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Originally Posted by Sinanju
OP Here. I ran the original wolves vs humans combat as an experiment. I wanted to see how a couple of armed and armored (in one case) humans did against a pack of wolves.
I was surprised at how one-sided the combat was. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been. The wolves were getting up to six attacks a turn, doing 1d+1 damage each, while the humans got two and were extremely unlikely to take out any of the wolves in a single turn.
The wolves also got numerous chances to take the battle to the ground (HTH), where the humans were at even greater disadvantage. At best, they'd retain a dagger, doing equal damage (1d+1) to the wolves, but still dealing with multiple opponents. Unless the wolves missed a lot and the humans did major damage, the wolves were going to reduce them to cooling meat in short order.
RaniE's combat using dog stats was very interesting, and more in line with how I thought the combat would go before I ran mine. Reducing the wolves' ST from 10 to 6 meant it was possible to kill a wolf in one shot, and thereby effectively reduce their numerical advantage much more easily, and reducing the number of wolves attacking seems to be the best way to survive the encounter.
Reran my original combat with THREE humans versus six Original Flavor (tm) wolves. It went a bit longer, but still ended with all three humans--and one wolf--dead.
Statting wolves as medium dogs makes the combat much more survivable for the humans, but that's really a matter of taste. Plus, I agree that realistically, the wolves would be unlikely to attack a couple of armed humans unless they had no choice, and would back off in favor of easier prey if the humans put up a strong defense.
Either way (Wolves as Wolves, or Wolves as Dogs), I am pleased that they represent a real threat. Too many games treat ordinary animals as unthreatening--the PCs are simply too powerful (at least at higher levels) to have to worry about them. One of the things I like at TFT is that "It's just a bear" or "It's just some wolves" are not words one is likely to hear spoken even by experienced heroes.
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I find many games seem to have a hard time finding a good balance. Either wild animals present no threat, or house cats are deadly menaces capable of laying waste to villages if they want to. Or both at the same time, if there is a huge gap between player characters and your average farmer. Since TFT keeps everyone grouped pretty tight in a "human range", it is easier to balance animals not being too deadly for ordinary humans while not being pushovers for experienced heroes either. I might want to tinker with the stats a bit (and often the animal stats are given in ranges anyway in ITL) but those are just minor modifications for my own tastes. Overall I think the system works very well for this, as you say.
edit: Three vs six, and the wolves still winning. Yeah, I think for the humans to have a good shot there you want to add missile weapons into the mix, and probably increase the humans level of armor protection. Two guys with full plate and small shield will be nearly invulnerable to the wolves, and if they do bring them to ground, the +4 to hit will help the heavily armored fighters more than it will help the wolves. But it won't be the best tactic against non-wolf fights of course.
After the wolf combat I tried running two fighters vs two giant snakes. I did this I think five times. The snakes won every time. The best outcome for the humans was when I left the pre-generated fighters behind and had one with a horse bow and DX 14. He actually managed to hit the snakes. That -3 to DX when attacking them is brutal. Anyone in armor can't hit, anyone not in armor won't survive long against 1d+1 damage. I think I might have to try two heroes vs one snake, see how that goes. I think the snake is still the favorite there to be honest.