Hello everybody
I want to ask for suggestions to solve the following. The ratcatcher in my group asked me to use his dog to follow trails. I find it very reasonable, so keep the flow of the game I said yes. I asked him to do an Animal Handling check (1d), the ratcatcher had an object the dog could sniff on, so I considered it was easy for him to tell the dog what to do. Then I just created a dice pool for the dog made out of 3 <BU> to define the inate observatory skills of the dogs and one <W> to represent the "especialization" dogs have on follow trails plus 2<P> for the difficulty of the trail. For that particular case it was ok, but I know this situation is going to repeat and I am not happy with the rule I came with.
Do you have any suggestion for it? I have some ideas only.
1) I think that the initial Animal Handling skill test was ok. You need to explain the dog what to do, and the difficulty should be based on how abstract /difficult it is to explain it to a dog. "Follow this smell" when the PC has something the dog can smell should be an easy task; on the other hand "follow the trail of a coach" you must be able to comunicate to the dog what a coach is and it can be (2d). The more abstract the information the more difficult the animal handling test difficulty.
2) I don't know how to parametrice the observation skills of the dog. They are very good at hearing, sniffing /following trails that is for sure, but this does not mean they have and high Int, 3 as I used. So may be Int 1 and two expertise dice in observation regarding only Hearing and sniffing? or Int 1 and many fortune dices??
Cheers