First foray into the Only War areas. Usually I'm lingering in Deathwatch and Black Crusade but needs must due to my current GM. I've put this under rules questions to see if it exists and probably should shift this to house rules if it doesn't.

Anyhow, I'm currently playing as a medic and it's a few sessions in, morale of the squad is patchy and I'm beginning to see a number of weaknesses in my skill set. One other thing I missed was that I never got round to generating a comrade to help me. So I've been thinking of putting to my GM the idea of me having a comrade who's a little different...a dog. I don't like the idea of just having a boring guardsman comrade, so normal and average. The justification for such a comrade would be that dogs have better senses of smell and hearing than many of us and military recon dogs have been known to indicate or give away enemy sniper positions before the sniper even realises. They are also good at sniffing out explosive devices or, to help me in a medical capacity, identify hidden casualties which might need my assistance or just offset my frankly horrible weapon skill (it was bad...really bad).

I'd like to request information then from anyone present whether there are any prewritten rules for non guardsmen comrades in any of the supplementary books or anything that you lot have come up with. I'm thinking similar to German Shepherd, good breeding and well trained so should be able to supplement the squad abilities quite nicely.

Unusual Comrade would be the talent to buy it. Never seen anything for dog comrades though. That'd be a homebrew in so far as I know.

That I can do no problem. Take some of the ideas and appropriate skills/talents from a Fenrisian Wolf such as Survival, Heightened Senses (Smell/hearing) from Deathwatch and tone the stats down to remove Unnatural Strength and Toughness. That's not an issue but if theres no homebrew I'm happy to put some together and share back.

While I'm actually working on these does anyone have any other ideas for non human comrades they might wish to take into battle? Don't know why but I was thinking of adding horses as well. The idea of charging into an enemy line on horseback as a guardsman in a massed formation seems surprisingly epic and appealing. Is it practical or effective? *shrug*

We already have a variety of Cavalry ruled covered by Hammer of the Emperor.

I'm at a loss as to other possibilities. Maybe other pets? Lizard Xenos? Idk. There are stats for Velociraptor things in Black Crusade lol.

Based on the same dog profile, you could start getting creative with similar type "domesticated" animals.

Big cats immedaitely come to mind. Something like Drizzt and his Black Panther. Minor changes would be made from the dog outline, but I could see this as simply a more agile creature. The trick would be exploiting their lethality. Granted, they would already give you the ganging up bonus in close combat, perhaps they could also aid in upping damage rolls as well.

Spitballing here, as I have nothing solid in mind.

Expansion on the dog profile that I'm intending to use for my GMPC in my next campaign.

Cybermastiff. Counts as a Servitor. Not sure of what mechanical effects it could have, but I want one because I'm going to be playing an Arbitrator.

Cybermastiff (and some other cyber dogs) are in Dark Heresy's Book of Judgement - because nothing says don't bother running like a pack of cybernetically enhanced dogs (with chainblade jaws!) just waiting for an excuse.

Think there's a cyber-hound in another DH supplement .. might be Inquisitor's Handbook, but not sure.