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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gez" data-source="post: 759272" data-attributes="member: 1328">In creature collection 1, there is a dog trained by dwarves to live in the dark caves and mines, able to find gold by scent, and with a deafening bark attack.Elves are famous for their cooshee. Wood elves would also adopt wolves, à la Elfquest (dire wolves could be used as mounts).Gnomes take foxes as pets, furthermore any gnome can speak with his pet fox.Halflings are notorious for their riding dogs -- Saint-Bernards (with their little rhum barrel attached on the collar) and pyrenean shepherds comes to mind.Orcs would have pitbulls, hogboblins would have german shepherds, kobolds would have the terrifying man-eating pirahna-poodle of monkey island fame.Maybe a racial traits. Dogs have been bred from the wolves who understood the best human body language. This human empathy is now innate to them, they can understand it even without having seen a human ever before. Cats, horses, and other domesticated animals are still far from having been as "humanified" as dogs have.Maybe a special class for "Trained Animal": animal HD, BAB, saves, skills, and feat (as for 3.5: 2 skill point per HD, 1 feat every three HD, etc.) but with class features like Extra Trick, Uncanny Empathy (sense motive bonus to understand master); and why not, in the high level, ever more fantastical abilities like Danger Sense (intuition or premonition to when master is threatened), heightened intelligence, transcendance to magical beast, telepathy, speach... To progress, it could either be keyed to a core class of beastmaster (not too narrow in focus if it can be generalized to other animals than canine), so for example, your animal companion would be of the same level as yourself in its special class; or it the progression could be paid by the master (similarly to what Monte Cook made for advancing intelligent items in the third Book of Eldritch Might, with a pseudo class and all).I don't think it would be really useful to describe every races of dog. By size (Tiny to Medium), and maybe broad categories (pet for mere company dogs like poodle, shepherd, utilitary (blindman dog, sniffer dog), tracker/watchdog, and warhounds.However, fantasy dogs (like the <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=books/fr/pets" target="_blank">Cavvekan</a> or those from <a href="http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr/fx20011025a" target="_blank">that article</a>) should not be forgotten. Dogs that could scent magic, or whose barks make certain creature (undead or evil outsiders, for example) flee, winged dogs, 3-headed dogs, 6-legged dogs, chimerical dogs (cat dog, horse dog, owl dog, raven dog, bear dog, boar dog, and other magical hybrids)... See also certain creatures from the Tome of Horrors: hound of ill omen and moon dog, hoar fox. As another example, to complement the blink dog and displacer beast, I have made blur foxes IMC.Finally, don't forget this prized pet of Azers and salamanders alike, the Hot Dog.</blockquote>

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