[Bestiary] Should predators be tacticians?

[Anders]

I watched an analysis of the Battle of Kruger Park. The lions coordinate a well-executed ambush with three arrows of attack. Spoiler:It's their inexperience that costs them their prey - they don't silence the calf.

It got me thinking - should pack predators like wolves and lions have Tactics? They are, after all, very skilled in small-group attacks against sometimes very determined foes.

[vicky_molokh]

Probably to some extent, though it's probably not represented by GURPS Tactics. Maybe an IQ/E skill of some sort, or a Specialization of Tactics?

[Bruno]

It's a highly specialized version of tactics, for use against herd animals from their home environment. I suspect they rarely have it even at skill 10 - their prey animals are IQ 4-ish so they don't exactly need to be super-tacticians.

[Anders]

Or a default from Survival?

[Ulzgoroth]

LTC3 uses Tactics when humans do things like that on a hunt.

[Anthony]

That should be Survival. While there is some overlap between ambushing/trapping prey animals and ambushing/trapping enemies, they really aren't the same skill.

[Anders]

But what if the wolves use their expertise to attack PCs?

ETA: A perk to let them use Survival?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

That should be Survival. While there is some overlap between ambushing/trapping prey animals and ambushing/trapping enemies, they really aren't the same skill.

LTC3 disagrees on that. Survival can do food gathering, small game traps and snares, or finding game for hunting, but actually taking down the prey is based on other skills.

And Tactics isn't restricted to use against intelligent enemies. So I don't really see how it could not apply.

I would give pack hunters Tactics, but bear in mind that they're low-IQ, hidebound animals...they're going to have problems recognizing human capabilities and adjusting hunting tactics to account for them.

[Danukian]

Originally Posted by Anthony

That should be Survival. While there is some overlap between ambushing/trapping prey animals and ambushing/trapping enemies, they really aren't the same skill.

I think the cutoff should be sapiance. Hunting low IQ prey animals is Survival, trying to outwit an enemy capable of a counter plan is Tactics.

Cunning animals vs. Humans gets a little tricky, but looking at a Wolf's Survival skill, I'd eyeball Tactics: Intelligent Prey defaulting to Survival -4, with maybe some familiarity penalties, if appropriate.

[Bruno]

Historically, once humans get to the pointy-stick stage wolves start being outclassed. That really suggests they shouldn't be using Survival, or Perception-based Tactics of any kind - it gives them too much of a skill boost vs humans.

Man-eaters classically prey on solitary, weak, and unarmed humans. Children, women carrying things, the elderly, the crippled. And even then man-eating tigers can usually be driven off by one or two able-bodied humans with clubs.

The big exception for land predators is the famous Tsavo lions, who are probably best written up in GURPS as having human-levels of Tactics. They still preyed on workers (people who didn't have combat training), the injured (vulnerable people), and the sleeping (vulnerable people) in prefernce over the hunters (people who did have combat training).

If regular predators have Tactics in the 8-12 range, that would require exceptional predatory groups like the Tsavo lions to have Tactics in the 16+ range to be so exceptional - and they just didn't act like military geniuses. I'd peg the Tsavo lions in the 11-12 range on Tactics - these are the tactical geniuses of the animal world, as good as trained professional humans, and that's what made them scary. By necessity, this means that normal animals can't have skills in that range.