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kpenguin
2007-07-21, 03:43 AM
Dire animals are supposed to represent prehistoric animals, like dire wolves or mastadons. Cavemen are supposed to have tangoed with with these beasts and won. So, how could you represent that in D&D? They are using nonmagical nonmasterwork stone weaponry, wearing little to no armor, and are limited to no magic at all. So, build me a caveman that could kill dire animals with the resources of the time. Since this caveman will be the average of the time, let's make it level 2 or 3, since level 5 is frequently cited as the limit of human ability.

The moral here is that D&D doesn't represent reality accurately, but let's try to anyway.

Saph
2007-07-21, 03:48 AM
Level: Anything you like
Class: Anything you like
Stats: Anything you like
Gear: Anything you like
Feats: Anything you like
Skills: Max ranks in Trapmaking

Dig pits. Put spikes in the pits. Lead the animals in. Once they're in the pit, chuck spears at them until they're dead.

As far as I know, that was how cavemen beat dire animals. They didn't go toe-to-toe, they trapped them or led them off the edge of cliffs or dropped rocks on them or something. Given tools and some time to prepare, intelligence beats muscle.

- Saph

Yechezkiel
2007-07-21, 03:52 AM
The moral here is that D&D doesn't represent reality accurately, but let's try to anyway.

This is so easy a caveman can do it.

Orzel
2007-07-21, 04:03 AM
Weapon proficiency (large rock), Skill focus: Craft (Trapmaking)

JackMage666
2007-07-21, 04:05 AM
Well, there's always the Neanderthal race in Frostburn. I'd think that'd be the first step - Regressed mental capacity, but increased physical capacity.

After than, warrior levels for someone who's a trained hunter, or Ranger if you're going for PC classes. It'd be a tough fight, one-on-one, but alot of pre-historic tribes would use ambush tactics and superior numbers to overwelm enemies. Ranger's probably more fitting, but Warrior is more common, of course.

Experts would be the craftsmen. Likely, the tribal elders as well. Adepts would be elders only if your idea includes magic.

The others, noncombatants, cooks, and others who didn't hunt, would be Commoners (though, in this case, I'd say commoners with Average BAB and good Fort).

Xuincherguixe
2007-07-21, 04:33 AM
I don't see why just race human doesn't work for Cavemen.

Also, seems to me that they don't have to be less intelligent either. Cavemen just wouldn't have made as many discoveries, or communicated as much. (The progress that we made is due in large degrees from interactions between different groups of people and exposure to new ideas)

I figure Cavemen would just use less advanced tools.

JackMage666
2007-07-21, 04:37 AM
Well, the real important thing is their increased physical endurance and strength (or, Constitution and Strength). The discoveries they made seemed more Wisdom based, not Intelligence based.

Face it, people who drop-kicked dinosaurs were tougher than us on the computer right now.

Diggorian
2007-07-21, 04:39 AM
Non-trap using Successful cave man build: Human, non-elite array with Str and Con favored, Warrior or Expert 2 or 3, Feats-- Endurance and power attack or track.

Versus a Mastadon (elephant stats), get enough cave men to surround it with their longspears (sixteen lvl 3 equals a lvl 7 party). Approach mastadon, if it runs follow it until it tires then surround. Experts fight defensive while aiding other on the warriors who fight defensive also.

If it charges, everyone readies versus the charge and power attacks for two or aids other on an ally.

You'll lose a few but thats more meat for the others.

mostlyharmful
2007-07-21, 05:35 AM
fire induced stampieds, traps, teamwork, and the all important acceptance that sometimes things will go down the crapper and one in five of you will get maulled.

Also they didn't so much hunt down the big creatures like cavebears as out compete them. changing their environment to suit us and depleting their food supply while we have contingency food sources will starve out a population of cavelions.

The moral is that with good planning, teamwork and tool use low level NPCs beat big nasty gribblies in the long run not necessarily in the short.

AtomicKitKat
2007-07-21, 07:10 AM
I suspect meat eating wasn't what elevated sapience. Brain eating on the other hand, probably has a mild Lamarckian effect on the evolution of the species...

Anxe
2007-07-21, 09:32 AM
If we're talking about reality just use a Half-orc to represent Neanderthals. And sidenote, they defeated these dire animals through strategy and the fact that the animals were scared of people not ready to eat them.

Indon
2007-07-21, 09:41 AM
A group of five or so level 2 warriors with maxed-out Intimidate.

During each of their turns, they approach the animal and Intimidate it. If more than one succeed, the animal flees during its' turn (because Intimidation makes a creature Shaken, and fear effects stack). After the required successes are garnered, the others attack, probably by throwing or stabbing with a spear.

For larger creatures, you'll need more warriors.

Edit: For a large-sized creature, with sufficient warriors to keep the creature panicked, you could just surround it and have a few warriors screaming at it to keep it cowering while the rest of your band kills it.

A panicked creature enclosed by your band in this method has an effective dex of 0, and takes an additional -2 to armor.

Tellah
2007-07-21, 11:26 AM
Which hominid species are you looking to emulate? Humans, Homo Erectus, Australopithecus, Homo Habilis...? In general, the further you go back in the time line of hominid evolution, the smaller hominids were in physical stature and the more alien and undeveloped the brain structure. If you go with human, then a character focusing on trap-making, crafting, and survival skills would best emulate our ancestors. The Endurance feat would be a good starting point for emulating the sort of persistence hunting that made early man so successful, as would the Track feat.

Also, I'd like to point out that humans and dinosaurs absolutely did not coexist, and that Lamarckian evolution does not in any way occur. Eating brains would provide a nice, fatty, protein rich meal, which would improve a creature's survival chance. Hominids required tools to crack open skulls and scrape out the brain matter, so that encourages the development of intelligence. Eating a particular meal, even frequently, will not affect the genetic traits of potential offspring.
/rant

Roderick_BR
2007-07-21, 12:33 PM
"The moral here is that D&D doesn't represent reality accurately,"
Hmm.. yeah, it doesn't.

In 2nd edition, there was a "caveman" creature. Just make it with npc classes (mostly commoners and warriors), make them illiterate, forbid some skills, and give them low level equipment (clubs, shortspears, and leather).
They don't need to have any special ability or flaw, other than being unable to get some skills, and more advanced feats/classes.

Neek
2007-07-21, 12:44 PM
Caveman is a very vague term; if we talk about a Neanderthal, then we run the problem of not playing a very intelligent creature. Neanderthals were not creative or inventive by any means. Tracing archaeological history, they were tool users, but their tools did not evolve at any pace that was faster than biological evolution. Cro-magnon were early homo sapiens, but were still using older tools from an earlier time in their biological history. This quickly changed.

Creating a caveman can be done for flavor rather than accuracy. I would avoid classes that have societal niches: Bards are right out; Paladins and Wizards are too smart and too abstract; Clerics are generally part of a religious institution; Monks are too distant from the life of a caveman. This leaves Barbarian, Druid, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, or Sorcerer. From the splat books I'd also say Scout and Mystic Theurge are good choices. A cleric is good as long as you don't worship any specific deity, but take an animistic approach to your belief (perhaps a Spirit Shaman would be good?)

All your equipment is bone or stone. You'd be more or less self-sufficient despite whatever class you pick; this means you'd focus on Craft checks, boost Survival up, and make sure you have good Spot and Listen. Staying is your chief concern.

Koji
2007-07-21, 12:59 PM
Which hominid species are you looking to emulate? Humans, Homo Erectus, Australopithecus, Homo Habilis...? In general, the further you go back in the time line of hominid evolution, the smaller hominids were in physical stature

Waaay wrong.

Were Homo Erectus alive today, they would stand in the tallest 15% of people on earth. Some Australopithecus species were enormous, and though Homo Habilis was fairly short, he represents the stepping stone up from the (admittedly short) Australopithecus (the name of this particular variety escapes me at the moment) to the much taller Homo Erectus.

Generally, if you're playing with Cavemen, you will either want a Neanderthal or a modern human. Homo Sapiens, regardless of time period, are identical to modern ones. Just because someone does not have access to modern technology does not make him stupid. Why just these two? The brain size of earlier Hominina (basically everything from early australopithecus on) was just too small before that. While it's certainly still debatable, evidence tends to suggest that increase in brain size (from around 900cc in Erectus to 1400cc in modern man) was an extremely recent development.

Homo Sapiens would be statistically human, and would take down dire animals by using group tactics, traps, and ranged weapons. Pit traps (with or without spikes), spear-throwers (a tool that hugely increases range increment, basically), and strong observational skills would have gone a long way toward giving Homo Sapiens the edge. Consider horseback riding (if your environment is a temperate steppe), and use of the short bow.

Neanderthals were far stronger than humans. Frostburn has a statted out neanderthal, but I don't like it. Perhaps something a little more like the goliath would work. Either way, Neandethals were extremely good at moving through underbrush and generally lived in heavily forested areas. They hunted with spears that they used at melee range with incredible force to take down large animals. They were intelligent, but probably less "cultured" than homo sapiens. Their dead have been found buried with flowers and tools, and the tools they made were just as well-made as those made by sapiens of the time (Though they may have been copying them, as their tool styles seemed to change at around the time they came into contact with man.

EntilZha
2007-07-21, 02:04 PM
This is so easy a caveman can do it.

The guys in the GEICO commercial are doubtless going to take umbrage with this thread. :smallbiggrin:

Tellah,
[BUTT-HEAD]
You said "Homo Erectus" huh, huh, huh....huh, huh, huh
[/BUTT-HEAD]

Tellah
2007-07-21, 04:08 PM
Waaay wrong.

Were Homo Erectus alive today, they would stand in the tallest 15% of people on earth. Some Australopithecus species were enormous, and though Homo Habilis was fairly short, he represents the stepping stone up from the (admittedly short) Australopithecus (the name of this particular variety escapes me at the moment) to the much taller Homo Erectus.


First link found from a Google search for "hominid height," from the Fall 1997 update to the textbook Physical Anthropology:


THE UPS AND DOWNS OF HOMINID HEIGHT

See Physical Anthropology, 6th edition, Chapters 16-19; Physical Anthropology: The Core, 2nd edition, Chapters 11-13.

The traditional view of hominid stature is that as hominids evolved from prehominid ancestors to H. sapiens, each genus and species progressively got taller and larger brained. Some doubt had been cast on this generality with the realization that one early Homo fossil ("Turkana Youth"), dated at about 1.6 million B.P., represented an individual who might have grown to over 6 feet tall if he had lived to adulthood.

Recently, Christopher Ruff, Eric Trinkaus, and Trenton Holliday have used two different measures of body mass on 163 Pleistocene members of the genus Homo. These individuals lived between 1.8 million and 36,000 years ago. In comparing these fossils with contemporary humans, they found that the body mass of the fossil hominids gradually increased over time and was, on the average, 12.7 percent greater than the average for modern peoples. Neandertals were about 24 percent larger than modern humans living at the same latitudes.

In this same study, the investigators found that brain size relative to body size remained constant from about 1.8 million to about 600,000 years ago. Then, relative brain size began to increase until about 35,000 to 30,000 years ago. Since that time, brain size has declined by about 10 percent in comparison with early modern humans such as those found at the sites of Skh_l and Qafzeh in Israel and the Cro-Magnon rock shelter in France.

There are many reasons why such a decline in body mass and relative brain size may have occurred in recent modern people. New technologies that developed in the Upper Paleolithic and later may have reduced the selective advantage of brawn in some way while increasing the selective advantage of brain power. However, brain size was also decreasing. The decrease in brain size is not necessarily associated with a decrease in intellectual abilities. Also, as humans developed domestication, nutrition actually worsened. Eric Trinkaus suggests that poor nutrition could have contributed to a decline in body mass in recent modern peoples.

John Kappelman believes that the conclusions that Ruff's and his colleagues' make may have merit. Yet he also points to some possible problems in the calculations. He suggests that the modern humans used for comparisons should be athletes. They would be a better match for hunters, scavengers, and gatherers of the past, as opposed to more sedentary peoples. Also, 87 percent of the 163 fossils used are from the last 200,000 years. Finally, there are questions of sampling error with the estimates of body size and brain size. In most cases, the crania and postcranial materials do not come from the same individual.

Sources: C. B. Ruff, E. Trinkaus, and T. W. Holliday, "Body Mass and Encephalization in Pleistocene Homo," Nature, 387 (May 8, 1997), 173-176; J. Kappleman, "They Might be Giants," Nature, 387 (May 8, 1997), 126-127; A. Gibbon, "Bone Sizes Trace the Decline of Man (and Woman)," Science, 276 (May 9, 1997), 896-897.

As a general principle, hominids grew in height and relative brain size until a decline in modern humans, commonly attributed to declining nutritional variety since switching over to agriculture. Exceptions exist, obviously, and if we include the "vegetarian" hominid line then the whole pattern is thrown off.

Neek
2007-07-21, 05:06 PM
As a general principle, hominids grew in height and relative brain size until a decline in modern humans, commonly attributed to declining nutritional variety since switching over to agriculture. Exceptions exist, obviously, and if we include the "vegetarian" hominid line then the whole pattern is thrown off.

That still accounts for a great disparity of time. Homo sapiens emerged approximately 200,000 years in Africa (in comparison, Homo neanderthalensis emerged as early as 350,000 years ago in Europe, but were not full blown Neanderthal as we know it until 130,000 years ago, finally becoming deceased 24,000 years ago).

Agriculture did not begin until 10,000 years ago in the fertile crescent, and it took thousand of years before cultures began to practice aggressive forms of agriculture. The cessation of the increase of brain cavity size coincides more with the extinction of the Neanderthal.

Also, Neanderthals stand about 5'5 for males, females 5'-5'2 (averaging 1.6 meters). Homines sapientes were standing at 1.4 meters during this time. Height has increased, which is definitely attributed to nutrition.

Hunter-gatherers spend less effort to forage for food, however have to forage constantly and generally can never gather more than is necessary. Farming cultures opened up because the food which they harvested gave such a radically higher nutritional content than simply gathering, which allowed communities to store unused food. Which then led into distributing unused food to specialized community members, i.e., standing armies. This also increased birth-rates and population density as a result. Disease runs rampant.

Poorer nutrition (from, say, eating food from a single source of food, or having one source of food constantly that is far greater than the other sources), having to work hard, disease (from higher density and being packed close to domesticated animals)--those are contributing factors to short height (aside from simple genetics). Though height would have increased dramatically from the fall of the Neanderthal to the discovery of agriculture for this argument to hold true.

AtomicKitKat
2007-07-21, 11:57 PM
Also, I'd like to point out that humans and dinosaurs absolutely did not coexist, and that Lamarckian evolution does not in any way occur. Eating brains would provide a nice, fatty, protein rich meal, which would improve a creature's survival chance. Hominids required tools to crack open skulls and scrape out the brain matter, so that encourages the development of intelligence. Eating a particular meal, even frequently, will not affect the genetic traits of potential offspring.
/rant

The Lamarckian Evolution remark was just me lacking a proper term. In this case, it's more a case of eating brains=smarter kids, with regards to pregnant mothers essentially having to spend little effort(comparatively) breaking down the brain in their stomachs, then reforming it into the developing foetal brains.:smallbiggrin: Besides which, everyone knows getting damaged goolies winds up with greater mutations in the population(what with the male contribution to genetics not being "fixed at birth").

Kami2awa
2007-07-22, 11:53 AM
"Cavemen" never existed outside the imaginations of Victorian historians; early humans did not live in caves. There are more humans living in caves (especially in parts of Northern China) in modern times than ever lived in them in prehistory.

But prehistoric humans were VERY efficient hunters who used their intelligence and ability to manipulate the environment to great effect. There is strong evidence that they were effective enough to exterminate many large animals such as the mammoth and moa.

As to technique, they hunted in large groups (raising their effective CR), used fire to drive out enemies (a forest fire is CR 6 according to the DMG; a fire deliberately started as a trap combined with hordes of low-level hunters would b e even higher CR). Cave drawings show large nets being used, possibly dropped from trees on animals fleeing the fire. Pit traps probably did get used, and hunters probably drove herds of animals off cliffs using fire to kill vast numbers.

The notion of a stone-age hunter fighting a bear or sabre tooth tiger on his own is evocative but probably never happened. In real life humans are intelligent enough to fight on their terms.

And one final word: Tucker's Kobolds.

Maerok
2007-07-22, 12:08 PM
The moral here is that D&D doesn't represent reality accurately, but let's try to anyway.

Because, in real life, wish is actually an eighth level spell... DnD totally doesn't represent reality accurately, nor was it ever intended to; otherwise, go outside! C'mon, when you signed up to play DnD, you weren't thinking "alright! I've heard this is perhaps the greatest reality simulator next to life itself." It's DnD, it's fantasy... How about a Walk skill, requiring a check each step to avoid tripping. It's a different reality, where dramatics and fiats are *the* fundamental forces. While I accept the mental exercise for a 'caveman build', trying to beat a dead horse for the millionth time is foolish. If your intentions were the latter, I'm directing this at you; if the former, then this was merely a rant inspired by your quote.

CASTLEMIKE
2007-07-23, 02:00 AM
There is the the half orc (or orc) with the preferred class of Barbarian without Darkvision or Orc Blood and possibly low light vision with a +2 to constitution for losing the Darkvision and Orc Blood. I would think that comes pretty close mechanically maybe Ranger levels without the spellcasting.

Bigger, stronger, tougher (con) and intelligent but less intelligent and shorter lifespans than modern man.

Intelligence was the primary edge and using it against more physically capable individual animals with Tools.

Simple weapons like basic spears (clubs and sharpened sticks at first, evolving to throwing sticks (boomerangs) and fire hardened spears and stone tipped spears then bows and arrows over time).

Using and adapting successful tactics based on the animal for groups or individuals. Things like digging pitfall traps for large animals and herding them or attacking in packs.

8 Level 3 Barbarians in Hide armor with Clubs, Slings and Spears is a CR9 or lower encounter which probably should have the CR lowered for their inferior gear and equipment down to 7.