My wife was asking about the possibility of her Archaeologist character acquiring a pet, possibly a small canine creature that might help with tracking or exploring.

Any ideas on how to manage it?

My basic thoughts were just to create a creature with stats and handle it narratively, possibly using her Survival skill in case checks were needed to train or handle the animal.

Nah, something that'll cause mischief. Like a cat-monkey!

AGL 3 | BRA 1 | CUN 3 | INT 1 | PRE 3 | WIL 1

Silhouette 0 | WT 7 | ST 10

2 Coordination YYGBB

2 Stealth YYGBB

2 Perception YYG

2 Survival YYG

4 Know: Ancient Wisdom of the Cat-Monkians* YGGG

3 Charm YYY

1 Vigilance YBB

1 Brawl Y

Dodge

Forager

Outdoorsman x2

Quick Strike x2

Stalker x2

Sixth Sense

Uncanny Reactions x2

Animal

Climbing Claws + Tail (uses Coordination to climb, not Athletics)

Doesn't speak Basic (but understands basic Basic)

* The best places to sleep. How to get giants to give you food. What to steal in order to force a giant to play with you.

I'm hoping that the colonist will get the 'herder' specialty - that focuses on dealing with both wild and domesticated animals, and has talents like the ones that upgrade weapond with hard points, increase the stats for companion animals.

Until then, I would treat any 'pets' as a rival level ally.

As I mentioned in another thread, my girlfriend managed to capture a pair of Nexu cubs on Cholganna, and has been raising them.

For the purposes of the creatures, I treated them initially as non-combat narrative elements, and had her perform regular Survival checks to train them and raise them.

I kept a tally of all successes, and subtracted any failures. I kept track of advantages/threats to determine the animal's personality quirks. When the successes hit a certain number (in this case 20), I considered them 'trained' and gave her them to use as actual Companions, with statlines and abilities.

As a result of the threat/advantage at the end, one of them behaves very obediently, whereas the other one likes to nip at fingers.

If she wanted to level them up/teach them new abilities, I would consider more Survival 'training sessions' to improve their training.

You might want to check this topic on the d20Radio boards where I created a translation of the Small But Vicious Dog from WFRP3. The pet is treated something like a Force Power.

http://www.d20radio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=168&t=12141

I have updated it a bit since, but its pretty close to that.

I would treat animals as droid NPCs as there are Talents (Hunter for Instance) that improve interactions with animals, including domestication. Survival would be the skill used with animal interaction and I'd allow the animal to keep it's base line stats / skills / talents, once domesticated. If you're trying to give XP to a controlled animal NPC, then I'm not sure what to do...

Depends on how involved you want the pet to be. Just for tracking only I'd treat it like a boost die or dice to her tracking check.

Depends on how involved you want thd pet to be. Just for tracking only I'd treat it like a boost die or dice to her tracking check.

That's kinda the question we were looking at. She was thinking it might be something like that.

We also looked at the K-9 droid in Enter the Unknown for ideas.

Of course a dog-type pet, droid or sentient, could have the potential to get into combat as well.

I agree that it would depend on how you want to use it, and when.

In the case of the Nexu cubs mentioned, they're supposed to be used as attack dogs/guard dogs. Typically its narrative, "The Nexu guard the ship while we're out".

For a pet helping with a task, adding Boost in the same way a player would while helping, seems reasonable. Having the pet do something specific, and untrained behavior, should take some sort of Survival roll, I'd think.

However, in-combat, you could go to the trouble of rolling for Initiative for the pet, and give it its own turn. But I find it faster/easier to give the player control over the pet during their Initiative Slot. If a situation arises where the player has to actively command the pet, I would have it cost a maneuver/action depending on the complexity.

Is the pet just charging at the thing the player is shooting at? No real command required. But does she want it to bite the guy's leg and hold him in place? That might take an action.

Just my thoughts on it. Working well so far for us.

Our droid mechanic has a poisonous, carnivorous, jumping spider called Boris. Mostly this keeps the crew out of the engine room. And the droid seems to be covered in slime from his cute pet. (The poison has no effect on him.)

As a GM I never liked having 'pets' around. They either get into trouble of a lethal kind, or they get forgotten about. At least with he rules you can limit it to an Obligation.

Someone else described a Malware ridden droid assistant who kept rattling off ads. At least with something like that the players can give it detailed instructions.

Someone else described a Malware ridden droid assistant who kept rattling off ads. At least with something like that the players can give it detailed instructions.

That's one of mine. SIX, our Mechanic's Security Droid. He's essentially a glorified Slicer's Kit, but he allows for some fun narrative flare. Also an easy way to use up Threat when I have nothing better...

"You infect the security system with SIX's Malware. They're annoyed with pop-up adverts for the next 2 weeks."