Wilderness Rogue with pet dogs Question

I can't tell you the hassle I have gone through with one particular character and her character creation for a new character. I won't even go into the 1200 year old elf she wanted to play at level one, but now she wants to play a rogue whom owns a pair of dogs.

I'm trying to stay openminded but the hassle shes been giving me the last two weeks with this character creation is almost beyond my patience and I need to make sure I'm not acting on emotion.

Is this character 3.5 core legal. She wants to buy 2 dogs at 50 gold pieces a piece. Her story says she has owned these dogs for sometiime, can she have the dogs pretrained before sessions. What should the cost be for the dogs trained? The dogs in the monster manual are small 20 to 50 lbs, she wants some english breed dog whose 100 lbs. She wants to purchase a dog with these stats and wishes to substitute the dog stat for the wolf stat to accomodate for the different breed. Is this allowable? If so what would the cost of it be?

Also I want to make sure I understand the handle animal skill correctly.

Even if the animal is trained, the player still has to make a handle animal skill check of 15 to make it do the trained act. This takes a move action in combat. Can the player make two consequitive move actions to control both dogs?

She should buy riding dogs. These beefier 2HD versions cost a lot more but come equipped for combat riding, which should give you all the tricks you need for effective combatnents.

If she wants to get the cheaper versions, then I'd imagine she needs a skilled hireling's assistance for several weeks to train the animals. A level 1 commoner with +1 cha, 4 ranks in handle animal, skill focus handle animal, and animal affinity would do the trick, so it'd be a few SP a day for a few weks depending on which trick package she wants them to know.

"Riding" Dogs would do the trick. IIRC, they're slightly tougher than wolves.

So what is she going to do at higher lvl when her dogs get crunched to -s in a single hit?

Drowbane said:

"Riding" Dogs would do the trick. IIRC, they're slightly tougher than wolves.

So what is she going to do at higher lvl when her dogs get crunched to -s in a single hit?

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I don't think she's thought that far ahead, though I"ve already informed her. Shes so into this concept that she's giving up buying armor, weapons and equipment for the dogs.

DonTadow said:

she's giving up buying armor, weapons and equipment

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The dogs won't much matter for long, then, anyway... and you'll have to go through the fun of character creation with her again when she gets toasted by a pair of gibberlings.

IMO,

I would do my best as a DM and steer her away from the dog concept. If she is absolutely fixed on it then make sure you just warn her about the high risk of the dogs getting killed quite easily. Then she is stuck putting all that money into a couple dead muts. Not a wise decision.

Otherwise, maybe you could be a nice DM and give her a wolf companion (this one was domesticated and trained for this purpose). Those free trip attempts are great for creating AOO. This still isn't a wise decision as a Rogue IMO, the chance of the animal getting killed often is too high and I wouldn't want to be raising the animal back all the time. On the other hand, now the rogue will have a designated partner to flank with to get sneak attack damage.

First off age has nothing to do with class level. That is it is entirely possible (not likely but possible) for an elf to be that old and still only have a single level in a class. Basically she has spent her time do things that didn't matter as far a focusing on a class goes.

I think you have rules about right for getting a trained animal (although I'm sure of the exact price to use).

Regardless if she want to focus on the attachment to dogs then have her take a class with that attachment built in - say druid it starts with an animal companion or a ranger (doesn't get one until 4th level, but does have wild empathy).

If she is going the wizard route then IMO she is not really focusing on the character's past history, etc. Although she could get a dog as familiar (well our DM allowed my sone to have one -it was in one of the dragon mags).

IMHO having a war dog is a great idea for rogues. They really offset some of your liabilities, especially when you can't rely reliably on sneaking and stealth yet.

In my first 1E campaign I played a rogue that relied on a hound through ~5th level or so and it worked out great. Dogs have pretty good AC once you put them into cheap leather or studded leather armor, they do respectable damage, they have a lot of HP compared to a rogue, and they can make free trip attacks. Throw in the ability to track through scent or entertain the kiddies (for your social rogues) and you've got a great winning companion.

irdeggman said:

First off age has nothing to do with class level. That is it is entirely possible (not likely but possible) for an elf to be that old and still only have a single level in a class. Basically she has spent her time do things that didn't matter as far a focusing on a class goes.

I think you have rules about right for getting a trained animal (although I'm sure of the exact price to use).

Regardless if she want to focus on the attachment to dogs then have her take a class with that attachment built in - say druid it starts with an animal companion or a ranger (doesn't get one until 4th level, but does have wild empathy).

If she is going the wizard route then IMO she is not really focusing on the character's past history, etc. Although she could get a dog as familiar (well our DM allowed my sone to have one -it was in one of the dragon mags).

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The problem with the elf was that I had given her character creation sheet that specified the history and max ages of all the characters-- 800 years old for an elf is very very old in my world. She wanted her character to be 1,200 years old and the maximum life expentancy of an elf to be 7,000 years old. I thought she hadn't read the character creation page, but it was just that my world didn't correspond with her thought of elves and she wanted to argue via email for two weeks about it, thus I nixed the character.
I thought the idea was really cool which is why I allowed it, but I think it could work better at later levels perhaps multiclassing ranger with scout/rogue. Or I'd wait until we're in the adventure to buy the pets as opposed to spending your starting gold on dogs .

As to the Handle Animal skill, apply a +2 to the DC for additional same type animals being commanded the same thing. That way she can do an 'Attack that guy' as a move action and have both dogs spring into combat.

Apply a +4 to the DC for same type animal, same action, different target..
+6 for same type animal, different action
And an additional +2 if different type of animal.


In this fashion, a wagon with an 8 harness rig takes a Handle Animal check of DC 30 as a move action, or two DC 22 checks as a full action
{yes, I rounded up...}


I am not sure if this is in the PHB, its not in the SRD