A lot of times in games Animals seem like they get a sort of cannon fodder role. They don’t do a whole lot of what they could be doing – if you’re out in the wilderness and you definitively are going to fight an animal, chances are it’ll not be a really mechanically innovative brawl. I don’t exactly relish in brutalizing imaginary animals but I think it can be a compelling confrontation for fantasy characters, and often, it just mechanically isn’t very interesting.
Perhaps this is because, since we’re so familiar with them, it might distract us to see them do fantastic things. But honestly, I just don’t accept that – about any element of a fantasy game. While working on Expedition I’ve been thinking about what kinds of abilities, coming into this from the perspective of making a fairly intricate combat system, one could work into animals that would give them some pizazz. D&D 4e did a fairly good job with this, albeit a lot of creatures were still just getting abilities like “runs at a character and slashes them, but in a single action instead of two!” which while effective, isn’t very flashy.
So I thought I’d do a quick post on some abilities I think should get looked at when you design an animal-like creature. For now, let’s limit ourselves to more “realistic” things. We COULD for example, say “make it an elemental animal” or “have an animal with magic spells cast on it by someone else” but I’d rather go a different route, for variety’s sake.
