Dinosaurs as Animal Companions - Gamebreaker?

[Rackhir]

That's what I'm saying. If a player quits a game because of a dinosaur, why not a rhinoceros, or a dire bat? I think the problem doesn't lie with the dinosaurs, but with the player's perception of them. If the character rolled in riding a "dread lizard", no one would bat an eye.

Sorry I got used to arguing with RC. Missed the "I agree" at the start. Mea culpa.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Well this topic has certainly generated a lot more discussion than I thought it would!

Just thought I might clarify a few things here.

Both players had been playing in the campaign from the beginning (about 1 1/2 years). All players began at 3rd level and had worked their way up to 10th level when the whole Druid/dinosaur situation came about.

Raven Crowking, I think you are a little off base when you are suggesting that it is ok for the players to be demand that they have +10 Plate at 1st level or be Superman with all the powers. The Druid character was not breaking the system in that regard. He was a 10th level Druid. At that level he had the ability to Wildshape into a Dinosaur. As a 10th level Druid it was also within the "rules" (for lack of a better word) to take the Bloodstriker Dinosaur as an animal companion. The MM3 also had a small section about riding the Bloodstriker as well as using it as a Druid's animal companion.

So from a rules perspective, a 10th level Druid is well within the rules to have a Bloodstriker as an animal companion. Now whether or not the DM should allow a PC to take such a creature as his animal companion is a totally different question, and obviously an answer that will vary from DM to DM. If the Druid had been played from the start of the campaign then I would not have allowed him to take the Bloodstriker as an animal companion. The party had not encountered any dinosaurs in the campaign at that point so there would have been no opportunity to gain such a mount.

However the Druid PC was not in the game from the beginning (although the Druid's player was) The Druid's player had decided that he had achieved all he had wanted to with his previous PC (A Fighter specialising in Archery) and wanted to try something new. He came up with a few concepts and eventually settled on the Druid. He wanted to have a dinosaur as an animal companion and have some dinosaur wildshape forms and I didn't really think it was that far out to deny it. The Druid was 10th level. I thought it was fair enough to assume that he had travelled around a bit and had encountered dinosaurs before.

Up until this point in the campaign dinosaurs had not been brought up and I hadn't really considered whether or not they existed to be honest. None of the players had asked if there were dinosaurs in the campaign world and the party had not encountered them. The campaign world is rather vague due to me not having the time to detail it. I didn't have anything against there being dinosaurs in the campaign world so I allowed them to exist.

Here is a rough campaign overview of what the party has done. The first half of the campaign was spent in the Green Ronin city of Freeport as we played through the Freeport Trilogy of adventures. Adventures then moved to the mainland as I ran the group through a couple of Dungeon magazine adventures. The last couple of levels had been spent with the PC's trying to solve the mystery of why every summer 3 young girls had been getting murdered in a particular city. Overall a lot of the campaign has taken place in urban environments and a lot of fights have been against classed humanoids so it is not really surprising that the PC's haven't encountered any dinosaurs. There are a whole host of creatures that the party is yet to encounter. Does that mean that they are also so strange as to freak out about?

The Druid was not introduced to the party in the middle of the wilderness. The party first met the Druid just outside the town gates of Penmough (a town where they had just solved the mystery of murdered young girls). The Druid was introduced to them by the rescued gir'sl family as the young girl's Grandfather. The family did think of him as a bit crazy but he was a softie at heart. (the Druid treated the dinosaur like it was his child, calling it Mr. Cuddles). When the party had rescued the girl they inadvertantly released a bound demon onto the world. The Druid wished to accompany the party on their mission to deal with the demon as thanks for rescuing his grand-daughter.

The Druid PC was quite strong from a powergaming perspective. The player in question tended to create pretty effective PC's in general though. When he was playing the archery specialising Fighter he was the strongest PC in the party. The rest of the party was probably a little underpowered in my opinion. I thnik that the fact that the Druid was strong from a game mechanic perspective may have been part of the reason that the other player quit, despite him saying it was all to do with the dinosaurs.

In the one combat we had with the Druid in the party I was surprised at how strong he was. It did happen in the middle of a forest so the Druid was in his most favourable environment. Even still I talked to him about it straight after the session and said how I was worried about how strong his PC was in relation to the other PC's. He was happy to tone down his character so it wasn't as strong. That never happened though as the player quit before that could happen.

If I really wanted to rectify the situation and keep the quitting player (and his friend that also left) in the group I think that I could have. However I personally think that it is for the best that he has quit. We were both aware that we had different preferred play styles. I like to uses the rules as rules when I DM, he prefers to think of them as guidelines when he DM's. He would quite often get frustrated when he wanted to do something, but the D&D rules said that he couldn't. I really think that D&D isn't the game for him. I think he would be a lot happier playing or running a more rules-light game. However, because there aren't a huge amount of players where we live it is almost a matter of playing D&D or not playing at all.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I agree. Would it make more sense to have the druid riding a rhinoceros through a Middle Ages-like setting?

The Bloodstriker picture in the MM3, it actually looks relatively similar to a rhino. It also looks similar to a Triceratops. Add in a few more spikes/horns on the body and that's basically the Bloodstriker.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Tonguez]

I agree. Would it make more sense to have the druid riding a rhinoceros through a Middle Ages-like setting?

Um the Monoceros appears in some medieval bestiaries and has been identified as a Rhinoceros (similarily the Medieval Camelopard is identified as a Giraffe) and although its not middle ages the Beast of Gévaudan might have been a African spotted Hyena and of course the 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' depicted it as an African lion.

The point being that a Rhino might have been bizzarre in Medieval Europe, but it was 'known' of and thus would not be wholly implausible....

 

[Brother MacLaren]

There are a whole host of creatures that the party is yet to encounter. Does that mean that they are also so strange as to freak out about?

Wouldn't it be great if they were? If your players had such a clearly defined image of what range of creatures were in your world that the existence of an aboleth would be the mind-numbing Lovecraftian horror that it is meant to be? Or if they actually reacted to a vampire according to their PCs' knowledge and expectations rather than their player knowledge and expectations?

The Druid PC was quite strong from a powergaming perspective.

No kidding. An organic Drd10, core only, no animal companion, is extremely strong. A created-at-10th Drd10 can dump stats and pick feats and items more efficiently and is a lot stronger. One with an animal companion is even more powerful, one with access to MM2 (legendary animals) is even more powerful than that, and as I understand it MM3 pushes the bar still higher for animal power.

 

[Jhulae]

Hi
I recently had the dino companion come up in a campaign. One of my players who was running a druid with a very effective large dog animal companion, read about the clawfoot dino and wanted to dismiss his dog and call a clawfoot. I put the nix on it because I"ve always felt that dinos in a 3e greyhawk/default setting are only found in the tropics. We were playing in a temperate area and the group hadn't run across any dinos, so I said no. I told him that if I had brought dinos into the campaign, or if I thought there was a good chance dinos lived anywhere near the campaign area I would have allowed it.
Thanks.

To be honest, it really doesn't matter where the characters are or the animal companions they want live. Re-read how druids call their animal companion. They pray for 24 hours and it just appears. Nothing is mentioned about climate, location, or anything else (except for the very spicific case of an aquatic environment). The praying bit implies that it's in part due to your diety's intervention that you get the animal companion. That means, if your druid had a gorilla that was killed while you were fighting frosts giants in the arctic, and you wanted another, just pray for 24 hours and a new gorilla shows up.

And, as regards to dinosaurs and campaign worlds, campagin worlds tend to include them, such as Eberron and FR. In FR, they're not even really split off from the main continent, save that Chult is a peninsula.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

*jumps on Mustrum Ridcully, gags him and drags him off before he can make a reasonable point that everyone might agree with*

Help! Helbmmmmhmm ...

 

[Klaus]

Um the Monoceros appears in some medieval bestiaries and has been identified as a Rhinoceros (similarily the Medieval Camelopard is identified as a Giraffe) and although its not middle ages the Beast of Gévaudan might have been a African spotted Hyena and of course the 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' depicted it as an African lion.

The point being that a Rhino might have been bizzarre in Medieval Europe, but it was 'known' of and thus would not be wholly implausible....

Right, Monoceros, aka, Unicorn.

And those medieval bestiaries listed the Monoceros as capable of skewering elephants, and hyenas as having shadows that could strike dogs mute.

In that context, if dinosaurs existed in Medieval Europe, people would just call them dragons (and maybe they did, based on fossil remains).

 

[Raven Crowking]

The cheetah is a spirit animal from a distant, yet related pantheon which leads the Eskimo PC's on a quest to the far south where are ancient evil is rising unchecked.

See what I mean about choosing to expend effort making a concept work, rather than expending effort to negate it?

See what I mean about a choice of animal companion changing the playstyle of the game? Gone is the "grim arctic survival" game that everyone else was enjoying; we now have "fish out of water" as our Innuit warriors visit Africa!

"Cleave close to the feel of a setting" is a playstyle choice, and not doing so does change playstyle.

It's a question of degree. Dinosaurs are in the MM, and on the druid's summon lists. Vulcans aren't. As an aside, I created an entire religion in my homebrew to handle players that want to names themselves "Spock" and pretend their wands of magic missiles are phasers. Really, I think of everything.

Having a little trouble distinguishing between mechanical advantages and aesthetics, I see. Just because elves aren't called Vulcans in the MM doesn't mean that they shouldn't be. And we can call the orcs Tellurians.

Gee, I hope you made a spot in your homebrew for the Teenage Ninja Turtle character I am thinking of creating, and have an adventure set up that works for Spock, Michelangelo, Bob the Dinosaur-Riding Druid, and Sarah's new character -- a giant transforming robot.

Because there is nothing qualitatively different between these characters. If it is "a question of degree", one would hope that you could see that different people like different degrees, and as a result Character X, who is great for many campaigns, might not fit with Group Y.

What if I don't like dragonborn or tieflings in my game? Does the advent of 4e mean that either I can't switch, or I just have to suck it up? What if I want to devise a world in which there are no elves? Am I not allowed to do that in D&D?

Because Sarah's rights end were Bob's begin. You have the right to enjoy the game in the manner of your choosing, up until the point your start telling other players what they can and cannot do. Sarah has no right to demand that Bob's character conform to her wishes. If she needs to control other people's choices in order to enjoy the game herself... well, then it's sayonara, Sarah.

Again, what if I want to devise a world in which there are no elves? Am I not allowed to do that in D&D?

More closely to the point, say we are playing a game modelled after the real Middle Ages, in which magic is rare, using classes and notes from the Medieval Player's Handbook (say), and your players have invested in that game over the past years. Then Bob shows up, maybe for one game, maybe for a few, maybe as a permanent member, with his dinosaur-riding druid.

Are you actually telling me that you consider it wrong for the DM to take his players' investment in the game into account when deciding whether or not to allow Bob to play that character?



RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

What about a cheetah is so inherently unreasonable for an Eskimo campaign? Aside from the fact that they don't live in the arctic in our world? Are you incapable of "filing off the serial numbers" a bit and giving the player a creature functionally identical to a cheetah, with slightly different flavor text? And if it looks like a cheetah, acts like a cheetah does calling it a cheetah, really piss in your cereal to the point where you can't enjoy the campaign?

Rackhir, the idea is that it is a cheetah, and allowing a cheetah into an otherwise realistic arctic environment changes the way that the players view that environment. My point is not that you cannot include cheetahs, dinosaurs, 1st level characters in +10 plate mail, or Vulcans in a campaign setting -- my point is that the inclusion of anything nonstandard (and, in this context, "standard" is defined by the environment) changes the way the players perceive the game.

One of your favourite quotes is that "The difference between reality and fiction. Is that reality doesn't have to make sense." The converse to this is that fiction does have to make sense.

When a campaign begins, in general, the DM might supply the players with a bit of background information or she may not. If she does not, literally anything goes. The players are free, to some degree, to design the world around them. However, as the players play within the setting, they learn more about it. Hopefully, as they get a sense of how the world works, they invest in it. Their knowledge and sense of the world becomes an important part of the fun of adventuring in that world.

Because of this, it is important that the DM gives the players the ability to know as much about their world as their characters should reasonably know. This doesn't mean that the DM must rigorously detail every aspect of the world, but that she should be able to supply the broad parameters. If manticores only lived in the mountains for the last 200 years of game time, and suddenly they are appearing elsewhere, there should be some reason for it. Likewise, if there are large herds of cattle, buffalo, or whatever, the players should have some idea that they are there.

A good DM, IMHO, doesn't balk at player input that adds to a setting, unless it is inconsistent with what has come before. If a PC (who should have that knowledge) gives a speech about constellations, then the DM should take notes and those constellations can appear again later. This doesn't mean that the PC is automatically 100% correct, but it does mean that the player is part of the additive process of world creation. Likewise, a PC in a bar fight should be able to say "I grab a bottle and swing it" without having to ask if there are any bottles around first. This also has limits -- "I grab a 10,000 gp ruby I spot lying on a table and run" isn't going to fly.

Good players work with the group to establish a world that they can enjoy playing in, and make characters that make sense within that world. Bad players do not. Good DMs present a world for their players' enjoyment. Good DMs allow the players to be part of the additive process of world creation. Good DMs know that player knowledge and sense of the world becomes an important part of the fun of adventuring in that world, and take steps to nurture and protect that sense of the world. Bad DMs do not.

IMHO, of course.

It is primarily the DM's job to communicate knowledge about the world. The players share in that responsibility, but the buck stops with the DM. When a major failure to communicate has occurred -- and if a player quits, that's a major failure -- the DM should take stock of how well he is communicating that world.


RC