Interest in Prehistoric mammal article?

[RockJock]

Palladium Fantasy has a few examples of prehistoric animals being given stats. Would any of you have an interest in seeing an expansion of this as a Rifter article?

[Warshield73]

If you have an idea of where in Palladium these animals would be and how they fit in then I think it would great. Random monsters aren't bad necessarily but if you can give a GM a hook for how to include them that is always helpful.

[Library Ogre]

I think it would be a great addition... how they fit into the Palladium World, how they act and how they hunt, etc. Something to give spice to monsters that are frequently kill-switches with HP attached.

[rpetras]

I'd like to see a prehistoric mammal article, especially if it was paired with stats for mutant animals as well.

That would make a great Rifter theme, much like the Dino articles from a while back.

[RockJock]

What I was thinking is animals with thought out stats/descriptions, dropped into different parts of the Palladium World that resemble their original environment. Maybe with notes about how they animals could be dropped into other settings. I'm not sure if I would go for the mutant animal idea, but the basic stats would be usable to create a mutant animal.

Without stats a good example would be a North American Lion (heavier, stronger, bigger than an African Lion, but with similar hunting style) getting the treatment as Ophid's Lion.

[glitterboy2098]

Don't forget about mount potential, especially for the larger and smaller races. Mastodons and mammoths ought to be trainable as war elephant type mounts, and there are plenty of things in the fossil records that might make a fun alternative to horses.

[Whiskeyjack]

I've used a few pre-ice age mammals in my games. They add a fun twist to the common animals. Both monstrous and familiar. Stats on a variety of them would be cool. There are a ton of pre dinosaur animals that are pretty cool too. Andrewsarchus and such.

[glitterboy2098]

Interesting thought i had today while researching for something else.. the American mastodon (Mammut americanum) is almost perfectly sized for a Wolfen to ride. snf it lived in a climate pretty close to that of the Northern Wilderness.
it is also similar in size to the North African and Syrian Elephants (both now extinct) that were used in ancient times as war elephants. War Elephants could reach 20mph on a charge, which is the same rough speed fully armed and armored horse cavalry reach on a charge.

now i can't get the image of Wolfen Knights and paladins charging on mastodon back, lances leveled.

as browsers mastodons might be trickier than horses to keep in feed, but evidence shows they were very flexible in diet, ranging from water plants, brush, even tough stuff like twigs and conifer needles. and they were able to graze off grass to a degree, unlike most browsers. so you could use grain and the like as a dietary supplement for them. (and i suspect that you could develop a type of dried feed for them, the way Hay is for grazers. just use the appropriate plants for their diet, and dry them out. combine with letting them browse on the surrounding foliage) diet wise they'd be similar to Indian Elephants (which are also similar sized) and those worked reasonably well as domestic animals for thousands of years.)

[kiralon]

Who needs lances when you could use ballista, now that would be scary (even a batch of wolfen longbowman would be a pain).

Coyle horde on mastadons
now that sounds like an adventure

[glitterboy2098]

because Knight use lances.

and ballistae would be too big to fit onto the back of a mastodon. they were quite large, and a wolfen model would likely be even bigger. and atthe size Wolfen are, it would be hard to stick more than one on a Howdah anyway, and that wouldn't leave much room for a mahout.

though certainly, for the Empire's human, orc, and kobold allies a mastodon could be used in a more classic war elephant fashion.


i've also considered the Wolfen having bred a version of the Megahippus, which was a browsing multi-toe proto-horse from the Middle Miocene (16 to 10 MYA). it was the size of a modern draft horse. While it lived in light woodlands rather than the dense stuff like the northern wilderness (and in a slightly warmer climate) you could easily just declare a new species adapted to PFRPG. with a few centuries of selective breeding, such an animal could give the Wolfen an interesting pack animal and light duty riding animal. (not really suited to use with cavalry, but usable for more civilian purposes, like the Palfrey's of the IRL middle ages, which were lighter and weaker than a warhorse, but better at slow steady travel.)

[kiralon]

I guess elephants in monsters and animals are bigger than mastodons, as the elephants in M&A can get up to 12ft tall and 20ft long. I always thought mammoths and mastodons were the same size so for mammoths I just put wool on elephants which upped their natural AR and made 4m the normal size.

2 coyle longbowman on the back of a mammoth would be a nightmare, the ballista doesn't do enough damage to make it worth it, but a human sized one could be fitted onto the back of one with mechanism to use the elephants trunk to re-cock.

[glitterboy2098]

size depends on the species. the Mammoths were mostly the size of African Bush elephants. (Who are 13 feet tall at the shoulder. the biggest species of Mammoths about 15ft)

Mastodons are what mammoths and elephants derived from, they tended to be smaller and less bulky.

[kiralon]

Elephant tusk swords are pretty cool.

[RockJock]

There are some bigger mammoth and mastodon species out there like Palaeoloxodon namadicus.

Mammoths and Mastodons overlapped in their time periods, and were not straight ancestors, but shared a common ancestor. The thought is that most mastodons were forest foragers versus open plains/tundra eaters like the Mammoth.

[Tick]

Palladium Fantasy has a few examples of prehistoric animals being given stats. Would any of you have an interest in seeing an expansion of this as a Rifter article?

yes! with ATB mutations upgraded and updated to match too!