Worldbuilding Talk Thread

[Sam113097]

I don't like the incredibly long lives of some races in D&D, because it can lead to so many problems regarding plot. Realistically, when you think about it, races that live for 1000s of years would have so much more knowledge than other races just because they have experienced so much more compared to a human.

[Everyl]

I don't like the incredibly long lives of some races in D&D, because it can lead to so many problems regarding plot. Realistically, when you think about it, races that live for 1000s of years would have so much more knowledge than other races just because they have experienced so much more compared to a human.

That's basically a flaw with the steep power curves in D&D as characters rise in level. Logically, a 350-year-old elf is going to be considerably higher in level than a 70-year-old human, and thus far more powerful, especially if they're in a caster class. The problem largely disappears in E6, since power begins to plateau much earlier - the ancient elven archmage would still be more powerful than a human wizard of similar relative age, but the differences wouldn't be nearly as noticeable. It makes the conventional explanation that humans are more influential in the world than elves due to faster population growth actually make sense, at the very least.

[00dlez]

Assuming you're running D&D with fairly standard races and cosmology, don't forget to account for the influence of long-lived races, divination, and immortals on how much of history is forgotten. It's a lot harder for the past to be completely lost in a world where some people live for centuries, and ageless Outsiders can be consulted with enough effort. One of my newbie DM mistakes way back in the day was figuring that 850 or so years would be long enough for the details of a major world event to be largely lost from general knowledge. Upon later reflection, there would actually be living elves who heard first-hand accounts of that event from their parents.

I do, somewhat. The first world war started 14,000 years ago, lasted only several hundred, and gave way to the millenia long Dark Age which stomped out a vast majority of knowledge/civilization. Only in the last 1,500 years or so has it regained a portion of what it once was.

I find that people tend to over estimate the long lived races, though. Just because an Elf CAN live to be 900 doesn't mean that a great amount do. The FR wiki page says "Usually up to 200" for their average lifespan. Just for arguement I'll give you the 900 figure - but just because they live that long doesn't make that the "generation" age. Humans have generations every 25 years or so, call that every 250 elf years. So in my 1,500 span, that's still 6 elven generations and many more for the less longlived races... plenty of time to lose information on historical events.

[urkthegurk]

I think the only really important factors are the numbers of people and the distances between the major settlements. If there's a decent density of farming villages around the cities, it's not a problem if huge stretches of area are completely uninhabited.
Compared to Bangladesh, the size of Canada is massive but has only 20% as many people. In an area of any given size, there are more than 300 times as many people living in Canada, but when you go to the few big cities, they are just as crowded as anywhere else in the world.

They aren't. They're denser than the prairies, sure, but there's enough elbow room on even the busiest streets downtown. The biggest city,Toronto, has 5.6 million people in the metropolitan area. London has 15 million.

[SquidOfSquids]

They aren't. They're denser than the prairies, sure, but there's enough elbow room on even the busiest streets downtown. The biggest city,Toronto, has 5.6 million people in the metropolitan area. London has 15 million.

The same concept applies at a smaller scale too. Toronto may be overall less dense than London, but a block of downtown condos in Toronto is still similar in density to a block of condos in London.

(In fact, Toronto might actually be more dense due to building height restrictions in London.)

[urkthegurk]

It might be. I get your basic premise, and I think there are probably examples to back you up. Canada, in general, has a fair bit of sprawl, although Toronto is certainly (based on my observation) the densest followed, possibly, by Montreal. But even there, there's just room, and people tend to spread out if they can. Its not that there isn't density, I just feel that its mitigated by several percentage points.

But Canadian cities aren't a perfect model for DnD cities! (sadly). What with wandering monsters, rival city-states, and the need for walls and Dimensional wards as defences, people would probably cluster much closer together, especially in relatively hostile regions like the North.

[Everyl]

I do, somewhat. The first world war started 14,000 years ago, lasted only several hundred, and gave way to the millenia long Dark Age which stomped out a vast majority of knowledge/civilization. Only in the last 1,500 years or so has it regained a portion of what it once was.

I find that people tend to over estimate the long lived races, though. Just because an Elf CAN live to be 900 doesn't mean that a great amount do. The FR wiki page says "Usually up to 200" for their average lifespan. Just for arguement I'll give you the 900 figure - but just because they live that long doesn't make that the "generation" age. Humans have generations every 25 years or so, call that every 250 elf years. So in my 1,500 span, that's still 6 elven generations and many more for the less longlived races... plenty of time to lose information on historical events.

Actually, I was going by the SRD age range for elves. Their "venerable" age category has a max of 350 + 4d100 years. While that doesn't necessarily mean that a typical elf will actually live anywhere near that long, it does mean that there will be a few outliers who live 700+ years, and in the case of my example, it only takes a handful of elves that age to retain second-hand knowledge of that 850-year-ago event. That was much fresher than I intended such knowledge to be in my newbie game setting back in the day.

Also, your generation estimate is accurate for averages, but again, outliers. I come from a long line of people who married and reproduced late; my grandfather would have been well over 80 years old if he'd lived to see the day I was born. Last I checked, there were still a few children of American Civil War veterans alive today. Once in a while, those long generations do happen.

All that being said, it sounds like you have a long enough time frame for this to not be an issue in your setting. I just wanted to explain where I was coming from.

[00dlez]

^ I get it, and appreciate the opinion. Outliers mean that the knowledge is retained to a degree, but perhaps my point was poorly worded. My point was more akin to "world knowledge" - a dozen elves scattered around the world will have a time of it trying to educate the common citizen of the world about the events of past centuries that have no written record to speak of anymore.

[TheStranger]

Do we really know how fast historical knowledge disappears? I would think at least several full lifespans for a major event, as long as it's locally relevant. I consider myself to have a more-or-less average knowledge of history, and I can tell you the basics of the American Revolution, which was 3-4 full lifetimes ago. I couldn't give you more than a couple names, dates, or battles, but I know that it's a thing that happened. And if I lived in a town that had a major battle, I could probably tell you a lot of detail about that based on local lore. It might not be 100% accurate, but nobody's going to forget that it happened.

Some of that is because of a relatively high standard of education and literacy, but that's not all of it. As recently as the 17th century (and maybe more recently), judges in England were still quoting Roman law to settle tough cases, despite the fact that the Roman Empire had been gone for a thousand years and the dark ages had happened in between.

If it's just a matter of knowing what day-to-day life was like a bunch of years ago, or where the old bridge used to be, that would obviously fade much faster. (Although it's always fun when old-timers give directions using landmarks that haven't existed for decades.)

But if you're saying that the major events were ~15,000 years in the past, and that it's just been a slow rebuilding process since then, I think you're fine. People may know that, a bunch of years ago, this city wasn't here, but that's not really a problem.

The bigger problem I run into is that memory tends to outlast any physical evidence. Which means that by the time everybody's forgotten about the ruins, they've pretty much fallen apart, so you can't use them as a dungeon. Things like the pyramids are probably the exception, not the rule.

[Yora]

People tend to forget about things very, very quickly.

For information to survive, you either have to seen it yourself, or you'd have to have heard a very memorable retelling of it.
How long people will remember that there used to be an old woman living in the forest depends pretty much on how often people tell stories about it to their kids. If it's a good story that gets popular, it can survive for a very long time. If it's not really relevant, then it will be very soon forgotten once nobody lives who remembers it first hand.

Assume some guy comes back to the tavern and tells a story how he found an overground grave in the wilderness. Could be an exiting story for that evening, and he might tell it again a week later, but since there isn't really much to tell about it, people won't be talking about it just a few days later.
Come back 10 years later and ask around if anyone knows about a grave in the wilderness, and some people might remember that once there was a guy who said he found something. Come back 50 years later and probably nobody remembers ever having heard anything about it.
Now, if the original story includes actually seeing some walking dead at the grave, that story would be repeated a lot more often, and people would tell their grandchildren not to go to that area because they remember that undead have been seen there.

It really comes down to how long the story remains part of the local folklore and tavern tales. If it is good entertainment or fuctions as an explaination for a special or unusual role, it will survive a lot longer.
It really depends on how relevant it is. People might remember the assassination of a king for a very long time. But the name of the murderer and who exactly was present at the event is information that is not relevant for the telling of the story for entertainment, so these things will get lost very quickly.

And human memory also is notoriously bad. People do not have videocameras in their heads and can rewind the tape to any point they want. The brain much rather works like writing down a report and saving the report. And when you remember the thing later, the brain will create new images that match the memory of the report. Details that you didn't consider important at the time will most likely not make it into that memory report and therefore won't show up in the recreated images as well.
In courts, witnesses are generally considered to be the worst kind of evidence and persecutors and lawyers will almost always try to prove things in any other way before trying to rely on a witness.

[urkthegurk]

On the other hand, jury's will often find it difficult to convict someone WITHOUT eyewitness testimony. People are strange.

[Tzi]

So I'm considering going into (For me) uncharted waters. As I tinker with my setting a plausible issue arises....

I am considering replacing all Magic with Psionics. Well at least replacing the conventional system of "magic" with that of "psionics" and using psionic classes in its place. Part of this is my deep abiding love for the Warhammer 40k universe and its great source of inspiration for me.

HOWEVER, its a land I've never tread upon. I'm using Pathfinder and am considering just using Psionics unleashed however, I'm not sure if this would be a radical a change as I assume or if it would be relatively easy. Things like monsters, "healing," the whole system of clerics and Gods, ect.

Anyone gone exclusively psionic or have any tips or ideas for that?

[Everyl]

I've been tossing around the idea of a psionics-only setting lately, too. I have zero experience with Pathfinder, though, so I've been limiting myself to d20 SRD materials on the subject. So I apologize if any of these considerations don't apply to PF, it's entirely outside my experience.

One plus, IMO, is that psionics is almost completely separated from the concept of "expensive material components." You don't have to worry about things like how the market price of diamonds affects game-balance in a setting where diamonds aren't the key to a wide variety of important spells. It's minor from a gaming standpoint, but makes it a lot easier for me to suspend disbelief in the game world; YMMV.

Personally, I'm taking the angle that the different disciplines of psionics are associated with different peoples and regions. They get access to their specialty power lists because the traditions and teaching methods used in those areas are specialized toward that style of power. It adds flavor to an area to ask, "How does it affect this society if 95% of all psions in their borders are Shapers? Egoists? Nomads?" Just as one example, a culture with mostly Egoists around will not consider fast-healing powers to be nearly as rare as elsewhere. They'll basically have better healthcare than anywhere else, possibly meaning higher populations and longer lifespans. Psions there will likely have a very different social role from, say Nomads in their homeland.

As for healing, I considered the low-healing setting to be a feature, not a bug. Fighting is dangerous, and even the best healers aren't really that good at it. Death becomes a bigger deal, since the only raise-dead equivalent for other people is Egoist-only (barring other Psions taking a feat just for it) and it only works within a short window after death.

I'm working on adapting some of the secondary-caster classes to use psionics. My hope is to have at least one secondary-caster or non-caster class associated with each discipline. Psychic Warriors are already Psychometabolism-focused, Bards will adapt well as Telepaths, etc. Other classes will need more work, like trying to make a psychic Ranger to go with Psychoportation - there isn't a convenient psionic class to copy the power and psi point progression from in that case.

Beyond that, psionics is basically just another magic system. D&D (or, AFAIK, Pathfinder) doesn't rely on Vancian spellcasting to make the game work. Switching to point-based spellcasting isn't that fundamental of a shift, and might even make your game more accessible to newbies with video game RPG experience.

[Tzi]

I've been tossing around the idea of a psionics-only setting lately, too. I have zero experience with Pathfinder, though, so I've been limiting myself to d20 SRD materials on the subject. So I apologize if any of these considerations don't apply to PF, it's entirely outside my experience.

One plus, IMO, is that psionics is almost completely separated from the concept of "expensive material components." You don't have to worry about things like how the market price of diamonds affects game-balance in a setting where diamonds aren't the key to a wide variety of important spells. It's minor from a gaming standpoint, but makes it a lot easier for me to suspend disbelief in the game world; YMMV.

Personally, I'm taking the angle that the different disciplines of psionics are associated with different peoples and regions. They get access to their specialty power lists because the traditions and teaching methods used in those areas are specialized toward that style of power. It adds flavor to an area to ask, "How does it affect this society if 95% of all psions in their borders are Shapers? Egoists? Nomads?" Just as one example, a culture with mostly Egoists around will not consider fast-healing powers to be nearly as rare as elsewhere. They'll basically have better healthcare than anywhere else, possibly meaning higher populations and longer lifespans. Psions there will likely have a very different social role from, say Nomads in their homeland.

As for healing, I considered the low-healing setting to be a feature, not a bug. Fighting is dangerous, and even the best healers aren't really that good at it. Death becomes a bigger deal, since the only raise-dead equivalent for other people is Egoist-only (barring other Psions taking a feat just for it) and it only works within a short window after death.

I'm working on adapting some of the secondary-caster classes to use psionics. My hope is to have at least one secondary-caster or non-caster class associated with each discipline. Psychic Warriors are already Psychometabolism-focused, Bards will adapt well as Telepaths, etc. Other classes will need more work, like trying to make a psychic Ranger to go with Psychoportation - there isn't a convenient psionic class to copy the power and psi point progression from in that case.

Beyond that, psionics is basically just another magic system. D&D (or, AFAIK, Pathfinder) doesn't rely on Vancian spellcasting to make the game work. Switching to point-based spellcasting isn't that fundamental of a shift, and might even make your game more accessible to newbies with video game RPG experience.

Pathfinder has some great 3rd party Psionic sourcebooks that makes them IMHO much better then 3.5e Psionics. Plus a whole host of rebooted and new classes that can easily replace traditional magic classes and still have playability. All the major party roles would no be lost but such a transition.

[urkthegurk]

I'm working on adapting some of the secondary-caster classes to use psionics. My hope is to have at least one secondary-caster or non-caster class associated with each discipline. Psychic Warriors are already Psychometabolism-focused, Bards will adapt well as Telepaths, etc. Other classes will need more work, like trying to make a psychic Ranger to go with Psychoportation - there isn't a convenient psionic class to copy the power and psi point progression from in that case.

I think bards are more empaths than telepaths. Their songs are more about influencing emotions and behaviour, not reading minds. Rangers I don't know if you need to change... just make them manifest powers instead of casting spells and say they're minor talents who've turned their abilities towards hunting, both monsters and other psychics.Adapt some Mage Slayer feats or AMF effects for the Ranger, and you've got a potent Damper-type class.

[Everyl]

Pathfinder has some great 3rd party Psionic sourcebooks that makes them IMHO much better then 3.5e Psionics. Plus a whole host of rebooted and new classes that can easily replace traditional magic classes and still have playability. All the major party roles would no be lost but such a transition.

Yeah, I've heard all kinds of nice things about Pathfinder. My lack of experience with it stems mostly from the fact that I moved across the Pacific Ocean from my gaming group shortly before Pathfinder came out; I didn't even hear about it until earlier this year. I still get a bit of online gaming in via IRC, but not nearly enough to justify investing time and money into acquiring and learning a new game system.

Maybe someday, but not today.

I think bards are more empaths than telepaths. Their songs are more about influencing emotions and behaviour, not reading minds. Rangers I don't know if you need to change... just make them manifest powers instead of casting spells and say they're minor talents who've turned their abilities towards hunting, both monsters and other psychics.Adapt some Mage Slayer feats or AMF effects for the Ranger, and you've got a potent Damper-type class.

Detect Thoughts is a level 2 Bard spell in 3.5. A great many other bard spells that have psionic equivalents also fall into Telepathy - charms, illusions, empathic manipulation, etc. The conversion will basically just mean choosing a thematically-appropriate power list and giving them Psychic Warrior powers and PP progressions.

Rangers need to be changed because "just" saying they manifest powers instead of casting spells isn't that simple of a change. There are no SRD psionic classes that parallel a Ranger or Paladin's spell progression the way a Psychic Warrior parallels a Bard's. It's entirely possible that something exists somewhere that would do the trick, but in the interests of keeping the cash price of developing the setting at zero without resorting to pirating books, I'm not using any of that stuff. So I either beef up their psionic abilities and weaken them in other areas, or I have to mess with creating a third-tier psionic progression myself. On top of that, other aspects of the setting make stuff like favored enemies a little less easy to work with - the only humanoids are humans, and there will probably be a sharply reduced variety of monsters around (details pending).

I'm not sure what Mage Slayer feats, AMF, or Dampers are. I can infer the first and last from context, but I'm guessing the details are in a book I don't have access to? Regardless, psion-hunters don't really fit the setting I'm working with. Psions are generally well-integrated into society, with powerful criminals and troublemakers rare enough that there wouldn't be cause to have specialists trained in killing them.

[Tzi]

Detect Thoughts is a level 2 Bard spell in 3.5. A great many other bard spells that have psionic equivalents also fall into Telepathy - charms, illusions, empathic manipulation, etc. The conversion will basically just mean choosing a thematically-appropriate power list and giving them Psychic Warrior powers and PP progressions.

Rangers need to be changed because "just" saying they manifest powers instead of casting spells isn't that simple of a change. There are no SRD psionic classes that parallel a Ranger or Paladin's spell progression the way a Psychic Warrior parallels a Bard's. It's entirely possible that something exists somewhere that would do the trick, but in the interests of keeping the cash price of developing the setting at zero without resorting to pirating books, I'm not using any of that stuff. So I either beef up their psionic abilities and weaken them in other areas, or I have to mess with creating a third-tier psionic progression myself. On top of that, other aspects of the setting make stuff like favored enemies a little less easy to work with - the only humanoids are humans, and there will probably be a sharply reduced variety of monsters around (details pending).

I'm not sure what Mage Slayer feats, AMF, or Dampers are. I can infer the first and last from context, but I'm guessing the details are in a book I don't have access to? Regardless, psion-hunters don't really fit the setting I'm working with. Psions are generally well-integrated into society, with powerful criminals and troublemakers rare enough that there wouldn't be cause to have specialists trained in killing them.

Well I also might not necessarily port classes. Like the class Paladin would not exist but a Lawful Good Soulknife or Psychic Warrior would in Roleplay terms fulfill the same basic role.

Same with Bards, or any of the standard classes that use magic. Some will simply cease in my setting and be simple character concepts. Not mechanical classes.

[Everyl]

Well I also might not necessarily port classes. Like the class Paladin would not exist but a Lawful Good Soulknife or Psychic Warrior would in Roleplay terms fulfill the same basic role.

Same with Bards, or any of the standard classes that use magic. Some will simply cease in my setting and be simple character concepts. Not mechanical classes.

That's basically what I'm doing. Clerics, druids, wizards, and sorcerers don't exist beyond as social roles for some of them. Paladins might exist in some way, shape, or form, but I'm inclined to say no on them, too. Bards weren't going to make the cut until I started working on the fluff differences between the different psionic traditions in my setting. Basically, while all psionics is fundamentally a question of willpower and mental conditioning, each tradition employs different training techniques which can affect the way they act while manifesting psionic effects. Telepaths use song as a major part of their training techniques; a telepath who is struggling to focus will probably sing softly, a group of telepaths cooperating toward a combined effect will sing in harmony, etc. IRL, singing in a group can cause people's brain activity to synch up, so it seemed like a natural fit. And once I decided that, adapting bards as a second-tier manifester class similar to psychic warriors proved to be so easy that I thought, why not?

Rangers, on the other hand, may bear so little resemblance to their SRD equivalent that I might start looking for a different name for the class. To maintain parallels between all of the major nation-groups in my setting, I'm trying to get one non-primary manifester class associated with each tradition, and outdoorsey, independent rangers seemed like a natural warrior class to match Nomads. Favored enemies are a pretty big component of RAW rangers, though, and I don't think they work well in a setting where there will be dramatically fewer creature types. Figuring out exactly what to do with the ranger-like psychoportation-using wilderness warriors is a lower priority than fleshing out the setting enough to start a proper thread for it here, though; I'm not likely to have a player group for this setting in the foreseeable future, but I enjoy world-building, so here I am.

[urkthegurk]

Well for favoured enemy you could have it keyed to specific groups, guilds, cults, organizations, etc. Have a ranger with favoured enemy 'criminals', another with favoured enemy 'blood cult of psi-orcus'

[Tzi]

-snip-

Well with regards to a ranger, Ranger's are, at their boiler plate distilled level simply (Often anyway) range weapon wielding people who are good at navigating the wilderness and wilderness survival. Pathfinder's Psionics has a ranged weapon focused Psi-class called The Marksman which with minor tweaking or even just creating an archetype (Basically alt features for the class) you can have a more classic ranger.

Getting rid of the actual mechanical classes of say Sorcerer for example leads me to one other conclusion. In Pathfinder Sorcerers are empowered by their blood line. Say Fey, Infernal, Abberant, Elemental, ect... without the Sorcerer and indeed without traditional magic I am a bit freer to cut out what I consider to be clutter in the world. There is now no mechanical reason for me to need all these types and sub types and am more free to create my own. In a sense Psionics is so rarely used that there is no preset lore for me to get stymied in.

And when speaking of fleshing out a setting I've found it's easier now since I'm not trying to work around mechanics and player expectations but instead can freely make things without being encumbered by having to find a place in the world of Sorcerer bloodlines, all of the various types and subtypes, carefully defined Gods and Realms for them. Basically I've clung to Psionics partly because its a short cut that allows me to focus on less crunch and more lore and geography and ecology.

And I too will likely have a player problem. Within my local circle my campaign world design style isn't very well received as I tend to be more restrictive. (These are the races of this world, these are the classes). My goal being to make a world with as few seems as possible and as few logical inconsistencies as possible.

[Yora]

Found this one and wanted to share it:

Book of Tigers

"Tigers are not araid of the dark. Because a tiger knows that there is nothing more dangerous in the dark than tigers."
It's a couple of ideas for creatures that evolved specifically to hunt humanoids.
Now creatures that evolved to penetrate plate armor, resist bullets, and be able to deflect magic spells are rather unlikely, but things that have evolved to be able to deal with the basic humanoid advantages and exploit human weaknesses are not that much of a stretch.
I'd say the absolute super-powers of humans are teamwork and planning ahead. Pretty much every advantage modern humans have over animals are the result of these abilities. Tigers are in fact a good example, as they have superior hearing and night vision, excelent stealth, and natural weapons powerful enough to kill pretty much instantly. When hunting at night, they can't be seen, they can't be heard, and any humans they might encounter are likely to be alone or only in small groups, since everyone else is sleeping.

[Eldan]

Humans have, I think, more than just those basic advantages.

The arm: originally evolved for climbing, but the ape shoulder is quite a bit changed from the basic mammalian one. The human shoulder is changed further. It gives us the ability to accurately throw objects over a distance.

The hand: is awesome. It allows for tool use more than most animals can.

Endurance running: no one beats a human on a marathon. At least a trained one. Our breathing, sweating, musculature, metabolism, everything makes us a perfect long-distance runner.

And then, yes, intelligence. Teamwork, tool use and planning.

That said, all of these advantages work together. A human alone can run down a gazelle, sure. But if they can also throw stones at it and make it bleed, it's much quicker. If you have a group of humans cooperate, they can set traps and hunt as a running pack, like wolves. Planning is that much more important if you can plan with a group and tools.


Edit: oh, and bat**** insanity, which may be connected to the intelligence thing. The best example I can think of is that video I once saw of three unarmed Massai walking up to a pride of lions with their kill, taking the kill from the lions and retreating. If you walk slowly and show no fear whatsoever, the lions will retreat, because they are confused by your behaviour.

[Yora]

I think one thing to take away is that such creatures would have to be exceptionally smart to be able to really keep up with humanoids. Building on that, they could use deception and have a great awareness of when it is a bad time to allow a confrontation and keep their distance until a good opportunity presents itself.
Cats do sneak up on their prey and go straight for a target that seems most easy to take down, but I am not sure if they normally have the ability to plan ambushes or wait for hours or even days while waiting for an opportunity they expect to happen in the forseeable future.

[Eldan]

The cat's greatest skill is indeed ambush hunting. What should not be discarded in a lot of great cats, however, is their expert knowledge of the terrain. I've worked on a reintroduction project before with a certain species of large cat that we can't mention on this forum. They often spend six days out of the week walking about their terrain, memorizing it and all the animals that move within it, then one day hunting. At that point, they know all the routes deer usually take, where they eat, drink and sleep.

Tigers do still kill humans every now and then in India. Usually single humans, away from the communities and from ambush. The problem is that you then get revenge hunts where a troop of armed men goes out and kills the tiger.

So, what would be important would be planning, stealth and an ability to get far, far away after a kill or hide so effectively that humans can't find you.

[Yora]

I meant not simply hiding in a bush near a herd and waiting for an animal to wander a bit closer, but actually memorizing movement patterns and picking an ambush site. I'm not sure cats think that far ahead.
When hunting herd animals, it also wouldn't be very efficient since those tend to wander around in the open in large groups. But since humans tend to follow plans and schedules most of the time, it's a lot easier to figure at what time and place an easy target will show up, and then you can pick a spot where the terrain works entirely in your favor.

[Eldan]

I meant not simply hiding in a bush near a herd and waiting for an animal to wander a bit closer, but actually memorizing movement patterns and picking an ambush site. I'm not sure cats think that far ahead.

They absolutely do think that far ahead. As I said, they memorize movement patterns in their prey and pick the best ambush spots where the prey regularly moves by and is most vulnerable.

[TheStranger]

The biggest issue with anything evolving to go after humans is how insanely adaptable humans are. This is mostly a function of our intelligence - we can change things about ourselves overnight that most other animals just can't. As a species, we don't stick with low-survival behavior very long; an individual person might get killed by a tiger or whatever, but then other people either stop doing whatever got the first person killed, or they band together and go kill the tiger (and, in extreme situations, all the other tigers they can find, just in case). And they'll take the time to think of the best way to do it, invent new tools, etc. Basically, the idea of, "if it has stats, you can kill it," applies in real life, too.

Put another way, any individual human, or group of humans, can stop, reconsider its behavior, and then do something completely different based on abstract thinking rather than trial and error. We can also communicate with each other, sharing ideas and strategies that are successful. there aren't many animals that can do all that, or that can think on the fly well enough to deal with a behavior that they haven't seen before.

What I'm thinking is, an animal that could overcome these advantages would need to either be insanely powerful or be intelligent enough to adapt as quickly as humans do. Which might well require tool use, at which point you're basically looking at one of D&D's many intelligent races. Which makes me think this is a good way to refluff gnolls, or something.

[Yora]

Maybe evolving to be efficient at hunting humans is not the primary objective of adaptation to living close to humans? After all, humans are really difficult to hunt and risky to engage. Those animals who do kill humans just do so when there's a really good and also rare opportunity, but most of the time they hunt something else.
But a much stronger selection pressure would be evolving to a form that can resist being hunted or pushed out by humans. Being good at escaping from hunters is one thing, but keeping your territory and get fed dispite human interference is just as vital. In Europe, we have pretty much removed any competition from predators, and those that are still here only feed on things that we don't want to, like insects or garbage.
Having competitors who can prey on game animals and lifestock without being removed by humanoids could make quite interesting creatures.

On a different note, something with much more direct relevance to worldbuilding:
What's needed for a setting?

[Eldan]

It would be interesting to have an intelligent solitary creature, though. Their mental makeup would be quite different.

They wouldn't need much communication, so they wouldn't develop a culture.

I'm thinking of Octopodes here. They are extremely intelligent and adept at tool use, individually, but due to their short lifespans, can not develop a culture or cooperation. I've also read at least one article that their memory is extremely bad: if you give an octopus a test, it will solve it very well. If you give it the same test some days later, it will solve it again, but it will take it just as long as the first time and it may come up with an entirely new solution.

[Tzi]

So, has anyone used Incantations from UA in 3.5e?

I have an idea, well an addition to an idea I've already started to run with. Basically in my setting I've replaced the traditional magic and magic classes with psionic's and psionic classes. (Using Pathfinder and the Psionics Unleashed) But as a way to keep "magic" still there I was considering using Incantations to be the "magic," of the world.

So for example trying to raise the dead, communicate with the dead, invoke Gods, Open Portals, summon and bind elementals and other beings, change the weather ect all become the domain of "true magic," and require incantations and specialized rituals.

No idea how this might play out in gameplay terms though.