| This contains concepts or rules derived from canonical material but doesn't expressly appear in a rule book. |
Animal[]
Cost: [-20]
Animal is a non-canon mentality meta-trait which can be derived from looking at the common elements shared between the canonical Wild Animal [-30] and Domestic Animal [-30] meta traits.
- Animal [-20]: Cannot Speak [-15] (physical disad), Hidebound [-5] (mental disad), Taboo Trait (Fixed IQ) -0
Lenses[]
- Wild Animal [-10]: Bestial [-10]
- Domestic Animal [-10]: Social Stigma (Valuable Property) [-10]
- Animal Ally [-24]: Bestial [-10]; Remove Hidebound [+5]; Native Language (Accented/None) [-4]; Speak With Animals (Specialized, Own Family, -60%) [10]; Wealth (Dead Broke) [-25]
Effectively, "domesticating" a wild animal is just replacing Bestial w/ Stigma somehow, swapping a mental disadvantage for a social one. This can, in theory, be applied to Animal Ally.
Important Note[]
Despite what the basic set says Domestication is not the same as Training. "Taming is the conditioned behavioral modification of a wild-born animal when its natural avoidance of humans is reduced and it accepts the presence of humans, but domestication is the permanent genetic modification of a bred lineage that leads to an inherited predisposition toward humans."[1]
Also, all animals, even IQ 1 ones, generally Can Learn.
Etymology[]
It is effectively a hypernym of these terms, and if looked at as the "parent" mentality meta-trait, "Wild" and "Tame" can be seen as Lenses which apply to it.
"Mentality" is slightly a misnomer though: "Cannot Speak" is a physical disadvantage per B125:
- if a human possessed an animal, it couldn't speak through it
- if an animal possessed a human, it could speak .. if it knew a language
The animal templates are likely meant to be used for species with IQ of 5 or less, but because it's not actually part of the template, it is entirely possible to have a higher IQ: but it could not be improved due to Taboo Trait.
Taboo traits being worth 0 makes it seem reasonable to treat it like a [-0.1] disadvantage so that Affliction to Negate Disadvantage would only cost +1%.
See also[]
- Animal Ally which lacks Hidebound, implying that it may not be universal to animals and simply for Domestic/Wild ones
- Automaton who are also Hidebound