My Pet Drake

[Titus_Manlius]

On my groups first session they succeeded in binding a Guard Drake with rope at the end of the third encounter of Kobold Hall (Skull-Skull!) At this point the session ended and they excitedly talked of how they would begin to train the Drake for their fighting pet in the next session.
According to the Monster Manual, Drakes are to fight to the death for their masters. However, this drake did watch his master and fellow drake being slaughtered by his present captors as well as receive quite the beating himself.
The question now is how to handle my PC's trying to train their new Drake. My current thought is to allow my PC's to train it through healing it from the previous battle, my elf's high skill in Nature, and other forms of positive reinforcement. I've decided to privately judge each character's actions in the training instead of doing a skill challenge since I believe the challenge would muddle the process and come up with unfair results.
If the PC's train the Drake by positive reinforcement I believe it should go to their side since it was beaten to do the bidding of its previous masters. If the PC's, however, act negatively towards it I believe it will just attack anything that comes near it or run back to the Kobold's side in the next encounter.
Just give me your thoughts on what to do in this scenario.
....Also since the Drake's speak no language except a series of "clicks" would they be understood by the ritual "comprehend language"?
Thanks for your thoughts!

 

[generalhenry]

my first answer is pets are discouraged in 4E. But other than that you have the right ideas.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I wouldn't give them too hard a time about training. If they want the drake, give them the drake.

Just remember to
a) make it interesting
b) subtract the XP of the drake from any fight in which it takes part

I was seriously thinking of giving a guard drake to a small group of PCs.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Welcome to ENworld!

Personally, I would make training the animal into a skill challenge, using primarily 'Nature' skill, but also including other skills if the PCs can justify them well.

If the skill challenge succeeds, they have tamed their guard drake and it participates as per Kwalish Kids suggestion. If they fail the skill challenge it is partially trained and needs careful handling - an appropriate DC nature check each encounter it is used, in order to prevent it reverting to its wild state.

In fact I'd probably require an easy check to prevent it reverting to wild state if they where successful at the skill challenge and a difficult check to prevent it reverting if they had failed at the skill challenge). If they go through a whole adventure OK, the level of check required in the next adventure goes down by one, with easy checks becoming automatic successes.

This would give them fun training it, it becomes a helpful buddy but with some risk involved until it has worked alongside them for a significant piece of time.

How does that sound to you?

 

[Boarstorm]

I just wanted to pop in and say I love the idea of players taking the initiative and deciding to domesticate one of those cute little fellas.

As for suggestions, I don't really have anything to add to the comments of the prior posters.