Does anybody want to move forward on the possibility of monster intraspecies AP variability or at least a re-evaluation of how we scale species?
Whether it's baseline
High 6-C or bringing everybody down to
High 8-C with exceptions for Environmental Destruction, or slapping a
Varies wholesale, I have little preference, but the way things are - this huge AP gap - is still pretty silly to me!
1. Bazelgeuse's introduction cutscene for Rise shows
it slamming headfirst into a Tigrex after bombing the latter with several scales, and the Tigrex has strength enough to not only recover its wits while being blown up and blasted back but to actively push itself off of and recover from the attack. This is by far Bazelgeuse's strongest attack, and it doesn't even knock the Tigrex down, let alone finish it.
2. Congalala not only survives a Deviljho's bite right to the neck but
smacks it back hard enough to make it dizzy in Legends of the Guild. Plus, the hunters were using the same equipment to make injuries on both the Congalala and Deviljho and even killed the latter, so... there's that. Why would Deviljho-killing hunters need all their fancy trap equipment and hunting tactics just to capture a Congalala? They could just one-shot it if Deviljho was truly scaled so much higher.
3. In Rise's intro cutscene Rathian felt comfortable enough to
go after Rajang and even
start attacking it and the latter doesn't tank but notably dodges its attacks. Noteworthy also is Rajang's turf war with regular wyverns, where Legiana, Rathalos, and Rathian actually strike it hard enough to
flinch it. I feel that the example that no damage happens to Rajang from those turf wars in-game really has more to do with Iceborne's precedent for ties and victories in turf wars; Rathalos doesn't hurt Glavenus at all when it does its "losing" turf war variant, despite that same animation causing damage to other brutes like Brachydios.
4. There's also the fact that Zinogre
openly goes up against Scorned Magnamalo and contests it enough in a head-to-head clash to make the latter enter its Raging Hellfire state, which is... well, it's something. While clearly being portrayed as its lesser in terms of raw power, a Zinogre not only feels comfortable going after Scorned but still manages to make it work for the victory. It's not even a case like Violet Mizutsune's where the Zinogre might have thought it was a regular Magnamalo instead of its empowered variant, since that would mean that Zinogre as a species are find going up against them anyways.
As for the latter two cases, unless it's literally a species' first encounter with another, initiating combat with another creature in nature is a pretty solid indication that it's worked at least
sometimes in the past in order for the former species to still be extant and have adapted to the same environment.
Attacking something way out of your league is not a case of animalistic intelligence but rather because it's cornered, sick, or brooding
since that stuff just doesn't work in nature. Instincts arise from the traits of those who survive. Species who do stupid things like that will just not continue, unless they weren't so stupid in the first place!
Magnamalo, Bazelgeuse, Rajang, and even Deviljho are just another species of monster like Rathalos, it's not even a "this creature is a living force of nature who can clear the skies themselves!" or "it's super rare!" (Rajang excluded for the latter point, I guess). For example, Bazelgeuse
is known in many places across the world as "the Bomber Wyvern" and holds an extremely wide range over which its species roam.
There's also the case where variants and deviants are the same species yet are scaled to have so much higher AP due to environmental, personal, or other factors, like just growing up in a cold place or being really old for some cases. In my eyes, these species are either variable or most of them scale.
