Some few years ago I had my cat Miles Morales outside and he got spooked by one of our dogs who he knows and trusts.
He fled up a tree in the yard and immediately started panicking and howling.
I positioned myself under him and called out and he slowly began climbing down until I could grab him.
Guess he hasn’t been bit by a spider yet.
My RPG heyday was in and after high school, so 90-94. 1st or 2nd edition.
Add to that injury rules.
Oh, you’ve been shot? It’s going to be nearly impossible to cast a spell or fight back. Maybe realistic but the number of characters I spent multiple hours making only to be wounded within moments of play was… greater than two.
It has been a few decades.
Damnit, now that song is stuck in my head!
Like I said, see the vet.
I want that cat to be healthy and seen by a vet but also the owner to be informed and not worry about neighborhood assholes when it might be a bite.
Just see the vet, they’ll examine the wounds and tell you what’s going on.
My wife could be wrong, we have a couple of pics and nothing internal.
BB guns don’t go all the way through. She also knows that from personal experience.
But the abcesses bursting also means the infection has passed and the wounds should heal.
My vet tech wife thinks it abcesses from an older dog bite. She believes there would be more damage from a gunshot.
But an abcess would be a round, symmetrical wound and if it was from a bite it explains why there would be another on the other side. There should also be scabs next to the abcesses from the other two canine teeth.
I’ve really wanted to learn Delta Green so I can run a SCP story I love (What Happened to Site 13?) and at the end the site teleports out of the world.
Then I’d run a fantasy campaign that is cleaning up the mess they left in the Delta Green one.
And we feed them, groom them, care for them. They know and love us back.
I have five cats. They all love me and each other. It’s a decent little life. (Plus two dogs, a tortoise, and a wife.)
Is that a Johnny Dangerously reference?!
Keeping it strictly in D&D terms, I’d give it a Legendary Resistance that can be used each round as a reaction. Each time it’s used it also consumes one of the multi attacks.
In this way the enemy avoids being crippled but is still weakened for the round and the players get less bruised for it. It feels they’ve earned it rather than wasted a resource.
Narratively it’s rearing back to avoid a blow so it can’t bite this turn, or a claw parries. Maybe the spell that was supposed to entangle instead damages a wing, halving flight speed.
Turn those resistances into opportunities to strike back.
Their enemy is the Monkey’s Paw Paladin.
They are constantly having to come up with terribly evil things to inflict upon the world in order to make the efforts of the wannabe evil enemy work out well for everyone.
A thankless task, really, but what else can you expect when you serve the Monkey’s Paw?
I don’t know if that’s the exact blanket we have or not but it is well loved by our cars. They knead on it like its mama’s belly.
It’s still necessary so long as anyone feels it puts a target on their back.
Because that’s the point, to tell people they are accepted and loved. There’s really no point where that stops being necessary.
I appreciate you trying to attribute the artist. That’s a good instinct to have, glad to see it in practice!