The Small But Vicious Dog (SBVD) recovers Obedience as characters do Fatigue and Stress, using Animal Handling instead of Discipline or Obeidence

Meaning:

- recover 1 each Rally Step;

- as a Rally action instead of making a Resilience or Discipline check for themselves to recover more Fatigue or Stress, a Ratcatcher can make Animal Handling to try to recover more Obedience (same challenge and amount)

First Question: What about recoveries characters have based on To or Wp? Night's rest and End of Episode. Does the SBVD get those based on Fellowship? (this is what I'v been doing, extrapolating from Disipline/Resiience reference - is it too generous?)

The SBVD card also says that whenever it would suffer fatigue or stress or wounds it loses 1 Obedience. An attack on it simply automatically costs 1 Obedience (which I find makes attacks on the dog rather a poor choice in a fight).

Second Question: What causes fatigue or stress to the SBVD? No trick actions do - on banes it's Obedience. Should a "all foes" effect that causes stress or damage also affect the SBVD? I haven't been doing this but realized I probably should. What about Fear and Terror? Should it make those checks, using Animal Handling instead of Discipline? I haven't been doing this but think I probably should do this too.

Has anyone asked FFG support any of these questions?

I haven't asked FFG support, but here's my view on your questions.

First question:
No, that's how I've allways though that the SBVD recovers obedience and I think the recovery should be quite fast.

Second question:

• Feat/Terror absolutely, and yes I'd use animal handeling to resist the fear/terror effects.
• Extra manouvers also cost obedience for the dog (and you have to do animal handeling checks).
• Most pet actions can force the dog to loose obedience on one or two banes and only one action allows the dog to recover obedience (on two boons).
• Some actions/spells might cause fatigue/stress and some of them has area effects, like clouds of gas and such (there are also area damaging actions which will affect the dog).
• Some location cards, like Burning Building for example, will have an affect on the dog.
• Long jurneys on foot.
• Weather effects, like snow, rain etc. might cause fatigue.

Attacking the dog might be a poor choise in many instances, but the attacks succeed automatically and if the dog only has 1 or 2 obedience left it might be a good idea to attack it since the ratcatcher looses access to all those actions and talents that he/she has bought for the dog. In a longer fight with many opponents it might also be a good idea, some of the weaker opponents might hit the dog every now and then. SVBD only has 6/7 obedience after all and when the dog is getting close to 0 the ratcatcher might not want to use his/her actions since they can cause obedience losses. Also, attacking the dog could be justified if the dog is an annoyance (for the enemies), as it fits from a roleplaying perspective (and it might be comical seeing the goblins engage the dog).

FFG support confirmed that Fear/Terror etc. affect SBVD and you can make it simple and have it fail/pass with owners check or have its own check with Animal Handling.