Best.Pet.Evar

[Mark CMG]

My druid's wolf animal companion Suffo. He was named after one of my college professors, since both had Int 2, you had to use a spell to understand what hey were saying, and both were sons of a bitch.

Ouch!

 

[Faerl'Elghinn]

A 3.0 druid in a game I was in befriended an enemy dire weasel with Animal Friendship. But I think the only reason I remember it as being particularly cool was because she named it 'Chester'.

Chester the dire weasel. Heh. Heh-heh.

Dire weasels are definitely the best--what other animal could provide for so much in-game innuendo? "Say hello to my dire weasel..." "I attack him with my dire weasel..."

 

[krunchyfrogg]

I had a Halfling in OD&D who threw his pet rocks at enemies.

 

[werk]

A baby basilisk. Too small to petrity a human, but it saved us from a hellwasp swarm.

Worst familiar ever. I gave a PC one, and the only thing he ever did with it was threaten people and had it attack (turn to stone) a monster that was constricting him.

Wait...that was the worst wizard PC ever. My bad.


My favorite pets/mounts were riding lizards that I gave to a party as a reward. I used the monitor lizard mount entry, but described tham as frilled on the neck and tail with rainbow colors. Years later they showed up in the new Star Wars movies...basically.

 

[Argent Silvermage]

Dire weasels are definitely the best--what other animal could provide for so much in-game innuendo? "Say hello to my dire weasel..." "I attack him with my dire weasel..."

You see. Now I have to get myself a dire Weasel.

 

[Old Drew Id]

I had a gnome sorcerer with the Earth Bloodline feat (Dragon 311) and Planar Familiar (Planar Handbook).

He was a small earth-related gnome sorcerer. His familiar was a small earth elemental.

They were half-brothers.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

A mage in our ravenloft had a mundane horse named "Fernguy". Horses came and went pretty frequently with werewolf attacks, swarms of ghouls, and errant fireballs, but somehow Fernguy managed to live through it all through sheer dumb luck. He went through the shadow rift and back, saw the destruction of Gregor Zolnik and the redemption of Yagno Petrovna. Eventually the party had to get somewhere fast on Captain Timothy's river boat, and Fernguy had to be left behind. The players wracked their brains for a way to get him down river easy. The best was when they were going to conjure a grue to RIDE the horse to the destination. I told them it would work, but it wouldnt be the same Fernguy when they arrived, and thus the mage and his horse bid their good byes.

 

[00Machado]

Back in the days of Basic D&D, my DM gave my 6th level wizard a panther familiar that would shrink down into a cub when not in the presence of the wizard (as well as at the wizard's command for easy hiding). One time the group was captured, escaped from the prison cell, and found a guard room where they were playing with the cub like a kitten. When the wizard walked in the cub grew to full grown size and the party wreaked havoc on the guards. Good times.

 

[SiderisAnon]

We had great plans for Toby... But the DM wasn't along for the ride, and to stop us from keeping our newly beloved Toby he killed our friggin kobold in an epic display of DM Fiat. After one or two more displays of "Bone the players and kill or destroy whatever they manage to acquire" methodology we fired that DM.

Bah! I would never kill Toby. Spot was one of the greatest plot elements I ever had in a game. That little guy got them into so many roleplaying situations -- once I could NEVER have gotten the players into if they hadn't decided they were going to protect Spot as much as a PC.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

The closest I came to having a 'pet' was the human-sized, sentient steamjack (using warforged stats) I had as a cohort in an IK campaign. He (it?) was a trusted ally through several tough battles, but got destroyed in the same session my PC was killed (and lost a level due to being raised). Despite the obvious 'we can rebuild him - stronger... faster... more powerful' joke, the reality was, the PCs couldn't actually do that and the mechkanic who could was many weeks journey away in a direction we weren't going. Since my character had lost his Leadership feat when he lost his level, I went ahead and took a different feat going forward.

However, the MOST memorable pet I ever saw was the Axewing (a somewhat broken, possibly erroneously typed creature from the Monster Encyclopaedia II) animal companion from my last Spelljammer campaign. She was quickly dubbed Empyria (after the Godbird in Dragon Quest 8) by the players because, well, she was a bird... and seemingly a god. Already a powerful, possibly under-CR'd critter in a normal campaign, she was death on wings in a game where aerial mobility was key. And lucky? That bird critted more often than not. Her master, a raptorean Cleric/Druid, rarely involved himself in fights, but why, when his animal companion was the party's best damage dealer?