Bat scratches

[vatas]

Bats shouldn't be able to apply "Nasty Laceration" or "Severe Mauling", give them their own type of wound(s) that's scaled appropriately for an animal that weighs less than 100 grams.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

Rabies.
Character permanently dies in about 20 in-game days


The reason you can get bad wounda from bats is because of wound stacking, primarily. Don't think of it as one tiny scrape of the talon.

[Sevenless]

Bats shouldn't be able to apply "Nasty Laceration" or "Severe Mauling", give them their own type of wound(s) that's scaled appropriately for an animal that weighs less than 100 grams.

Bats have a unique immune defense system. They don't kill viruses, they just render them dormant. That means that an individual bat can be infected with multiple viruses simultaneously and not be "sick" in a classic sense. In 2020, more than 10,000 unique virus strains were detected in bats.

So yeah some kind of fever style wound works.

[TrueCellites]

Given bats are often the first animals most players will actually be fighting, why not expand on the idea of semi-beneficial wounds like nettle burn, as well as pull from the common stereotype of rabies making those infected aggressive but mindless. "Bat Bite Fever" effects: debuff to intelligence (-2), but with a small buff to strength and agility (+1) per stack of the wound. Heals slowly over time.

[Sevenless]

Given bats are often the first animals most players will actually be fighting, why not expand on the idea of semi-beneficial wounds like nettle burn, as well as pull from the common stereotype of rabies making those infected aggressive but mindless. "Bat Bite Fever" effects: debuff to intelligence (-2), but with a small buff to strength and agility (+1) per stack of the wound. Heals slowly over time.

Early game int penalties are the most painful of all, str boost would need to be in the 10s in order to be relevant. I'd say +str -agi would be less painful. Useful for mining, mildly annoying for cheese hunting, but ultimately a meaningless (outside the HHP loss) for everything else.

[TrueCellites]

Given bats are often the first animals most players will actually be fighting, why not expand on the idea of semi-beneficial wounds like nettle burn, as well as pull from the common stereotype of rabies making those infected aggressive but mindless. "Bat Bite Fever" effects: debuff to intelligence (-2), but with a small buff to strength and agility (+1) per stack of the wound. Heals slowly over time.

Early game int penalties are the most painful of all, str boost would need to be in the 10s in order to be relevant. I'd say +str -agi would be less painful. Useful for mining, mildly annoying for cheese hunting, but ultimately a meaningless (outside the HHP loss) for everything else.

That's a fair point, I like your suggestion.

[Massa]

i read about some guys who were setting up research equipment outside of a bat cave in vietnam (massive jungle cave system)

and they all flew out for the morning sunrise and shat in unison. hundreds of thousands of bats carpet bombing these guys with shit

and they died within 4 days of overwhelming resipiratory infections

bats in haven should do that