Animal army [Archive] - Wizards Community

Animal army [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
icnivad
10-05-06, 09:21 PM I have a Druid player who is building his character around collecting and training an animal army, and I was hoping I could get some advice on how to handle this.

The way I see it, there are two ways for him to get an animal: to buy one, or to run across one and befriend it.

The first is a no brainer how to proceed, but the second I'm not quite sure on. According to the PHB, a random encounter animal starts out as unfriendly(doesn't attack) and he can use Wild Empathy to increase it's reaction with a 15 or higher. Lower than a 5 causes the creature to become hostile and attack. This character has a 3 (2 cha, 1 level) bonus to wild empathy, so rolling under a 5 is almost impossible, and will become impossible once he hits level 2. Once an animal is raised to indifferent, it is impossible for it to drop down a rank with a posative score. So once he hits indifferent, he can keep trying until he pushes the attitude all the way up to helpful? This seems a little too easy, I'd like there to be some danger involved. any ideas?

Once he has the animal, I've house ruled the following:
Animal Training:
Training DC increases by +1 for each animal you have in your posession. This does not include your companion. DC also increases by +1 for each hd of the animal you are trying to train.
failure in training results in losing the week spent, and the animal still being untrained. failure in training by 10 or more points results in the animal dying running off, or being otherwise never-trainable.

I'm pretty happy with the training portion as it makes it harder for him to train difficult creatures and harder for him to build a large army, but easy to get a few creatures. maybe I should so something similar to this with befriending? DC + animal HD + animal army total HD? any thoughts?
Burgundy Lotus
10-05-06, 11:05 PM They are just his friends, I wouldn't see them as loyal enough to actually be a fighting army. A group of sentries maybe, but not an army.
Omega the Powerfull
10-05-06, 11:29 PM Drids as clerics are way too overpowered in my opinion - in my current campaing the clerics = sujengia (I think that's how you write it) describe in complete divine, and no druids.

Altought I don't think that solves your problem
Tsushi
10-06-06, 12:31 PM If I could make several points.

The majority of the animal kingdom is not carnivors so it should be fairly hard to find pets with good combat abilities (In the real world there is 1 carnavor for close to every 1000 herbavors.) In addition as the druid levels they will have increasingly smaller affects on combat .

Second unless the animals are fanatic they wont stick around if they drop like flies every combat.

The cost to feed the pets will quickly get out of hand and inherintly limits the amount that you can have.

How are 35 wolves (or any other med animal) going to fit in a normal dungeon.

Personaly I don't think that you have to change any of the rules. One of my first characters in 3.0 was a druid inspired by deranged hermit (magic card see my avitar) that had close to 100 squirels with him (I awakend several and they became my cohorts, a cleric, and several more as druids) but they had almost no affect on combat besides my cohorts and cost nearly 2g a day to import nuts from other sections of the world. (once they tried macadamion nuts they would eat nothing else)

Also keep in mind mating season, and how much time it takes to find and train each animal. Most paties are not going to wait around that long.
Gladi
10-06-06, 02:08 PM Bright day
Thank you Tsushi for lightening up my day.
icnivad
10-06-06, 03:42 PM I guess I've always tried to reward players for thinking outside the box, and I like the idea of this druid going the route of animal master. He's made sacrifices to his characters ability in combat for this mode. As far as animals not being able to help, there's also always a stronger animal out there. I don't quite see the point of comparing a squirrel to a bear, or a dire bear, which no one could deny it's effectiveness in battle. I could even let him train monsters of animal inteligence with a -4 modifier.
I just need a system that allows him to get more powerful creatures as he increases in level. but still maintaining balance.

Here's my latest thoughts:
To befriend an animal:
Make a wild empathy check(d20+Druid Lev+Cha) of DC 15 + creatures HD + total HD of animals already following the Druid(not including animal companion)
-If the animal is hostile toward the druid, increase this check by 2.
-If the animal has a master nearby increase this check by 2.
Success calms the animal and the animal will follow the Druid, and fight if attacked, but will not follow orders or fight for the druid unless already trained.
Failure by 10 or more makes the animal hostile and will attack. If the creature is already hostile, it will become enraged for 1d4 rounds gaining +2 to attack, -1 to AC and cannot be befriended for that time.
The druid can release an animal only in it's natural environment.
To Train an animal:
Training DC increases by +1 for each HD of animal you have in your posession. This does not include your companion. DC also increases by +1 for each hd of the animal you are trying to train.
failure in training results in losing the week, and the animal still being untrained. failure in training by 10 or more points results in the animal dying or running off as a result of the training.
Tsushi
10-07-06, 01:36 PM Ok I can see a dire bear being useful in combat but where are you going to find a domesticated one?

As per 3.5
DC 15 to change an attitude from indifrent to friendly,
DC 30 to change an attitude from indiffrent to helpful,
DC 25 to change an attitude from unfriendly to friendly
DC 40 to change an attitude from unfriendly to helpful,

Try agin: Optional but not recomended because retries usally do not work. Even if the inital Diplomacy check succeds the other character can only be perswaded so far. and a retry may do more harm then good. If the intial check fails, the other character has probably become more commited to his position and a retry is futile.

As a domestic animal starts as indiffrent I would say that a wild animal starts as unfriendly. So you need to beat a DC of 25 to geta wild animal to stick around at all and a DC 40 to become protective of you (which in the case of a Dire bear could present problems of its own. Such as him trying to tear anyone limb from limb when the try to shake hands with you.;) ) In the case of magical beasts (the example gives studing a basilisk. hope you don't make eye contact :D ) a wild one would start unfriendly at the least and hostile if it were hungry (tack on 10 more to the above DC's in addition to the -4.)

Take into account that you or your party can't attack it for one min so you have to find a way to stay near you but not attack you as well . I realy do belive that you could only influnce those animals that are closer to your combat level anyway.

PS. How many dire bears are running around out there not that many. Not nearly enough to make even an army of 5. ( as posted above with the limits of carnavors vs. herbaviors, plus the dire bear is a SUPER preditor so it would have even less numbers. Say one in 10,000? And I use the veriant that legendary creatures are created at the time they are neaded as a companion and only a companion for a high level druid. So no army of legendary tigers.)I would say unless you specificly track them down wich no party I ever played with is going to take that amount of time he should not just be able to say I go out in the wilderness and find a dire bear. Make him hunt down stories, then track the bear, find its home try his check and IF he servives he has a single dire bear.

the number of riding dogs (generaly agreed to as having better stats then a wolf) a 1st level character (not limited to a druid) can have is limited only to the amount you are willing to spend to get more and to feed them. A 4th level character could have 36 dogs (5,400g for bieng 4th level and 150g per dog comes to 36 dogs) now thats an army that has awsome combat stats for a 4th level character. But the cost to feed, train, and heal them. would quickly eat the entire party's worth of treasure per encounter. (and how you would fit 36 dogs in the average dungeon is beyond me.)

Sorry if this post was to long. :D
BW0222
10-07-06, 01:56 PM icnivad,

By the rules, one would have to plan this really carefully. However, it would be a great long-term task.

Domestication
Handle animal allows training animals, but it takes a long time and you are limited to numbers. Given the life span of your average animal (10 years maybe), animals would be dead by the time you domesticated enough.

You would honestly need a lot of characters with a high handle animal skill in order to domestic them.

Controlling
It is a move equivalent action to direct one animal to perform a trick it is trained for. It could honestly take minutes to direct a group of fifty wolves to attack. Worse, if the wolves saw a rabbit, it could take minutes to direct them to "come" back.

That said, you could employ a fair number of handlers. Druids, rangers, barbarians with the handle animal skill (or speak with animals) or perhaps awaken a few wolves and use these as commanders.

Types
Remember that unless you are taking the actions to command an animal, it does what comes naturally. If you mix wolves and lions, or lions and bears, expect a fight to break out unless you are continually commanding them not to attack each other or keeping them well separated.

Assuming you had the time and resources, one could:

* Take the leadership feat. Recruit a decend ranger or druid as a cohort.
* Take followers who are druids, rangers, or at least expert (animal trainers). Say you could get 10.
* Have each of these train 6 wolves. Have you and the cohort train some dire wolves.
* Awaken a half-dozen wolves and one of the dire wolves.

It would be an interesting roleplaying. You might get a small sized army 100 creatures or so.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
icnivad 10-05-06, 09:21 PM	I have a Druid player who is building his character around collecting and training an animal army, and I was hoping I could get some advice on how to handle this. The way I see it, there are two ways for him to get an animal: to buy one, or to run across one and befriend it. The first is a no brainer how to proceed, but the second I'm not quite sure on. According to the PHB, a random encounter animal starts out as unfriendly(doesn't attack) and he can use Wild Empathy to increase it's reaction with a 15 or higher. Lower than a 5 causes the creature to become hostile and attack. This character has a 3 (2 cha, 1 level) bonus to wild empathy, so rolling under a 5 is almost impossible, and will become impossible once he hits level 2. Once an animal is raised to indifferent, it is impossible for it to drop down a rank with a posative score. So once he hits indifferent, he can keep trying until he pushes the attitude all the way up to helpful? This seems a little too easy, I'd like there to be some danger involved. any ideas? Once he has the animal, I've house ruled the following: Animal Training: Training DC increases by +1 for each animal you have in your posession. This does not include your companion. DC also increases by +1 for each hd of the animal you are trying to train. failure in training results in losing the week spent, and the animal still being untrained. failure in training by 10 or more points results in the animal dying running off, or being otherwise never-trainable. I'm pretty happy with the training portion as it makes it harder for him to train difficult creatures and harder for him to build a large army, but easy to get a few creatures. maybe I should so something similar to this with befriending? DC + animal HD + animal army total HD? any thoughts?
Burgundy Lotus 10-05-06, 11:05 PM	They are just his friends, I wouldn't see them as loyal enough to actually be a fighting army. A group of sentries maybe, but not an army.
Omega the Powerfull 10-05-06, 11:29 PM	Drids as clerics are way too overpowered in my opinion - in my current campaing the clerics = sujengia (I think that's how you write it) describe in complete divine, and no druids. Altought I don't think that solves your problem
Tsushi 10-06-06, 12:31 PM	If I could make several points. The majority of the animal kingdom is not carnivors so it should be fairly hard to find pets with good combat abilities (In the real world there is 1 carnavor for close to every 1000 herbavors.) In addition as the druid levels they will have increasingly smaller affects on combat . Second unless the animals are fanatic they wont stick around if they drop like flies every combat. The cost to feed the pets will quickly get out of hand and inherintly limits the amount that you can have. How are 35 wolves (or any other med animal) going to fit in a normal dungeon. Personaly I don't think that you have to change any of the rules. One of my first characters in 3.0 was a druid inspired by deranged hermit (magic card see my avitar) that had close to 100 squirels with him (I awakend several and they became my cohorts, a cleric, and several more as druids) but they had almost no affect on combat besides my cohorts and cost nearly 2g a day to import nuts from other sections of the world. (once they tried macadamion nuts they would eat nothing else) Also keep in mind mating season, and how much time it takes to find and train each animal. Most paties are not going to wait around that long.
Gladi 10-06-06, 02:08 PM	Bright day Thank you Tsushi for lightening up my day.
icnivad 10-06-06, 03:42 PM	I guess I've always tried to reward players for thinking outside the box, and I like the idea of this druid going the route of animal master. He's made sacrifices to his characters ability in combat for this mode. As far as animals not being able to help, there's also always a stronger animal out there. I don't quite see the point of comparing a squirrel to a bear, or a dire bear, which no one could deny it's effectiveness in battle. I could even let him train monsters of animal inteligence with a -4 modifier. I just need a system that allows him to get more powerful creatures as he increases in level. but still maintaining balance. Here's my latest thoughts: To befriend an animal: Make a wild empathy check(d20+Druid Lev+Cha) of DC 15 + creatures HD + total HD of animals already following the Druid(not including animal companion) -If the animal is hostile toward the druid, increase this check by 2. -If the animal has a master nearby increase this check by 2. Success calms the animal and the animal will follow the Druid, and fight if attacked, but will not follow orders or fight for the druid unless already trained. Failure by 10 or more makes the animal hostile and will attack. If the creature is already hostile, it will become enraged for 1d4 rounds gaining +2 to attack, -1 to AC and cannot be befriended for that time. The druid can release an animal only in it's natural environment. To Train an animal: Training DC increases by +1 for each HD of animal you have in your posession. This does not include your companion. DC also increases by +1 for each hd of the animal you are trying to train. failure in training results in losing the week, and the animal still being untrained. failure in training by 10 or more points results in the animal dying or running off as a result of the training.
Tsushi 10-07-06, 01:36 PM	Ok I can see a dire bear being useful in combat but where are you going to find a domesticated one? As per 3.5 DC 15 to change an attitude from indifrent to friendly, DC 30 to change an attitude from indiffrent to helpful, DC 25 to change an attitude from unfriendly to friendly DC 40 to change an attitude from unfriendly to helpful, Try agin: Optional but not recomended because retries usally do not work. Even if the inital Diplomacy check succeds the other character can only be perswaded so far. and a retry may do more harm then good. If the intial check fails, the other character has probably become more commited to his position and a retry is futile. As a domestic animal starts as indiffrent I would say that a wild animal starts as unfriendly. So you need to beat a DC of 25 to geta wild animal to stick around at all and a DC 40 to become protective of you (which in the case of a Dire bear could present problems of its own. Such as him trying to tear anyone limb from limb when the try to shake hands with you.;) ) In the case of magical beasts (the example gives studing a basilisk. hope you don't make eye contact :D ) a wild one would start unfriendly at the least and hostile if it were hungry (tack on 10 more to the above DC's in addition to the -4.) Take into account that you or your party can't attack it for one min so you have to find a way to stay near you but not attack you as well . I realy do belive that you could only influnce those animals that are closer to your combat level anyway. PS. How many dire bears are running around out there not that many. Not nearly enough to make even an army of 5. ( as posted above with the limits of carnavors vs. herbaviors, plus the dire bear is a SUPER preditor so it would have even less numbers. Say one in 10,000? And I use the veriant that legendary creatures are created at the time they are neaded as a companion and only a companion for a high level druid. So no army of legendary tigers.)I would say unless you specificly track them down wich no party I ever played with is going to take that amount of time he should not just be able to say I go out in the wilderness and find a dire bear. Make him hunt down stories, then track the bear, find its home try his check and IF he servives he has a single dire bear. the number of riding dogs (generaly agreed to as having better stats then a wolf) a 1st level character (not limited to a druid) can have is limited only to the amount you are willing to spend to get more and to feed them. A 4th level character could have 36 dogs (5,400g for bieng 4th level and 150g per dog comes to 36 dogs) now thats an army that has awsome combat stats for a 4th level character. But the cost to feed, train, and heal them. would quickly eat the entire party's worth of treasure per encounter. (and how you would fit 36 dogs in the average dungeon is beyond me.) Sorry if this post was to long. :D
BW0222 10-07-06, 01:56 PM	icnivad, By the rules, one would have to plan this really carefully. However, it would be a great long-term task. Domestication Handle animal allows training animals, but it takes a long time and you are limited to numbers. Given the life span of your average animal (10 years maybe), animals would be dead by the time you domesticated enough. You would honestly need a lot of characters with a high handle animal skill in order to domestic them. Controlling It is a move equivalent action to direct one animal to perform a trick it is trained for. It could honestly take minutes to direct a group of fifty wolves to attack. Worse, if the wolves saw a rabbit, it could take minutes to direct them to "come" back. That said, you could employ a fair number of handlers. Druids, rangers, barbarians with the handle animal skill (or speak with animals) or perhaps awaken a few wolves and use these as commanders. Types Remember that unless you are taking the actions to command an animal, it does what comes naturally. If you mix wolves and lions, or lions and bears, expect a fight to break out unless you are continually commanding them not to attack each other or keeping them well separated. Assuming you had the time and resources, one could: * Take the leadership feat. Recruit a decend ranger or druid as a cohort. * Take followers who are druids, rangers, or at least expert (animal trainers). Say you could get 10. * Have each of these train 6 wolves. Have you and the cohort train some dire wolves. * Awaken a half-dozen wolves and one of the dire wolves. It would be an interesting roleplaying. You might get a small sized army 100 creatures or so.