A small change, but a meaningful one. One, you'd be able to track them on hunter PCs. Two they could be given the "run away" AI or a permanent Fear effect to make hunting them little more interesting than walking up loudly and punching them in the head. :D
I would always get a kick beating deer unarmed with my barbarian. This would make it so much sweeter.
This seems like a good idea to me.
It probably means it can't be done, but still.
Yes!
This is going to make my next character, the FE: Animals, Gentleman Ranger "Coronado del Deerpuncher" so much more rewarding. Please implement this NOW.
We approve. Especially the fear part, they should bolt as soon as they sense you. Only problem with this might be that they will all end up in the corner of an area.
Deer are friends, not food :'(
Absolutely. Might make it a bit harder than running through the crossroads and killing 10 deer with no effort.
On the other hand, slaughtering deer will be necesary whenver you want to rest in the wild.
I'm not hearing any downsides to this plan.
Or instead of killing them you can chase them off!
I guess it would be better if they weren't hostile, but had the AI as if they were.
No, because Tracking only lets you view the tracks of Hostile creatures. I remember once on a DM event pursuing a white stag and asking the DM to turn it Hostile so my PC was able to track it.
Hostile deer would be pretty annoying for rangers wanting to rest in the wild, especially considering how numerous they are.
Ah... Yeah that's true :(. THere any other way to make them flee from PCs?
If the rangers don't want to kill the deer but want to rest, they could always just chase them off, if the deer have perma-fear.
Perhaps someone could script a permanent aura around the deer, that, if triggered, puts a fear effect on the deer itself.
Silly. A better AI for animals that -DOESNT LAG- is definitely a tall order and a grey area... Yes, realistic animals are nice, but if they make the server sluggish... I'd rather sacrifice them.
I did try to tweak the animal AI several times, and from experience it's hard to make them seem smart without severely diminishing server performance.
Just as a comparison, I once tried to make rats in the sewer behave more like rats (run around the sewer, etc.). It melted the processor and it was only a set of 3 area, now extend that for every birds, boars, deers, fireflies, etc. into every nature area.
I imagine rats are quite numerous however. What if we'd make deer rarer, but their pelt and meat more valuable? After all such animals are most of the time hiding and fleeing, it should be rare to spot one. If instead of 9-12 deer per area we had one, with such AI, would it lag the server much?
Why is this so important? If you really have a hard time tracking down some deer without using a tracking system then you should probably just get your eyes checked, they are everywhere!
Introduce the Dire Deer. Make it hostile, give it flaming antlers that do +1D6 acid damage, AC 30 and Improved Knockdown. Top it off with massive HP, AB and damage, make it rove in herds of a dozen and this should satisfy all cravings for homicidal ungulates the players here may have, at least for a while.
ToHs idea, brilliant.
A deer ate my bedroll. True story.
An actual dire deer:
(http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/8517/diredeer2.jpg) (//%22http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/856/diredeer2.jpg/%22)