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I'm always very interested in how animals act in so many tabletop games. That is, a healthy animal or even a hungry one will keep attacking a creature who is a very bad food source, when most animals (outside some more bull-headed species) will hightail it after getting smacked once, or maybe twice.
Why does this end up happening so often?
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In Pathfinder, I think it's because Lamashtu murdered a god and ripped the domain of Beasts from his cooling carcass.
In general, it's because actual animal behavior is not very exciting for the game, and it'd be a shame to waste so many good free monster designs.
A PCs snimal is no less sane than its PCs. I mean, being a PC is basically the opposite of sanity.
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A PCs snimal is no less sane than its PCs. I mean, being a PC is basically the opposite of sanity.
They grow to resemble their masters. So much so, that a higher level Animal Companion will slaughter any other wild beast over a minor trifle then systematically rob the animal's corpse of anything worth over a copper piece.
If it is a dire animal (which likely includes a lot of animals after the first few levels, since they are the upgraded versions that extend the longevity as enemies), then I can excuse it, since they have been somewhat characterized as a 'nature's revenge' thing, so they are born to fight off humans.
If it is a herbivore, then I would totally believe that it would fight fiercely. From my understanding of big african game, their main survival strategy is 'splat every potential threat to prevent future problems'. They are not in it for the meat like a lion is- the lion would give up after it finds that it would spend more energy healing than it would get from eating you. Nope, rhinos survive by actively zoning out all threats so nothing attacks their babies, or their potential babies they have after mating season.
Hell, wildebeasts are even characterized as 'vengeful', with instances where they actively hunt down hunters that tried to shoot them. So they take this to the extreme.
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Hippos are seriously deadly. Don't mess with hippos. Or swans.
I run animals pretty realistically. If they're defending a kill, they'll fight for it pretty hard. If they're defending their young, the same thing. But if they're just hunting and things go against them, they retreat after taking a beating from the PCs.
A cat that happens to live in the same house as me, and that I provide food and medical treatments to, routinely attacks me despite being healthy and well fed.
There fixed it for ya! ;-)
A cat that happens to live in the same house as me, and that I provide food and medical treatments to, routinely attacks me despite being healthy and well fed.There fixed it for ya! ;-)
And there is your probable reason for the attacks, it's been FIXED.
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I run animals pretty realistically. If they're defending a kill, they'll fight for it pretty hard. If they're defending their young, the same thing. But if they're just hunting and things go against them, they retreat after taking a beating from the PCs.
I do this as well. If I expect that a few of the enemies will flee but I wouyld like to keep the encounter challenging, I will add an additional enemy or two. Role-playing the manerisms of animals during an encounter can make things interesting. In fact, sometimes manerisms of an animal to a monster (like making a dragon pounce like a cat or play with it's prey) can be fun too.
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Most of the APs I've read have standard animals behaving pretty realistically, with excerpts saying that they'll flee if injured enough or scared away. Otherwise, I run them as a situation demands it (i.e. some species are very territorial or aggressive, whereas most will ignore or flee from sapient lifeforms).