Wednesday, August 13, 2014

30 Cats [Basic 5th]

Yup... 30 cats, that's what it takes for a 1st level 5th edition D&D charcater to become a 2nd level 5th edition D&D character: defeat 30 cats or maybe 30 rats, they are both worth 10 exp each.  My house cats are disgusted by this as they believe they are worth at least 6 rats each. The lowly frog is worthless earning folks 0 exp if defeated and as it is raining today I'm not going down to the river to ask them what they think of that.






10 comments:

  1. I dunno. Cat scratches can be rather nasty.

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    1. The infections are the bad part in the real world, luckily wounds don't seem to cause infections in D&D.

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    2. But there's 5% chance of disease from rat bites!
      I'm sure there are plenty of house rules and variants with wounds going septic/gangrenous...

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  2. How many cats do you need in other editions? :P

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    1. 100's undoubtedly but once a PC has defeated the 10th or 11th cat there are some deeper issues on hand.

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    2. A quick check for pathfinder puts it at 20[1], but the stats and description imply a good sized, (not quite as big as a Maine Coon), and healthy cat.


      [1] Medium advancement track, fast drops it to 13 and slow increases it to 30.

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  3. Cats in D&D are a serious problem! In past editions, they have been known to kill normal people (0-level men and 1st level Commoners). I have no idea what the stats for a 5e house cat is, but 5e Commoners still only got around 4 hip points to live by!

    For some reason, this reminds me of the "Bag of Rats" schtick form v3.x (q.v.).

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  4. OK, I just found the rules...

    It seems that the more the party (of 3-5 characters) faces is a singe encounter, the more EXP they would get. A character can gain a level by killing 30 individual cats (or rats), but he can advance by killing less cats if he kills in bulk. Here are the number of cats needed to get to get to second level, per encounter size:

    Single cat encounters = 30 cats (10 xp each)
    Pairs of cats = 20 cats (15 xp each)
    Group of 3-6 cats = 15 cats (20 xp each)
    Gang of 7-10 cats = 12 cats (25 xp each)
    Mob of 11-14 cats = 10 cats (30 xp each)
    Horde of 15 or more cats = 8 cats (40 xp each)

    So yeah, a first level character can gain a level in one encounter by defeating a dozen cats. An encounter up to a Group would be considered "Easy" by the rulebook. A Gang of cats would be Moderate, a Mob would be Hard, and a Horde would be Deadly -- cats can only do 1 point of damage per attack, but that would add-up fast!

    I hope that was useful to you?

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    1. That's great, and useful (in a way). It does a good job of showing 5th just isn't old-school despite all petense. Yeah sometimes level advancement could be a grind but having levels whip by also makes an achievement an expectation.

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    2. The Experience Point award system use for this edition is far form old-school, nor its it new. It is based, more or less, on the EXP system used in 4e.

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