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Thread: How tough *are* animals?
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2013-08-05, 06:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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How tough *are* animals?
As we all know, humans and company fare poorly in comparison with nonhuman animals in 3.x D&D. Ye old house cat can famously give the average commoner a run for their money, and according to the DMG commoners make up the bulk of the typical army. A large dog has higher challenge rating than an elf warrior with a longbow. Even more curiously, the dog's coat apparently provide the same protection as a shirt of a mail with a steel cap or a suit of scale armor with gauntlets. Various other animals have the same or higher natural armor bonus. Elephants and rhinos might as well be wearing plates of steel.
Both the dog's superiority to the warrior and its impenetrable hide stand hilariously at odds with our reality. It's easy - and fun! - to mock 3.x for this, but I'm additionally interested in hashing out what animals should look like versus human warriors with medieval weapons.
To begin, I'll argue that even an elephant's hide doesn't protection as well as steel plate. While elephants do resist arrows and historically proved dangerous if unpredictable in war, they've been killed by 80-120lb bows that probably didn't deliver much more than 80-120 J. A high-quality steel breastplate would require 300-400+ J to penetrate with an arrow.Last edited by Incanur; 2013-08-05 at 06:40 PM.
Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!
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2013-08-05, 06:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
*shrug*
I'm not sure, most of the stuff that comes to mind immediately for me is kind of edge cases, like the hide of the red kangaroo being able to turn aside low-calibre bullets (at least when tanned into leather, not sure about when it's still attached to the 'roo), that bear skulls can deflect even fairly high calibre bullets unless struck precisely and that an adult grizzly can tear a mid-sized tree up by the roots, or that wolverines, because of their loose skin and incredibly powerful jaws (can bite straight through a deer's legbone with one chomp)... and their phenomenal greed/hunger... will cheerfully attack full-grown bears, and occasionally even win. That's an animal that weighs somewhere in the range of 45 pounds bringing down something that can weigh ten to twenty times that.
As far as dogs... eh, it really depends. I mean, an angry Pomeranian is going to be rather less of a threat than an angry Bordeaux Mastiff, just as an example.
And then there's the psychotic things like wild boars, which will try to run straight up the spear shaft that's impaling them to kill the guy holding it, or hippopotami, who could probably slaughter a small company if it caught them off guard. Don't be fooled by the vaguely cute appearance, hippopotami are vicious buggers.
But yeah. I suppose it depends what you're going for.Last edited by TeChameleon; 2013-08-05 at 06:53 PM.
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2013-08-05, 07:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
(Hm, this post may hav3e ended up unhelpfully rambly...)
Well, I would say that natural armour is really weird in 3.X in general, not just with Animals--for example, a Bearded Devil has +8 natural armour, equal to the absolute best mundane non-exotic armour. Why? Well, because they're CR5 and were designed to have an "appropriate" Armor Class to that, but the designers decided against giving them (lootable) armour such as fullplate, so they just assigned them a weird-when-you-think-about-it-that-way nat armour rating.
It's also a general cultural misconception that humans are just physically weaker than other animals, period. Shows up all over the place, and certainly must have informed 3.X's mechanical choices, e.g. setting 10 as the 'baseline'.
I think, going back to the natural armour question for a moment, that the entire armour system would to some degree have to be re-written in order to have natural versus manufactured armour values make much 'realistic' sense. I mean, even comparing manufactured armours to each other breaks down fast due to it being linear. The difference in protection between padded cloth, i.e. +1 in-game, and fullplate, +8, is 'in reality' muuuuch more than just eight times, rather more like eight hundred, shall we say.
Consider as well that riding dog has the same natural armour rating as a crocodile. Just...what?
And it's not just 'animal superiority' inherent in the system, either, because they get gypped in terms of intellect. IRL, creatures such as some cetaceans, some parrots, etc, are in at least the same general ballpark as humans, but in 3.X, an Animal has an INT of 1 or of 2, no exceptions. Ridiculous.I think I just failed a Spot check.
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2013-08-05, 07:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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2013-08-05, 07:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
When I lived in Sitka, Alaska, (a bush island with nearly as many Grizzlies as people,) it was pretty universally acknowledged you needed a .50 cal to go up against one. The only handgun that any woodsman or cop would recommend you venture into bear territory with, (someone got mauled every few years or so,) was this guy. http://ww3.hdnux.com/photos/10/13/26.../5/628x471.jpg
Looks like Hellboy's gun. While a .44 magnum may kill a bear, it certainly wouldn't kill it fast enough to stop it from killing you first. A lot of people favored the .50 cal lever action Marlin precisely because it is tied for THE most powerful non-military rifle you can buy in America. And if you wanted to stop the bear before it reached you you needed to put one in both lungs. (At which point, yeah, even a grizzly will drop like a sack of potatoes.)
I'm sure a headshot would do it, too, but military/cops/hunters are all trained to shoot for center mass because A. if you miss by a little you don't miss entirely and B. the chest moves around the least.
Again, even fairly small caliber rifles WILL penetrate the hide of a grizzly and probably kill it. That isn't why you need such overkill. Animal hide won't stop even a .22. It's that it won't kill it fast enough to save your life.
Yes, an arrow can go through an elephant hide. In the right spot, or enough of them, can even kill an elephant. But cultures that hunted elephants banked on the elephant running away and then they tracked them down and found their corpse much later.
People hunt elephants. A lot are poachers. But certain areas in Sub-Saharan Africa where elephants are over populated open themselves up to international hunters. And should the elephant get pissed and decide to charge you, the only way to kill it fast enough to survive is to destroy it's brain or maybe the heart. They hunt these things in groups of six or seven with guns so strong the exit wound is, literally, the size of your head. And throwing 10 to 20 of those rounds into an elephant will not drop it dead. One of those bullets has to hit the head. (Which, relative to other animals, is still a pretty big target.)
To hunt cape buffalo safely, (ha, safely, they kill a lot of people. Who have guns. And hunting experience.) you'll want a bow with a 90 pound pull give or take ten pounds. Ever tried to pull that back? I have. (Tried, I mean. I never did it, gosh, no.) I would of been lucky to do it in high school during tennis season when I worked out a couple hours a day. Even then I highly doubt I could.
Watch this: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6b...ion_shortfilms
If you are wondering how they all missed so much, they didn't. Some missed. But the lion was hit 3, maybe 4 times before dying. The lion just kept shrugging it off as bullets strong enough to easily rip off your hand and leave a stump passed through it. And it kept running and jumping. Animals can be DANG tough. Back when lion hunting was legal, they used to hunt them with two or three massive hunting dogs. I'm talking those monster terriers that even on all four legs stand half as tall as a person. Those dogs aren't to tree a lion and its a crapshoot if the lion will run or not. The dogs are to slow the lion down about ten or fifteen seconds to give you time to plug it enough times to kill it.
Cougars can drag a 600 pound sack backwards up a 45 degree incline with its teeth. Strong enough to decapitate someone then add in inch long sharp claws. Maybe they aren't a good example in this conversation, though. They don't like pain and you can kill one with a 9mm handgun. In D&D terms, high strength, low constitution. (Crazy vulnerable to disease. They die like flies when diseases pass around.)
Finally, I shall leave you with this article if you want nightmares. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_(crocodile)Last edited by SowZ; 2013-08-05 at 08:12 PM.
Homebrew PrC: The Performance Artist
Avatar by Kymme
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2013-08-05, 11:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again--you don't need dragons and werewolves and all these monster creatures to make your world's wildlife interesting and dangerous to adventurers, not when we have stuff like this in real life. If I ever run a game for a party with a ranger, I'm totally throwing them a quest to take down something like this.
Last edited by Amaril; 2013-08-05 at 11:31 PM.
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2013-08-05, 11:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
You know those news stories that come out every few years or so about a dog mauling a jogger? Ever notice how they pretty much never end with the jogger coming out on top unless they're armed, even though they're probably a lot bigger than the dog?
Another, slightly gorier case from my personal experience. Every year we butcher and roast a pig on the Fourth of July. The first step in this process is shooting the pig in the head with a .22. Couple two years ago the pig turned its head just as Dad squeezed the trigger, so the bullet that was supposed to land dead center in the forehead hit just above the eyebrow. It still penetrated the skull, and there was a reasonably impressive amount of blood. The pig was obviously in a lot of pain, and probably mortally wounded. Didn't fall over. Dad, who outweighed the pig by at least a hundred pounds, couldn't even knock the pig over. Even at a hundred pounds, an ordinary pig is basically as strong as your average adult.Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2013-08-06, 12:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
Yes and no. In my view, a skilled human warrior armed with typical medieval weapons would either survive a cage match or make it a mutual kill. This account of a Frankish crusader versus bear both informs and illustrates my position. Despite being surprised and wounding himself in the leg with his own sword, Duke Godfrey nonetheless punched the bear in the face with a mailed fist until help arrived. Said help killed the bear with a sword. This version has an extended brawl between bear and knight, but the effect is roughly the same. It's a familiar story. Various folks have killed bears and at least one lion up close with knives, though they usually get injured in the process.
This strikes at the heart of the issue. Hits points don't effectively model the long-term effects of wounds. Lots of fatal piercing injuries kill over minutes or hours.
To hunt cape buffalo safely, (ha, safely, they kill a lot of people. Who have guns. And hunting experience.) you'll want a bow with a 90 pound pull give or take ten pounds.
If you are wondering how they all missed so much, they didn't. Some missed. But the lion was hit 3, maybe 4 times before dying.
The lion just kept shrugging it off as bullets strong enough to easily rip off your hand and leave a stump passed through it.Last edited by Incanur; 2013-08-06 at 12:11 AM.
Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!
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2013-08-06, 12:14 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
Have you ever dealt with a big dog? The ones that are half the size of a person can all but floor you when they're playing. If a man-sized dog is actually trying, it can easily knock you down. I've heard it's hard for humans to fight dogs partly because of their size; they can just rip at you while you have to strike downward.
Also, the "riding dog" is twice the size of a normal dog, and trained for war.
Elephants are goddamn monsters. Sometimes they go berserk from severe psychological trauma (poaching/habitat-destruction usually), and can destroy multiple towns until someone can get a big enough gun to take them down. An elephant can pick you up with its trunk and just dash you on a hard surface if it doesn't feel like goring you or crushing your head like a melon.
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2013-08-06, 12:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
Doesn't AC reflect not only your actual armor strength but also ability to dodge and parry?
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2013-08-06, 12:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
They do work that way in high enough calibers. If the exit wound is bigger than the length of your wrist, a bullet can rip your hand off. You can stick both your fists in the exit wound of an old school blackpowder of the 50 caliber variety and modern guns get much faster than that. An animal getting its leg blown off is not too uncommon.
As for hunting lions with spears, certain Masai tribes practiced this frequently up until pretty recently, and a few still do it.Last edited by SowZ; 2013-08-06 at 12:53 AM.
Homebrew PrC: The Performance Artist
Avatar by Kymme
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2013-08-06, 01:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
Dogs are an interesting case because of the curious tales of Spanish war dogs against Amerindians. Such dogs supposedly had great success against human warriors, especially when armored to endure arrows. However, war dogs had no such efficacy in Europe, though they certainly saw service here and there. While I suspect chroniclers have exaggerated the potency has Spanish war dogs, the Amerindian lack of armor and metal weapons surely would render dogs more dangerous.
That didn't work so well for the elephant in this one case. When armored as well as guided and supported by humans, the elephant has a decent record on the battlefield, though they at times proved more of a liability than an asset. The linked book offers lots of fascinating accounts of elephants at war.Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!
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2013-08-06, 05:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
Imagine if all real-world conversations were like internet D&D conversations...
Protip: DnD is an incredibly social game played by some of the most socially inept people on the planet - Lev
I read this somewhere and I stick to it: "I would rather play a bad system with my friends than a great system with nobody". - Trevlac
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2013-08-06, 05:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying
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2013-08-06, 06:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. (W.Whitman)
Things that increase my self esteem:
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2013-08-06, 06:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
Aren't they angry by default?
A lot of animals have the advantage of natural weapons (sharp teeth and claws) and being four-legged does make one more stable on the ground to wrestle than those of us on two legs.
And yeah, crocs are nasty for D&D adventurers.
"Four legs good, two legs bad!" -Animal Farm
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2013-08-06, 07:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
Ugh at this topic.
44mag is fine for hunting grizzly (hunting is about shot placement) and the hotter loads are fine for self defense against them. You don't need* to go up to 454 casull, 50 ae or even 500s&w.
As for dogs attacking humans, I have at least 100lbs on even a big dog. I've been attacked by strays, it always ends with the **** getting kicked out of them. I really wish people would stop pretending that humans are physically inferior to animals in every way. A lot of the times we have a mechanical advantage, we certainly have more endurance, adaptability and an understanding of anatomy.
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2013-08-06, 07:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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2013-08-06, 09:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
It also reflects the difficulty to score a hit against a vital organ. Anyone can hit an elephant with a rifle. The difficulty is hitting it in the right spot so that you can actually hurt it.
Same goes for most dangerous animals. An angry bear won't give a flip about a shot to the back or hip unless the bullet actually penetrates and hits bone or tendon.
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2013-08-06, 11:14 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
44 mag is fine for hunting grizzly if you are hunting them and expect the bear to run. It should be dead or at least unconscious in minutes. If you are carrying the gun because you are afraid of the grizzly attacking you, a 44 mag is not fine against Sitka/Kodiak Grizzly because unless you throw 2 mags into each lung or happen to hit the heart or brain or something it won't drop dead immediately.
An Alaskan grizzly charging you gives you seconds to drop it before it reaches you. A 50 cal is going to be needed to kill it on impact.Last edited by SowZ; 2013-08-06 at 11:16 AM.
Homebrew PrC: The Performance Artist
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2013-08-06, 12:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
Humans are kind of bad at fighting quadpedals, because they expect the said animal to fight like a human. When a dog starts running at you, they will pin you and go for your throat. A human trying that would be notably less effective. But a dog trying to punch you in the nose is really bad at fighting. A human's kick holds a lot more power than most people think, and could do a lot of damage to a leaping dog if it hits their face.
(I don't speak from experience, please don't sue me)I'M NOT CRAZY!!
I just find sanity a rather dull affair
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2013-08-06, 12:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
Regarding human strength;
As you yourself noted, you have a massive weight advantage versus most dogs, so the fact that you can overpower one is fairly unimpressive. The fact of the matter is, humans have substantially lower muscle density than most animals. Consider, for example, the difference in physical strength between an average human and an average chimpanzee.
Now, what humans do have in our favor is the fact that we happen to have abnormally high levels of endurance, courtesy in large part to how our feet our designed. In prehistoric times, our ancestors would hunt animals essentially by chasing them until they were too exhausted to move, at which point the coup de grace could be administered courtesy of a handy stick and/or rock.If brute force isn't working, that just means you're not using enough of it.
When in doubt, set something on fire. If not in doubt, set something on fire anyway.
My Homebrew
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2013-08-06, 01:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
There's a psychological element to this, I think. Most modern humans aren't mentally prepared for a fight. When we are, we can do crazy things like take knives and bullets and keep fighting. I think animals, in general, tend to be a lot closer to that place than we are.
Seriously, the list of things that real-world men and women have done is insane. We're not any less tough than animals, most of us are just kind of soft.
Running 135 miles in Death Valley in July is a thing that people do for fun.
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2013-08-06, 01:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
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2013-08-06, 04:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
There are humans and dogs, and then there are humans and dogs. An urban low-life stands almost nill chance against a trained German shepherd, while an angry father can easily kick the tar out of an uppity family dog. There is a great deal of variance between inviduals. Some people break their wrists when punching a wall, others break the wall.
"It's the fate of all things under the sky,
to grow old and wither and die."
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2013-08-06, 07:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
In regards to war dogs
first for the Spanish/ native Americans there is a psychological factor war dogs are huge and the Spanish ones were incredible vicious often fed on human flesh (primarily for that psychological threat i suspect). The natives would have had no dogs even remotely close to that size so combined with their raw speed and all the other strange and disheartening things that came along with the Europeans they would have had a effect far outweighing their physical threat.
in regards to size according to Wikipedia the Spanish mastiff is between 176 and 264 pounds if male. keeping in mind a aztec would likely be smaller then most Americans do you think that sounds like a fair fight?
also a trained war dog, trained to attack and kill humans would be vastly more aggressive and willing to push the attack then any random street cur.Last edited by awa; 2013-08-06 at 07:08 PM.
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2013-08-06, 07:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
Some dogs stand over 3 feet tall and weigh 200 pounds+. They would rip most people apart.
Homebrew PrC: The Performance Artist
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2013-08-06, 07:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
We're not physically less capable than most animals, but most animals are physically adapted to hunting or defending themselves. If you can catch a deer I don't doubt killing it with a switch blade is entirely possible, but good luck catching one on foot. With dogs there's a reason they can be dangerous. Strays run when hurt, a dog trained to hunt lions probably isn't going to run and it is certainly trained to hunt something more dangerous than a human being (at least in so far compared to the dog). Then there's the whole pack hunting thing, dogs alone aren't much of a match for a adult human but three or four of them of any reasonable size is much more dangerous.
Its just like stories of unarmed, or minimally armed people, fighting and killing a tiger. That is one hell of an epic feat given that most tigers could put my head in their mouth.Last edited by Beleriphon; 2013-08-06 at 07:41 PM.
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2013-08-06, 07:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2013-08-06, 07:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How tough *are* animals?
you can, some did, but i was talking specifically about the Spanish and i have no idea if they did it wasn't mentioned in any of the books i read one way or the other.