[DF] The House Cat, 62 point template

[Anders]

Goes well with the Martial Arts style for cats.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Tymathee

As for the stats, I pulled most of it from the Allies supplement, which in turn was probably based on the stats given in Basic. They looked fine to me at a glance, so I did not bother reality checking them. The traits and customization options I've picked for the template are meant to reflect what I think would both fun and gameable for DF (which I assume is the intended philosophy for how templates in DF are made), rather than adhering to what might be more strictly realistic. An ordinary, not very intelligent, non-talking house cat might not think to invest time into learning skilled tracking of their prey but a highly intelligent, talking cat just might.

And so you did pull mostly from allies. Which makes me wonder why THAT template uses move 10 and speed 6. I suppose if you hang out with a DF wizard, that might be more useful than speed 7 and move 7, so he can send you out to places quickly.



fair enough call on the tracking.

Wouldn't Clinging (Wood) be better suited for a more arboreal animal? The fact that their claws happen to give a better grip might better be described as a Feature of being both SM-3 and having Claws (Sharp).

That gets into weird GM-adjudication and house rules, but its probably fair enough. It'd be nice to have a unified discussion of climbing (though now that I think of it, Furries might have one, though that's a book I don't have yet...)

[Anders]

They already get +3 Climbing from Flexibility. That's plenty.

[Tymathee]

Originally Posted by ericthered

And so you did pull mostly from allies. Which makes me wonder why THAT template uses move 10 and speed 6. I suppose if you hang out with a DF wizard, that might be more useful than speed 7 and move 7, so he can send you out to places quickly.

fair enough call on the tracking.

That gets into weird GM-adjudication and house rules, but its probably fair enough. It'd be nice to have a unified discussion of climbing (though now that I think of it, Furries might have one, though that's a book I don't have yet...)

Looking at Basic's Campaigns, it appears the stat block for the house cat also uses Speed 6, Move 10 too. So perhaps I was right about DF's Allies pulling from those stats. :)

As for reality checking, a quick Google search says the top speed of house cats caps out at 30 mph. I recall it being mentioned somewhere that top mph for a character is Basic Move x2. That's the fastest of house cats though, so perhaps the stats given in Basic reflect the more average of house cats. My template caps additional Move at +3, but an additional 2 levels of it could be amongst the selection of "power-ups" for advancement.

Yes, it is very much GM-adjudication to say that cat-sized paws with cat-like claws fits into cat-suited grips found while climbing. The alternative of Clinging requires just as if not much more of that though... a modifier for the types of surfaces, modifiers to reflect being better suited for ascending and not being able to descend head-first... probably something that reflects a lack of ceiling-clinging ability too... which sounds like multiple Accessibility modifiers that require the GM to hem and haw over the values of them. Then you have to probably do a write-up of the legalese involved in this so there's no ambiguity as to how it functions in play. Bah! Just say there's a new "Catclinging" -80% and say it only permits as much clinging as plausible for a house cat.

In GURPS, sometimes less is more and less thinking is a better use of time. If anything, we could just say "skilled at ascending" and "poorly suited to descending" comes out as a net wash Feature, further supported by the fact that, IMHO, this is covered by SM -3 and Claws (Sharp).

[Anders]

Just give them a good Climbing skill. Clinging is overkill.

[Tymathee]

Originally Posted by Anders

Just give them a good Climbing skill. Clinging is overkill.

Indeed. I don't think that a appropriately modified Clinging advantage would better reflect what a cat would be capable of than what the traits already present on the template provides. Skill 17 in Climbing is already "extraordinary world-class experts" level of competence as well.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Tymathee

While they're skilled climbers, they don't have the same level of Clinging as, say, squirrels.

I'd call that a Limitation to Clinging (reduced climbing skill/speed while descending, can't get stuck in places they can't get down from) rather than negating the advantage.

Try to pick up an unwilling cat from a soft surface and they sure as hell can cling to it with their claws. A cat in a hurry can also go up a tree almost as fast as they can run, without resorting to their considerable jumping skills.

[Pursuivant]

Advantages: Add Clinging (Not for descending, -20%; Only on surfaces softer than claws or which allow good claw-holds, -20%) [12 points]; Discriminatory Smell [15]; Nictitating Membrane 1 [1]; Reduced Consumption 1 [2 points]; Reduced Consumption 2 (Limitation: Water Only, -50%) [1]; Ultrahearing [5].

Cats have a sense of smell 14 times good as a humans can can hear well into the Ultrasonic range - at higher frequencies than dogs can hear. They require less food than humans do (although not on a pound by pound basis) and far less water.

Drop Perfect Balance to an optional advantage. As any cat owner or vet can tell you, most cats don't have Perfect Balance just high DX and good Climbing skill.

Night Vision 9 is generous, but fits the stereotype. Night Vision 4-5 is more realistic, but we are talking about DF here. Add the Nuisance Effect limitation (Tapetum Lucidum), -10% which makes cat's eyes "glow in the dark" when directly illuminated by bright light.

Vibration Sense is a bit too generous, realistically whiskers (Vibrissae) require touch or nearby (say 1 yard) or very strong air currents in order to be effective. This adds the Range Divisor (x1/10) (-30%) limitation to Vibration Sense reducing it to 7 points. Allow the full advantage as an option.

Add Appearance, Fearlessness, Indomitable, Luck, Rapid Healing/Very Rapid Healing, Serendipity, Super Jump, and Temperature Tolerance to optional advantages.

Add Controllable Disadvantage (Light Sleeper), Deep Sleeper, and Resistant (+3, Ingested Poisons and food-borne illnesses) as Perks.

Controllable Disadvantage/Deep Sleeper represents "Catsleep" the ability to fall asleep just about instantly any time and any place and wake up instantly when something "interesting" is nearby.

Resistant represents the cat's short, acidic gut and keenly honed and easily triggered vomit reflex. (Dogs and many scavengers have this as well.)

Add Penetrating Voice as a potential Perk.

For disadvantages: Add Bad Sight (Nearsighted) (Limitations: Not for Motion Tracking, -25%, Not for distances within ~10 yards, -25%) [-12 points] and Sleepy (2/3 of the time) [-16 points].

Allow Sleepy (1/2 of the time) [+8] as an optional advantage.

Optional Disadvantages: Appearance, Bad Temper, Bully, Colorblind (for cats who don't understand/care about colors), Compulsive Behavior (Territorial or Wanderlust), Cowardice, Enemy (Other Cats), Fat/Very Fat, Fearfulness, Gluttony, Hidebound, Impulsiveness, Intolerance (Dogs, Noisy or Threatening People, and of course the traditional enemy of the cat - Other Cats), Lame (Crippled Leg or Missing Leg), Odious Personal Habit (Cynical, Destructive, "Litter Box Issues," Manipulative, Noisy, Socially Inappropriate Behavior, etc.), One Eye, Overconfidence, Phobia (Fire, Loud Noises, Open Areas, Strange People/Places, Water), Selfish, and Short Attention Span.

Compulsive Behavior (Territorial) means that you feel compelled to patrol, mark, and defend a specific territory as yours against others of your kind and potential threats to yourself and potential mates.

Quirks: Cannot Detect Sweet, Colorblindness (Partial), Compulsive Behavior (Grooming), Requires Meat-Based Diet, Short Lifespan, Short Winded, and Susceptible to Hunger as quirks.

Cats can't detect sweet tastes (Very Limited No Sense of Smell or Taste) and must have a diet which is primarily meat-based (quirk level Restricted Diet).

Compulsive Grooming means that the cat feels the need to keep is fur clean by licking it. This is a disadvantage due to hairballs and the risk of licking contact or ingested poisons off the fur.

Short-Winded means that the cat is effectively Unfit when it attempts to perform any long endurance tasks, such as long distance running or sustained lifting or pulling.

Susceptible to Hunger means that cats need to make HT rolls to avoid the effects of starvation twice as often as humans or other animals. After about 5 days of starvation, cats can suffer from a condition where their body starts to attack the liver with lethal results (hepatic lipidosis).

The Layabout quirk might be redundant with laziness.

Optional quirks include: Dislikes (Forced Confinement, Loud Noises, Riding in Vehicles, Strong Smells, and/or Water), Distinctive Feature (Damaged Ears/Tail, Scarring), Distractible, Dull, Likes Confined Areas, Likes Hiding, Likes High Places, Playful, Prone to Overeating (quirk level Gluttony), Proud, Secretive, and Staid.

[Tymathee]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

"...is generous, but fits the stereotype... but we are talking about DF here..."

Yes, this was very intentional on my part. Since I largely based this off the Allies supplement's stat block for the cat, I trust that the author designed it to be better suited for dungeon crawling... the traits favor the dramatic over realism. So for the spirit of DF, I think that there's diminishing returns in trying to have every thing line up with what we think ought to be real within a setting that eschews realism in favor of what's over-the-top entertaining; e.g. Heroic Archer enabling Legolas-esque action. So something like Perfect Balance is totally within that scope. We could work hard to squeeze a realistic simulation of what is mostly a plain house cat into a 62 point template... meh. What's important is that it's a template with traits that the dungeon crawling genre cares about. Besides the fair amount customization options I've added in, what changed most was the HP and Night Vision.

Allies gives the house cat 9 HP(!). Usually HP scales with mass, but it seems as if DF specifically doesn't adhere to this really (ahem, Barbarians). So I didn't lower it in a concern for realistic mass, but actually because it suits the "Cat vs. Commoner" meme. The cat is actually supposed to be more or less frail as our supposed commoner, but still has the lethal edge over them as the idea is that our cat strikes from stealth every time killing the commoner who's only thing holding them to life being a single hit point.

Night Vision? Ha. This really was a personal touch here, as I find "ignores darkness penalties in all but absolute darkness" more intuitive than "ignores up to -8 in darkness penalties, suffers -1 in darkness penalties with -9 in penalties in effect before -10 of total darkness kick in". So to borrow from videogame-speak this was a Quality of Life improvement more than anything else when I raised it from 8 to 9 levels of Night Vision.

I'm still thinking about Clinging, so I might have to get back with my thoughts on that later. Basic didn't give house cats the trait, nor did Allies, and I might just prefer to stick to that pattern (Bio-Tech has some sort of space cat template that's meant to otherwise be a normal cat and they also didn't include it either). You've got some other good ideas here that I'll have to take time to consider as well.

Oh, and the Reduced Consumption stuff isn't too necessary, as it already scales with SM as a Feature. See Bio-Tech for details. Found out about that while reading up on DF's Pixies. They actually have the trait because, in addition to the SM scaling of consumption, the author wanted them to survive off just the occasional dew drops and crumbs. Fun facts!

[Tymathee]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Advantages: Add Clinging (Not for descending, -20%; Only on surfaces softer than claws or which allow good claw-holds, -20%) [12 points]

This still lets them cling to ceilings. Their needle-like curved claws can accomplish a great deal but that's just too bizarre. I can't seem to shake the image of a eight-legged Spiderkitty from my mind. Ahhh!

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Luck... Serendipity...

Both of these are already listed within the options of what to spend the discretionary points with. Any of the Advantages you mentioned could be added to the preferably left undefined list of "power-ups" for the House Cat.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

The Layabout quirk might be redundant with laziness.

This was intentional, as if the player wants to pick Quirk-level Laziness they could instead of the full-blown Disadvantage. The same could be said of any other overlaps.

The bit of rules text often gets forgotten in DF's Adventurers about how any Disadvantages on templates are suggestions and anything else can be chosen instead at the GM's discretion. So, if you really wanted to simulate more of the realistic Disadvantages you've listed of a house cat you certainly are welcome too.

I wouldn't want to have too much option bloat either, as part of the allure of a 62 point template is the simplicity of it for quick pick-up play. I was partly inspired by Delvers to Grow, and I really like the idea of "low level" play. The long grind from low level to heroic competency is a huge part of what I enjoy in my RPGS, and I see that that is a trending popular opinion.