Wilderness Rogue with pet dogs Question

[Klaus]

Here's her character, as per the RAW:

She's a (presumably human) rogue.

She has a pair of riding dogs. They are trained for guard, attack or hunting tasks (see Handle Animal). They were bought already trained.

If she wants to be able to control her dogs, she needs at least one rank in Handle Animal. Be sure to enforce the limits of what Handle Animal can do, and how fast (IIRC, standard action). Animal Affinity, Skill Focus (Handle Animal) help.

There's a feat at the WotC site called Wild Cohort. It's kinda like a weaker Animal Companion. You should also look into that.

 

[rowport]

I thought the idea was really cool which is why I allowed it, but I think it could work better at later levels perhaps multiclassing ranger with scout/rogue. Or I'd wait until we're in the adventure to buy the pets as opposed to spending your starting gold on dogs .

Don-

How about a compromise with the player? (FWIW, I think the idea is cool, too.) Adopt some of your own ideas with Klaus' suggestions, and I think you will have a workable compromise that will keep the player happy. Have her start as a Wilderness Rogue (or even Scout or Ranger, which would still fit the concept and probably be better mechanically) taking the Wild Cohort feat. That will have her start with *one* dog, but it could be a good one, useful for flanking for a Rogue, or just nifty tricks to assist a Scout.

Read the Handle Animal rules *very* carefully. There are severe limits to what an animal can do, even a trained one or "companion".

But, the best part about this idea is that if she then gets to Ranger 4, she will pick up Animal Companion, and can add her second dog. So, she still ultimately gets her concept intact, but does not blow all her starting funds on the dogs, and will end up with better dogs in both cases than she could otherwise get as they will both be Companions (i.e. less likely to die painfully).

If she wants to later move to a dog menagerie, you might also consider a "Dog Lord" Animal Lord PrC, based on the base examples in the Complete Adventurer. Cool idea, really.

 

[cmanos]

The problem with the elf was that I had given her character creation sheet that specified the history and max ages of all the characters-- 800 years old for an elf is very very old in my world. She wanted her character to be 1,200 years old and the maximum life expentancy of an elf to be 7,000 years old. I thought she hadn't read the character creation page, but it was just that my world didn't correspond with her thought of elves and she wanted to argue via email for two weeks about it, thus I nixed the character.

OK< So you, as the DM, state that Elves live no longer that 800 years. She' as a player points to the book and says the book says so.

Open up your DMG and point out the rule that the DM can change whatever he or she wishes to suit her game.

As for the dogs....so basically she wants 2 wolves.....charge her 250 for the wolf + 10gp per trick.

Then have the first encounter be with a druid who charms the animals.....

And if you allow this character to have 'pre-game' time invested in the training of the dogs, allow all the other characters to have pregame time crafting things, or using "profession" skills to make more money.

 

[DonTadow]

OK< So you, as the DM, state that Elves live no longer that 800 years. She' as a player points to the book and says the book says so.

Open up your DMG and point out the rule that the DM can change whatever he or she wishes to suit her game.

As for the dogs....so basically she wants 2 wolves.....charge her 250 for the wolf + 10gp per trick.

Then have the first encounter be with a druid who charms the animals.....

And if you allow this character to have 'pre-game' time invested in the training of the dogs, allow all the other characters to have pregame time crafting things, or using "profession" skills to make more money.

Actually, on page 109 of the phb it stayes that the maximum age of an elf is 350 Plus 4d100 which is 750 years old max for an elf. My elves are based off of everything in the phb.

I like the wild cohort and it does work well with the character, unfortunately its not in the phb and thats the only book I"m allowing.

I should also clarify, I am setting up this campaign for a new DM which is why she's been specific that no character can use anything outside the core material.

However, though its not RAW, I think I'm going to allow this one feat in. I don't think its breaking the game and it seems to be a good compromise. Thanks Klause for leading me to it.

 

[lukelightning]

I see no reason not to allow her to have the dogs; Klaus has shown how best to handle this. Don't go out of your way to whack the dogs or anything; after all she is spending her resources on 'em.

She definitely needs some ranks in handle animal, and be strict about what the animals can do. Make her know that she is not getting an "animal companion" but a trained animal.

 

[nittanytbone]

As for the dogs....so basically she wants 2 wolves.....charge her 250 for the wolf + 10gp per trick.

Then have the first encounter be with a druid who charms the animals.....

And if you allow this character to have 'pre-game' time invested in the training of the dogs, allow all the other characters to have pregame time crafting things, or using "profession" skills to make more money.

This really isn't that unreasonable of a player request. Would you let a fighter start out with a warhorse? Could a cleric have a paid hireling that follows him around carrying extra vestments and clerical items? Would you design the first encounters to destroy these "followers?" If you do, then your players will conclude that its a bad idea to invest in territory development of any kind and its safer to sink wealth into equipment, which adds fuel to the Magic Items Menagerie fire.

And there's nothing wrong with letting characters craft a few things themselves before the campaign starts. Make them itemize all expenses ("A game of epic shopkeeping!") which will be enough to dissuade all but the most ambitious. Make sure they detail their living expenses (a private inn room is 2 GP/day) and all expenses for hireling assistants. You will find that they will get at most a 10% price break by making it themself as opposed to buying it retail. After all, there's little reason why a skilled weaponsmith WOULDN"T save some money by making himself a nice sword at some point during his shopkeeping days -- he might even refuse to buy from others out of pride. This could be turned into a fun roleplaying and background point -- where was the shop? Who were the customers? Are there any NPC tie-ins? Did the PC make any enemies? How about guilds?

If she wants to be able to control her dogs, she needs at least one rank in Handle Animal.[/QUOTE}

Not quite. From the SRD: Untrained
If you have no ranks in Handle Animal, you can use a Charisma check to handle and push domestic animals, but you can’t teach, rear, or train animals.

Your other points are good suggestions, though. If handle-animal is a cross class skill then skill feats can be a good investment.

The pricing isn't hard to figure out either. Its in the equipment section of the SRD: 150 GP per dog for trained martial dogs (just as you buy trained warhorses), whether they be riding dogs (combat riding package), hunting dogs (hunting package), guard dogs (guard package), or whatever.

As far as character design to keep it all RAW core books only, she could front-load rogue for the tons of skill points and then easily take a level in ranger or fighter or some other class which gives handle animal as an in-class skill. In fact, if she's keen on the outdoors rogue thing, taking 2-4 levels of ranger with favored enemy: Animals could work out quite nicely.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

Actually, on page 109 of the phb it stayes that the maximum age of an elf is 350 Plus 4d100 which is 750 years old max for an elf. My elves are based off of everything in the phb.

I should also clarify, I am setting up this campaign for a new DM which is why she's been specific that no character can use anything outside the core material.

However, though its not RAW, I think I'm going to allow this one feat in. I don't think its breaking the game and it seems to be a good compromise. Thanks Klause for leading me to it.

Second Edition Elves had much longer lifespans than the current ones (a la Middle Earth).

If you are setting this up for a NEW DM, don't let her bring the dogs in. Make her have a single character. At present she's going to have 3 Characters (Rogue, Dog 1, Dog 2). This means she can be doing 3 things at once in combat. Or increase the new DMN's workload keeping track of her & her 2 dogs. The new DM might get pretty frazzeled trying to keep track of it all. And at very low levels, her & her 2 dogs will chew through most low CR creatures.

If the DM has never DM'd before, you should keep it simple. Lots of animal companions.followers, wierd abilities can just throw off a new DM.

Tell her to come up with a different character and set this one aside for a different game/DM.

 

[werk]

Not to keep beating a dead elf, but I think I can see where the player was coming from. I guess if somone was willing to take all the cumulative penalties for age, I'd allow it. But I think that might be this players problem...they are so focused on twinking out their character before they start playing, they are making it unplayable or at least unreasonable, which is your problem. +3 to mental -6 to physical is a big hit, especially if you are using a reasonable point-buy system. But it's your campaign, you make the call...it wouldn't make sense to have a 120 year old human running dungeons with three 20 year old punks.

Same with the dogs, I would definitely steer the player away from creating anything new, just find something in a book. If they can't find exactly what they want in a book, or make it using standard rules, TFB. It's really easy to advance an animal or throw a template on it without making a dog double size and giving it wolf stats...just use a dog or a wolf...what's the problem? There's plenty of material out there to avoid 'making it up'. Motivations for making it up are usually so they can squeeze 500 pounds into a 100 pound girdle (some call it unbalanced/munchkin/PG/whatever) and get away with it.

IMC I'd also make it hard on a character trying to do this. Like I'd point out that the dogs, since oversized, eat A LOT. The character has no money, and the dogs are starving. Make them waste time scavenging for food for the mutts...isn't this fun? Have the dogs been trained to hunt? If so, they can find food if it is available, but it's easy for the dogs to get into stuff where they might become diseased or poisoned. I'd make the character take care of the dogs, they get the whole ball of wax, not just the perks. Maybe get kicked out of town because the dogs aren't potty trained and leave dumps all over the place.

Most importantly, I'd tell the player what I thought some of the bonuses and penalties of their strategy would be in my campaign and let them make an informed decision.

 

[DonTadow]

If the DM has never DM'd before, you should keep it simple. Lots of animal companions.followers, wierd abilities can just throw off a new DM.

Tell her to come up with a different character and set this one aside for a different game/DM.

Essentially I'm "tutoring" a DM during this campaign. She'll be DM'n but I'm making sure everything is basic and overseeing the character creation.

The dogs aren't unreasonable, but I can tell that my newbie DM is pretty ticked at the player because of the previous characters that were denied. If I tell her to set aside the character it will be the third character we've asked her to set aside:

Let me rundown the timeline which could explain the history between the new DM and the player, :

Three weeks ago
21 days ago DM- We're running a campaign, Nate (thats me) is helping me out. I am only using the core book and the book of exalted deeds. All players must select races, classes, feats and magic from these two books only.

Player- I don't mean to be a problem, but can I play a rogue drow whom is rebelling against her people.

DM- No, first the drow is a +1 level adjustment and we're starting at first level.

Player- Complains for a week about how she should be able to play this character

14 days ago
DM - tells her for the final time no find another character, but also tells her not to finalize a character until we all get together (the pcs) and do a group character design. The DM wants all of our characters to know each other and be friends.

Player- 2 days before the character cration session, she tells everyone she has her character finalized. A 1200 year old elf whom is prince of all the elves in the land.

DM- at game creation the DM tells her that the character isnt allowed. It goes against what she's already written in the campaign write up. The player also refuses to come up with a background that incorporates the other players characters. In the mean time during the course of the week, the other four players and I have already come up with characters that have a common background. Eventually we talked the player into getting her character to have least met us a week ago.

Player- spends a week trying to convince the character to change the elves of the campaign to accomodate for her history. Asks the dm if she can use the suggested elven kindgom as a resource in game.

DM- Tells the player that she needs to pick another character as the two can not come to agreement on the Player's suggested Elf Ranger

One week ago- The wilderness rogue comes up. The PC allows the player to use the wilderness rogue template from the U.A. AS I found myself to be more of a mediator, trying to find common ground. The Player asked for dogs and the DM allowed her to purchase them.

Last night- The player then went on with a long email rant about how the dogs given are not the St. Benards she wanted to have in the game. She completed this email with pictures and email references to the history, bio and breeds of the dog. This annoyed the DM greatly. I was miffed as well, but I wanted to know if my emotions was getting in the way of my DM'n so I had to make sure I had the rules correct. The player suggests that she could have two wolves and substitute them as the dogs. She would not need so much armor and weaponry with the dogs protecting her she states. Again the biggest problem with all this is starting gold and her inablity to afford to riding dogs with 200 gp .. and one dog would leave her with only 50 gp.

Luckily Klause found the feat, because the only solution I had was for her to buy the smaller dogs.

I'm very intrigued by this rogues with dog concept. I think this is the best of the concepts and is workable, despite the DM wanting to avoid unneccessary npcs. The problem came in with the player spending all her money on dogs and none on weapons, armor and thieves equipment. This first dungeon is very trap heavy and i (as one of the players) would very p'd off if our rogue is inept.

What we've decided to do, allow the player to have One riding dog and give the character the feat of Wild Cohort at first level. The player does not have to buy the dog nor the tricks as this is consideed part of the feat. The character can get armor, weapons and equipment with the starting money.

As a seasoned player, I wouldn't bring a warhorse or a weak cohort into a dangerious dungeon and that is what the player is considering doing. However, the cohort does not get a seperate initiative in combat (if i am correct the handle animal skill controls the animals actions), so that should help the dm out some . Plus in the email she sent the player it was firmly warned that if the companion becomes a problem she would not be able to bring it along.

 

[rowport]

allow the player to have One riding dog and give the character the feat of Wild Cohort at first level. The player does not have to buy the dog nor the tricks as this is consideed part of the feat. ...the cohort does not get a seperate initiative in combat (if i am correct the handle animal skill controls the animals actions), so that should help the dm out some . .

That is a good arrangement that keeps the concept pretty well. I would hope (and expect) that the player should be happy with that proposal. You are right about the initative for the cohort, but advise the DM to keep track of her *using* the Handle Animal skill (i.e. not a free action) and the limits of the animals' tricks, especially the non-cohort riding dog.

Frankly, I fully expect the riding dog to die a painful death PDQ. The cohort *might* last, unless she uses it to flank BBEGs on a regular basis...