Monster Adoption
So no shit there we were, neck deep in cultists and trying desperately to cut our way out of a Razmiran temple. The plan had been simple: pose as converts and infiltrate from within. The plan had failed hard. There were dead guards and freed orphans in our wake, and now the entire complex was coming down on our heads. Hordes of silver-masked false god worshiping psychopaths were swarming in every corridor, all howling for our blood. We hadn’t even kept up the ruse long enough to know our way around the place.
“Why aren’t they closing in for the kill?” wondered the rogue.
“We’ve slain a dozen already. I’d be scared of us too,” said the fighter.
“They’re herding us,” said the cynical wizard. That was your’s truly. I hate it when I’m right.
We soon found ourselves in a dead-end corridor. There was a gloating high priest at the top of the stairs behind us, a murder of priests behind him, and a disturbing hissing sound wafting out of the darkness up ahead. It was accompanied by the clank of chains. And when the behir stepped into the light, we knew that we were bound for the Boneyard.
Thinking fast, I did my best imitation of sincerity. “You poor thing!” I cried.
The behir paused, taken aback. There were welts on its neck where the chain had rubbed away the scales. Its ribs were plainly visible through its hide. The beast was starving.
“Did they do this to you?”
The creature nodded, obviously surprised to be addressed in its own tongue. I thanked all the gods that my master had spent the long hours necessary to pound draconic into my skull.
“Well I’ll tell you what. If you promise not to eat my companion—the frightened looking halfling with the lockpicks there—we’ll have you out and dining on cultists in no time. Does that sound agreeable to you?”
The Lady of Dreams must have smiled, because Kazaat the behir nodded his scaly head. It had been an excellent time to Nat 20 the Diplomacy check. With our new ally in tow we managed to turn the tides on the cultists. I even managed to acquire a new cohort. You can see us at tea here.
The thing is, teaching your behir table manners is hard work. When you’ve got a magical beast as your boon companion, there is a great deal of apologizing to innkeepers, repaying farmers for livestock, and appeasing frightened villagers. So if you do find yourself traveling in unusual company, heed the warning of a journeyman mage. The friendship of magical creatures is well worth the effort, but make no mistake: it is an effort.
Question of the day! Have you ever adopted an unusual pet? I’m not talking the standard “my ranger has a wolf companion” stuff, but the full on “we were going to fight it, but decided to give it belly rubs instead.” Sound off with tales of your monstrous minions down in the comments!
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in my iron gods campaign, every time aurumvoraxes came up the party tried to adopt and train one. So near the end I let them have one join them pre-trained by the barbarian king himself.
Very early in the campaign however, they adopted a cerebric fungus who actually survived to the endgame after the barbarian took leadership and gave it class levels.
Well now I’ve got to know: what class levels does a fungus take?
Druid. It gains Human Empathy, the ability to perform Diplomacy checks on humanoids. At higher levels, it even gets Civil Shape, allowing it to better interact with and communicate with them.
nice
It actually took Ranger. The fungus already had telepathy to communicate just fine.
Ahh, the humble Aurumvorax. Small but ludicrously lethal.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/magical-beasts/aurumvorax/
The textbook definition of ‘honey badger don’t give a f***’.
Fun fact: they like to eat robots.
https://pathfinderwiki.com/mediawiki/images/thumb/7/7d/Aurumvorax.jpg/250px-Aurumvorax.jpg
I’m just glad it doesn’t have pounce. There would be no survivors.
That’s why the Pouncing Fury spell exists, lets you make all your claw attacks on a charge, of which they have four of.
*8 of. Rake is mean.
Good luck getting the little bugger to cast the spell though!
The solution is to be a druid/ranger and tame one (kits go for 5k gp), then turn it into your animal companion. And then give it the spell with the share spell feature. And watch the carnage unfold.
Alternately, awaken animal and train it up to become a lvl3 druid. Or wildshape into one.
Sadly, they’re magical beasts, so I don’t think animal companion or awaken will play. Anything that looks like “beast shape III” would work though!
Huh, surprised Barbarian wasn’t the one to find kinship with the Aurumvorax. After all, they’re both wild murder-machines of rage, fueled by hunger and a fondness for glittery metals.
That would be too much angry blonde in one party.
Early on during our Kingmaker game, our Skald adopted a baby Owlbear and started to raise him as his own son.
He’s not joining in on the adventures since he’s still a little pup, but he definitly made an impression on the local peasants
Is “pup” the correct terminology here?
Chickcub?
I submit that chick + cub = chub.
Edit: Credit where it’s due: https://www.bropls.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/1-9-181.jpg
Erg, no… just no for my group. I can hear it now…
“Is that a chub under your cloak or are you just happy to see us?”
…owlbear cub chirping intensifies…
Better than cub+chick=cuck…
During our Curse of Strahd 5e game, the party has tamed, and is travelling with 5 giant snakes, a wild mountain goat, a domesticated goat, an undead guard drake, 3 animated brooms, and 3 zombies. We also have with us an assortment of NPC’s that we have taken under our wings such as a Nobleman’s son who is gifted with Necromancy, and a wizard apprentice whose master died in the amber temple. This is to say nothing of our own allies gained from class features including a zombified pixie, a skeletal flying snake, and a spectral dire moose. Not travelling with us, we possess an army of barbarians, and a vast assortment of other powerful NPC’s, which have in their possession a multitude of nameless NPC’s under their own command. We probably could’ve ended the adventure earlier, but we want to make sure that we fix everyone’s problems first before taking the fight to Strand (besides, it is better to come over-prepared than under prepared).
So… exactly which class features give you a spectral dire moose? Asking for a friend. >_>
I guess in all actuality, it was merely an elk, but he described it as a massive moose (of course moose in general are massive, so that is a mistake on my part). Anyways, to answer your question, it is the Paladin spell, find steed.
Killed a displaced beast. Found 4 cubs. Raised them and my dwarf gained the riding skill. Ofcourse the displacing effect only worked on the cat. So I was always floating across the ground
What do you call a dwarven blacksmith on a displacer beast? A hovercrafter.
Not me, but there’s a Fighter in our party who seems to have a thing for picking up stray mounts. First it was just an ordinary mule that mostly served as a supply-wagon (the group named the mule Emry, short for “emergency rations”; luckily it never came to that).
Then after we had to leave the mule behind, he commandeered a horse in the middle of a battle to charge down the enemy magic-archer who was raining death and destruction on us from several football fields away. He had to give it back later, but then there was more mules to take us up into the mountains…where we encountered manticore-riders.
Things were going well at first, but even so the cost of a trained manticore (2000g) was a little out of our price range. Anyway, then stuff happened, we ended up fleeing for our lives, and during the ensuing chase scene, he five-finger-discount “appropriated” one of our pursuer’s mounts. By lassoing it while we were several hundred feet in the air, climbing up the rope, and knocking the rider off.
And now he’s trying to get it to accept him as it’s new owner. He’s not proficient in handle animal so it’s going….slowly. But he’s rolled well enough so far to not have an arm bitten off or anything.
Manticores speak common, yo. I think your boy might need Diplomacy instead of Handle Animal. 😛
Well this one was raised by shifters who don’t speak Common as their native language, so….
actually how should that sort of thing affect a monster’s entry in the book? I feel like there are a lot of story moments that might be (I hestitate to say improved) made more interesting if a creature was “capable of speaking a human language” but the players had no idea what that might be.
I imagine you’d just change “common” to “appropriate language.” They’re intelligent critters rather than animals though.
If you want to play with it as a plot point… oof. It’s hard to do language right, and usually in my experience it just disappears into the convenience of “assume they speak common.”
If you wanted it to be a an RP thing, I imagine it could be funny if the creature kept trying to communicate, only to be told, “Don’t you snarl at me, beast!” The trope of “oblivious owners don’t realize their pet is smarter than them” is a fun one: https://cowboybebop.fandom.com/wiki/Ein
My last game had a runaway princess join the party. My Wizard would qualify her as a pet.
(Sqeaky Gnome voice) “A system where people rule based on who their parents are is a system designed to put the inept in power, and keep Wizards from their rightful place.”
Well hey, you already know my opinions on royal hangers-on: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/always-choose-gold
Dead guards and rescued orphans, you say?
“Guys! We’ve been doing it wrong!”
I customised a system to make a Redwall game, built out a full world map and used a few randomisers to set up the current state of the world. Due to the relatively formulaic nature of the stories it makes a very authentic-feeling game. Lots of replayability too, because each time you run the randomisers you have a book’s starting conditions.
Don’t worry. Fighter got it backwards too:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/orphanages
Happens to the best of us.
I was gm’ing a group a while back, some close friends. One guy managed to create a character I hadn’t realized was basically just Colonel Sanders.
Anyway, I rolled on a random table for an encounter overnight and some axe-beaks attacked. The Col. Sanders guy just wrestled it to the ground, tamed it over a week of travel, and proceeded to turn it into a mount.
Since then I’ve been enamored of the idea of riding a two-legged mount, but sadly Pathfinder’s most bestial Cav-Archetype (Beast-Rider) doesn’t allow for bipedal steeds.
Attack chicken is always a viable strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miomuSGoPzI
I read that as “axe-bears” at first… Those probably exist in some sourcebook somewhere.
Yeah they do: http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/77446%20werebear/a-z/77446
In an old campaign, our druid adopted a cult of Kuo-Toa, who made him a demigod of leather and animal furs. They were great in combat and very cute, but we got strange looks and one of them died, so he made them guard the ruins we were raiding while we dealt with the bbeg
So like… He was the fake demi-god of leather, or they made him an idol out of leather, or he gained divine ranks…?
well, the campaign ended before we could figure that out, due to our DM starting a new camapaign after things went to shit, but it turned him into a very minor deity with bonus AC, so thats about it. oh yeah, nad the cult of kuo toas who praised him were pretty dope.
So inspired by The Rising of a Shield Hero I decided to give the party a monster egg lottery. 500 gold entry and the players got an egg ranging in quality.
1 is a chicken
2-29 is a Owlbear. One of the players got one.
30 -40 was an axebeak
41-49 was a Hippogriff
50-60 was a griffon
61-to 90 were dinosaurs ranging from compy’s to gigas. The one player rolled and got an Elasmosaurus which should be fun
91-99 were pseudodragons
and I struggled to figure out what 100 was thinking no player would roll that well, so of course someone rolled that. After some trouble, I decided the result should be a Roc egg.
They’re magic’d up so all the eggs look the same to make the lottery more difficult and I am super excited by the results, the party is reaching the point where traveling faster should be on their mind and both of those creatures should do the trick.
I hope they build a Baba Yaga style hut on their new Roc. Important adventurers deserve to travel in style!
Is that thing a Wasp eater?
https://girlgenius.fandom.com/wiki/Wasp_eater
In pathfinder terms, it’s an ‘Aurumvorax’. But its likely girl genius borrowed on the design.
Aurumvorax confirmed. 🙂
So… no Girl Genius crossover for now? 🙁
I’m sure Alchemist would fit right in. 😛
Thanks for the answer, but i search for it and the Aururun… Aurusoap… Whatever is called. Goes back to the 80′ according to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurumvorax
Also yes i know how that hings names is writen but is more fun to not do it 🙂
Yup. One of the many beasties that Pathfinder adapted from older editions of D&D (that it could, due to WotC trademarks – hence why beholders and mind flayers aren’t a thing in Pathfinder).
While I have ironically not done this with anything of animal intelligence in D&D, I did have a Thrallherd in 3.5 that the DM announced “Never again” on. It caused surprisingly few problems, but mostly because I tended to Charm humanoids.
More Amusingly, i did play a primative Force Adept in a Star Wars game that ended up begging the pilot to keep a Rancor. I eventually had to leave him behind, but mainly because the pilot kept insisting that he couldn’t fit in the same ship as the food supply required to keep him from eating us. Ended up playing a tearful goodbye and making the GM realize that I had left a Rancor who had been trained to attack Imperial Stormtroopers on that planet.
Well then. I’m now of the opinion that this guy is a primative force adept:
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Malakili
Headcanon accepted.
It was in Saga Edition, and I think the Talent Tree was designed for the Witches of Dathomir. Who have Rancor they have taught to throw spears. ;-; I was forbidden from teaching it surface to air.
Well I’ve had a few weird things from class features like a Leadership granted half-celestial spider-eater and less surreal stuff like NPC drakes that just got added to the party as the result of the plot….
But I haven’t gotten a chance to adopt in-game through dice rolls/diplomacy many things. Only thing I can recall off-hand was a droid that my droid in a Star Wars game decided they owned (because they figured if meat-folk can own droids, they could too) and a giant vulture a bard I had in a game acquired as a temporary mount for a while.
Of course I have made a homebrew 5e class all about having monster companions and another that’s a Summoner which is similar in concept. Not quite the same as picking up creatures in your travels though.
There is nothing celestial about spider eaters. Jibblies, man. Jibblies.
Did you ever get around to emancipating your droid?
Oh my droid was emancipated from the start and would totally have cut you for implying otherwise. My droid’s droid…. naw, it was just an R2 unit. Everyone knows those things don’t really have a sense of self. =P
https://80steess3.imgix.net/production/products/SWARS1013/droid-rights-solo-star-wars-t-shirt.multi.jpeg?w=800&h=800&fit=max&usm=12
And I try…Oh my God, how I try…
I was a ranger in kind of a hextech campaign where black powder firearms were just now getting into vogue, and the DM ruled that if everyone was using a firearm, combat rounds were 30 seconds long to account for clearing and reloading a muzzle loaded weapon every shot. I used this to my advantage when we met an owlbear that I didn’t actually want to kill, by
uh…I actually used a tanglefoot bag to stick myself to it so it couldn’t run away so I could use Wild Empathy. It only took 2 rounds like this, and I actually rolled really well!
That’s when another party member fired a shot that took off half of its beak, aaaaaaaand everything went horribly wrong from there. But we got a nice memory from the ensuing conversation.
“WHY WOULD YOU SHOOT IT! WHYYYY?”
“I…I’m helping!”
“STOP HELPING YOU’RE MAKING IT WORSE”
Suffice to say, the owlbear got turned into experience points, and my ranger was very unhappy about it for a long time.
I see you too have adopted the “ima ride it” mentality:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/unconventional-mount
It’s always more dangerous than it looks. 🙁
Pathfinder game my half-orc inquisitor adopted a black dragon wyrmling and the cleric/fighter hatched a green dragon egg. The party witch had an arbiter inevitable as her familiar.
Short 5e game my dragonborn barbarian ended up adopting a tribe of kobolds and their wyrmling white dragon from the Sunless Citadel.
Current 5e game the party has the ranger’s deinonychus companion, the warlock’s pseudodragon familiar, and from a mirror of life trapping we rescued an amazon warrior, a fiendish minotaur barbarian, and a dao princess.
I had an alchemist encounter a Shocker Lizard by itself. It seemed the rest of his colony had died, and being a group lived creature and after some good knowledge checks, He found it seemed to be just lonely and not genuinely hostile. He gave it some food and it ended up following me around, occasionally accidentally shocking him. This continued for the rest of the campaign, eventually treating him as a full animal companion, and my alchemist got in the habit of wearing rubber gloves and ended up with minor electrical resistance. I still remember little Steve fondly.
Did you name it after any particular Steve?
In a Pathfinder Kingmaker campaign my Cavalier climbed a mountain to steal a Roc egg. After taking the egg with the use of some invisibility and fly spells, he brought the egg back to his kingdom and decided to hatch the little bugger, raising him and training him over several years to be a resplendent mount.
And so it was that my Cavalier abused the ever loving shit out of flying rules to divebomb every enemy we fought like a flying Stuka with a Lance. All while looking good doing it. Air cavalry baby, old school air cav.
I also still get teased by my table for taking the “Narrow Frame” feat on my Roc which let it ignore squeezing penalties. Now THAT was shenanigans.
I don’t know why, but the first [i]three times[/] I read that I saw the sentence:
“my Cavalier climbed a mountain [i]lion[/] to steal a Roc egg.”
I was expecting the rest of the story to be a little different on that basis!
That just raises so many questions…
Aw, man, these are such great stories! Our nature paladin mostly puts headbands of intellect of potatoes named Gerald and adopts normal animals like goats and pigs. The biggest things he’s ever adopted have been a giant goat and a telepathic intelligent gelatinous cube.
Sigh… I wish we had something weird in our party. (No, you don’t count half-dragon baby, that was a surprise adoption not a taming)
Does Gerald have class levels in Spudomancer?
I bet he’s got a robe of many eyes.
He must be a bard, because he’s very appealing.
You can tell Gerald’s out of spells if you stick a fork in him.
My group’s paladin somehow managed to get two pets: A big dog with wings named Buffski, and a homebrewed amphibious shark monster (think zamtrios from monster hunter) named Mako. Both of them are broken as heck. Buffski’s flight just ended puzzles before they began, and Mako is the strongest member of our party.
How long do you reckon it will take to “catch up” to these very-strong critters? Usually minions start strong, but get outgrown in a hurry.
My Barbarian in Pathfinder took… I think it was a feat, that let her have an animal companion. This was in the DM’s own setting, which was a world where there was very little land after the planet was shattered and it took airships to travel from place to place. Naturally, we still had sharks. They were just sharks with bat-wings instead of fins.
My barbarian had run into a young one while starving in the wilderness of the chunk of land she called home, and in her words, “He tried to take a bite out of me, I tried to take a bite out of him, we both figured out we didn’t taste very good and both just sort of refused to leave.”
Well that’s amazing. Also, ima need to know bat-shark’s name.
I put Jaws down on his companion sheet, but in-character she never named him. She didn’t like the idea of arbitrary naming, you were supposed to earn one.
A campaign I’m doing I am playing a Tiefling Cleric that just adores beasts! During the campaign I did start off with 5 normal pet wolves I tamed in a dungeon but that did change quite quickly my first odd pet is a creature called a grick. Some may say it’s freaky or ugly but in my opinion both me and my character both think it’s cute.
My second strange pet I got, and this one was a struggle, was a stirge. In general it does look kinda strange but in my opinion it kinda has some charm to it.
My latest pet is a giant spider! I don’t know exactly what a giant spider looks like but going off of normal spiders, which are terrifying and cute at the same time, it’s a rather cool pet.
I am currently planning on making a sanctuary for them and written all the supplies I can’t gather easily and their costs. Now I just need to design each of their homes!
Incoming “they escaped, you have to save the village from your pets” storyline.