Outfitting an Elephant?

[verbatim]

So my players decided to pool their gold and buy an elephant in advance of the Young Green Dragon fight in the Lost Mines of Phandelver. The elephant ended up getting a natural 20 to kill the dragon and now the party is asking about ways to improve the elephant.


Looking at the DMG I see that they can buy barding (PC armor at 4x normal price) for an elephant (does this require armor proficiency?) or a saddle, but not much else. Does anyone have any ideas for outfitting an elephant in 5e.

Ideas that have not been priced:

a riding platform that can fit more than one PC.
upgrading or modifying certain player items to work with an elephant (example, reworking the backside of a shield such that it could be held by an elephant's trunk).


Ideas that have been or are easy to price:

a bag of stuff that he could be trained to throw/throw items out of
paying someone to cast awaken on it



Magic items that it could probably use without (or with minor) modification:

bag of holding/devouring/etc
efficient quiver

[suplee215]

So my players decided to pool their gold and buy an elephant in advance of the Young Green Dragon fight in the Lost Mines of Phandelver. The elephant ended up getting a natural 20 to kill the dragon and now the party is asking about ways to improve the elephant.


Looking at the DMG I see that they can buy barding (PC armor at 4x normal price) for an elephant (does this require armor proficiency?) or a saddle, but not much else. Does anyone have any ideas for outfitting an elephant in 5e.

Ideas that have not been priced:

a riding platform that can fit more than one PC.
upgrading or modifying certain player items to work with an elephant (example, reworking the backside of a shield such that it could be held by an elephant's trunk).


Ideas that have been or are easy to price:

a bag of stuff that he could be trained to throw/throw items out of
paying someone to cast awaken on it

A platform makes sense and is pretty accurate. Similiar platforms exist for orgres in Volos' Guide to Monsters but no price is given. Barding does not require proficiency as if it did then no animal will be able to use it although if you want you could include a skill challenge required to train the elephant in using armor to use it properly. There is also a magic saddle in the DMG that gives amazing benefits.

[Helliquin]

Well it could always carry all the extra luggage in its trunk...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Trunk.jpg/220px-Trunk.jpg

*snigger*

[verbatim]

Barding does not require proficiency as if it did then no animal will be able to use it although if you want you could include a skill challenge required to train the elephant in using armor to use it properly.

Apparently Jeremy Crawford stated that it is intentionally up to DM discretion (https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/753429029928087552) whether or not to count mounts as being proficient with barding. By virtue of rule of cool I decided that trained elephants would be proficient w/ armor.

[Wilko]

Historically metal banding or full on weapons known as "Tusk Swords" (A metal brace with a sword blade attached Link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elephant_Sword_MET_DP350518.jpg) ) were used to reinforce or improve an elephants tusks for combat.
I imagine that the D&D version would be getting an enchanted blade converted to allow the elephant to have attacks that bypass resistance to non magical attacks.

[Sigreid]

For a riding platform I would just use the price of a cart or wagon depending the style they want.