Quote from: Black Vulmea;543460Or you could just use the rules as written, such that a squirrel which does not hit successfully cannot disrupt a spell.

Without having to do damage in the process. Sure.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;543460Or you could just use the rules as written, such that a squirrel which does not hit successfully cannot disrupt a spell.

Quote from: Benoist;543462Without having to do damage in the process. Sure.

Probably the best bet.  Vermin and critters aren't very dangerous as direct opponents, but the after-effects can be devastating.  

Or, make them undead or something.  

There's the number of critters involved at play too. Like if you have like one squirrel thrown at your face or five, then you could just roll the attacks and that's it. Or you have like a wave of hundreds of squirrels jumping through the bushes at you and then, you could either rule it an autohit and not being able to cast spells period, or allow a saving throw, depending on circumstances, I guess.

Quote from: Benoist;543462Without having to do damage in the process. Sure.

I have no problem with the idea that a squirrel can cost one point of luck, fatigue, or divine intervention on a successful attack, so again, I'm fine with the rules as written on this one.

If the thought is that small animals like cats, squirrels, and the like shouldn't be able to cause mortal injury, then house rule that attacks from such critters can't drop someone to zero hit points. Easy-peasy, keeps everything else as written.

Either way, if I ever find myself placing a dryad encounter in the future, you can be damn sure she's going to have an extended family of well-trained squirrels living in her branches. Treants, too.

I have no problem with the Hit Point mechanic in general, nor any resultant wonkiness per se.  AD&D doesn't model 0-Hit Dice and less than 1-Hit Die creatures particularly well, but it still works close enough for Government work in my book.

I really like how 3.x D&D removed the concept of 0-Hit Die and less than 1-Hit Die for baseline humanity (i.e., people in general, which includes demi-humans and semi-humans) and made 1-Hit Die the base for humanity.  Also, tied to this is that everyone had a defined class, even if it was the Commoner NPC Class.

The most common situation where a critter attacks a PC will be with MU familars.
Here you have a fairly common situation where the MU has a cat/rat/crow whatever and the creature attacks when the MU is about to be finished off by a foe.
Like I said I have been on both ends of this.

But again this is all a situational case exposing the gaps with very low level HP.

Rather than cats we could be talking about fighters using dart weapons or Blowpipes, or PCs tripping over and dying or lots of other environmental effects that can but probably shouldn't kill low HP PCs.

Well in the case of the MU's familiars I think the argument that "the familiar is just really tough and yes, it CAN kill you" that's been talked about earlier in the thread (with the Cats of Ulthar and so on) is relevant here.

Well, the small animals aspect of D&D has always been problematic, as the HP system is set up to be human scale, that is very weak humans have 1HP, but there are lots of animals that would be worse then a weak human, like mice, rats, hawks, cats, etc...  If you are going to model a hawk vs. a cat (familiar fight!), then either...
1. You make up a new scale for smaller animals.
2. You accept the occasional anomaly.
3. You make up a different scale for Humans and above.

For example in Hackmaster 4th(older editon), anything with a HD, for example a 1st level Mage or an animal with 1HD, adds in a 20hp "Kicker" (which is offset by critical hits and damage dice penetrating/exploding).  A Housecat, however, doesn't have HD, but just 2-8 HPs, it doesn't get the kicker.  So every creature in the world except small animals is 20HPs higher (including the PCs).  In the Mage/Cat fight, the 1st Level Mage will have 1d4+Con+20 HPs, the Housecat has 2-8, which makes it properly scaled for small animals fights, but extremely unlikely that a small animal like a Housecat can kill a human.

My own solution is: small predatory critters that have only 1 hp (or less) should only do damage on a roll of 6+ (d6). That represents the chance that their otherwise ineffectual attack might tear open an artery or something. Non-predators probably shouldn't get any effective attack; all attacks by normal bunnies are just fluff.

I'll be honest. I've never actually had a cat or squirrel frag a character, even if it's potentially possible. Maybe I'm just overreacting to all this, because the situation has never actually come up in endless years of play...

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;543498I'll be honest. I've never actually had a cat or squirrel frag a character, even if it's potentially possible. Maybe I'm just overreacting to all this, because the situation has never actually come up in endless years of play...

Nor have I, but I'm tempted to write up some cat swarms.

Quote from: talysman;543505Nor have I, but I'm tempted to write up some cat swarms.

Packs, not swarms. Packs of cats!

Quote from: Marleycat;543508Packs, not swarms. Packs of cats!

No, I mean "swarms" as in "I have swarm rules, and I'll apply 'em to anything."

Cat Swarm
# appearing: d6 x 20; d6 HD, AC 9, Move 9, slows movement

Roll 1d6 for number of HD, multiply by 20 for the number of cats in the swarm. Treat the entire swarm as one monster that can engulf and slow creatures: halve the Move of any terrestrial creature with fewer hit dice. On a successful attack, multiple cats trip an opponent, leap on the body, and do 1d6 damage per round automatically until somehow removed. Every 6 points of damage done to a swarm reduces the effective HD of the swarm by 1, for all purposes. However, third-party attacks on a swarm that has engulfed victims are treated as attacks on the victims; they take the same amount of damage as the swarm.

(This is for OD&D, so you might want to change AC to 10 and up the 6 points per HD to 8 for AD&D.)

Quote from: talysman;543523No, I mean "swarms" as in "I have swarm rules, and I'll apply 'em to anything."

Cat Swarm
# appearing: d6 x 20; d6 HD, AC 9, Move 9, slows movement

Roll 1d6 for number of HD, multiply by 20 for the number of cats in the swarm. Treat the entire swarm as one monster that can engulf and slow creatures: halve the Move of any terrestrial creature with fewer hit dice. On a successful attack, multiple cats trip an opponent, leap on the body, and do 1d6 damage per round automatically until somehow removed. Every 6 points of damage done to a swarm reduces the effective HD of the swarm by 1, for all purposes. However, third-party attacks on a swarm that has engulfed victims are treated as attacks on the victims; they take the same amount of damage as the swarm.

(This is for OD&D, so you might want to change AC to 10 and up the 6 points per HD to 8 for AD&D.)

Yeah I knew you were referring to the swarm rules but packs does sound better and less insectiod.

Does the Cat Lady from the Simpsons have a cat-throwing At-Will ability?

Also, I think that a gaggle of cats sounds more menacing.