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Old 10-12-2018, 02:30 PM   #1
WaterAndWindSpirit
 
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Default Scavenger diet

Okay, so in my fantasy campaign, there is a species that is a species of scavengers (going by the dietary definition of a scavenger) (They're my version of the good old D&D gnolls).

So I could get away with adding Restricted Diet (Meat only) and Reduced Consumption X (Cast Iron Stomach) to their racial template to represent that they can literally eat fresh carrion and drink water that would be unsafe for others but can subsist on fresh meat and only on meat?

Also, could I add a racial quirk that doesn't count for the regular limit of quirks like "Prefer their meat raw"? Are racial quirks a thing? Like because of their physiology cooking meat makes it lose flavor to them?

Thanks!
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Old 10-12-2018, 02:38 PM   #2
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Default Re: Scavenger diet

Sure.
Cast Iron Stomach and possibly Resistant to Disease are practically staples for carrion eaters.And Racial Perks and Quirks are perfectly doable and shouldn't really count against a campaign limit.
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Old 10-12-2018, 02:51 PM   #3
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Default Re: Scavenger diet

I agree with the Cast Iron Stomach method. Seems very legit to me. Accurate and Simple.

As one of my alien starfighter pilot characters was fond of commenting: "You ... cook ... your food? Barbarians."
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Old 10-17-2018, 01:01 AM   #4
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Default Re: Scavenger diet

The only thing I always had with Cast-Iron Stomach is figuring out what levels correspond to what sorts of food becoming edible. I once asked the forum for advice on that, but I'm still longing for a conclusive table of food/scavenger ratings sorted by the level of Reduced Consumption. ^_^
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Old 10-17-2018, 09:12 AM   #5
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Default Re: Scavenger diet

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
The only thing I always had with Cast-Iron Stomach is figuring out what levels correspond to what sorts of food becoming edible. I once asked the forum for advice on that, but I'm still longing for a conclusive table of food/scavenger ratings sorted by the level of Reduced Consumption. ^_^
I interpret it in a manner probably completely different from RAW - Cast Iron Stomach lets you replace some meals with otherwise-inedible things, and the level determines how often you need to eat "proper" food. CIS rations can be purchased as rations at 1/10th normal cost, characters who are foraging/scrounging specifically for CIS food roll at +4, and normal foraging/butchering/scrounging for food yields 1 free CIS meal for every 3 normal meals. What these meals are is left up to the GM - moldy bread, animal bones, old leather, whatever.
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Old 10-17-2018, 09:56 AM   #6
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Default Re: Scavenger diet

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
I interpret it in a manner probably completely different from RAW - Cast Iron Stomach lets you replace some meals with otherwise-inedible things, and the level determines how often you need to eat "proper" food. CIS rations can be purchased as rations at 1/10th normal cost, characters who are foraging/scrounging specifically for CIS food roll at +4, and normal foraging/butchering/scrounging for food yields 1 free CIS meal for every 3 normal meals. What these meals are is left up to the GM - moldy bread, animal bones, old leather, whatever.
That reads like something that is more complicated and fussy but no less vague. What's the gain from doing it that way?
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Old 10-17-2018, 02:59 PM   #7
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Default Re: Scavenger diet

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
That reads like something that is more complicated and fussy but no less vague. What's the gain from doing it that way?
It creates roughly two classes of foodstuffs - those generally edible, and those edible by characters with Reduced Consumption (Cast Iron Stomach) or Doesn't Eat or Drink (Cast Iron Stomach)*. This is instead of as things are now, where there are full-cost rations (generally edible), 2/3 cost rations (CIS 1), 1/3 cost rations (CIS 2), 1/20th cost rations (CIS 3), 1/100th cost rations (CIS 4), and possibly zero-cost rations (for those with CIS on Doesn't Eat or Drink, which is basically CIS 5). When not doing the abstract handling of it, this means as a GM if a player expresses interest in having his character eat something, I would just have to ask myself if the object is generally edible or would be edible with CIS. I don't need to figure out what level of CIS is needed to turn some old leather into a meal - I just let a character with CIS replace however many meals the Advantage lets him with appropriate quantities of leather.

It also gives guidelines on how CIS can help when not purchasing food. As it stands, CIS gives no benefit for foraged food, unless the GM decides to be mean and dictates some/all of the food you found is inedible without a certain level of CIS.

*I don't think CIS is a RAW Limitation for Doesn't Eat or Drink, but I see no reason not to include it.
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Old 10-22-2018, 11:55 AM   #8
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Default Re: Scavenger diet

I'd say it depends. If this is for a Player's racial template where the party will largely not be Gnolls then it is quirky and leads to fun Role-play where the Gnoll is constantly being gross and alien. It would be a character quirk, so making it a racial quirk just cements it in the game world.

However in generally in your world this isn't a quirk. Most carrion eaters eat raw meat simply because cooking was a tradition exclusively for those that needed to cook meat. Other Gnoll would naturally have a palate derived from carrion eating and cooked food would be icky to them. It wouldn't be strange to them. Or not any more of a quirk than those weird humans and their frying fetish.
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Old 10-22-2018, 01:11 PM   #9
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Default Re: Scavenger diet

Crows and ravens and dogs are all scavengers, but they certainly don't turn their noses (or beaks) up at fresh meat.

Dogs are a particularly broad example: they will eat feces, their own vomit, rotting meat, tinned dog food, raw beef and elk steaks. Along with tennis balls, socks, and various other non-food things.

Spotted Hyenas (probably a close comparison for Gnolls) prefer to hunt their own meat (and are quite good at it) but are hardly fussy - they eat bone, hooves, hair, teeth, etc off fresh kills and scavenged kills, along with some dubious quality left-over meat.

Even hypercarnivores like lions will eat a lightning-struck magotty wildebeast they stumble across, but vultures have the specialized stomach acids and enzymes [1] to sterilize anything, and hyenas have the bone-destroying jaws to process the allegedly inedible.

I don't think lions really count as having Cast Iron Stomach. They just are willing to risk HT rolls for rotting food in exchange for not risking life and limb wrestling with large herbivores.

Spotted Hyenas might more properly said to have a "low level" of Universal Digestion - digesting even fresh bones and hooves is a challenge few animals are up to.

[1] Incidentally, vulture stomach acid pH is similar to human stomach acid... if we could projectile vomit on command in a foes face like a vulture can, we might never have bothered learning to use tools.
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Old 10-22-2018, 05:16 PM   #10
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Default Re: Scavenger diet

Rotten food is far more likely to merely induce vomiting or diarrhea than actual life threatening illness. So the risk is likely to be worth it for most animals with okay immune systems. Most humans and cheetahs being unusual for sensitivity, I think.

Free food is hard to turn down.
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