In the Pathfinder world, most untrained mercenaries and blacksmiths can easily defeat a full-grown gorilla in an arm-wrestling contest, without breaking a sweat. 15 Strength? For a gorilla?
I can think of only two reasons to make such an egregious rules quirk, neither of which, in my opinion, justifies the ridiculousness of the change:
1. To make the monster's threat match its CR.
A: Increase the CR, rather than decreasing the Strength.
2. To make ape animal companions weaker.
A: Specifically set starting ape companion stats with a lower STR.
There's ample precedent for this.
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I know that real-world logic doesn't apply to RPGs, but, come on. A RL chimpanzee is something like 5 times stronger than a full-grown man, and a gorilla is stronger still. In Pathfinder, scaling down, a child could outwrestle a chimp. There's something very wrong there.
Your blacksmith is going to have 10 str, 12 if he is heroic. A mercenary, melee, is going to going to have a 13, 15 if he is heroic. 15 is well above average human strength. Most untrained mercs and blacksmiths are weaker.
Blacksmith (1st level human commoner): put 11 in STR, and the +2 human racial bonus, and he's got a 13: very close. Heroic uses the elite stat array, so the merc gets an additional +4, for 17 STR: he's stronger than the gorilla. And essentially ALL 1st level PC barbarians are stronger than gorillas -- a LOT stronger while raging.
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Keep in mind, the elite array (and PCs in general) represent exceptional individuals. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me that a heroic strongman would be stronger than a gorilla. The vast majority of people, even blacksmiths and mercenaries, are probably going to be ending up with the 13 you talk about above. And these are the people who are "unusually" strong. Joe average commoner will probably just have the base 10 or 11 (probably putting his human +2 in Int or Wis for the Craft or Profession skill he makes a living with 8^).
I think gorillas are right where they should be compared to the average person.
From the Guinness book of records, 1975:
In 1924 "Boma" a 165-lb. male chimp at the Bronx zoo, New York, recorded a right handed pull (feet braced) of 847 lbs on a dynamometer. (The comparison given is 210 lbs for a man of the same weight.) On another occasion, "Suzette" registered a pull of 1260 lbs while in a rage (same zoo).
A record form the USA of a 100-lb. chimp achieving a dead lift of 600 lbs with ease sugests that, with training, a male gorilla could raise 1800 lbs.
Using the STR table, that puts the chimp's STR at 23, and the gorilla'a in the 27-30 range! In the interest of game balance, a lesser STR score is warranted, however; the 3.5e STR of 21 for an ape seems about right to me. Lowering it as much as they did serves no useful purpose that I can discern.
EDIT: Over at the Pathfinder SRD they've added a "did you know" note to the gorilla entry, mentioning that a RL gorilla would have something like a 27 STR, and listing optional adjustments to the stats to reflect that. REALLY nice work on their part!
The 5x stronger value has been highly suspect for decades. Here's an interesting article on that very subject: How Strong Is a Chimpanzee?
The 5x stronger value has been highly suspect for decades. Here's an interesting article on that very subject: How Strong Is a Chimpanzee?
Interesting article. Let's abandon the old studies, then, and use the conclusion from your article: "Repeated tests in the 1960s confirmed this basic picture. A chimpanzee had, pound for pound, as much as twice the strength of a human when it came to pulling weights."
An 11 Str, 200-lb. human can pull 575 lbs. (5x max load). A 400-lb. gorilla is twice as heavy, and can pull twice as much per pound, = 2300 lbs. Divide by 5, and its max load is 460 lbs., giving it a strength of 21 -- which is EXACTLY the Strength of the 3.5e ape! Arbitrarily reducing the gorilla's Str to 15 serves no useful purpose that I can detect -- it just makes apes comedic, rather than threatening.
If we're using their known RL weight capacity as a means of generating their strength rating, lets not forget that primates are also primarily quadrupeds, as bipedal movement is not their preferred means of movement.
Quadrupeds can carry heavier loads than bipeds can. Multiply the values corresponding to the creature’s Strength score from Table 7–4 by the appropriate modifier, as follows: Fine ×1/4, Diminutive ×1/2, Tiny ×3/4, Small ×1, Medium ×1-1/2, Large ×3, Huge ×6, Gargantuan ×12, Colossal ×24.
If we're using their known RL weight capacity as a means of generating their strength rating, lets not forget that primates are also primarily quadrupeds, as bipedal movement is not their preferred means of movement.
Despite knuckle-walking, I think you'd be hard pressed to classify a gorilla as a "quadruped" -- certainly not in the way that, say, a horse is. Also, while performing the strength tests, the chimps would be using their arms, and hence standing bipedally.
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Don't congratulate them too much, a Str of 27 would change more than just those three stats.
Yeah it looks like we missed increasing the Climb modifier.
It also appears that a base gorilla's CMB should be +5 not +6 as listed in the PRD. It has been reported on the Bestiary errata thread but it doesn't look like it has been confirmed as errata by Paizo. We based the increased CMB on what we believe to be the correct CMB of +5 not +6.
Tom (or anyone) can you tell me what else we may have missed so we can get it right? We're always open to corrections! We ain't too proud to correct our mistakes!
At least they're getting better about labeling non-PRD stuff.
Thanks! We took the "sour taste in your mouth" to heart and have really been trying to address concerns about labeling what's fan content, whats core content, whats additional content etc, as well as making sure we go above and beyond when it comes to OGL/CUP compliance. It may not be perfect yet but we're getting there and working on it every day.
There's still room for you on the team TOM! Though with your site you'll probably be too busy now :(
@Kirth: Don't forget that a gorilla is built MUCH differently than a chimp in the real world and their upper body is substantially more powerful in proportion to their size difference. Some reading I did today reinforces the estimate of at least 6x a normal human strength and some tests suggest 10-20x though the upper end ones have been discounted in many sources. We went with 10x as a median, basically looking at what a Str 10 human can lift, multiplied by 10, then determined what Str that would equate to. Now of course a gorilla's body is not structurally built for lifting heavy weights over its head due to its hip structure etc, but for our purposes 10x just seemed like a nice round number :)
An 11 Str, 200-lb. human can pull 575 lbs. (5x max load). A 400-lb. gorilla is twice as heavy, and can pull twice as much per pound, = 2300 lbs. Divide by 5, and its max load is 460 lbs., giving it a strength of 21 -- which is EXACTLY the Strength of the 3.5e ape! Arbitrarily reducing the gorilla's Str to 15 serves no useful purpose that I can detect -- it just makes apes comedic, rather than threatening.
If you'll check out a 200 lb chimpanzee-type case, look for double the heavy load compared to a 11 Str, 200 lb human and you get 16 (pretty close to that 15).
Maybe the main issue isn't the strength - it's the choice of artwork. It shouldn't be a gorilla. It should be a chimp.
Edit: And I guess the main text as well as art, but you get the idea. The stats are more Chimpish than gorillaish
An 11 Str, 200-lb. human can pull 575 lbs. (5x max load). A 400-lb. gorilla is twice as heavy, and can pull twice as much per pound, = 2300 lbs. Divide by 5, and its max load is 460 lbs., giving it a strength of 21 -- which is EXACTLY the Strength of the 3.5e ape! Arbitrarily reducing the gorilla's Str to 15 serves no useful purpose that I can detect -- it just makes apes comedic, rather than threatening.
Actually it would be a strength of 16 (230 lbs) as a large creature has it's weight capacity doubled (230x2=460 lbs).
Assuming that a gorilla in this case is a quadruped, you would then multiply that by 1.5 for a heavy load of 690 lbs, and a push/pull wietght of 3,400 lbs.
Arbitrarily reducing the gorilla's Str to 15 serves no useful purpose that I can detect -- it just makes apes comedic, rather than threatening.
Well, I'm pretty sure you hit it on the head with #1 -- the point was to make it a CR 2 creature which should do about 10 damage if all attacks hit (according to the monster creation chart). Of course, that doesn't explain why the crocodile is a relative badass.
Like you said, they could have raised the CR, although I'm not crazy about the idea of having a gorilla be as tough as an ogre personally. EDIT: On second thought, I'm actually pretty indifferent about that.
Despite knuckle-walking, I think you'd be hard pressed to classify a gorilla as a "quadruped" -- certainly not in the way that, say, a horse is. Also, while performing the strength tests, the chimps would be using their arms, and hence standing bipedally.
Technically, primates are concidered quadrupeds with extra means of locomotive behaviours.
Like you said, they could have raised the CR, although I'm not crazy about the idea of having a gorilla be as tough as an ogre personally.
I must be too big an REH fan, then -- back in the Stone Age, he used to be cited as one of the primary influences on the game.
If you'll check out a 200 lb chimpanzee-type case, look for double the heavy load compared to a 11 Str, 200 lb human and you get 16 (pretty close to that 15). Maybe the main issue isn't the strength - it's the choice of artwork. It shouldn't be a gorilla. It should be a chimp.
Edit: And I guess the main text as well as art, but you get the idea. The stats are more Chimpish than gorillaish
That I can go with -- the "gorilla" stats given, with a size change to Medium, are for chimpanzees; people can then Advance a chimp to size Large to get gorilla stats; and dire apes would be adjusted as well (as MiB points out).
What we're looking at here is that even people who use the absolute minimum strength equivalency for apes are ending up with 16-Str chimps. The 15-Str gorilla has no use except to reinforce the idea that apes are for comic relief, not for combat ("Bedtime for Bonzo d20!").
Like you said, they could have raised the CR, although I'm not crazy about the idea of having a gorilla be as tough as an ogre personally.I must be too big an REH fan, then -- back in the Stone Age, he used to be cited as one of the primary influences on the game.
How tough are Howard's ogres?
(Note: I later amended my comment to indicate I'm indifferent on the issue.)
Dire apes are also curiously puny. They have str 19, despite being large. That means they lose arm-wrestling contests with ogres. :(
I agree that's pretty lame.
Creative Director
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The in-game reason:
When we were converting monsters over, we built a pretty extensive chart (table 1–1 in the bestiary) that we used to set benchmarks for damage, hit points, AC, attacks, saves, and save DCs for every monster, all orginized by CR. This allowed us to make the monsters in the Bestiary more balanced than ever for their CR scores, since the numbers are based upon expectations of how much damage an average group of PCs will be able to dish out and handle.
We ALSO wanted to preserve as many of the CR scores in the game as possible, mostly to preserve compatibility. It wouldn't do to switch the CRs of monsters around too much because suddenly they'd no longer be appropriate encounters for 3.5 adventures, and more to the point, they'd suddenly change into new categories of threat that just felt "off" after seeing them at their current category of CR for 10 or so years.
So when we were rebuilding the bestiary monsters, we had to make changes. And in the case of gorillas, you see the effects of that. We had to reduce their strength score pretty considerably in order to make them fit in the expected damage range for a CR 2 monster. Further complicating the scene is the fact that we have the dire ape at CR 3, and we wanted HIM to be an appropriate threat at CR 3 as well. but the fact that he's got rend complicates things; we had to nerf the dire ape in order to bring him in line with CR 3, and that actually had ripple effects on the normal ape, since we didn't want the normal ape to be as strong as a dire ape. And then when you factor in the girallion... things got REALLY kinda tricksy...
In retrospect, we probably should have just reduced the normal ape to Medium size as well to help explain its "feeble" strength score of 15.
The in-game reason:
When we were converting monsters over, we built a pretty extensive chart (table 1–1 in the bestiary) that we used to set benchmarks for damage, hit points, AC, attacks, saves, and save DCs for every monster, all orginized by CR. This allowed us to make the monsters in the Bestiary more balanced than ever for their CR scores, since the numbers are based upon expectations of how much damage an average group of PCs will be able to dish out and handle.
We ALSO wanted to preserve as many of the CR scores in the game as possible, mostly to preserve compatibility. It wouldn't do to switch the CRs of monsters around too much because suddenly they'd no longer be appropriate encounters for 3.5 adventures, and more to the point, they'd suddenly change into new categories of threat that just felt "off" after seeing them at their current category of CR for 10 or so years.
So when we were rebuilding the bestiary monsters, we had to make changes. And in the case of gorillas, you see the effects of that. We had to reduce their strength score pretty considerably in order to make them fit in the expected damage range for a CR 2 monster. Further complicating the scene is the fact that we have the dire ape at CR 3, and we wanted HIM to be an appropriate threat at CR 3 as well. but the fact that he's got rend complicates things; we had to nerf the dire ape in order to bring him in line with CR 3, and that actually had ripple effects on the normal ape, since we didn't want the normal ape to be as strong as a dire ape. And then when you factor in the girallion... things got REALLY kinda tricksy...
In retrospect, we probably should have just reduced the normal ape to Medium size as well to help explain its "feeble" strength score of 15.
All of that, to spare you simply upping the CR by 1? Wow. Chalk this up to another case of "backwards compatibility" resulting in "rules that don't quite work" -- I'm starting to wonder if we wouldn't have an even more awesome game if you guys had just started from scratch! Still, thanks for the reply.
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Creative Director
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All of that, to spare you simply upping the CR by 1? Wow. Chalk this up to another case of "backwards compatibility" resulting in "rules that don't quite work" -- I'm starting to wonder if we wouldn't have an even more awesome game if you guys had just started from scratch! Still, thanks for the reply.
We didn't ALWAYS slave ourselves to the old CR scores. Look at the kraken. We bumped him up to CR 18, because we just couldn't make something that was Gargantuan with 11 or so attacks fit at CR 12.
But for the apes and dire apes... there's another complication. By the time we got into developing the apes for the Bestiary, the Core Rules were already pretty locked in. And since those rules were built assuming CR 2 apes and CR 3 dire apes for druids to wildshape into and to summon with summon nature's ally... we couldn't change their CR scores. They HAD to stay the same.
As it was, we had a fair bit of problems with monsters on those summon spell tables shifting in power and CR... I'm a bit shocked the tables weren't more messed up.
Anyway... if you want stronger apes in your game, it's a simple matter to throw the advanced simple template onto them and presto! Stronger apes!
Anyway... if you want stronger apes in your game, it's a simple matter to throw the advanced simple template onto them and presto! Stronger apes!
Amen! Or I can still use their SRD counterparts, which is a very clear advantage of backwards compatibility. Thanks again, James.
P.S.
All of that, to spare you simply upping the CR by 1? Wow. Chalk this up to another case of "backwards compatibility" resulting in "rules that don't quite work" -- I'm starting to wonder if we wouldn't have an even more awesome game if you guys had just started from scratch! Still, thanks for the reply.
I'm reasonably OK with it. It means that any adventure that had these creatures in it, at their old CR level, can be run without really changing the EL of the encounter. I assume that's the goal of fixing the redesign around the already-set CR. And I can agree with that goal even if it does mean that gorillas kind of get reduced to chimpanzees. That's easy enough to change on the fly (heck, as chimps they'd have the potential to be even more aggressive than gorillas, so no tears shed here).
It means that any adventure that had these creatures in it, at their old CR level, can be run without really changing the EL of the encounter. I assume that's the goal of fixing the redesign around the already-set CR. And I can agree with that goal even if it does mean that gorillas kind of get reduced to chimpanzees.
True enough. I'm still going to reset the CR 2 guys as Medium, and I'll descibe them as chimps, but your (and Paizo's) approach works -- just not quite as anticipated.