Rules on owning pets

[Diomeneus]

Alright, so a horse is easy enough... and the rules do give you handle animal checks for rearing animals from the wild, but what are hte rules on purchasing animals on the market? My buddy wants a falcon to train and use to follow track, scents etc (there are many things a hawk could do for you within the rules of 'tricks' pets can know)

and i find it hard to beleive that hawks would not be fairly common on a large marketplace, considering prices for griffin eggs are given.

anyone know where to find out information on purchasing animals other then the standards?

 

[BlackSeed_Vash]

check the AEG, I know there is information about this sort of thing somewhere, but I currently do not have time to go looking

 

[lukelightning]

I don't think they should be too expensive, at least by the standards of D&D PCs. 50gp seems like pocket change to most 5th level characters, but is out of reach of the majority of NPCs.

I would definitely say that you'd need some handle animal skill ranks to keep any special pet (i.e. not a dog or cat or other totally domesticated animal). Or at least have a hireling/henchman/peon with that skill. Handle animal isn't just training them; it's also taking care of them. You can shell out lots of gold for a well trained hunting falcon, but do you know how to take care of it? Do you know how much it needs to eat, sleep, drink, etc.? Do you know how to maintain its health?

Speaking of falconry (or is this hawkery?), one of my sister's friends recently got her falconry permit, to keep a red-tailed hawk. It turns out that it's pretty easy to tame hawks and falcons; once they know you're a source of food and not a source of danger they get used to you.

 

[Diomeneus]

heh, i kept telling him to just take the hawk and call it a falcon... because we couldn't find an actual falcon. i imagine you can use the rules for training a creature (1000g for a trainer to train an animal) for i believe 6 tricks, or just one designated purpose... like tracking or combat. Its indicated that you know the command to give each of these tricks (you can read about it under the handle animal skill i think, not sure).

but yeah, i definately agree that hawks should be a fairly easy to come by

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

How does a bird track? It doesn't fly close to the ground and doesn't have Scent (or it shouldn't; birds are "immune" to skunk sprays, which should tell you something about their sense of smell).

 

[Goblyns Hoard]

That really depends on the species of bird - vultures have phenomenal sense of smell

As to how most of the raptors track - that would have to be by sight. Presuming they know what to look for and are trained to follow it then they just keep it in sight and you follow it. O course this has limitations in terms of any visual obstacles and in knowing what to look for in the first place, but once it has a target it will be able to track it very well.

 

[lukelightning]

That's not tracking, that's shadowing; the raptor uses spot to locate the target. And while turkey vultures have incredible senses of smell, they don't track with it per se; they use it to locate already dead and rotting meat.... a stationary source. They don't follow the trail of moving creatures.

But this is D&D, so birds tracking is within the realm of possiblility.