HERO System Stress Test: Homo Sapien versus Felis Catus.

[Christopher R Taylor]

It's an artifact of the game starting as a Supers RPG. So for that, +2DCV per level of Shrinking made sense.

 

It never really worked for shrinking either, they always overestimated the benefits of being small, and if you wanted being small to make you unhittable, you could always buy DCV levels.

[Pattern Ghost]

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.

 

Christopher Taylor has the answer: The cat is built wrong. And likely its prey. Cats simply don't do killing damage. Smaller cat prey should just follow mook rules, one hit = kill. Larger prey may have 1 PD at best (squirrels, rabbits, opossums*, larger birds).

 

No, I don't agree that the human is at a disadvantage compared to the 'official' statistics for a house cat -- because the human can PRE attack and easily stomp/beat the cat into oblivion when it hesitates.

 

In a two-cat scenario the human PRE attacks, then grabs one (scruff) and slams it ... while PRE-attacking again during the slam (likely with increased dice due to the sheer violence displayed) to cause the second to hesitate, at which point the next slam is of the first cat into the second one (i.e. one cat becomes the weapon used against the other).  The human may soak a little damage from the second cat before it's struck.  No biggie.

 

I absolutely agree that the cat was so poorly built as to be unrealistic -- and that a different build is called for.

 

Spoken like someone who's never been in a fight with a house cat. First, cats have about +50 PRE, Defensive Only (-1), Only When Berserk (-1/4, because if they're in a fight, they're berzerk). Since the premise is that you're in a fight with a house cat, bet on it being berserk. Also, good luck with grabbing an enraged cat. I'm not saying it can't be done, but if you aren't wearing protective gear, you're going to have spaghetti for an arm and your own blood for the sauce by the time you subdue the cat, and you're going to need a very high pain threshold.

 

Grab the cat and, having done so, squeeze the life out of it.

 

See above comment about needing a high pain threshold and getting spaghetti arm.

 

----------------------------------------

 

That said, I have three cat stories to share.

 

The first, is the story of my friend's cat, we'll call her Cat 1. Cat 1 was a scrawny little female that was probably five pounds or less. She had kittens. An English sheepdog came sniffing around my friend's yard one day while I was there. The tiny female cat jumped up on top of the sheepdog's head, hissing, spitting, and spinning like a top. She hit that dog at least ten or twenty times with the claws of all four feet on the top of its head before it reacted. The reaction was to run off yelping. She didn't inflict any real damage due to the thick pad of hair on top of its head, and it wasn't looking for a fight, or things would have ended badly for the cat.  Still, that was one of the greatest displays of sheer speed and ferocity I've ever seen in my life.

 

The second, is a story of my cat. I'll call him Cat. Just Cat, because that was his actual name that he answered to. He was a good-sized male, about 13.5 lbs. One day, I was holding him in my arms, showing him to my boss who'd just dropped me off from work. The neighbor's dog came over to slobber on me, and the cat went nuts trying to get away from the dog. He scrambled to push off from my arm so much, claws extended, that he left half a dozen deep(ish) gashes in my forearm before I could drop him. I was bleeding freely and copiously. It took nearly ten years for the scars to fade out. He still didn't inflict Body damage IMO. I can kind of see how someone may take that kind of bleeding as an indicator of Body damage, but the cuts weren't deep enough to cause any lasting damage or impair the arm at all.

 

Third story is a friend's cat. We'll call her Cat W. Cat W was a white female of average size, maybe six or seven pounds. My other friend went over to feed her for the owner when Cat W had kittens in the house. Cat W launched herself at my friend and bit and clawed her leg extensively before my friend could retreat. Cat W hit her with three full on bites and seven or eight claw wounds. The bites were hard enough that the fangs fully went in and had extensive bruising. And yet my friend was walking around fine and not dead from taking 10 or 11 Body.

 

So, in summary:

 

1. No way in hell house cats have a 1 pip Killing Attack.

2. Cat prey should follow mook rules.

3. Good luck PRE attacking an enraged cat. It will PRE attack you.

4. Good luck grabbing a cat by the neck and taking it out. Armor up first, or have an abnormally high pain threshold.

5. Cats don't have killing attacks and not much PD or Body, but they sure as heck have a higher CV than a normal human and probably PSLs to offset making multiple attacks in a phase.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*I don't think these are typical house cat prey, but I had a cat who took one out.

[Durzan Malakim]

This may be beating a dead cat, but I got curious how cats actually kill their prey. If I can believe the Internet:

 

 

 

Cats kill their prey by delivering a neck bite that severs the spinal cord. To do this, they must temporarily release the prey to get at the nape of the neck, but when they do so, they risk the prey escaping or counterattacking. Small animals will defend themselves if they get the chance. Mice, rats, and other rodents can deliver a vicious bite, and birds can peck. A cat has a very short muzzle, and to get close enough to apply the neck bite, she risks injury to her eyes and face from the prey.

 

In HERO System terms I'd say this is a maneuver that either increases DCs or changes their normal attack into a killing attack. The caveat being the prey has to be small enough to bite through the neck, or I suppose the cat has to be motivated enough to use its teeth on someone's neck.

 

I still think the most likely outcome of any cat versus bigger animal fight is one or the other opponent fleeing because outside of hunting or psychopathy most animals and people don't go around killing things for no reason. Certainly this fits the anecdotal evidence.

[Christopher R Taylor]

In HERO System terms I'd say this is a maneuver that either increases DCs or changes their normal attack into a killing attack.

 

I'd say just a normal attack against a foe with little to no PD, targeting the head for x1½ body.

[Tasha]

So, in summary:

 

1. No way in hell house cats have a 1 pip Killing Attack.

2. Cat prey should follow mook rules.

3. Good luck PRE attacking an enraged cat. It will PRE attack you.

4. Good luck grabbing a cat by the neck and taking it out. Armor up first, or have an abnormally high pain threshold.

5. Cats don't have killing attacks and not much PD or Body, but they sure as heck have a higher CV than a normal human and probably PSLs to offset making multiple attacks in a phase.

 

 

*I don't think these are typical house cat prey, but I had a cat who took one out.

I think that everyone is forgetting Hit Location. Hands and arms are a half body location. A one pip killing attack would do .5 body there. Also IMHO if you are bleeding profusely from your arms then you have taken a body. It won't impair you because the Cat would have had to do half your total body in one shot before or after the body multiplier to do so. Which is impossible for the cat to do with a 1 pip HKA. Also if you look around the internet there have been Housecats that inflicted major damage on people. We always think of the front paws as being the major damage dealer, but it's really when they hold you with the forepaws and then rake the hell out of you with the back paws that they do Major Damage. 

 

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/calif-house-cat-sends-3-people-hospital-article-1.1762652

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10478401/Devil-cat-hospitalises-villagers-in-attacking-spree.html

 

http://news.discovery.com/animals/pets/feral-cats-attack-130727.htm

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah but still.  A cat could claw your head 20 times and you still will not be dead.  Cat claws are painful, not lethal.

 

And you can presence attack an angry cat.  Its first instinct in danger is to run away and hide, not fight.  All you have to do is trigger that response.

[Tasha]

Yeah but still.  A cat could claw your head 20 times and you still will not be dead.  Cat claws are painful, not lethal.

 

And you can presence attack an angry cat.  Its first instinct in danger is to run away and hide, not fight.  All you have to do is trigger that response.

A cat could open up an artery on your neck (which IS a Head Location). They couldn't really pierce the bones in your head.

[Christopher R Taylor]

A cat could open up an artery on your neck

 

Sure, in theory, with a perfect hit on a target, you can do amazing things.  I could kill you with a papercut but that doesn't mean a piece of paper has a killing attack.  The way a cat is built right now, they could kill someone by clawing them 10 times on the thigh.  That's baldly ridiculous.

[Pattern Ghost]

I think that everyone is forgetting Hit Location.

 

You're right. I was applying the base rule rather than the optional one. But cats are still built wrong.

[Pattern Ghost]

More seriously, let's look at the image from the second article:

 

 

That's not Body damage. I took a LOT more damage to my arm from my cat, as did the girl who was trying to feed the mother cat in my stories above. Neither case represented Body damage, IMO. (Side note, when I said "impaired" I wasn't using rules speak above. I meant the arm wasn't significantly damaged.)

 

Look at it this way: Against a 10 BODY character, one pip of Killing damage is 5% dead.

[Pattern Ghost]

And you can presence attack an angry cat.  Its first instinct in danger is to run away and hide, not fight.  All you have to do is trigger that response.

 

On an angry cat, yes. Because when a cat is angry and making its PRE attack on you, it just wants you to leave it alone, really.

 

I didn't say "angry" though. I stipulated an enraged, attacking cat. That's a different ball of wax. I take it  you've never been attacked by a mother cat that just had her berserk tirggered? You are not likely to win that PRE contest.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Oh I expect you can get anything to go to a point of demented rage that they lose all sense of place and time and ignore instinct.  But that's sort of a particular, special case.

[Pattern Ghost]

Oh I expect you can get anything to go to a point of demented rage that they lose all sense of place and time and ignore instinct.  But that's sort of a particular, special case.

 

This thread is about that particular, special case. That was the base premise of the thread: Fight to death between a human and a cat. Whether it's realistic or not, that was the parameter set, and it was set that way for a reason. I think that reason was to test the game's modelling of physical combat and related characteristics and not the PRE system.

[Pattern Ghost]

I think the real problem with the house cat build isn't so much that a cat can't inflict what the game would describe as Body damage, but that the system can't handle values of lower than 1 for killing damage and resistant defenses.

 

For example, a bird has really, really thin skin that's easy to injure. A rabbit has thicker skin. A squirrel even thicker skin and more muscle (way harder to kill than a bird or rabbit). Compared to the rest, a raccoon may as well be Godzilla in its resistance to damage.

 

Since Hero wasn't built to model Redwall, it just doesn't scale in that direction. If you move the baseline down, so that the rabbit, for example, becomes the baseline, then you're in business.

[Pattern Ghost]

A cat could open up an artery on your neck (which IS a Head Location). They couldn't really pierce the bones in your head.

 

Cats don't have much bite strength, and their claws lack the depth of penetration to hit an artery. A cat would have to hit the same spot over and over again to reach an artery. The chances of a house cat killing a human with a single lucky shot are very near zero. Given a preternaturally intelligent and determined cat, the odds are still very low due to the need to concentrate on one area. The cat would have to have a way to restrain or stun the human.

[Pattern Ghost]

OMG, six posts from me in the cat vs human thread before lunch. I'm losing it. Time to take a forum break!

[Surrealone]

This thread is about that particular, special case. That was the base premise of the thread: Fight to death between a human and a cat. Whether it's realistic or not, that was the parameter set, and it was set that way for a reason. I think that reason was to test the game's modelling of physical combat and related characteristics and not the PRE system.

Actually, this thread didn't start out dealing with an enraged/beserk/possessed cat; Ragitsu added those sorts of parameters in later to justify his scenario after the fact -- effectively using such parameter (and others) to paint people into a blank box of his choosing.  Step outside his box and he'll paint some more lines/parameters to keep you colouring within his lines, I suspect.

[Ragitsu]

Actually, this thread didn't start out dealing with an enraged/beserk/possessed cat; Ragitsu added those sorts of parameters in later to justify his scenario after the fact -- effectively using such parameter (and others) to paint people into a blank box of his choosing.  Step outside his box and he'll paint some more lines/parameters to keep you colouring within his lines, I suspect.

 

No dude, it was always about a fight to the death (not a fight to a technical victory) and the human always just had the clothing on their back...and legs...and feet.

 

The *only* reason I brought up the cat being enraged/possessed/actually a shapeshifter was in response to someone finding the idea of a felis catus battling so viciously to be unrealistic. Use whatever excuse/reason gels with you for the proposed scenario to make it "work"...or don't. Just think of the two beings as a collection of stats going at it if you must rely on cold mechanical representation. Point being, those were merely examples I put out there.

 

 

 

This thread is about that particular, special case. That was the base premise of the thread: Fight to death between a human and a cat. Whether it's realistic or not, that was the parameter set, and it was set that way for a reason. I think that reason was to test the game's modelling of physical combat and related characteristics and not the PRE system.

 

You got it, hoss.

 

 

I think the real problem with the house cat build isn't so much that a cat can't inflict what the game would describe as Body damage, but that the system can't handle values of lower than 1 for killing damage and resistant defenses.

 

For example, a bird has really, really thin skin that's easy to injure. A rabbit has thicker skin. A squirrel even thicker skin and more muscle (way harder to kill than a bird or rabbit). Compared to the rest, a raccoon may as well be Godzilla in its resistance to damage.

 

Since Hero wasn't built to model Redwall, it just doesn't scale in that direction. If you move the baseline down, so that the rabbit, for example, becomes the baseline, then you're in business.

 

I believe this is how GURPS handles it's "Bunnies and Burrows" supplement. That is to say, the rabbits have "human" baseline stats and everything else that's a threat is pretty much a giant by comparison.

[Pattern Ghost]

Actually, this thread didn't start out dealing with an enraged/beserk/possessed cat; Ragitsu added those sorts of parameters in later to justify his scenario after the fact -- effectively using such parameter (and others) to paint people into a blank box of his choosing.  Step outside his box and he'll paint some more lines/parameters to keep you colouring within his lines, I suspect.

 

No.

 

I had more words originally, but you don't seem to pay attention, so I made it simple for you.

[Hugh Neilson]

Christopher Taylor has the answer: The cat is built wrong. And likely its prey. Cats simply don't do killing damage. Smaller cat prey should just follow mook rules, one hit = kill. Larger prey may have 1 PD at best (squirrels, rabbits, opossums*, larger birds).

  

Spoken like someone who's never been in a fight with a house cat. First, cats have about +50 PRE, Defensive Only (-1), Only When Berserk (-1/4, because if they're in a fight, they're berzerk). Since the premise is that you're in a fight with a house cat, bet on it being berserk. Also, good luck with grabbing an enraged cat. I'm not saying it can't be done, but if you aren't wearing protective gear, you're going to have spaghetti for an arm and your own blood for the sauce by the time you subdue the cat, and you're going to need a very high pain threshold.

So how is that modeled in Hero? BOD damage? No, you don't think the cat can do BOD damage despite leaving you profusely bleeding when you could not drop it fast enough (that would only be one phase, maybe two, for the cat in a Hero combat, wouldn't it?) If it keeps clawing because it is stark raving mad with no purpose remaining but slashing you to death, and it was capable of doing that much injury just trying to escape, I submit that it can indeed inflict BOD damage. 1 BOD does not cause your arm to fall off.

 

The only other thing that would prevent you reacting in Hero rules is being Stunned, and it's clearly not doing enough STUN for that. And doesn`t the difficulty in grabbing a cat whole it is twisting, squirming and slashing indicate a pretty solid DCV? A high DCV could certainly have the SFX of being unable to get a solid hit that actually grabs, or damages, the target.

 

The second, is a story of my cat. I'll call him Cat. Just Cat, because that was his actual name that he answered to. He was a good-sized male, about 13.5 lbs. One day, I was holding him in my arms, showing him to my boss who'd just dropped me off from work. The neighbor's dog came over to slobber on me, and the cat went nuts trying to get away from the dog. He scrambled to push off from my arm so much, claws extended, that he left half a dozen deep(ish) gashes in my forearm before I could drop him. I was bleeding freely and copiously. It took nearly ten years for the scars to fade out. He still didn't inflict Body damage IMO. I can kind of see how someone may take that kind of bleeding as an indicator of Body damage, but the cuts weren't deep enough to cause any lasting damage or impair the arm at all.

So, after five minutes, all the STUN damage was fully recovered, so your arm was not bleeding, in danger of any wound reopening, or painful enough to impair functioning at 100% capacity? Because we don`t have Long Term STUN in Hero - either it`s BOD or it heals amazingly rapidly.

 

I suggest the real issue is that we want to keep the numbers manageable, so base humans have 2 PD and 8 - 10 BOD. Maybe they need to have 80 - 100 BOD, so it takes 80 - 100 strikes from the cat (remembering that one strike may have the SFX of a flurry of clawing and scratching) to reduce him to "`bleeding out". Of course, that means our normal human needs 20 PD, a 20d6 strike with normal STR and 200 or so STUN.

 

We often sacrifice realism and granularity (wow - Hero`s not granular enough - don`t hear that every day!) in the interests of playability. That lets out scenarios that we didn`t actually expect to come up in play - like a Death Duel with KittyCat - working perfectly.

 

I think the real problem with the house cat build isn't so much that a cat can't inflict what the game would describe as Body damage, but that the system can't handle values of lower than 1 for killing damage and resistant defenses.

 

For example, a bird has really, really thin skin that's easy to injure. A rabbit has thicker skin. A squirrel even thicker skin and more muscle (way harder to kill than a bird or rabbit). Compared to the rest, a raccoon may as well be Godzilla in its resistance to damage.

 

Since Hero wasn't built to model Redwall, it just doesn't scale in that direction. If you move the baseline down, so that the rabbit, for example, becomes the baseline, then you're in business.

Exactly.

[Pattern Ghost]

So how is that modeled in Hero? BOD damage? No, you don't think the cat can do BOD damage despite leaving you profusely bleeding when you could not drop it fast enough (that would only be one phase, maybe two, for the cat in a Hero combat, wouldn't it?) If it keeps clawing because it is stark raving mad with no purpose remaining but slashing you to death, and it was capable of doing that much injury just trying to escape, I submit that it can indeed inflict BOD damage. 1 BOD does not cause your arm to fall off.

 

 

It'd take far more than 20 hits to take me out. And if it didn't stop, I'd start.

 

 

The only other thing that would prevent you reacting in Hero rules is being Stunned, and it's clearly not doing enough STUN for that.

 

I think that the key words here are "in Hero rules." The rules don't really model pain. It's left as a special effect, the same as things like fear or poison. Many ways to model it, but "pain" isn't really a rules mechanic. Ultimately, the game just doesn't model real life stuff, and really shouldn't. That'd really up the book keeping. 

 

Also, I wasn't unable to react. I reacted by dropping the cat like a hot potato! You could say I failed an EGO roll to ignore the pain. Or didn't even think to take the roll.

 

 

 

And doesn`t the difficulty in grabbing a cat whole it is twisting, squirming and slashing indicate a pretty solid DCV? A high DCV could certainly have the SFX of being unable to get a solid hit that actually grabs, or damages, the target.

 

Agreed. Cats have higher CVs (both OCV and DCV) than your average human. The same spine that lets them torque around and land on their feet makes them crazily flexible. Cats probably have a 2 or 3 CV advantage over Joe Normal.

 

 

So, after five minutes, all the STUN damage was fully recovered, so your arm was not bleeding, in danger of any wound reopening, or painful enough to impair functioning at 100% capacity? Because we don`t have Long Term STUN in Hero - either it`s BOD or it heals amazingly rapidly.

 

You know, that bast-- lovely cat had razor sharp claws. The wounds closed up fast due to being fine cuts. It's probably safe to say Hero wasn't intended to model severe paper cuts.

 

 

I suggest the real issue is that we want to keep the numbers manageable, so base humans have 2 PD and 8 - 10 BOD. Maybe they need to have 80 - 100 BOD, so it takes 80 - 100 strikes from the cat (remembering that one strike may have the SFX of a flurry of clawing and scratching) to reduce him to "`bleeding out". Of course, that means our normal human needs 20 PD, a 20d6 strike with normal STR and 200 or so STUN.

We often sacrifice realism and granularity (wow - Hero`s not granular enough - don`t hear that every day!) in the interests of playability. That lets out scenarios that we didn`t actually expect to come up in play - like a Death Duel with KittyCat - working perfectly.

 

 

Exactly. If we really wanted to play Housecat Hero, we'd have to start at the base, managable numbers and scale up. Kind of reminds me of the problem with SDC and MDC in Palladium games. That system doesn't scale up to very large numbers well, while Hero can handle it. OTOH, Hero wasn't intended to go too far below the baseline, or to model trivial animals (the prey of house cats, though cats are pretty close to trivial) with precision.

 

 

 

Exactly.

 

Precisely!

[Surrealone]

I think the real problem with the house cat build isn't so much that a cat can't inflict what the game would describe as Body damage, but that the system can't handle values of lower than 1 for killing damage and resistant defenses.

 

Values lower than 1 can be simulated by taking a value of 1 ... and apportioning it over time.  i.e. Rather than a hit dealing 1 BODY damage in the segment in which it lands, it could be apportioned across a turn/minute/5 mins/ etc. (using the Extra Time limitation to make 1 pip killing take longer than normal to affect the target) -- which is quite fair for a bleeding cat scratch or a bite's puncture wound that is becoming infected.  Do some reading and you'll find that the most threat cat scratches and bites render to humans is not from the wound, itself, but from bacteria (in the saliva) and infection (due to said bacteria and the depth of punctures caused by teeth -- making a deeper wound that's tough to clean properly.)

 

Such a power build should likely also entail mitigation if properly cleaned and bound (i.e. the wound would only be 50% of 1 pip or a half pip if it was bound when exactly half the time elapsed).  This, of course, requires tracking how many wounds (scratches?  bites?) were inflicted, when, how much time has elapsed since each was inflicted, and whether each wound is open, cleaned, and/or cleaned/bound.  It's a lot of work ... and requires the use of optional rules, but it can be done.  For the partial pips the GM could, after the battle) aggregate them into a total sum of BODY loss for the purpose of determining BODY recovery time and/or healing needed.

 

OMG, six posts from me in the cat vs human thread before lunch. I'm losing it. Time to take a forum break!

There's a multi-quote button precisely to avoid a bunch of tiny posts.  I was trying to figure out why you didn't use it, as you've been here a while and have a lot of posts.  (Perhaps that's WHY you have a lot of posts -- artificial post-count inflation?)

 

No.

 

I had more words originally, but you don't seem to pay attention, so I made it simple for you.

Oh, I pay attention, but I am also human/imperfect and, thus, I miss things.  What I did not miss was the changing of parameters by the OP.

[eepjr24]

Values lower than 1 can be simulated by taking a value of 1 ... and apportioning it over time.  i.e. Rather than a hit dealing 1 BODY damage in the segment in which it lands, it could be apportioned across a turn/minute/5 mins/ etc. (using the Extra Time limitation to make 1 pip killing take longer than normal to affect the target) -- which is quite fair for a bleeding cat scratch or a bite's puncture wound that is becoming infected.  Do some reading and you'll find that the most threat cat scratches and bites render to humans is not from the wound, itself, but from bacteria (in the saliva) and infection (due to said bacteria and the depth of punctures caused by teeth -- making a deeper wound that's tough to clean properly.)

 

Such a power build should likely also entail mitigation if properly cleaned and bound (i.e. the wound would only be 50% of 1 pip or a half pip if it was bound when exactly half the time elapsed).  This, of course, requires tracking how many wounds (scratches?  bites?) were inflicted, when, how much time has elapsed since each was inflicted, and whether each wound is open, cleaned, and/or cleaned/bound.  It's a lot of work ... and requires the use of optional rules, but it can be done.  For the partial pips the GM could, after the battle) aggregate them into a total sum of BODY loss for the purpose of determining BODY recovery time and/or healing needed.

So we are really back to the cat being built incorrectly at that point. The HKA should have been built with Damage Over Time, Extra Time and other limitations to reflect it's effectiveness.

 

- E

[Surrealone]

So we are really back to the cat being built incorrectly at that point. The HKA should have been built with Damage Over Time, Extra Time and other limitations to reflect it's effectiveness.

 

- E

Yup.  That's the one thing upon which everyone seems to agree.  (The 'official' cat is officially a broken build?  Heh.)

[Pattern Ghost]

There's a multi-quote button precisely to avoid a bunch of tiny posts.  I was trying to figure out why you didn't use it, as you've been here a while and have a lot of posts.  (Perhaps that's WHY you have a lot of posts -- artificial post-count inflation?)

 

Oh, I pay attention, but I am also human/imperfect and, thus, I miss things.  What I did not miss was the changing of parameters by the OP.

 

LOL