Hi there!

I am currently planning on playing a shaman, who has the Shapechange spell to transform himself into a (small house) cat. That means: I'd need the physical attributes for cats. Unfortunately, the Core Rules only have stats for Great Cats, which are hardly useful for me. And I'm just too impatient to wait for the critter SB (I also doubt it will have cats in it).
That's why I've created my own stats 4 cats here. I would really appreciate if you could have a look at them and give me your opinion. Although I only need the physical attributes (plus the movement speed and powers), I have also made stats for mental attributes and skills, just in order to make it a complete thing. As a means of comparison, I have sticked to the stats of the dog for orientation.


House Cat

BOD: 2
AGI: 4
REA: 3
STR: 2

CHA: 4
INT: 3
LOG: 1
WIL: 3

EDG: 3
ESS: 6
INI: 6
IPs: 1

Movement: 10/45

Skills: Climbing 2, Infiltration 3, Perception 2, Unarmed Combat 2

Powers: Enchanced Senses (Night Vision), Natural Weapon (Claws/Bite: DV 1P, AP 0)

You should probably base stats on those of a devil rat (BBB p292), though why they qualify for body 2, I'm not really sure.

Strength 2 seems way too high for me. This would mean that an average cat is as strong as an undertrained human. I agree with Crusher Bob on Body. A cat as a predator hunting fast mammals could qualify for reaction 4.

ever had to deal with a REALLY angry cat? O.o
those stats are much more believable than you would think *g*

Angry housecats can destroy worlds, indeed.

Though remember, in SR4, 2 is the general, average stat of Joe Regular walking down the street these days. As strong as an angry housecat is(perhaps they have a 'Berserk' power that gives them these stats ), Im not sure if it's as strong as roughly 50% of the general populace.

Wait, wait wait.

The average guy in the average job in the average part of your average Plex is supposedly almost solid 2's.

How is it that a house cat is smarter, stronger willed, massively more charismatic, with more edge than allot of Runners and and a strength and bod equal to a one hundred and eighty pound man?

Sorry, but other than reaction*3 and agility*3 I can't see any HOUSE CAT having anything else but 1's in stats...and I've had cats all my life and am a HUGE cat FAN.

Unless of course your house cat is a cougar. Then up the strength and bod to 3 or 4, drop the charisma down and you might be close.


Isshia

Heh, considering that they gave devil rats CHA 5, I think I'll just get some of what they were smoking at the time and make up some numbers.

Got that right.

The older 3E stuff was weird to in many places that way. They got really idiotic at times. The average shark was smarter than the average troll for instance. But that doesn't mean we should carry the tradition forward. The only thing that speaks against giving most animals solid ones in most stats is the lack of variation thus engendered; but damn, do we really need that much stat variation for a house cat?


Isshia

One quick thing: Do small critters also have 8 + Bod/2 damage boxes?

the stronger willed is easy enough for cats . . hell, even dwarves seem docile compared to cats some times *g*
i've grown up with cats, i've lived with cats for about 90% of my life . . and cats are hella strong if they want to . . it took 2 big men to hold my tomcat down once, to give a big dog chance to escape . . and who wants to argue about cats being charismatic bastards? *g* those cute little engines of bloodshed and furniture destruction . . why would we love cats like we do if they weren't so cute and charismatic if they want to? ^^ and more edge is easy . . cats are supposed to have 9 lives because they are hard to kill, so there's your edge right there o.O and the body factors into staying alive too, so it's explainable . . ok, strength IS a bit wonky . . but hell, cats can drag more than their own weight up frigging trees and JUMP while doing that . . granted that's a big cat, but still . .

Don't give stats to cats if you do not want runners to shoot them!

Let us assume that most players have strength 2(low average). That said, find a cat, wrap your arms around it to grapple(an opposed strengthtest) and then spray the cat with water so it REALLY wants to get out...see who is still there after 30 seconds

Of course, I think the people arguing against those stats do not own cats.

I don't think you need to worry about the mental stats of cats. If you shapechange, you keep your mental stats. And it's not like they go around making social rolls in normal play. I would say give them Bod 1 Str 1 Rea 4 Agi 4.

EDIT: If cats had strength higher than 1, I'd expect that they could move like 50 pounds without much effort... They can't. Their ability to escape from someone is not based on their strength, but on their agility and sharp claws. Their claws don't do much, they just hurt you enough that the cat can wiggle free. SR4's grapple rules only count strength unfortunately, but that shouldn't be the basis of a house cat's stats. Because technically if a house cat had strength of 2, it should be able to knock people down, immobilize parts of them with grappling, move heavy weights... I don't think they should be able to do any of those things.

This seems good for outdoors cats...
My cats are indoors cats, I'd stat them about the same but 3's instead of 4's in Agi and Rea...

Cats are downright dangerous, and I've had one that's tried to kill me on a number of occasions.

And not just through my allergies.

I think this would be because of their skill, I'd stat my cats with 1 in unarmed combat, while my moms cats, who are outdoors cats, would get a skill of 3...

Of course, their "cause allergy" attack is not to be triffled with...

Well, if it was that dangerous, it would have succeeded, wouldn't it? Of course that's only me assuming you're not dead...

This was an indoor cat. And, of course, he used his High Charisma on his owner to fool him.

But I knew the cat had it in for me...

I KNOW!

Well of course it did...
I mean you're only human...
It seems like indoors cats get the "People Empathy" Quality...
'Cause I know my cats can get me to give them anything...
Little manipulating... Oh, gotta stop, they're looking at me...

Cat Stats/Skills need to be compared to other animals, not against humans etc.

Cats are stronger and more agile than us humans. Yes they can alot of damage to the unprepared.

WMS
Cat Rescuer/Volunteer 15+ years

one can only compare cats of similar body weight and size to humans, and nobody will argue about lions and tigers being much stronger, faster and tougher than us puny humans right? O.o
Canines of similar Size ain't that bad . . Wolves are not fit to fight Tigers and Cougars one on one either *g*
Cats are Natures Dikote'd Katana!

The first time I read the title all i could think was:
Stats 4 cats...

In hats.

the title is actually a neat little play on words, utilizing the SR version number 4 instead of using the word for in the sentence stats for cats *g*
but cats in hats get shot at. period.

That depends, does the guy holding the cat care if the cat dies? If not, he'll simply snap the cats spine like a dry twig with a single convulsion.

Look, the cat is NOT even in the same range as a small child strength wise, no matter how much they are loved as pets. It is ludicrous to compare relative strength in that manner. Even a really small cat will beat the snot out of a large dog, until the dog gets serious...then it's cat tartar. When you are holding back 90% because you don't want to hurt the pet, of course it seems this way, but not when you stop and think about it for a few seconds. Even a small child, eight to ten years old, can be a handful for FOUR large men to hold down if it is in a panic. I've seen this with a severely autistic child who had a massive cut on the back of his leg and four very strong emergency room staffers trying to hold him still while he was sedated.

I've owned cats all my life, sometimes having as many as a dozen or more at the same time when I lived out in the country, and LOVE cats and they ARE amazing creatures...but fan boyness (or girlness) aside, they are NOT even in one fifth the strength range of the average guy who sits in an office eight hours a day, nor able to absorb even half THAT much a difference in punishment and keep going.



Isshia

- Just to get something straight here: The average rating for John Doe and Joe Average is 3, not 2. Hence, my cat stats would give them Body & Strength below the human average.
- Since the dog has Body 3 (afair; right now I am lacking a rule book), I reduced the cat to body 2. That's precisely the rating of a Devil's Rat, which should have about the same size.
- Strength 2 or 1 - that's arguable, you're right. Originally, I gave it 2 in order to provide cats with better climbing skills; maybe I'd better change Strength to 1 and add one die to Climbing.
- Reaction 4 sounds plausible to me.
- The (relatively) high Charisma, Intuition, Willpower and Edge ratings are based on the comparison with the dog. I only added one die to Charisma (anyone who is familiar with cats should find this change to be justified ). As for the Edge I agree that it's incredibly high, but again it's the dog's rating I have copied. The reference to cats' nine lives should be considered here, though *g*



You got it. Long live the pun!

The cat shat on the mat. (Yay, that one should finally get me a reprimand from Medizinmann)

Do you pick up your cat, or does your cat pick you up?
Cat = Str 1

When I pick up my cat and he wants to get away, he wiggles and squirms and gets out. That's AGIL, not STR.

When there is a lound noise, I blink and I don't even know where my cat is anymore. That's high Reaction, again with high agil.

When my cat does something bad, I spray him with water and chase him away. He comes back and does it again. This is debatable, but IMO that's high Will (seriously, cats don't deal well with orders).

Overall, I think Stalker-x's stats are pretty good.

a cat your size(e.g. Lion/Tiger) would pick up you and you would not be able to pick it up, because they are frigging heavy for their size . . which comes from their high muscle density which gives them incredible strength . . Gepards or leopards or something like that, i ain't sure how they are called in english, actually drag their food which consists of antilopes roughly their own size up frigging trees o.O

Right. But we are not talking about tigers here. And I still have to meet the house cat being able to carry me onto a tree...

A tiger should of course have a much higher strength than 1. One of the problems here is, that the SR rules are clearly made for humanoid characters. They don't scale too well with animals.

*snickers*

With spats.


I would also agree with strength 1 and body 1, agility and reaction 3 or 4 sounds fair too. I would like a magician with the catshape spell in my game, but mostly because the street sam has a cat allergy. Of course, now I have stats, so I can have the odd cat wandering around.


Note: a Lion or a Tiger is quite a lot larger than your average person, whereas a cat is much smaller. It's a rare cat that weighs as much as 20lbs. Also AFAIK the dogs stated in the book are large guard dogs like rotweilers or dobermans.

Devil rats are just kinda freaky, and magic.

i had a tomcat once. he was LARGE . . i am not too small myself(1,86-1,90m), but his back was about at my knee while both me and him were standing straight . .
and cats have allways been magical mammals, so why should they not get a little boost? <.<

My PCs live with 2 normal cats, a taliscat, and her four kitties. Two of them will be taken in by the mage of the group once they are old enough (the mage's protests not withstanding). Curious about the stats for them (currently using great cat stats for the cheeta form).

And a gat.

Ah... Shadow Seus....

Word. I got bitten by a feral "domestic" tomcat four weeks ago, Saturday. I'm glad it only had the one go at me before letting go. I can still count the marks and its canines are all going to leave scars.

In Soviet Russia, cats pick YOU up!
SCNR

---

Okay, I've read the dog paragraph once more and noticed something I hadn't seen before:



These stats, which are obviously above the average, attribute a BOD-rating of 2 to the dog, and a STR of 2. As for STR, I'm convinced that STR 1 is fine for cats.

BOD, however, should remain 2. The comparison with the devil rat supports this statement:



If you have one, go and stretch your cat and look if she's about a meter in lenth (including tail; and have fun with the scratch wounds when taking the size ). It should be roundabout 1 meter.
In the meantime, wikipedia has done your weighing for you; the average cat's weight is indeed four kilos.



Thus, the body mass of devil rats and cats should be relatively similar, which would justify applying the rat's BOD (2) to the cat.

Now that's been a really furry fread


-----

I guess I'd better update the stats posted at the beginning, so people won't need to read all of the thread to get them right:

House Cat

BOD: 2
AGI: 4
REA: 4
STR: 1

CHA: 4
INT: 3
LOG: 1
WIL: 3

EDG: 3
ESS: 6
INI: 6
IPs: 1

Movement: 10/45

Skills: Climbing 3, Infiltration 3, Perception 2, Unarmed Combat 2

Powers: Enchanced Senses (Night Vision), Natural Weapon (Claws/Bite: DV 1P, AP 0)

I don't think I've ever seen a housecat that had the same capability to absorb damage that a rottweiler has.

Devil Rats are listed with Bod 2, but they're magical. In general the paranimals seem to have higher stats than their mundane cousins, so I don't think the comparison applies. If you wanted to compare devil rats to blackberry cats, then the score might be more appropriate (I don't have my books with me - what is the bod score of a blackberry cat?)

Magic is no "killer argument" to solve all logical problems. What does magical capacity change in regard to your physical stats? Nothing, if you're not an adept with the proper powers.
In a system that has so little potential of differentiation through its ratings (where even humans are only given six categories to distinguish one from the other), blurring most of the fine distinctions that exist outside the game is inevitable. The only thing I know for sure is the following: if I give BOD 1 to a cat, this cat will have the same Body rating as its much smaller prey - rats and mice. And that's ridiculous. Facing that comparison, I'd rather put the cat into the same category as dogs.

Nit to pick, all "feral" cats by definition are "domestic". Ie Feral means gone wild, ie domestic cats that have been dumped, bred, etc and raised with out human interaction. All other felines species here in NA, are never used with the word feral like feral mountain lion.

If you have been only bitten once you are lucky I have been involved in cat rescue for over 10+ years, I have forgotten the number of times I have bitten, several times requiring Emergency room care/treatment.

Yes cats are stronger than us, but all other animals are also.

WMS

I literally just posted stats for house kitties in an unrelated thread not 5 minutes ago and then read this thread. That is creepy.

I actually gave cats the con skill just to be silly. I was deciding if etiquette was more appropriate but then I realized neither of my cats give a shit about what I think of them, so I gave them con instead.

Although, from how my cat is staring longingly at me upside down right now, I'm mightily tempted to give them the control actions spell power.

These were the stats that I posted

Cat, Domestic:
These statistics represent the average housecat. They range in color and size just like normal cats.
B A R S C I L W EDG ESS Init IP
1 5 5 1 3 4 1 4 4 6 9 2
Movement: 20/35
Skills: Infiltration 4, Perception 4, Con 2, Tracking 3
Powers: Natural Weapon (Claws: DV 1P, AP 0), Low Light Vision
Qualities: Blandness

I gave them a higher willpower to reflect their overall stubbornness and default survival skill. Sorry about the spacing.

Cats are not stronger than people...even an adolescent is stronger. Thing is, that people usually hold back with them, whereas a pissed-off cat has no such compunctions, usually. If someone wanted to, they could kill a cat barehanded, without much trouble...but...why would you want to? They're fuzzy!

You seem to have some experience with this, but what you say here doesn't make sense. I couldn't see a cat dragging even a 25 pound weight behind it, while even a weak person can lift that one-handed, not to mention how extremely easy it would be for even a child to drag 25 pounds around behind them. Now, relative to body size is a whole nother matter. If a cat weighs 15 pounds, obviously it is at a great disadvantage when dragging a 25 pound weight -- even a toddler weighs more than that and could move that much weight simply with their own body weight as leverage. A 200 pound house cat would probably be brutally strong compared to a 200 pound person. In fact, I'm quite sure they are, because your larger cats like mountain lions which are more man-sized are much stronger than we are.

But just because a cat is stronger for its size does not mean it should have a comparable strength score. Strength is abstract. If something has a strength of 2, that makes it exactly as strong as a human with a strength of 2, per the system. The system just doesn't take size and weight, which are a big component of many feats of strength, especially those involving leverage, into account. Regardless, it does not make sense to put a house cat's strength near to an average human's, even if they are strong for their size, they are so small that in the long run, that strength is insignificant compared to ours.

Quoted.

-Chrysalis

Hatspur: The attributes look good.

...a few additions

Skills:

Climb 4 (Rough Surfaces +2) this is to compensate for the low strength. Cats are generally excellent climbers.
Gymnastics 3 (Jumping +2) again felines usually have a remarkable sense of balance and incredible leaping ability for their size. (they can perform a vertical leap that is about 4 times their height when on all fours).
Intimidation 2
Shadowing 3 (Stalking +2)

Qualities:

Positive: include Double Jointed & First Impression (the "ohh what a cute kitty" syndrome)
Negative: Phobia Common/Moderate: Bodies of Water (ever try and give a cat a bath - instant ball of fur with razor blades time).

One Subtraction:

Tracking. Domesticated felines stalk rather than track their prey which would be reflected more by the shadowing skill.

Good call, I think all of those skills are appropriate. Computing...


I think the First Impression should be on some cats, because I've seen a great deal of cats that are NOT cute. Other than that, I'll take all of those changes.

apples and oranges.

Again the strength measurement in SR4 is an abstract not an absolute. A strength of 1 human is technically less strong than a human with a strength of 3. But any strength human can carry his own weight in SR4 even if a strength 1 human weighing in at 400 pounds vs a strength 4 100 pound human.

How many times your body weight can you carry? An ant can carry 100x its own body weight. A Chimpanzee can rip the arm off a human. And so on.

A Cat's muscle mass to weight ratio is way better than ours. Ergo greater strength.

How far can your adolescent jump? A cat can jump 4 feet straight up without a running start can your adolescent/human do that?

Strength is more complex issue than raw carrying capacity.

But again we are attempting to discuss/argue specifics in a abstract system.

i don't know why people think cats are afraid of water . . they just don't like getting wet because of their nose . . do you know how bad wet fur stinks? x.x
cats have little trouble with walking out in the rain if they really have to . . they just prefer not to <.< . .
and even if they seriously try not to do it, they CAN in fact, swim well enough to get out of smaller ponds reliably . .
then there's those freak-incidents where cats really love water . . mine loved to play in the water which was flowing into the tub i wanted to bathe in untill it got close to his belly . . needless to say, i had to drain the water and fill up the tub again . . rinse and repeat untill i finally managed to get him the hell out of the bathroom for good . .
and don't forget about tigers, they frigging love to swim! . . if i were in ajungle and i saw a crocodile on the land and a tiger in the water i'd be confused like heck, but i'd probably rather take my chances with the croc on dry soil than with the tiger in water even if i more or less know how to handly cats of various sizes . .
but yes, con skill all the way . .
as for the jumpy bit . . my cat jumped over me while i was standing straight once, because i was in his way @.@

...this was why I specified bodies of water as opposed to water in general. Keep in mind there still also is the WP test.

If thrown into water the cat has no option (just as if someone with a fear of spiders was pushed into a web filled cellar against his will). Yes cats are good swimmers once in the water but usually will find the quickest route back to "dry land" again.

The phobia angle is the best mechanic SR has for handling this seemingly innate aversion.

My cat Damien(a 14 lb all black tom) loved water.. and not jsut to play around in.. he loved getting in it and wading around... Just as long as he could keep his head above it. He regularly would hop in the tub with me and splash around and loved to get in the shower and watch. He was a dream to bathe, as long as you kept it out of his face. While I agree this is not the absolute norm, I have also found out htat it's not that "rare" either from talking to vets.

And tigers do, indeed, LOVE water and swimming and like to spend a lot of time doing that.

Vlad

...yes they do, but for the purposes of this thread we are dealing with the common domesticated feline.

one of the problems with this game is that the statistics are retarded, particularly . A strength 1 human is clearly stronger than any cat, but there is no where to put that. And elephants need like strength a billion.

I'd just suggest not worrying about it to much.