[Bestiary] Should predators be tacticians?

[Dunadin777]

Originally Posted by Kraydak

Of course, the appropriate skill for anything involving animal psychology (such as driving prey) is, in fact, Animal Handling (seriously, Tactics? what?).

You're getting away from the Basic descriptions of the skills here. The key word of Animal Handling's description is 'training'. Saying that everything involving animal psychology is Animal Handling is like saying everything involving the military is the Soldier skill. Military matters also involve Savoir-Faire, Strategy, Tactics, Administration, and many more skills. Likewise, detailed RPG hunting should involve Tracking, Perception, and Trapping/Tactics rolls depending on the specific method of hunting.

A human hunter, in comparison with wolves, could hunt alone moderately effectively, and in groups casually wipe out entire herds. This is boring from a gaming perspective, but anything that people rely on for day-to-day survival in all but the most extreme of circumstances is boring from a gaming perspective.

That's not necessarily true, when you consider that a few key choices for a hunter can result in the loss of life, resource, or large quantities of time. Those are the key stakes for role-playing anything, and if you GM it well, it can be engrossing to track a deer, wound it, and then try to run it to ground before the failing light forces you to return home.

In any case, the granularity of one's RPG style doesn't have any bearing on what skill is most accurate to represent, and I haven't seen any arguments giving reasons why Tactics(hunting) doesn't fit, other than the mistaken impression that Survival already included it by RAW.