Why DMs hate pets in D&D (and how to fix them)
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- čas přidán 25. 06. 2024
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▼ INDEX ▼
0:00 Let's talk about pets!
1:41 Pick your battles
3:57 Energy for your adventures
5:05 Include pets in the party
7:25 Set limits
10:11 Simplify
11:37 Don't nerf other classes
A lot of Dungeon Masters hate pets, animal companions, mounts, and familiars in Dungeons & Dragons... and to be honest, I kind of get it. Today, let's dig into how we can make pets more fun in D&D!
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Hey Ginny
Love the channel - you talk about your home games, and I was wandering if you could tell us a little about them?
It would be cool to know a bit about your characters, the campaign world your in, the party, the GM, and what adventures you do!
Mny thks!!
Damn, this looks so cool. But sadly US only.
I have a whole playlist about my character in the home game I've been playing for a few years now: czcams.com/video/r63v4kLRhfc/video.html
when i found the channle i scouffed at the thought of needing help like this, but as i watch, i cant help but love the ideas and HOW MCUH YOU HELPED MY CAHRCTER STORY IDEAS, I LOVE THE RP VIEDOES
it suddently clicked why vexalia is always poor. she has to either hunt several deer or buy a cow every few days and not for herself.
-Give each member a pet
-The party gets kidnapped
-The players must rescue their characters as their pets.
Hahahaha! That would be fun OneShot for the players. The same magic that carries away the party members is also responsible for enhancing the pets' intelligence/awareness or perhaps even giving them skills. When the players are rescued, the pets revert to their former selves.
@@testfire3000 Oh no~ some genius- I mean Mad Mage(lol a Madge) switched the minds of the PC and Pets!
@@ShavedTomato Even Better! LOL And if everyone in the group doesn't have a pet (it would be a rather rare party that every member had a pet) you could do it in the wilderness and just roll random (or pre-selected) wild animals. The Cleric? He is an Elk. The rouge? He is a squirrel. etc etc etc.
I had my imp familiar feed him a healing potion while my character was unconcious.
Literally a plan I have for my campaign lmfao
When a player asks me if they can have a pet in my campaigns, I'll usually ask them what their intentions are. Some people want a trained hawk to scout ahead, and some people just want a huge cuddly cat. When I know the intention of the animal, It becomes much easier for me to make plans for the animal and the player.
this makes a lot of sense!
That’s interesting! I really do get scared of asking for pets because my intentions are to have a loyal pet that is usually a cool creature of sorts and practicality is something I do not mind throwing out the window for a pet. And idk how my dm would react tbh lol
I have a poisonous snake which lives in my Backpack. When i found it i used talk to animals to teach it a 4 tricks i can have it use out of combat, anything else i have to roll checks for.
Its called button. It knows "Button holes" bite the person i said that to
"Button Press" help me intimidate the person im speaking to (+1 to my intimidation check)
And "Button Pockets" hide yourself on the person i point towards (stealth check)
And "Button Backpack" No clever pun just try and come back to me and get in the bag.
Ive not had it very long and itll probably die if someone lands a hit on it but for now hes a great little addition
I had a player who wanted a falcon just so he could have him act as a scout. He once went into battle with the falcon on his shoulder. The player then got upset with me, because the mage the party was fighting cast the standard fireball spell the falcon failed his saving throw,and as you can imagine, it ate up all his hitponits.
When a DM asks me this, I say “inbreed them through endless generations.”
I currently have a deer, and I keep forgetting that he exists and then when we’re all in a small closet/ room I get a random thought about how there’s also a full grown deer in there💀
Imagine how hilarious it would be if your DM described the situation as: "As you're all scrammed into the closet, the last thing you see as you close the door, is the deer standing in the middle of the room, staring at the closet and feel it might give you away if left there." 😛
You know it would be entertaining for the pirate's parrot to get left behind in the teleport only to swoop in and land on his shoulder exactly 5 minutes later no mater how far they teleported. We just left that thing 1000 miles behind, how did it catch up so fast? Maybe there is something more to this seemingly mundane bird than meets the eye.
Its always fun to dangle weird plot hooks infront of players to see if they'll bite.
Turns out the bird can teleport and planeshift at will but whenever the party leaves it behind it gets miffed and spends 5minutes in paradise calming down before returning to its owner.
How it has these powers, its not telling and not even the cleric's god knows the answer.
i like the idea of the parrot coming back 2 weeks later going "again! you left me behind again! do you know how hard it is to find your own way out of the Astral Sea without magic! Goddamnit!!!!!! Oh a cracker"
@@TheAciddragon069well done. I just laughed out loud after reading that in a squeaky parrot voice. Thanks for the experience
Maybe it's like the bird in the mage test from the Frieren anime.
"You've probably met at least one DM who hates pets"
Well of course I know him, he's me.
General Kenobi!
A classic reply, well done!
Hello there.
*insert "boo this man" gif* :p
I can't help but agree. I'm in a party of seven people, two of which are different kinds of magic user who spawn stuff to fight for them and each of them is also responsible for a second character sheet with either a permanent npc or a super powerful magic using construct the mage himself made. These two people among seven make up for 70% of the initiative order. When the dm gave my very simple "I attack two times for x damage" barbarian a dragon egg, she immediately decided another guy in the fight was way too much and left it at home.
Now I'm the next in line to be dm for this group and I'm going to have a very serious talk about how many npcs/familiars/pets/evoked creatures
creatures the party is allowed to have, especially because they are already seven players and fights take way too long already!
Sorry, needed to rant.
In a campaign I’m running, one of my PCs character has a “pet” bullfrog who sits in a pouch on their person. The frog is actually their Paladin cousin who got turned into a frog and bestowed their Oath and ability to use magic onto my PC’s character. So essentially, their spell casting focus and holy symbol is the frog while they try to figure out how to turn their cousin back to a human. The frog doesn’t participate in combat, but if the frog is removed from the pouch to do whatever, during or out of combat, an Animal Handling check is made to secure the frog again. In order for the character to cast spells and whatnot, the frog must be on their person or within 5 ft of them. It sounds very different and wild, but my players and I have been in agreement over it bc of that session 0. I can’t agree with Ginny enough, that session is so important!
So...they were basically a warlock with a frog as a patron?
That's wonderful
One might say he's gonna find evil and ribbet a new one
I'll show myself out
My friend got a "cursed" black cat. It would bring bad luck to enemies that would touch it or pet it (as well as disadvantage to my friend when he carried it) and while it could die, it would instantly respawn behind us and the dead body would disappear as soon as it wasn't being observed. It was really cool too cause it was unbothered by death and we used it to test things for safety. We found out the anomalous properties when the Warlock used Eldrich blast and missed the Rogue's head but totally evaporated the cat that was sitting on his shoulder 😅 we weren't playing the good guys...
Love that idea.
Now I want to make magical creatures !!
Poor thing 😅
"...and while it could die, it would instantly respawn behind us and the dead body would dissapear as soon as it wasn't observed." Lmao Schrödinger's DnD cat
Yoink taking this
My game's pet rule is that if the pet would take damage, the owner takes it instead (thanks to a "soul bond").
Okay, I actually like that solution. It means sending your pet into a deadly area is actually potentially dangerous *to you* so you gotta be smart.
*Rick&Morty flashbacks*
@@annoynymouse1146 high IQ comment
Fireball! Fireball is the solution to everything!
@@KainSilverwind How exactly is fireball the solution to pets?
Here’s a fun fact: young winter wolves are beasts, adult winter wolves are monstrosities.
So as the winter wolf ages it eventually becomes too independent and magical for animal friendship to have power over it.
@@cpip i would say that you can only tame a young winter wolf but that once it grows up the status of beast vs monstrosity is based on how you raised it for spell purposes but either way it will probably stick around if its enjoying life.
Do higher CR/older winter wolves still have a cold breath weapon? That used to be why
evolves into a legendary pokemon
I recently had a situation where one of my players wanted her druid to have a brown bear as a companion and asked me if that was ok since we both remembered of often Trinket got forgotten in CR campaign one. i was fine with the idea, then another player asked if they could play as a bear and if so was there an race for that. she was an experienced player and just wanted to experiment with a totally unique character. Before i could say anything the druid player suggested that the player who wanted to pay as a bear could save me a job by playing the bear companion thereby ensuring that Keepsake was a fully integrated member of the party. So now in the current campaign i have an assistant DM playing as a brown bear Barbarian (Or do i mean bar-Bear-ian) Called Keepsake who always sticks close to the druid who saved her from hunters when she was a cub.
@@drewberrycrunch1417 for this particular character myself and the player re-visited a home brewed bear race, brown bear sub race combo I had created for an earlier campaign and she rolled stats as normal. If you want to go to the lengths of creating a mastif race then great, I’m sure you and your player will have a lot of fun. Otherwise go with the side kick stats as your starting setup and see how things go.
@@Ailieorz one player wanted to have a bear companion and one player wanted to play as a bear “To try something totally different” as a DM who tries never to say a hard NO to my players trying new thing I was open to the idea and both players felt it made no sense for there to be two bears 🐻 in the party so they suggested the companion be the bear the player who wanted to play as a bear played.
I mean, Bar-bear-ians were based off the Bear-serker in real life. :P
That's adorable. I love it when my players create those connections before a game, since it adds a lot to the game and makes my job as GM easier.
we had a similar idea. one wanted to play a "reverse" druid. one that can only turn human 2 a day. and one wanted a "pet companion". now we have the druid be a companion of the ranger. their goal is to "cure" the druid.
"...build pet shops in their towns"
*writes that down* I never considered this as a DM. There could be a lot of adventurers, rangers, wizards, etc. living or traveling through an area. A good number of them could have animal companions. Businesses could have noticed that and set up animal companion services.
They could potentially make a killing. People like Vex wouldn't want their animal companion out in the cold while they got to drink and eat in a tavern. And you know they would want armor for their companions too, and armor for animals was common enough with cavalry so there would be people for this, so that's another source of revenue.
Rulers could also get on board with this. Their citizenry express concern about animal companions on the street, but they don't want to ruffle no feathers on adventurers, wizards, rangers, etc. they might have regular need for so they zone out areas for animal companions, businesses set up there, and everyone is happy enough.
You're talking about daycare centers, like you see in pokemon. Or the IRL equivalent would be kennels. But I doubt a wizard would care to part with his familiar; they tend to be small and harmless enough, and if they do get in the way, they can always be dismissed for a while. Pet shops should be run by beastmasters who tame pets for adventuring parties.
But the bigger question is, why isn't it normal for adventurers to buy a dog? Dogs can track, assist in hunting tasks, and remain alert to danger after the party goes to sleep, to say nothing of potential combat use.
"I need a Horse" --Thor
@@Nurk0m0rath not to mention with the dog in the dungeon the goddest boy/girl can smell potential danger ahead. and really good for emotional scenes to calm one or both of them
also exotic animal pet shop = menagerie
I think every major settlement i've ever made has had a stables/menagerie type of building where animals were available for purchase or temporary care.
"What if a monster sees your mount and says 'lunch'?"
This is why my pet was a Roc, she's the one saying 'lunch" for the monsters
pet rock.
You would hate me for a DM as I would make you pay to feed it and even more so you would be held responsible for all damages it did to any settlement. Your Roc landed on that guard tower and it collapsed, well you better come up with the million gold pieces real fast to have it rebuilt and also pay for all the mercenaries that have to be hired to defend the town for the few years it taking to rebuild the tower.
@@Donkeyearsa I not wreckless with her and a million gold pieces is not a problem to this character, she became hella rich. And to feed, she's a hunting bird, a let her hunt with some control of mine of how much and what, 'cause that shit is massive.
Dragon: Hmmm rotisserie chicken
@@raresnaftan3977 you know Rocs hunt dragons, don't ya? and they're significantly faster too... 12m/s faster than the most matured dragon to be exact
"Some DMs hate them."
Me as a DM: *makes a new rule just for taming creatures because I started off as a Druid and know that having a pet is bloody dope*
???? Has no one heard of Wild Companion?
Am I in fucking space?
Oh fuck, brb stealing Elon's ride.
@@zettozettomer2640 Oh, no, I have, I just always forget it exists. XD
@@zettozettomer2640 what's Wild Companion? I'm new to ttrpgs so.I haven't learned everything yet 😅
@@evelynnsophia7631 alternative for wild shapes, summons minor animals instead of transforming
@@orionar2461 ooh, thank you for letting me know!
True story from a previous campaign:
Bard+rogue: "could we buy a cat here?"
DM: i mean yea that makes sense "yeah, for 8 sp" they're probably not gonna matter much in game outside of being cute
Bard+rogue: "we buy 8 cats each!"
This could be either the beginning of some frustrantingly smart plan or the prelude to something extremely stupid. I don't see much in between.
Crazy Cat Lady origin story.
Fireball. All the cats are dead. That didn't last long.
Psh! You trippin'. Cats got Evasion, proficiency, and DEX for days.
@@Alresu Polymorph enemies into mice.
The invincible rule is one I've been using for years, and players always liked it, so those pesky mages who try to make use of using spells through their familiars, are well aware that their trusty raven is going to be toast the next second something hits it.
Throught the campaign, a Paladin made a deal with me to train a snow gryphon as his mount, but he specifically trained it to be like an ambulance, the gryphon would only enter the battle to pick a fallen one, or to flee.
My party got a blink dog... well a blink puppy. We all instantly fell in love with him. Not wanting him to die, we decided to have a wizard friend of ours take care of him while we're having adventures. I frequently used the Sending spell to say, "Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy? You are."
I love this. I need to know the puppy name.
"Comments Section" is such a brilliant addition to this video. Great job!
This sounds like you're petting yourself on the back
Insert Obama meme
??? What does this even mean
Now I understand why this comment is top
I second this. Keep the comments section character
"Forgotten" is a term that is pretty appropriate for 9/10 animal companions or pets. MCDM's new Beast Heart class does introduce some awesome pet mechanics, but when it comes to already established 5e material, pet mechanics are lacking.
The best thing I think a DM can do is both:
1. Have consequences for pet injury or death (if that's how you run it)
- This keeps your party engaged and makes certain that they remember to take care of and protect their puppers.
2. REWARD players for using their pet
- Combo moves, bonus loot, items tailored to the companion. Sky is the limit
Or just use MCDM's Beast Heart. That works too,
Happy to see the Beastheart get a shoutout in the comments, and from Crispy no less!
Crispy saturates the CZcams D&D world, if it’s not his video or he can’t drag them on the show, at least you find him in the comments hahaha - love to you man :)
What is MCDM?
@@Lycandros MCDM Productions - they'll be at the top of Google if you search that. Matt Colville's company that's put out several 5e supplements, most of which contain additional rules for pets or sidekicks, now that I think about it.
@@dungeonmilitia1609
We rats may be small.
But we are legion.
One random thing: I just always make pets share their Master's initiative. It helped to remove a lot of the lag due to pets, even in cases where everyone has a pet. Simply put, either of them can take their actions in any order, on their shared turn. My players enjoy it, and so do I. And for the record, I do this with enemies as well; although they rarely have pets. But, it does make some "big bads" just a little badder, such as a Bugbear with two Worgs that share his initative.
My GM does that and I don't blame him one bit for it.
They all share initiative with group initiative. There is much less individual fencing in formation combat.
A cool way to deal with the pet lag machine
I had a Dog as a Master, I was his Pet Half-Orc. Everything I did was for Barkley(The Dog), My Orc doesn't even understand Barkley but guesses what he wants and his reward is licks on his face. He never fought and would watch me battle for him. He was pretty fun to roleplay with.
i have that except a fish lol
@@momomomocensoredbyyoutube9085 I guess he wasn't talking about dnd 🤣
Lowest maintenance animal companion in history of D&D: Sprinkle the Weasel from Critical Role
"...heeelp meee..."
And great for laughs!
This will never fail to break me. Sprinkle, the deathless, shall rise again! lmao
He really was... The Traveler
@@tomf3150 Yes, he was. Although there was some question as to whether Sprinkle was Artagan all along or if he used the weasel as a way to keep an eye on jester. Thaddeus on the other hand was just an asshole.
I've always had such a love/hate relationship with pets in games. I played with a druid with a raptor companion, and it was fine until the group was put into a dangerous situation, and one of the party members decided to save a fellow party member during their turn rather than the dino. When the dino almost died (because the druid had ordered him to run into the middle of combat, and he got surrounded), the druid declared that if the party ever allowed anything to happen to his dino, he'd kill them. That didn't go over well with the party. But on the other hand, I played with an amnesiac wizard whose raven familiar turned out to be his daughter in disguise trying to help her dad out. It was just so wholesome and sweet, and when she got kidnapped, the entire party went into hell to save her. There's a way to do pets right, but it definitely takes some work between the DM and players to make sure it works.
That Druid doesn’t sound neither mature nor fun to play with.
I send my pet into battle and don’t want to suffer the consequences! Save my pet or I’ll kill all of your npcs!
Sounds like the beginning of a dnd horrorstory
@@the4given196 At the very least, they should be looking into the prospect of being a Battle Smith artificer who's pet is functionally immortal and can die a thousand deaths and be fine an hour later. Or get mounted combatant.
@@zettozettomer2640 or get a familiar they can resummon after the combat.
@@the4given196 Not gonna lie, it kinda is. I've played plenty of games with this guy, and he's kind of amazing at making really problematic character. It's definitely the reason people stopped inviting him to games.
@@HeronAria that sucks man. ive got some problem players in the game im playing in and their the reason im dming a game with a few of the other players. its much more enjoyable without them. they arent likle creeps or do anything shitty ingame, but they are jsut constantly chatting and distracting the others at the table and both are a scheduling nightmare.
I cried when my pet dog died in D&D, cause I had just lost my actual dog a few weeks beforehand. It wasn't the DM's fault, he didn't know, I also kinda hid my sad, so I didn't ruin the game for anyone. I summoned the dog back as a familiar (because the DM said I could)
good dm
that's a cool narrative take to keep the dog
My tiefling has a hellhound companion (a gift from her patron, Lilith, who is also her grandmother, upon entering into a warlock pact), and she's treated as a summoned creature. She can take damage in battle, but she can't permanently die -- she's discorporated and sent back to Lilith's realm when her HP hits zero. Then my tiefling can summon her again later when she has the time to perform the ritual. She can also send her away and call her back without performing the full ritual when needed. She has hellhound stats, but we ignore the evil alignment; she's terrifying, but trustworthy, and acts like a big dopey puppy around children. My tiefling has to give her commands, but the command itself can give her some agency in a battle or particular situation, so she can be useful without bogging down the action.
If you play together at a table, having a plush or so as a stand in for your pet also helps. The "pet" is now physically there for everyone to see and won't be forgotten all the time.
If you're playing on an app or on discord, you can always just have yourself or an icon of the pet sit around for the players to remember
That's really the actual problem with pets. Sometimes even the players forget about them which can also happen with any NPCs who become party allies.
@@MorinehtarTheBlue that's why when my party decided they wanted to pour their resources into getting a hoard of cats to follow them around,
I gave them each a little avatar, name and customised statblock included.
And to get some petty revenge for them choosing to adopt an entire shelter worth of pets that I now had to account for,
I named them all really differently, but a few of them similar, so we had names like Tam, Tammy and Timmy, alongside Aaryn, Kikao and Prescilla.
But they also had nicknames and code names that they used when communicating with each other,
So if the party used speak with animals they'd refer to each other with different names than their calling name.
So the players made sure to keep track of which ones stuck together most and stuff like that as to make sure they didn't accidentally forget one.
We have dozens of goons and animals sometimes. I am not filling half the table with them.
Whenever my cat jumps on the tabletop everyone yells "Ah!! It's the Terrasque!!" Then we put her on the floor. Fumph.
Why can No-one spell Tarrasque anymore?
@@johannesstephanusroos4969 Why can no one spell rogue? The mysteries of life...
That Matt Mercer bear necklace thing reminds me of something similar I wrote for a friends game.
I wrote a series of items for the party to collect, a dagger with a horn handle, a tooth necklace, a scale shield, and a magic staff with a jar at the tip with a small chunk of flesh in it.
It seems obvious now, but in game they were given out far apart.. but each time a new one was given to a member the rest would glow a bit.
It was up to them to figure it out and during the final battle that was wayyy too difficult they regrouped a bit, their items all reacted and they investigated them. They put them together and they were the horn, tooth, scales and heart of a dragon. They chose to permanently sacrifice the items to summon the dragon to help them in combat, because the big bad was the one who killed him and made his body into artifacts.. they summoned him and he evened out the fight and tipped it in their favor a bit.
When the fight was done, he enjoyed his time with them so much that he inhabited the body of a little golden dragon statue permanently as a pet in the next campaign. It became a running joke that they had to constantly hide this massive chunk of gold from everyone who wanted to steal it, but it was their pet/friend. In a few dire occasions they tried shaving off some gold from his claws and horns to pay a ransom… that little gold dragon was the highlight of the whole campaign and everyone’s favorite character and it was just a fluke! The location was described to be an ancient dragon lair and had dragon gargoyles of solid gold, and when it was time for his soul to depart and move on, they all begged him to stay! Haha
So yeah.. Pets can make for amazing games! Just go with it, even if they have weird limitations or cause problems. Because those problems are fun to solve! Like a solid gold dragon trying to sneak through a very poor and violent village of thieves and scum who’s would murder for a tiny piece of it.. or the fact that it can only fly in tiny bursts because it weighs a crap ton because it’s solid gold.. so I’m order to sneak, it must be carried by the strongest member who has the worst stealth… fun issues that result in silly situations because everyone refuses to leave the gold dragon behind!
We treat out pets like another player, and she got killed right in front of me, my little Willow got killed in front of me, and I joined her when I died in the hands of the Hydra, I met her in the doorsteps in The Hall of Echoes, our party genuinely cried.
The look on the cat's face in the thumbnail is excellent. Also, it took the ranger on my party TWO YEARS before he started using his animal companion owl for scouting and recon. Another group befriended an Owlbear, but it was with an animal handling check facilitated by Speak with Animals, and they persuaded it that they would make it much easier to find food if it stayed with them and helped them out. I have them check in with him every so often to see how he's feeling about the arrangement, just so they remember that he's with them by choice, not by force/training/magic.
That's a shame. I played a ua revised ranger with a wolf companion, and that wolf was obscenely useful both in and out of combat. Companions get skill proficiencies in that version, so you end up getting free advantage on a lot of rolls
@@justoneman13 Well, everyone in the group was new to the game, so there was a good chunk of time where people were just trying to remember the basics.
@@LexIconLS I get that. I run a home game, and have had to remind my players how ability checks work literally every single time I've asked for a non-standard check (like Charisma (Arcana) or Constitution (Athletics))
@@justoneman13 The Beast Master variant from Tasha's are also really helpful due to the number of skills they are proficient in!
@@connorsmith4319 Yeah, skill proficiencies are great. People tend to overlook the Help mechanic, but it's pretty powerful
By the way, the Sidekicks UA did get an official format in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything for folks with access to the book
@@FrostyTheSnowPickle I think the Essentials kit only took sidekicks up to level 5 or 6, but Tasha's gives you up to level 20.
Oh, shit!! That's what I get for skimming Tasha's! Thank you!
I've looked through Tasha's many times and I missed that every time. Thank you.
We gave our Rogue's pet mouse the Goodberry spell, making it a support caster sidekick.
Saw this and immediately gave my players a dog with warrior levels.
7:48 While I won't say players can't bond with a banderhobb, I will mention that, if you're going by the lore in Volo's guide, their lifespan is "several days". Have fun explaining to the players why their giant smiley frog friend has melted into disgusting black tar and shadow stuff.
This could have use in the criminal underworld of my city. At least the mob can run fights with these things.
“Don’t make you pets unkillable”
Me holding my Charlene, my floating triangular mimic of total oblivion who breathes rat poison: “No.”
One of my first campaigns, the group befriended a giant owl after saving her from barbarians. She accompanied them and even used their cart as her nest, which generally meant that her first priority in combat was protecting the cart and its eggs. I've even had her grown up owlets show up in campaigns taking place later down the timeline
In a game I was running the druid had 6 dogs, 2 elephants, and a staff of the python. I let them know that the elephants might not be able to follow everywhere and they would be targets. Eventually one of the elephants was hit by a random bolt of chaotic magic and was effected by a permanent awakening spell. Ellie Phant became an important party member for our group.
I am glad I put my foot down and limited one player to a pseudodragon that proved to be a polymorphed hatchling dragon, an owlbear and two horses. He wants more, but he is also in charge of another character and it is starting to get ridiculous.
Ew, "Ellie Phant"?! Awakening Spell and it didn't have a name that it called itself? So much for "awakening"
Elephants eat a lot. Feeding the dang things was a big limit for cultures keeping them. A bum expedition could afford a couple though. You can do a lot with one.
@@teresaellis7062Owlbears are aggressive, territorial wankers. They make awful companions. An owlbear could try to eat your horse if you got one. You can chain one up in a room.
I like the bit when you said, "There is no purer disappointment than someone getting their puppy taken away." I feel like that sums up the whole why-you-need-to-think-about-this FAQ.
My Warlock has both an imp familiar, “Gizmo,” and a pet centipede, “Kaia.” Gizmo participates in combat, and has “died” a few times. Kaia, however, slinks into my armor and hides in there, so she’s “protected,” but she just kinda has plot armor like that. She also doesn’t participate in combat.
My character started as level 3 in one of my campaigns and when I told my DM about my character's build, he offered to give me a pseudodragon as my starting magical item. I loved the idea, but voiced my concerns about the safety of the dragon because I knew I'd get immediately attached, so we homebrewed it that when I saved my pseudodragon and we bonded causing the pseudodragon to choose to be my familiar, it gained the benefits of the familiar spell. This meant that he would be sent to a demiplane instead of dying, and I could send him to said demiplane since the world was very prejudiced and townspeople would likely attack him. This meant that every time we went to a city, he would question me on what I wanted to do. Despite not technically being able to die, I still try as hard as I can not to let him get hit. My DM also ruled that because my pseudodragon was wild, he can still attack despite the "can't attack" rule of familiars. (I was totally willing to follow it, in fact he was the one who brought it up) I have to say though, I don't think he expected my familiar to be the one who dropped our enemy in our first combat encounter lol.
That sounds like you got a Pokémon. At least, I visualized the last part as a Pokémon battle xD.
@@vira-siegkaiserreinhafro1670 it's actually surprisingly like a pokemon battle
My Druid has a Dire Wolf companion! My DM and I talked about how Soybean Jr does not fight, and will often be used to help NPCs find safety in a fight, or run and get help. I can ride on him or ask him to scout ahead. The DM is totally allowed to kill him if he chooses. Soybean Jr may come to protect my druid if she goes down, which can and may end up with him dying.
Love the name!
@@JustMe-um8zp Thank you! he is named after my Wolf Companion Soybean (back when my PC was a Ranger/Druid before I changed her to just a Druid for a new campaign). This wolf pet is his son!
Keeping animals to the rear along with porters and the rear guard is reasonable. PCs sometimes have a little non-combat section along. This is not completely risk-free.
2:40 Our campaign was mainly rp heavy, so my dm allowed me to conjure animals without using a spell slot. If, at any time, the owls become useful in anything other than hugging, they'd cost a spell slot. (I told my dm I'd follow that rule and I haven't missed it once so it's easier on him)
One of my favorite campaigns was a Descent into Avernus game that my friend DMed right after Xanathar's Guide to Everything came out. I was playing a fighter, so naturally I had to try out the new cavalier subclass. I actually had a brown bear named Oslo as my mount. It was written into my backstory, I had found it as a child after it had been abandoned by a circus as a cub, so we grew up together. DM was all for that. And it was amazing. From the rides across the deserts of Avernus, to Oslo thinking he's about the size of a cat, to the final battle where I had to joust with a narzugon on his nightmare. Would 10/10 recommend.
“Comment Section” is pure genius! Timely video too - I’m dealing with a player with a short attention span and a wolf companion. I think I’ll keep a stuffed wolf handy for the next time the party wants to stealthily climb down a rope.
One of my greatest D&D moments was stealing my arch nemesis’ favourite pet and turning it to my own. I could literally see the pain in my DM’s eyes. Good times 🙂
Mel Gibson from The Patriot approves.
In the last dnd session i was in i got a pet. Me and my friends are all not native to the English language but we really like speaking it so the sessions are almost only in English (u can kinda see where this is going) the dm said i saw a porcupine, i befriended it, the dm realised they said the wrong name and they meant to say a hedgehog, i have a pet porcupine now.
That's awesome
to be fair i'm a native english speaker and i didn't know the exact difference until like two months ago
I'm playing with my friends a module called "Tormenta" it's a brazilian module and instead of NPC's or pets in combat, it has the "ally system", every NPC or pet that joins the combat can have 3 levels (depending on your level, 1 for 1-7, 2 for 8-13, and 3 for 14-20). instead of fighting, the ally gives a bonus for skills, attack damage, etc..
I think it's a really good way to add NPC's on combat instead of the old way, it won't slow combat and the description for your attacks can be really fun.
I absolutely ADORE session 0 as a DM and when I'm a player very few of my DMs have ever used it.
It's a great way to share my ideas for how I would like the campaign to go, and allow the players to make informed decisions when building their characters. Too often as a player I have come with a character only to learn that the character doesn't fit into the party or story well
I won't run a table without a Session 0, myself, and greatly prefer it.
I absolutely ABHOR session zero as a DM, and as a player. To each their own, but it's not my bag, at all.
I've never experienced a Session 0, but they sound helpful. There's been one main place I think it'd be helpful and that's in my school campaigns where all our characters were created separately and ended up being very different from eachother. Though I will say that the rp with getting the characters to bond is pretty cool, would have been good to know half-orc wasn't a good race to play considering orcs are causing the most trouble so most people in the world hate them, and think I'm one of them, therefore hating me, but on the other hand all the orcs think I'm a traitor and want to murder me on sight 😅
@@evelynnsophia7631 They're very helpful to establish the ground rules of the world, for the players to come to a consensus on their characters, and to discuss what sort of campaign you all intend to play in, both in tone and structure.
@@cpip I think I'll bring up the idea to my DM next time we start a game
The ‘teleport’ issue really resonates with me. To my mind, if a player asks “the spell says X but… could it do Y?” the answer should never be an immediate “no”. I can absolutely say no, but I usually have a think about it first.
Can I use Prestidigitation to knock someone out with an awful smell? Fuck yeah, roll for it though.
Can my mage hand attack? No, no it cannot.
Can I teleport just *one* extra person? Sure, maybe it costs you a point of exhaustion, though.
Giving things a cost, or a chance of failure, leads to more well-rounded and realistic spellcasting. Magic isn’t like a law of physics; its rules can bend without breaking.
mage hand cant attack but what about floating infront of a ranged martial to throw off depth perception
I love this and wish more DMs were like thai
I've always thought of magic as a way of breaking the physical laws of the universe. Sure, magic has its own rules, too...but mages invent spells all the time. There are literal gods of magic...I can definitely see there being leeway there.
And, of course, Rule of Fun.
@@Someguy_9 usually it's the higher level spellcasters that invent the spells though. Not the level 2 wizard XD
There's a lot of examples of times when you need to alter the effects of a spell in order to account for numerous situations. If a DM tells me you only ever read exactly the rule of the spell my answer would likely be that I don't believe them.
But with teleport for example if you're considering if a pet cat can teleport... Then what about an intelligent magic item or a familiar or a bag of holding with a creature stuffed inside. There's a lot of ways to require a judgement call.
In my mind the best way to handle it is to ask what is expected to happen. If the player expects the spell to behave a certain way, why are you shorting that exception? To be fair sometimes it's good to say no to a players expectation. It comes down to WHY you are saying no.
My character's "pet" is a teddy bear that is a gateway for his patron to talk to him through. He is incredably attached to the bear but my DM is the controller of it. It can't fight and can give the help action on most social interactions lol. My DM loves this because he gets a "character" in our party and can use this to lead us if needed. Its really fun
I like how the gods in Esoteric Enterprises work. You are their tool.
I’m glad to hear more people speaking out on ways to utilize animals! I play a shifter artificer and get a companion in the form of a mechanical construct. Working within the rules laid out, I made it a medium humanoid with minimalist facial features (just eyes) and I made it the upper limit of medium height so it contrasts well with my petite character. My character is socially stunted and treats this automaton like a teddy bear and her best friend. So he doesn’t talk or do much independently, but the dm let him have some rudimentary emotional expressions. The party as a whole loves him and they sometimes refer to him as ‘steampunk baymax’.
What?! DMs hate pets?! I'm a DM and I love pets! I created an extensive pet shop for my players to interact with various pets to purchase.
My view is pets are like any aspect of the game. An extra layer or element of the game that people just have to work on. If you don't that's fine, let the players do the heavy-lifting.
Lots, including me, hate them because they're fun for the players to get but the DM is super unlikely to wanna keep track of the 7 exotic pets of the players and give them all personalities and have them interact throughout the campaign. It's a lot of work for no pay off at all generally. I let my players get pets with the understanding that if they wanna use them in combat, they have to manage them, and that they probably won't come up much from my end because I just already have a lot of plates to spin.
Man, I wish I could find a DM who loves pets. My old DM let me get puppies on occasion but he’s busy with school now. Finding DMs these days is a challenge 😭
I would love for players to have pets and use them to add layers to their characters in rollplaying. I would even be OK to give them gamemechanic advantages from those pets. But most players I know won't even acknowledge the pet untill it might be helpfull for scouting or removing a trap. Because of that I totally understand when DMs just don't want to put a lot of work into running an aditional pet character for each player when they instead just could give them a magical item that helps them solving puzzles.
@@sakuratejina I've only ever played as a DM. The players have loads of fun, trying their spells and effecting the world, having the story rolled out for them, but they also get to relax their brains now and then and not have to be engaged. I've never had players that really roleplay with each other and have group discussions, so it feels like it's always me generating atmosphere, setting a scene, keeping combat flavourful and exciting.
I am starting to think that DM's are always the theatre kid doing a 3 hour performance for their gamer friends. It's a lot of oomph for a guy that doesn't drink coffee.
@@CappyK I understand that. I tried to DM but found I didn’t like it as much. My old dnd group with childhood friends tried to roleplay together without the DM. Some of the most memorable moments actually came from what players did to or with each other at times. I feel like the fact that we played in person back then was an advantage for interaction. When I played online, I felt like I wanted to focus on the DM more, especially cause group chats got cluttered with everyone talking over each other or having issues coordinating.
So… I end up accidentally giving my parties pets.
I DM for 2 parties and here is what I got so far.
1: in a standard “the party didn’t bother setting up a watch order so they got surprised by some goblins with wolves”
During combat all that was left alive of the enemies was a wolf, who was in solo combat with their monk. Due to not one but 2 natural ones from the monk, he lost his short sword to the wolf. Now this ended up being the story of Chickpea who during some ungodly good rolls from the same monk, and two weeks down time. Became the party mascot and monk disciple.
2: now determined to not accidentally during that again. I send my level 3 party against two parent manticores. Now due to the a well laid plan, this seemingly suicidal encounter ended up being a breeze for the party.
I had planned that they would have to either let an abandoned manticore cub go or kill it…. They chose option 3: deceiving the cub and then try to adopt it.
Lessons I’ve learned. If you (in my opinion) don’t want them to try to adopt everything they choose not to kill, don’t give them their option. I personally allow these shenanigans because they add fun for our parties. Chickpea (the dire wolf in training) was deemed more important to save than one of the players, even by that player.
As for Chun-Chu (the manticore cub) they have become the flagship of the group’s name (they call themselves “The Mighty Manticores”) as well as they are building their base around that theme.
Not sure if this helps anyone or just confuses people, as to what kind of an idiot I am. But I’d thought I’d share these stories all the same.
My group recently adopted a Wolf-dog and named them Fluffy, he's been a good boy! The female teifling in the group also adopted a runt goblin named Flipatrick, and she's now basically Rosa Diaz and Arlo levels of protective of them! 😂 I can understand that some DMs hate pets and adopting creatures but so far it's been absolute entertainment watching this colorful group form the way it has! 😁 Lol I love my group, such an honor to DM for them!
I will never forget when my rogue's horse "Lucky" got eat by a green dragon because the bard's late night magic buttycall (rolled a nat 1 perception) during his night watch....
Your pet can have plot armour ... until you actively include them in your quest.
When you send your pet rat in to steal that key from that sleeping guard ... you are also sending it into danger ... the guard may wake up ... a guard dog may bark and attack ... it may fail a dice roll.
My party has a cat called Snowdrop in our home/inn, and considering our characters are constantly at loggerheads with each other, having our own pet and taking shared responsibility for her has really brought the party all closer together
I gave my party a dog a few sessions back that they saved from a group of bandits. It was a really emotional session and then I completely forgot it existed until halfway through this video. Gonna endeavour to make it way more involved from now on
"What do I do if, for some ungodly reason, they want to try to befriend the griffon rather than fight it?"
Me who's first D&D character had a pet baby Griffon: >_>
I'd say "Hey, if you can befriend it, good for you. You now have a griffon mount."
I would enjoy watching you keep it fed.@@Gambit17
@@edwardbirdsall6580Murderhobo bums are very good at logistics. These are people who set up expeditions with 20-50 people and elephants.
Does any one else just want to see a whole D&D game with only Ginny clones? 🤣
see? i wanna play in that game lol
YES!... That or the characters from the original characters playlist running through an adventure together.
I am on record as stating I want to play in such a game as well.
Man, this video brings back some memories...
During one of my homebrew campaigns, Party had to buy water for crossing a desert. Due to some *seriously bad* persuasion rolls, they became victims of a hoax. They bought two barrels of water, but soon found out that only one contained water and inside the other barrel was a corgi pembroke.
That dog became best friends with a totem warrior barbarian and accompanied him during scouting/hunting.
Another (tragicomic) incident occurred when a party tried to tame a WILD OWLBEAR (different campaign/different characters) During the attempt, a Gunslinger shot the owlbear causing it to run away. So our groups Bard chased it into the woods *and walked right into a goblin ambush* (he died, and was super pissed)
I love how much chemistry Ginny has with herself in all these videos. That ad-read b roll acting was on point haha
My current party all has pets. It started with the Paladin having a mouse with his urchin background and the wizard casting find familiar. Then I added a falcon for the druid to be able to talk to an animal about there friend's death and she asked if he wanted to join them. Then a ranger joined the party with an animal companion and had a cart (2 horses). With all these animals the fighter literally went into town to find a pet shop to buy a kitten.
They are all good about taking care of them and the falcon is used to help deliver mail when they travel.
My DM (who also loves your channel-- hi Brian!) recently basically made us get pets. He had an NPC approach us and offer a variety of small exotic animals at irresistibly low prices. It's one of the most exciting things he's included in the game and I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes with it.
I need to decide what monsters and animals my mob-run animal market has. Maybe a rust monster and a couple cave bears.
This is your best thumbnail yet, and your new intro is awesome!
I remember that my first "pet" was an animal I captured with the Demiplane spell and a few good investigation checks to set up food and everything else.
It was a brown bear.
I had to fight it to show dominance.
It was sad.
My cat liked dice a lot, she figured out by observing me and my friends gaming that the dice were meant for tossing around as toys. We'd be moving miniatures on the table and if dice were left near the edge a widdle fuzzy paw would often appear to grab them so that they'd fall off and bounce around on the floor, just like when we accidentally threw them off sometimes. ☺️
I love this! I DM a campaign where a paladin has a mount that he can summon, that originally came to him as a Hippocampus named Elb(we have lots of underwater moments). One day they're out and meet a triton rancher who keeps hippocampi. He notes the beautiful tropical colors on Elb and asks if the player will stud him out to his mares.
Fast-forward well over a year later irl, and he tells me "I'm gonna go check on the foals." 😊
Pets and Mounts are great imo.
You mean hippopotamus? The hippocampus is a part of the brain.
@@emmasilver2332 A hippocampus is a mythical creature from greek mythology, typically having the top half of a horse and bottom half of a fish.
This video really came with perfect timing. I've DMd a total of two sessions (technically one session and one one-shot) and that first session the bearbarian successfully charmed one of my "murder squirrel" type beasts when they attacked the party. Now she wants to try to keep it as a pet when the charm wears off, this helped me make up my mind about how to deal with that. xD
Two things that D&D DM's might want to port in from Pathfinder 2e. The Familiar Satchel prevents familiars from being targeted while they are in it. It's a mechanical reason justifying Ginny's rule that familiars who aren't in combat can't be targeted. The second is the Pet Cache spell. It's a first level spell that lasts 8 hours and puts your pet in an an extradimensional space for eight hours. One with enough food and water to sustain them for the duration. I flavor it as roaming the wild fields of Elysium. Very useful when your companion is a twelve foot long riding drake.
You can hire a teamster or other chump tasked with looking out for animals. Like part of your baggage train.
@@SusCalvin True, but when you are in a dangerous place that just means you find the teamster's bones next to your animal companion. Plus it feels so old school compared to turning them into a tattoo or sending them off extradimensionally.
@@philopharynx7910 Yeah, they aren't doing it themselves. You have a small platoon of people there. The base camp should not be right outside the nasty place you explore. You have to recce the place and figure out if a base camp is viable. If there are lots of animals you have an animal care dude among the other camp followers.
We have built forward camps outside the place sometimes, if there was a place we could really fortify or if we had gained military control of it. Sometimes there could be forward post and fallback points in the dungeon. Like a room we know we have the key to and can stock with a depot.
If I could get a tattoo of an animal and zap it out in front of my hobo it would be a tame king cobra or something. Then I can go "Aha, instant cobra in your ranks fools!"
Love these tips! This is the kind of advice that's really impactful for DMs. I'm glad I chanced upon your content today. You're smart and thoughtful, and your hair looks great!
Luckily the closest pet my party acquired was a goose from a spell gone wrong that would randomly appear at the weirdest moments and disappear. Reddit gave me this idea and the goose would appear during downtimes at camps and inns, choosing a player to interact with and items to mess with.
Surely geese are overpowered?
@@DJMavis the party had little to no control over the goose, other then mumbling before important meetings “goose please not now” to thin air essentially. The goose was there to break silence at some points and give the players a thing very close to a pet without needed to worry about the pet traveling or them being in combat. The party would feed the goose when it appeared in downtime but other then that, they got a companion that didn’t get too distracting or too complicated
Untitled Goose Game?
I've always been okay with my players having pets. But recently we had a problem player who in addition to other problems treated every campaign we played like her own personal zoo.
We think four attack dogs and an expedition of 20 is normal. With a couple wagons.
The BBEG of the campaign I DM, an oathbreaker paladin, has a "pet" dracolich 🙃.
Actually they found the dragon's remains in their lair, and learnt necromancy to resurrect it. Since the BBEG has the phylactery, the dracolich obeys their orders. Never fight both at the same time, tho, BBEG uses it as a distraction to leave or finish something.
I mean at least for mounts, we have "The Pocket Stables" which is similar to the Pocket Spa from The Adventure Zone. Its like a spa for mounts so that the players don't forget where they left them. And they get looked after while in the stables
Paying a goon to be part of the baggage train and look after horses is normal. If there are several animals you might need teamsters etc. Embrace the baggage train.
a great quality of life discussion, this is such a common thing players want to do, and a great thing to have some thought about before situations come up.
We are relatively new to playing dnd so we haven't had pets yet. The closest thing was Droop. He was my wizard's apprentice that he gained in the campaign. Droop died (we brought him back) and tears were shed
People should have more goons. What became of Droop? Sounds like a hero.
@SusCalvin the campaign has since ended and droop and my Wizard are studying magic in a castle I acquired and recently made a cameo appearance in our current campaign
I really like your approach to d&d. Your videos teach people how to be better table-mates VS better players. Cheerful and cheeky too.
This has been such a helpful video! I'm running a campaign based on ARK: Survival Evolved. So taming creatures and having "pets" is a HUGE part of the game!
I'm currently in two campaigns with pets. In my first one, my little cleric girl (who is secretly a living doll) has an frail, little almiraj named Clover. Clover doesn't help at all in combat, but does help out in other ways. So far, Clover's most significant assistance to the party was while we were traveling through a dungeon and came across a priestess who was cursed to never leave. We unfortunately weren't able to free the priestess right away and the priestess was very scared to be left alone, so Clover stayed with the priestess until we came back to try and better help her. My cleric did manage to learn Remove Curse before we left the dungeon, so we were able to save the priestess as we were escaping. The priestess thanked my cleric of lifting her curse and letting her have some company in the form of Clover. Clover has been very nice for roleplay, also able to teach my cleric the importance of caring for others. It's very sweet and I just love visualizing my little cleric cuddling with her almiraj!
For my other character with a form of "pet" it's my former pact of the chain warlock now cleric with her raven familiar Azrael. I know that you typically lose your familiar if you switch up your warlock to something else, but the party and DM loved Azrael so much that they decided to keep him around and he's actually played some vital roles in the campaign. He is a massive help to the party by scouting ahead for traps and being a major source of comedy in our party. The first time our party got together in a tavern, the DM decided it'd be fun to have Azrael steal some of the alcohol one of the players was drinking and got a nat 20 on his constitution save from being drunk. Everyone was instantly impressed with my raven's ability to hold his liquor which really helped ease my character more into the party more smoothly as I am actually playing the edgelord of the group. However, Azrael's heavy drinking ended up becoming a running gag throughout our game as he continued to steal party member's drinks and kept not 20ing or rolling very high on his constitution saves. Our DM even once rolled six D20s at once and all of them landed on 20 somehow, freaking us all out! And these weren't trick dice either. It was a legit roll! That night, Azrael drunk six whole barrels of strong liquor that made even our dragonborn tipsy! To this day, I think Azrael has only failed in his constitution save ONCE. I don't like drinking myself, but I absolutely love my alcoholic bird! Aside from this hilarious joke, Azrael has also been in a sort of Appa situation like you suggested it. While we were busy fighting a dragon turtle, Azrael stayed behind to help control the crowds but was abducted by an evil witch who really loves to experiment on others. We had to go on a rescue mission for him and it led to a very tense scene where we barely escaped with our lives from the cult we were trying to fight against and my character had some thing implanted into her that nearly made her fall under the witch's control. It was very tense and anxiety inducing. Azrael also has a lot of emotional value to my character and he was formed in remembrance of her father who often called her "little raven", a nickname that came from her black wings (she's a half-drow/half-aasimar). Finally, Azrael has a very loud personality. I based his personality off Daxter from the video game series Jak & Daxter, and he's also able to talk. The whole party absolutely loves interacting with him even our bard who is terrified of talking animals despite being a talking frog himself (long story).
Can't lie, I loved the coffee ad. Your creativity is definitely blesses.
Last time I experienced this my child, I say child but she was 19 at the time, had a pet. It was a bear and quite overpowered for our level. She made a character sheet for it. Got a miniature for it then painted it.
The DM "took it out" accadentally with a large fire elemental. She was devastated as it was her first "loss" in the game. We took a break so she could get over it.
I love the pets may slow the campaign down comment in a hilarious way. In my current group we joke to our DM that we are the Fillibuster of parties. A pet would no more stall or slow down our campaign than my character spending hours not progressing the plot in any meaningful way. We spent 6 months on a Christmas themed one shot that at max should have lasted 2 sessions because we spent so much time lecturing about the mistreatment of evergreen trees and having snowball fights and getting drunk on cider instead of you know following the actually plot hooks. We will go off on unrelated tangents on a frequent basis. A pet might actually help speed us along, like if one of the enemies stole the pet, all of a sudden we would drop everything and rush to their rescue, much more compelling for our characters than oh I don't know, stopping the revival of an ancient evil king who is trying to kill/rule the entire world.
The Chaotic Nimrod Druid in one of my games tamed a Rust Monster after 3 very successful animal handling checks, I let her use it in combat as a sidekick character because the party consisted of 2 players and they definitely needed more people. I have learned to not let her make those checks against anything that isn't a beast, although this doesn't stop her from calling the most abhorrent abberations or frightening fiends are cute. She called a *CANOLOTH* cute and then proceeded to try and tame it, which I absolutely did not let her do because it's an intelligent creature. If you don't know what a canoloth is, it's about the least cute D&D creature out there.
TL;DR It's okay to say no to your players sometimes.
Me and my dm talked about my character owlbear pet, we worked together with her health,attacks, and more we wanted her to be balanced yet not to die instantly due to story reasons.
I absolutely love your channel. You have no idea how much it's helped me as a DM
I love adding pets to the game, and my players are normally too attached to pets and followers to risk them, other than their familiars, and they feel so guilty each time, that they only do it in the most needed circumstances.
Poor familiars. They really should have made them actual animals to make the magic users feel bad for recklessly endangering them.
@@jerokterojokke3356 If it helps you to feel better for them, remember that when the fey or celestial (or fiend, even) familiar is killed, it gets to go back to its home plane where it is happier and more comfortable, until that foo wizard rips it away from its friends again to return to the Prime Material plane. I think it would be hilarious if a familiar who is often neglected purposefully gets itself killed to escape this lame plane.
@@FlatOnHisFace I like this.
Pets are usually either an extra hassle for DMs to consider in combat (when they are combat capable), are often forgotten by players until they are deemed necessary or used for a gag. Or a liability that sometimes makes situations more work than they need to be for botht the party and DM.
Idk but that sounds very different than my group. Sounds like yall are not as invested in the roleplaying side of DnD
@@xxxGiuliaxx This is what I've observed from most streams, none of my groups have gotten a pet
In one of my games, we have a mechanical panther. Basically we found it in an ancient dungeon, my roommate’s character got all sparkly eyed and we disabled it instead of destroying it. We put it in the bag of holding and took up a side mission on how the original builder constructed, powered, and programmed the creations. After getting the instruction book and arcane programming disks, we ended up in a situation where we could revive the creature. I wrote up the stat block, making the panther able to function as their own independent character. The panther is limited by the fact that it cannot speak and it cannot gain levels however in our last session, the panther acquired a rail gun as a boon from a mission the party took on. I can imagine my character settling into her cabin in the ship on the way back home and reading the instruction manual out loud to the panther (I’m pretty sure the panther themself can actually read, but you have to do something to pass the time on the voyage).
Animals and hirelings typically do not level up or poses levels at all. Creatures have HD as normal.
Buying stuff like dog-kevlar is possible.
We had a pet badger in our Gamma World campaign, called him Dim (as an accronym for Drowning In Mud). The GM loved it, and our entire table was bummed when he died. Around 3 years after his death in real-life time, the memory of Dim is still in the party and players' hearts, and the GM enabled us and thoroughly enjoyed the all to brief but entirely memorable addition to our party.
I'm currently playing a cleric. I have five Mastiffs that I bought at character creation. They act as a bag of holding and an alarm spell slot. They have been really useful for speeding up the game and eliminating incumbrance and ambushes.
Animals are not spells. You can roll for their chance to spot stuff. And calculating the carrying capacity of an animal should be easy.
@@SusCalvin Mastiffs have a plus three to their perception checks and have advantage on perception checks using smell. Furthermore each mastiff has a carrying capacity of 195 pounds. So in order to make gameplay easier and less muddled by excessive unnecessary rolls and calculations. We used the shorthand of the alarm spell Page 211 on the players handbook and a bag of holding Page 153 of the players handbook to simplify the explanation and the functionality of having five mastiffs tagging along with the party. Each party member got to name one of my mastiffs and they were their own little pat that was unable to engage in combat and were thus safe with plot armor. I'm not sure what was hard for you to understand about my original statement but I think me and the DM came up with a effective way of keeping the game flowing and allowing A 125 gold to be used as a Pseudo magic item for party convenience.
@@SusCalvin 3:01
@@mister-8658 I'm cautious with assigning x as spell. Because spells are dang powerful things. Alarm is like bringing a modern motion sensor and IR rig inside that can also detect invisible ghosts. It is way better than a dog in its specialized use. At least a dog can bite off their nose.
"How much can a dog carry?" is a good question. I imagine not a whole lot but some. And waddling around with little bags and straps. But we can look up what real life sled dogs and other work dogs can pull.
Spreading the dogs around players is nice. Then it's not one player controlling all the goons and animals. On average they might have two retainers, if they have them. On rare times four.
Keeping the mules and dogs and stuff to the rear is usually safe. You can have them and some goons form a rear guard section, or even a baggage train plus rear guard. Then they are far back if our bums fall into a pit or get bitten by elks.
@@SusCalvin each Mastiff can carry 195 lb
My party got some familiars using scrolls of find familiar and then went to Avernus with plane shift. The party immediately forgot about the familiars after arriving.
I am glad I watched this, your are witty empathetic and a natural storyteller, thank you.
"I have a pullout couch, go - we'll reconvene in 4 hours"
*Core memory unlock!*
Gosh did that take me back to high school days running all weekend for my friends
Encounter with a shocker lizard.
2 players: "we go to pet it"
It shocks you, take 2d8 dmg.
"We try to pet it again"
(I had to explain it was neutral hungry and will shock and bite them if it gets too close... it took 5 minutes)
Never underestimate the pet lovers dedication to "pet all the things"
"Grug pet ouch lizard!"
2d8 shock damage
"Grug pet ouch lizard?"
2d8 shock damage
"Grug ask healy man if can pet again."
*Crying cleric noises*
I’ve had 3 pets across 3 games and am very grateful to my dms for letting my animal lover self have them. I’ve had a sprinklesque chipmunk that lived in my cloak, a duck with a breastplate and a dagger, and a giant centipede ranger companion. My dm always asked what Petra the giant centipede was up to and I loved that she was so included.
Never pick up a duck in a dungeon
@@paperscott2901 he actually appeared via wild magic shenanigans and we kept him. Who knows how long he’ll be around.
This is my first video from this channel. The production quality is so good!
The last game I got to be a player in (instead of DMing) was run by a first-time DM (who did an awesome job). We used an old book of tables for creating backstory (Central Casting's "Heroes of Legend") and every character ended up with an animal companion. I had a bear who was cursed? to be a perpetual bear cub. There was also a cat or two. Later, we ended up with an elephant due to the chaos sorcerer's mishap.
We tied them all into our story by having us travelling around under the guise of being a travelling show. We had no actual bard, but several of us had musical instruments (my bounty hunting hexblade warlock pretended to be a bard to be welcome in towns). It worked pretty well, and we took the time to make sure there were people to care for them when we had to go into dungeons and such. So, no extra combat, but they certainly added to the story.
In the game I'm currently running, our druid has tamed a mountain lion, and they both get full action turns in combat, under the players control. Since the party is small (druid w/ cat, cleric, and rogue), I figured giving them a little more firepower wasn't a bad thing. The cat also adds in some vulnerability, as it doesn't advance as far or as fast as the PCs, so they will make tactical choices to protect it in bigger battles.
Not D&D, and not really pets, but I was running a Legend of the Five Rings campaign, and our origami artist had gotten high enough level that she could turn her paper creations into the real thing for an hour or so. If they're creatures, they're under her control and friendly toward her. The party was getting into a fight where they were likely to be highly outclassed unless they figured out the trick (the Bells of the Dead adventure). Well, as they're getting into this difficult boss fight, she whipped out an activated the origami she'd prepped the night before. Fifteen bears.
Now, was this "bearigami" encounter-breaking and stretching the rules? Absolutely. Was I going to punish my player for her creativity? Absolutely not. It was a campaign highlight and has been a running joke in campaigns since. Especially since my L5R campaigns with that group are generational, and at least one player (that one) has played the child of their previous character each time.
It sounds like what you could do with phantasms. You could create a convincing illusion of something nasty. Better if it was in a believable way. Like a monster fitting the location and acting accordingly. And you did not want them to actually strike at it.
In my experience the second you give somebody a pet, or establish that somebody's pet can't die because they are too emotionally attached to it, you end up playing D&D Pokemon because the game goes off the rails with everyone wanting their own pet regardless of class or reason, then they also want awakened pets and ect ect.
I understand your worry, I'm actually running a (pathfinder 2e) campaign where one player finds pets "meh" and would never actively go tame an animal, but we also have a beast druid with a cat animal companion. The player of this druid, as well as another player, are very much into "D&D Pokemon", but we agreed that they cannot just tame anything they come across, and the druid's companion is special as per the given ruleset. When said cat died in battle, PF2e requires a week of downtime meditation from the druid to revive/resummon it/another. When the cat died, I fully expected the player to be deeply affected, but she handled it really well, and the situation actually turned into amazing character development for ANOTHER character, the one of the other pet-friendly player. This character is a crazy alchemist goblin who is constantly up to no good and trying to set things on fire, but he's not evil, and he wanted to comfort the druid, so he went out of his way to charm a local granny so she would make a cat-doll he could then place next to the druid one night. This was some much needed depth for the goblin, and overall the players are doing a really good job finding the balance that the group as a whole is happy with. As such, if you're playing with people who are mature enough to take session 0 concerns seriously, I highly recommend you give it a try if some of them take great joy in it.
Emotional attachment = +1 Saving Throw upon reaching 0 HP. After that I take the Ivan Drago approach: "If it dies it dies."
Doing it this way means that players will focus on equipment, experience and abilities instead of pets. Yes a pet can help in combat but not compared to improving your weapon by taking it to a blacksmith or enchanter. For transportation I use rental and delivery services like how Earthbound does it.
I'm more of a tea drinker, but I really loved that coffee ad you included, it was pretty funny! lol
Just started a game with my siblings last month. Enjoying runehammer, professor DM and your videos! 🤘😆🤘
😂 When people say “That’s not realistic!” In a DND game, I nearly die. Like, okay, so dragons and owlbears are? Omg. 😂 Also I never had a DM that had a problem with one of my characters who has a chicken and wolf pup as pets because they’re treated as “NPCs” or a character’s “wardrobe.” Essentially they’re used only for role play interest and don’t interact with anything gameplay wise, i.e. no scouting, spying, fighting, etc. They pretty much stay on my character’s person at all times: the chicken in his backpack and the wolf pup in his shoulder bag. I also only ever played Adventures League because I don’t have any groups of friends to have homebrew fun with. 😞 So I figured the pets really wouldn’t be allowed to interact with things anyway (League rules) unless they were an accepted game mechanic like my Ranger’s Panther companion or my Druid’s familiar.