D&D General "Pet subclasses" - the problem and the solution

[Ancalagon]

while reading these replies, it occurred to me that there is one "model" where a slight reflavoring could deliver the desired experience.

In Drakkenheim, there is a class, the apothecary, that is essentially an int based warlock with support and "sciency" magic. A little bit more spell slots, no eldritch blast equivalent though. This class had a lot of the power come from the subclass, which would define the playstyle.

I played Mr Butters, an uppity little goblin. Well spoken, confident, reasonable. His subclass? Mutagenist. In combat, he would use a spell slot to MUTATE - becoming a large oger-like brute (essentially the hulk), rampaging around the battle field jumping around and punching stuff.

This is not a pet character. Buuuuuuuut... if instead of mutating into a giant monster, I summoned a giant monster and rode on its back, Master Blaster style... mechanically, it's the same, but the feel is quite different.

While the apothecary is not meant to be a "weak" main class, the mutagenist playstyle requires you to keep some of your spell slots to be able to mutate/summon your ogre in case of combat, so effectively it did hobble the power of the "summoner".

 

[gnarlygninja]

One is the Beastmaster, who has a single powerful companion, and they share resources (including action economy). The other is the Summoner, who summons lots of expendable minions but doesn't do all that much by themselves. I think the Beastmaster is more individually capable than the Summoner, but they just can't do awesome stuff themselves at the same time as their companion does.

Worth mentioning that MCDM released a 5th edition version of the Beastheart a few years ago.

 

[Mecheon]

I think you understand my intentions.

This is why I picked the artificer to do this - in part because of the reanimator inspiration, in part because it "fits", RP wise, but because the artificer base class has a bit less power (and a bit more power in the subclass), so it felt like a good "base class" for the controller of a large/powerful pet (such as a golem)

I was responding to Whisper's post, where they suggested the pets should be underwhelming.

 

[Horwath]

And if you want to make bigger change, than it would not be 5.5 but a new edition and there you would hopefully not start from 5E, but from scratch to make it possible to actually fix the problems 5e has.

with bigger changes it would be 5.5E
now it's 5.1E, at best.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think that them being underwhelming is the point though. They are meant to be a little extra and not shine on their own.

If we accept that, then their "point" is antithetical to what players want from the concept.

The point should be to fulfil the fantasy of having a companion that is part of your story and eventually of your legend (should you survive to have a legend). Otherwise people would be satisfied with find familiar and wouldnt ask for these pet subclasses.

 

[Li Shenron]

I hate pet classes with a passion.

Having cleared that out, it should definitely be doable to create one or more reasonably balanced options for a PC to have an attached creature or whatever. In 5e it could be a subclass (if you want the option restricted to a specific class), a feat (if you want it available to everyone) or even... nothing, just an independent creature following the party.

Of course, the problem is that this requires that subclasses can take away things that the base class has.

I most certainly wouldn't do something like that, but simply say that each subclass already takes away whatever you would have gained from other subclasses.

Seems like the actual problem is trying to bake the pet feature into a limited number of character class when it clearly should be an option for everyone so all players who want to live out their dreams of having a magic, talking fantasy pet can do so without having to be yet another Drizzt do'Urden or Jon Snow. The game already has hirelings and mounts, so it's not like it breaks anything.

This is the third option, an independent creature following the party. I think this option is actually potentially the most powerful one, since it may cost nothing to the PC (although the DM can decide there is an actual money cost to pay the hireling / buy the mount / feed the pet), at least doesn't cost any character feature, and the independent creature is fully functional. It's funny (and even quite pathetic) that players who are eternally underwhelmed by mechanical options to gain a pet don't usually like this "cheap" and most powerful option just because it doesn't feel like they truly "own" the creature.

Anyway, for anyone wanting a mechanical option available to all classes, I would look into creating a feat. Some might argue that a feat is not "big" or expensive enough, but let's see...

First of all, I would look into what is the main functional motivation for the "pet", and I think mostly it boils down to either "exploration aid" or "combat aid". The first one includes primarily scouting, plus less frequent uses such as delivering messages/items, creating a distraction, and for the more ruthless players also triggering traps.

But I feel like the majority of pet-wanting players actually want the pet to fight, otherwise the talking wouldn't be always about the economy of action. And if you look at a pet as a combat extension of the PC, what is it most similar to? IMO the pet is functionally most similar to a ranged weapon, with the caveat that it can be attacked and destroyed/disabled by the enemies. If the pet has additional mechanics such as the possibility to deliver spells, then it becomes more like a ranged extender in the sense that it might allow to deliver both melee attacks and spells at a distance. If you start seeing the pet in this way, suddenly you realize you don't actually necessarily have to pretend that the PC retains all its actions while the pet attacks, and even the original Beastmaster design which required your action rather than bonus action to attack with the pet is not necessarily wrong, as long as using the action to attack with the pet yields better results than using the action for a regular ranged attack. Obviously this needs to be designed properly, requiring an action to attack with a puny animal that deals less damage than an arrow isn't worth it, but this is just to say that, were I to design a pet option in the form of a subclass or feat (which now doesn't seem too small a cost for such option), starting the design from the assumption that it should augment your economy of action isn't the best idea.

 

[CreamCloud0]

First of all, I would look into what is the main functional motivation for the "pet", and I think mostly it boils down to either "exploration aid" or "combat aid". The first one includes primarily scouting, plus less frequent uses such as delivering messages/items, creating a distraction, and for the more ruthless players also triggering traps.

But I feel like the majority of pet-wanting players actually want the pet to fight,

reading this makes it occur to me, the reason i hate the execution of basically all the pet subclasses is because i want an 'exploration pet' while basically every pet in the game is combat focused, the only DnD pet i've ever been interested in is...find familiar, a primarily exploration focused companion with minor combat abilities, the characters/companion combos i think of when asked about a pet subclass aren't someone with a big beast (well, i concede some dragon riders come to mind) but my thoughts go to Alladin and Abu or Barbosa and Jack, Sabrina and Salem or Nanny Ogg and Greebo, Aang and Momo, ...Luke and R2D2, in more recent media Eda and Owlbert (the owl house) and Jinu and his tiger and crow (K-pop demon hunters, are they named in-movie i don't recall), Okay, i'm going overboard in my examples a bit but my point is my ideal of a companion pet is closer to that of an improved familiar that can interact with more things in more ways than it is a big pair of teeth and claws.

tangentially, i think the reason the owl's flyby ability is so prized, apart from it's sheer usefulness, is that the Advantage it provides is a far better conceptualization of the pet entering the fight to serve as a momentary distraction for the hero to exploit than some 1d4/1d6 damage that is functionally meaningless, if all familiars had an ability to, instead of dealing damage with an attack act as a distraction to that foe providing Advantage against them i think the owl would be the far less optimal choice. why is a crab pinching your ankles or a spider biting your side any less distracting than a bird swooping by?

 

[BenjaminPey]

if all familiars had an ability to, instead of dealing damage with an attack act as a distraction to that foe providing Advantage against them

They have one ; they can take the help action. It's only less risky for the owl to do it.

 

[CreamCloud0]

They have one ; they can take the help action. It's only less risky for the owl to do it.

fair, it's been a while since i last looked at their abilities.

 

[Blue]

Additional things to think about:

Multiclassing. It seems like you can either take this class or not, but because of the action economy it cannot work with any other class since you can either use your Action with the golem and ignore what your other class can do, or use your Action on an ability that your other class does and lose your Golem. A potential workaround would be to have lesser actions you could do with your bonus action, which doesn't include any defender-y ones since it's more survivable than other pets and therefore a defender action is more potent.

Out of Combat. There's so much to having a pet, from scouting to helping overcome challenges. That needs to be addressed as well.