Animal Friendship

[NecessaryWeevil]

So technically the game is Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Ed. but I think it's a fairly setting-agnostic question:

My character is an apothecary who's started learning wizard magic. One of his cantrips is to befriend a small animal for an hour or so. He can't *communicate* with the animal and it doesn't gain any increased intelligence or anything, so I'm having difficulty figuring out what it might be good for. Any ideas? The character's other spells are producing a flame in his open palm, shooting a magical dart, and purifying water.

[Batcathat]

At the very least, a befriended animal would probably defend your character if he's attacked. How useful that is probably depends on the definition of small animal. Something like a dog is pretty small compared to a bear, but big compared to a mouse.

Other than that, I can't really think of much that doesn't require communication and/or training the animal. Though I suppose the cantrip would be very useful for training animals, but that's more of a long-term benefit.

[Martin Greywolf]

1) Take care of guard animals. Dogs may or may not work, but something like a falcon or a raven is quite capable of acting like an alarm.

2) Pure profit. Find something that is a popular pet or good for its fur/other bodyparts, befriend it, catch it and sell it.

3) Unusually intelligent animals. A raven, octopus or a rat may well be able to figure out that those ropes around your ankles are causing you distress and help you.

Other than that, there are some very niche uses, like getting rid of contraband or such.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm trying to remember how common Bad Stuff is for such minor spells is in WFRP4e. But I'd probably rule it out as a training tool past the first few sessions just to avoid accidental daemon dogs. At least until you get the version that works on bears and elephants.

Now the intended use, pretty clearly, is to stop small animals from stabbingbiting you, and by extension to make guard dogs not mind your presence. If you can cast it stealthily enough then getting along with somebody's pet could help make them trust you.

Plus of course using it to convince a badger to come into the town square before scarpering and using the chaos said badger creates as a distraction.

Otherwise I'm out of ideas.

[Lacco]

Three words:

Improvised.

Throwing.

Weapon.

...sorry, couldn't resist.

[Tanarii]

Welcome to Petty magic. A bunch of stuff that's only good for getting you burned at the stake. :smallamused:

[Anonymouswizard]

Welcome to Petty magic. A bunch of stuff that's only good for getting you burned at the stake. :smallamused:

Yeah, it's a sad fact he doesn't have the official 'do not put in bonfire' papers real wizards do. Then he'd just need to launch a massive campaign to educate the masses to be safe from burning.

[Grim Portent]

For an apothecary the best use might be to make various venomous animals docile enough to milk them without peril, then using the extracted venom for... totally legitimate medical purposes.

Presumably you have the skills to handle and prepare venom for medical use or to use as a weaponised poison, and WHF is all about fishing for the little advantages. The venom of various small beasties from the Old World is also potentially quite valuable and normally very dangerous to collect, so you could also make some money off of milking deadly snakes and spiders.