Dire animals have always been inherently hilarious to me. >"It's a boar, but it's fucking HUGE, so it's more dangerous"There's something strangely adorable about that line of thinking.
anon they also have spikes on the outsidelike bones and shit
Dire animals actually existed. Dire wolves were a real thing. There were effectively dire dragonflies. Yes not as large as fantasy has them but still.
>>93902819>Dire wolves were a real thing.Aww he's just a big doggy, look at those big pointy ears.
>>93902848I for one welcome our Dire Penguin overlords
>>93902643>"It's a boar, but it's fucking HUGE, so it's more dangerous"If you have a system flexible enough to simulate it, this can actually lead to some interesting encounters.Hornets the size of rats are scary as fuck. A dire grouse will snap you up and try to shake you to death. Dire weasels hunt in human mineshafts as if they were rabbit warrens. A dire beaver isn't gonna kill you but it will tear your house apart to build a lodge twice the size.
>>93902643Why would a really big boar not be more dangerous than a regular boar?
>>93902643That's how it works in real lifeThe only difference between a chihuahua and a le cuddly flower crown pitbull is the capacity to actually make good on their aggression
>>93903312Not even aggression, but anything that size wouldn't hesitate to just snatch you up and eat you without a second thought.
Had a phenomena that turned animals dire in a game and I couldn't stop laughing at all the stupid shit the players got up to. Dire sheep, dire crabs, dire songbirds, and dire butterflies.Can't wait for them to meet the dire owlbear tho.
>>93902981canadian ahh border
>>93902643I admit that entelodonts weren't actually pigs, but they were close enough to use a dire boar statblock and would absolutely be more dangerous than a "mere" 500 lb boar which can already wreck your shit
>>93902981That's Pikmin energy lol
>>93902643Weight classes have always been inherently hilarious to me.>"It's a welterweight, but it's fucking cruiserweight, so it's more dangerous"There's something strangely adorable about that line of thinking.
>>93902981A dire goose would be horrifying.
>>93904084I mean, to be fair, if you're a featherweight you don't really want to be picking a fight with a heavyweight under most circumstances.While not strictly the case, generally that makes them taller than you, with more muscle mass and more reach; barring that their increased weight is more to have to hit, which is a problem enough in boxing, but becomes a weightier issue when grappling comes into the picture.Now on topic, imagining a bear that's twice as big as a normal bear under the sci-fi fantasy logic of "The square-cubed law should mean it would be struggling with its size, unfortunately it has never read a physics book" would follow the same concerns. A claw twice as big and heavy and at least as sharp is going to hurt quite a bit, maybe not twice as much as a claw that is already as big as your torso, but still plenty enough you'd wish it were smaller.
>>93902819Back in prehistory the oxygen content of the atmosphere was a lot greater. This meant that insects were able to support much larger bodies than they can now. They don't have lungs and blood systems like we do that can efficiently transport the oxygen around the body so the potential size they can grow to is greatly limited by the oxygen content of the air.Basically most arthropods had their own dire version. Dire spiders, dire centipedes, Dire cockroaches. You name it. If it had an exoskeleton it could be 10 times larger than what you have today.
>>93904163>While not strictly the case, generally that makes them taller than you, with more muscle mass and more reach; barring that their increased weight is more to have to hit, which is a problem enough in boxing, but becomes a weightier issue when grappling comes into the picture.>I'm sure to win because my speed is superior.>Now on topic, imagining a bear that's twice as big as a normal bear under the sci-fi fantasy logic of "The square-cubed law should mean it would be struggling with its size, unfortunately it has never read a physics book" would follow the same concerns.We already have this. It's called the Pleistocene Megafauna.
Fun fact. In 3.5, a sect of militant Druids decided Dire animals didn't go far enough and magically bioengineered bioweapon variants of animals. The new template, called Horrid, increased the size of the animal by another category, gave it level-scaling acid damage on its natural attacks, covered it in spiked bone armor, and generally made them tempermental psychopaths to attempt to handle. This is the art for the Horrid Rat.
>>93904605For me its the terrorbirds.
>>93904642That's pretty fucking metal.
>>93904661I was a fan for sure. Reading back on it, it was apparently an Eberron thing intended to help push back against incursions by the Far Plane. Just make nature so dangerous that even Aberrations didn't want to fuck with it.http://eberronunlimited.wikidot.com/horrid-animal
In the timbers of FennarioThe wolves are running 'roundThe winter was so hard and coldFroze ten feet 'neath the groundx2
>>93904707X2!?!
The adventure I just ran today, Living Greyhawk VER2-06 Glory Town by Ron Lundeen had a Dire Horse named Mountain. My players thought it would attack them but it just acted like a regular horse. One of them tried to trample Wererats but it didn't have silver shoes
>>93904660>500-600 years agoThis makes me very upset, I love ratites so much and the extinction of the elephant birds also led to the death of the largest flying birds who preyed on them
>>93902897
>>93902819Do you think a dire kitty kill you when it kneads you tummy?It would be the most adorably terribly painful death.
>>93902643Paladin I've been playing for 13 years has a dire golden retriever mount. Never explained it. Never seen another one in game. Just use the dire wolf stat block and fuck all context. Feels great to ride on my big dog friend :)
>>93905907Blame the Maori
>>93902643>>93902819from about 6 million years ago to 10k years ago, you can find larger versions of basically every animal that exists todayeven humans if you count neanderthals being heavierdire penguins, dire ducks, dire hippos, dire camels, you name it
>>93902679Like this?
>>93903820Kek glad I'm not the only one who thought that.
>>93902643A lion is basically a dire cat.
>>93908238I wouldn't run dire animals like this, personally. It's much more fun to me if there's something weird and fresh that happens when a small comfy animal is now large and wild. A dire housecat the size of a lion has a lankier build and a more skittish disposition, might take more of an interest in flying animals and tree-climbing, and is much less social. Lions will hunt animals larger than themselves, cats seldom do. Cats spend more time in dens and hollows, and play with their food more- sad if it's a bird, horrifying if it's a human, but maybe a chance for a player to escape.
>>93902819>a pack of dire wolves blocks your path, What's the plan?Pay the Cheese Tax
>>93904720Hey don't murder me
>>93902643If Dire Animals exist, do Dire Mums?
Nothing's quite as bad as running into a dire eeyah while out adventuring.
>It's just a big animal, how dangerous could it be?
>>93902819Lots of weird giant animals existed in our species' living past. Huge baboons the size of a human adult which may have been baby eaters (as modern baboons are still rumored to do). Gigantic orangutans. Absolutely massive ground sloths. Even bigger great cats than today. Titanic monitor lizards. Giant boar-like animals.
>>93909232Native Australians lived with these guys for nearly 40k years. This is about as dire as it'd get.
>>93909773Native australians were only around for 20k period at most and went extinct
what's adorable about the way the world works? every instance of small beating big is either an extreme outlier or circumstantial manlet copethe pecking order of animals is decided by size in all but the most specialized of circumstances
>>93902819>Dire wolves were a real thing.And they were the same size as modern gray wolves, not bigger
>>93902643>>93904163It has been so long man since I've met a true troll. Someone who's bait isn't the newest faggotry, but something nice and imaginative. I don't know your motivations anon, but I am glad you're here.
>>93907807Sorry lads, got hungry.
>>93904084>it's a welterweightNo it's not lmaoLiterally zero heavyweights can fight as well as the average featherweight with two years experience. The difference in skill is astronomical
>>93913358You have to be trolling, if you set Mike Tyson as he is right now up against any featherweight boxer he'd actually kill the dude.
>>93905615
>>93913358
>>93913555>>93914558Fatties in charge of reading comprehension I guessFeel free to point out where I ever said that heavyweights weren't more dangerous
>>93913697boxing is an European sport and the weight classes were invented in europe.
>>93914191That giga horse has forward facing eyes.... The implications are horrifying.
>>93915693horse_eating_a_bird.webm
>>93909900It's more the "what if but big" line of thinking, you buzzkill.
>>93909900>mustelids
>>93902643Would such a large pigeon be able to exist? Biolobros, help me understand this.
>>93913273babies and neighboring tribes just couldn't compare to those massive drumsticks
>>93923369They only win when it's something that is already dogshit-tier (snakes) or if they're ganging up on the foe, which actually reinforces the mass superiority.
>>93904660>Predator murder birds>Moa just there with its brain the size of a pea falling down holes and shit because it was the giant bird equivalent of Ralph from the simpsons
>>93907807Haast's eagle should be brought back to keep Maori kids in school for fear of raptorial predation.
>>93903312Specifically chihuahua since they're aggressive little shits I hope you mean?Fighting dogs are objectively worse natures than working dogs, it is not merely just their capacity to inflict harn
>>93923895Technically yes but it would be a very different world from ours where there could be food aplenty and even its shape would have been different. For one, the beak and bone shape. So while technically it could look pigeonish, it would have been something only such on first glance. Giant albatros? Yes, same with eagle - they are huge birds and would more or less retain their frame, but most other creatures would adjust significantly. Hyppo is essentially a giant pig, but you are not likely to mistaken one for another. Apply the same line of thought.Which should not hold you back on worldbuilding since magic can fix alot of things by being factor X that is not present in our world which is not well understood despite numerous claims of scientists. Not understood at all, to be honest.
>>93925743>snakes are shitNo, but your opinion on them is.>>93927079>knows nothing of them>makes that kind of claimsLYL!
>>93902643Many dinosaurs had feathers, in particular theropods. Your favorite carnivore growing up looked closer to a dire chicken or ostrich than most illustrations suggest. Science journalism is about as reliable as games journalism, so the popular image of a plucked tyrannosaurus rex still lingers in our collective unconsciousness.What color their feathers were is unclear, so if you prefer to imagine parakeet colored dinosaurs or black like crows, be my guest.I'm thoroughly disappointed more people don't know, and can't appreciate the delicious irony of dino tendies.
>>93927104Nta but I would not be concerned about a Maltese the size of a boxer. I grew up with a Samoyed, so I know exactly what a "giant Pomeranian" (it's the other way, they're irresponsibly small Spitzen) is like, same thing with a "dire miniature poodle."A dire chihuahua though? Fuck no, take your weird "I HAVE to proselytize X is gentle" complex and live somewhere else. Chihuahua attacks are underreported because victims feel embarassed about the size difference, and defense lawyers are great at throwing these cases out. Go into property management at an apartment with a dog park and you'll learn what a menace Chihuahuas are.>HuskiesNoise complaints mostly. I feel bad for the dogs. These animals were bred to work HARD 10+ hours a day in the snow, they do not belong in your 650sqft apartment alone all day, that's cruelty.>LabsThey have a very strong prey drive and if you don't train that out they will become a serious threat to tiny dogs. They're just too dopey to realize that very small children or toy breeds are not game. People need to stop overbreeding these things. Who is recommending them as ez mode dogs?
>>93927348There was a transition between scales and feathers, it's likely a lot of theropods were more hairy-like than feathery-like. Especially the less related to birds they were.
>>93927348This post is sad. Smug little know-it-all copying dead memes and shitty science while assuming he knows best.Tyrannosaurs were warm-blooded, running animals that lived in a hot climate and had over three tonnes of body mass. There is no way they retained bird-like feathers into adulthood (if they ever even evolved them). Tyrannosaur chicks probably had fuzzy down while they were growing, while adults would have had, at most, a short layer of furlike fibres. The correct word is 'integument'. They certainly would not have 'looked like a chicken', which is a flying animal from a different lineage of theropods that weighs less than one kilogram in nature.
>>93928147When you shitpost, you're not supposed to lead with why what you're about to say is wrong. You're too honest; don't warn us it's bait.
>>93914581you also said even expert heavyweight fighters are outclassed by featherweights of 2+years experience, so proving yourself as a reliable source is a foregone impossibility
>>93930677we have fucking skin fossils you retard. tyrannosaurs were lightly feathered on the back and neck, at best. the rest was scale-studded skin like a monitor lizard
>>93935357The huge number of fossils available divided by the incredibly low chance of fossils forming paint a clear picture of how terrifyingly successful tyrannosaurs were as a species.
