Handle Your Animal
Somewhere just off-screen, Antipaladin is all like, “What is it, boy? What’s the matter?” This mess has been going on for months now at Team Bounty Hunter HQ. Ever since he joined the party, Patches the Unkicked has taken an odd dislike to “””Magus.””” It must be that cats and dogs trope acting up again, right?
Animal behavior is one of those details that doesn’t come natural. If you’ve ever stumbled across the all animals are dogs trope, you might understand why. For most of us 21st century humanoids, the closest we get to animal handling is scooping a litterbox or telling Rover to sit. We are familiar with domesticated pets, and so every animal interaction begins to look like a walk at the dog park.
“Fetch,” we tell our trained hawks.
“Want a treat?” we ask the aurumvorax.
“Play dead,” we tell our dinosaur companions, just before we spring the ambush.
This is all in good fun. Fantastic beasts and trained critters are a tradition of the genre. Making them intelligible to players by drawing on familiar points of reference is only natural. But to my way of thinking, making animal characters highly-legible is only one way to bring them into the story.
The alternative is the inscrutable non-human. The alien creature with the mysterious motivation that must be uncovered. Think of all those moments where a character said “we’re in its territory” or “she’s defending her young.” The opportunity here is animal encounters based on exploring creature behavior.
Why is it making the sound?
What made them suddenly go quiet?
Why does the tarrasque need all those spines?
Allowing players to discover those answers for themselves is a fine formula for wilderness encounters. It also goes that all-important step beyond the Lassie model of animal interaction. Because even if, “What is it girl? Did Timmy fall down the well?” makes for decent television, it can get a bit repetitive on the tabletop.
So for today’s discussion, why don’t we trot out our favorite animal interactions? What was the beast doing? How did the players divine meaning from its actions? And how could you turn that moment into a full-blown encounter? Tell us all about your vibration-hunting graboids, murderous piggies, and misunderstood mama bears down in the comments!
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“What’s that, Patches? Magus fell down the ol’ Demon Web Pit?”
This has to be frustrating for Patches.
No specific animal characters, but my ranger does have a tendency to chat with random wildlife, using whatever spare spell slots he might have at the end of the day to cast speak-with-animals.
It’s fun, though generally not very useful. If you ask a mouse if there are any dangerous creatures in the area, they’re likely to tell you about the owl in a nearby tree, because that’s the scariest thing they know of. And they won’t think to mention the pack of werewolves, because those aren’t dangerous to mice…
You ever play Divinity II? Laurel and I were trying to do couch co-op, but she wanted to talk to every…freaking…animal. I wanted to save the world. She wanted Unskinkable Sam the ship’s cat to get a date with the mayor’s fancy Persian fluffball.
To be fair, I would absolutely talk to every animal I could just to see what they say.
On an unrelated note, for all the video RPGs I’ve started, I’ve only ever finished one. (Two, if you count SRPGs, but they’re a lot more linear.)
I would too… On single player. (ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ)
Our group has sort of collected animals along our journey. Not all of them “beasts” 🙂
Our Kenku wizard had a seagull that sort of followed her around, tho it left when we moved far enough north that the weather turned too cold and windy for it to continue being around her. She “replaced” the bird with a familiar that has been at various times a spider, giant crab, raven, and most recently a flying snake.
Our rogue/ranger(/fighter recently) gained a “ranger pet” in the form of a flying elven cat that basically just sticks around for the food… but also because it turns out our gruff half-orc is actually very good and sweet with animals and the cat really likes him as much as he really likes it. He’s a big softy, but he’ll still murder you in your sleep if you cross him.
Our bard and her simulacrum have familiars that they both dote on. A pseudo dragon for one and a faerie dragon for the other respectively.
Our druid has TWO Bags of Tricks that she pops out animals from “for the day” (we used to utilize the larger ones as mounts, but we stopped using mounts when our druid gained the ability to cast Wind Walk)
And even my Forgeborn (Warforged to the uncouth among you) has a “pet” clockwork baby snow owl that I wind up every evening so it can flit about as it desires (usually it perches on my staff that I carry at my back)
We may not always remember they are there in tense moments, but because our DM is a kind DM, they typically aren’t there when things get bad, because they have very wisely run away and hidden until danger has passed. Always returning later (or in the case of a familiar, when needed).
I love animal companions.
You remember a million years ago when I talked about my Noah’s Ark pirate game?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-help
Good times.
I know “flying elven cat” means “a breed of cat created by elves, which flies,” but I’d like to imagine that it’s an elven wizard who accidentally polymorphed into a cat.
Of course, you can always go the other way, if say, your party is all bird trainers. Then everything is all birds of prey.
“Sorry, my tiger is too fat today. He doesn’t want to maul people.”
“Oh no! That goblin has an umbrella, and now Imperator the Carnosaurus is terrified!”
*painfully pries velociraptor off leg* “One second, Skreek is just a bit excited to see you.”
“Hey! Stop eating rocks!”
“Why are you screaming now? Oh, I see it. The baby stroller across the field.”
“Come down from that tree! Yes, I know you’re afraid of heights. Shoulda thought of that before you went up the tree.”
I could see a bunch of raptor handlers are a bird sanctuary playing D&D in the evening.
“You rolled a ranger? But I wanted to be a ranger this time!”
“No fair guys. I called dibs on ranger!”
this actually reminds me of the game i run. one of the rangers (there are two of them) has a dino for a companion and ive been basing all its behaviors off of birds. its basically a smarter larger rainbow feathered chicken.
with some horrible goose tossed in for the memes
I hope it hides watering cans.
Back on 9/19 I mentioned how I managed to make my players terrified of ordinary ravens during a Halloween one-shot. In the aftermath of this, I sent the intrepid adventurers in search of a macguffin, the only clue being a vague letter misdelivered by a failed Animal Messenger spell and the path taken by said animal messenger when the sparrow flew back to its home. Along the way, the PCs find the remains of two or three other parties that tried to find the treasure. One (former) band of orcs is being feasted on by (you guessed it) an unkindness of ravens. For most groups, one Speak With Animals spell leads to the DMs best (or worst) Danny DeVito or Bob Hoskins impression as the raven’s Alpha steps up to negotiate the terms under which they’ll answer questions and/or let the PCs examine their current food supply, peppered with advice to the younger members of the flock. “No, go for the eyes, that’s where the nutrition’s at. No, not the shinies! What’d I tell you, your brother choked on a button.”
You know, a fun RP encounter before the 5-room meat-grinder that hides the treasure. Most groups *love* it and enjoy hamming it up with the pushy-but-knowledgeable carrion birds.
Cue my shell-shocked group of PCs, post-Halloween adventure.
DM: “In the center of the clearing, you see a pile of bodies being feasted on by a murder of ravens or crows–”
Wizard: “FIREBALL!!!” (Throws fistful of dice at the table. The rest of the players, including the Druid, nod solemnly.) “What’s on the other side of the clearing?”
Players: “Nuke the site from orbit.” (In unison) “–only way to be sure.”
I really ought to do a comic about “speak with animals” some time. Or even better, speak with plants! Figuring out how to portray that mess is all kinds of fun.
It’s a fun spell. Not always useful, as I said in my earlier comment — if you want good info, you need intelligent animals to talk to — but it’s a great “flavour” spell for rangers and druids.
Is that impressive floofyness a result of demonic powers, or has Magus always been capable of that level of floof? And more importantly, can it stay because it looks adorable?
All catfolk possess 80s hair as racial ability, and can trigger it as a standard action 3 + Charisma modifier times per day.
Provides advantage when interacting with Heathers.
XD
One of my favorite interactions as DM was a thief trying to blackmail a gold dragon currently polymorphed into a large war horse. The thief said, “What will you give me to not tell?” and without any hesitation the dragon replied, “Your life”. Player got all upset because the dragon was “lawful good” and wouldn’t do that. I simply said, “he’s draconic lawful good which has absolutely nothing to do with human lawful good”.
Damn I love that line.
Philosophically, it does call into question another line I love:
‘Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.’
Neat moment of philosophical conflict there. How did you wind up resolving the case of “Aragorn v. Gold Dragon?”
The best animal shenanigans I ever go into was my Paladin winning a dance-off through dressage. (It’s horse-ballet. It’s a real thing, and it’s an olympic sport.)
What did your paladin’s cutie mark look like?
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/125583/Ponyfinder–Campaign-Setting
😛
He was a Dwarf with a standard Dwarfoid limb arrangement. He was riding a horse. Due to his telepathic connection to his Paladin steed as well as it having more Intelligence than the average horse he could do feats of dressage that would be considered high end BS for actual dressage.
He didn’t have a cutie mark, but he had lots of tattoos. “Smite liyfe” in the style of the “Thug lyfe” tattoo over his belly, the tenets of the Oath of Devotion on his back, the emblems of his rank in the Dwarven military (It’s a design that gets added to so he wouldn’t need it removed if he ranked up) on his left arm, and a few miscellaneous ones.
Do Noble Wild campaigns count?
…well, scratch that. Do three sessions with characters made using the Noble Wild rules, which I meant to get back to but life happened and the game fell apart, count?
Well I mean… It depends on how you played them. Noble animals tend to be pretty human in their outlook, even if they occasionally exhibit animal-like behavior.
Not exactly an animal, but when my players were digging through an old spaceship in my Ancient Aliens campaign, I made some deliberate efforts to make the aliens seem, well, alien, even though they were pretty much humanoids except for their four arms (unlike another species of vastly more unusual aliens). One key thing I did was use different color symbolism than we are used to, since it’s just a cultural thing. These aliens considered red to be a positive color and yellow to be a warning sign (since it is the color of their blood), so it was fun to mess with the players by having red lights meaning “good” and yellow lights meaning “warning” or “danger.”
Surely Ranger can utilize her until now unseen powers of eloquent literacy (learned at her formerly unburnt foster home) to transcribe and write down the crisis at hand.
Unless she slept through those lessons and relied on her canine upbringing.