCV of a fastball would pull out a bat and take it to the cat to try to 'empirically' determine if the DCV of a cat was higher or lower than the DCV of a fastball.  Or maybe the human is a golfer and has golf clubs handy, instead.

 

Perhaps use YOUR imagination -- as there's certainly more than one way to kill the cat (and skin it, if you like) ... and a human has a pile of tools as options.  Gun.  Bat.  Golf clubs.  Chain saw.  Circular saw.  Blow torch.  Nail gun. Weed eater.  Pressure washer.  Consumer-grade poisons galore.  A hand sprayer, gasoline, and a match.  A lamp wielded like a club.  A rock.  I think you get the idea -- a human isn't going to just stand there and get scratched/bitten while fighting back with nothing.  Add any of a number of objects one commonly finds in a human's abode to the mix and the human will readily put an end to the cat, even with Champions/Hero System scale issues below 'average human' scale.

[Ragitsu]

- Snip -.

 

I deliberately left the human unarmed to see how both would fare in a melee....to test the rules.

 

A human would win with a sword or shotgun? That much is obvious.

 

The fact that a regular Calico would quickly slice an adult human to death? Not so much.

 

This snarky defensiveness is so very odd.

[womble]

Again: one (or more) badly-built "monsters" in the "bestiary" doesn't illustrate any basic failing in the ruleset.

 

The snarky defensiveness is because you seem to insist that it does.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Right, the test is bad because it starting out with bad data.  A cat is nothing like that build, so of course it ends up a mess.  Its like the 9 foot rattlesnakes with 40m movement in Western Hero; they're built poorly so you get poor results.