There are four kinds of bear in the 1981 Basic rules for D&D: Black, grizzly, polar, and cave. Neanderthals like to hunt the last of them.
Cave bears are tough opponents, even for Neanderthals. They have 7 hit dice, which is more than a white dragon, and their skin is tough enough to give them AC equal to chain mail. Plus, they move as fast as an unarmored human, and have three attacks per round, dealing 1-8, 1-8, and 2-12 points of damage, and if the first two hit, it deals another 2-16 with its hug.
According to their descriptive text, cave bears stand 15' tall and eat anything, with a preference for meat and, especially human flesh. The official description also says that they can't see well but have good noses.
Do Cave Bears have Infravision?
We know cave bears see poorly but smell well. The description indicates that they can follow tracks of blood, presumably by smell. In game terms, though, what does any of that mean?
"All non-human monsters have infravision and may 'see' objects by their heat up to 60' way in the dark," says page B29. Some monsters have especially good infravision, with a longer range. There's nothing to say cave bears are any different, apart from the mention that their eyesight is "poor."
Here's my suggestion: Thanks to their senses of smell, weak normal vision, and weak infravision, cave bears can "see" about 60' in all conditions. Beyond 60', they can smell you, but they can't see you. They have infravision, but it's not nearly as important to them as their ability to smell.
Cave Bear Weaknesses
Tough as they are, the weaknesses of cave bears are important. First and foremost, they have only animal-level intelligence. They aren't planning complicated tactics or even thinking much beyond the main biological drives of all animals: eating, reproducing, and surviving.
Obviously, cave bears can't make missile attacks. They might be able to figure out that the person throwing sticks (arrows) and rocks (sling stones) at them is hostile, but they have no clue about spell attacks, and missile attacks from beyond their range of vision might as well be coming from out of nowhere.
The fact that cave bears follow blood trails to their prey is easy for Neanderthal hunters to exploit. They can leave a blood trail leading a cave bear to a location where a score of Neanderthals are waiting in ambush with spears. The best locations will be the bottoms of gorges or ravines the bear can't climb, so the Neanderthals can throw their spears down at them.
Encountering Cave Bears
Cave bears want to eat, mate, and be left alone. They're pretty high up the food chain, without a lot of predators. They enjoy eating human flesh, but if they live in an area where there are Neanderthals, they've probably learned that two-leggers are dangerous. They'll happily attack lone humanoids, but they'll steer clear of groups, unless they are very hungry or they think their young are threatened.
In the stories I've always heard, mother bears become extremely aggressive and dangerous against people who find themselves between them and their cubs. I like that idea for bears in the game, and so I hang onto it.
You can skip reaction rolls for cave bears altogether and go with some rules of thumb. If the bear is encountering a lone PC, it attacks. If the PCs are between the bear and her young, she attacks. If the bear is extremely hungry, it attacks. Otherwise, it leaves.
However, especially for random encounters, you might not know how hungry the bear is. Here are some suggested reaction roll results:
- Immediate attack. Immediate attack.
- Hostile, may attack. The bear roars and makes a display, letting the PCs know they have impinged on its territory. This is their chance to leave. If they don't take it, the bear is hungry enough and territorial enough to charge them, going for whoever is nearest or smallest if it can.
- Uncertain. The bear doesn't know if the party is a threat, a meal, or carrying food. It makes its presence known, sniffs the air, and may move cautiously toward them.
- No attack. The bear leaves, unless the party gives it food. In that case, it takes the food and leaves.
- Enthusiastic friendship. The bear has decided the party will lead it to food. It keeps its distance (50' to 60' away) and follows them. It may become distracted later, but if the party thinks to feed it, it will continue following them for some time.
Cave bears have pretty good morale of 8, but they also have a survival instinct as strong as any animal's. They won't easily break off from fights once they're started, but they won't pursue fleeing foes they don't plan to eat. They will rarely make fighting withdrawals, if ever. When they need out of a fight, they'll retreat.
Cave Bears in the Dungeon
In the dungeon, cave bears typically wander in groups of 1 or 2. They are expected on the 7th level, but they appear on the sample tables for levels 4 through 7. Their lair size is also 1-2. Cave bears don't really form lairs the way more social monsters might. They live and hunt singly or in pairs, and that's pretty much it.
It's unsurprising that they'd be encountered higher up in the dungeon, as they need access to hunting grounds, which might include dungeon levels above where they live or outdoor area that access those levels.
Though the bears are tough, they aren't too tough to permit on the 4th level of a dungeon. A group of 4th-level PCs should be smart enough not to fight cave bears toe-to-toe, but they shouldn't have a hard time against it if they use magic (speak with animals might help, and web will hold them for at least two rounds) and ranged attacks, they can eat through its 29 hit points (on average).
Of course, cave bears do need to reproduce. They are giant grizzly bears, and grizzlies mate in May and June and give birth to one to four cubs in late winter. The cubs may stay with the mother for as long as three years. (Source)
So far as I've been able to tell, grizzlies don't live as mated pairs. So, I would suggest that encounters with one cave bear are with a solitary adult, while encounters with two are with a mother and cub. No stats for cave bear cubs are provided, so the DM has to make a choice. Depending how old the cub is, it might have the stats of a black, grizzly, or polar bear, or it might be a full, 7 HD cave bear, maybe with fewer hit points than momma bear.
Cave bears are omnivores who prefer meat. They need a water source, territory to hunt, and other cave bears to mate with. They could get all that underground, in principle, but in practice they'll need access to the surface. Caves are just too confined to provide enough meat to sustain a 15' tall bear.
Cave Bears in the Wilderness
A grizzly's territory can be as large as 600 square miles, which is about the size of one 24-mile hex or seven 6-mile hexes. Cave bears are three times the size of grizzlies, though, giving them about 27 times the mass of a grizzly. If cave bears lived in the same environments as grizzlies, their territory would have to be enormous to provide them with sufficient food: 16,200 square miles, or twenty-seven 24-mile hexes.
More plausibly, cave bear territory should have more abundant food sources for them than what a grizzly's territory usually provides it. Cave bears are giant bears, and they should live in areas where lots of animals are scaled up to match them. Lost world areas and the lands of giants suggest themselves immediately.
Cave bears do occur on two of the standard wilderness encounter tables—"prehistoric" and "barrens/mountain." The former is for lost world type areas, and the latter are fairly likely to include giants and dragons as well. Either (along with Neanderthals) might be predators of cave bears.
As giant grizzlies, we should expect cave bears to hibernate five or six months of the year. Wilderness encounters with them during that time will be in their dens. These might be lone males hibernating or a mother in a den with 4 to 6 cubs of various ages.
How Cave Bears Fight
Cave bears are not sophisticated fighters. If they are on the offensive, they attack prey who are alone or weak. If they are on the defensive, they fight whoever is fighting them. If someone is making missile attacks from less than 60' away, and the bear isn't already in melee, it'll charge them. It has no idea what to do in response to spells or ranged attacks whose source it can't see. It'll run away when subjected to those, but in a random direction that might be toward the source of the problem.
The bear's signature move is its hug attack, for 2-16 points of additional damage whenever it hits with both claws. This attack doesn't require any particular setup or tactics. Whenever the bear makes melee attacks, it makes its entire claw/claw/bite routine. In the lucky event that both claws hit, the extra damage comes along too.
Cave bears have decent morale, but they mainly want to survive. They won't fight just for the sake of fighting. If they can't identify the source of danger, they'll run (no need for a morale check). If they aren't hungry and they're facing a group of two-legged creatures, they won't start a fight. If PCs attack a cave bear and run away, the bear probably won't pursue for more than a round, and it definitely won't pursue once the PCs are out of sight. It'll wander off in the opposite direction and lick its wounds.
Cave Bear Treasure
Cave bears have treasure type V, which is usually the treasure of groups of intelligent creatures. It might include anything but copper pieces. You should almost always assume that any treasure in a cave bear den is incidental treasure that was carried by a something the bear ate. Cave bears won't use magic items in their treasure, and they won't care about the value of any gems, coins, or jewelry. You should certainly feel free to replace silver, gold, and platinum coins with trade goods suitable to the area. Cave bears are happy to eat merchants.
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