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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Yora's Avatar

    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    Germany

    Default Taming critters and keeping them around.

    When my players were boarding a pirate ship, one of my players decided to grapple one of the pirates' monkeys at the end of the fight and tried to calm it, rolling a 20 on Animal Handling for a total of 23. So the monkey allowed himself to be put into a cage without a fight. The group already has a goat and the two warlocks are excited about getting a familiar, and since the rest of the campaign will likely consist of expeditions with considerable numbers of hirelings in tow, I am expecting the players to try taming all kinds of creatures they come across.

    Making an animal stop attacking is nice, but do you have any suggestions for making the taming and training of animals a part of the game?
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

    Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Titan in the Playground
     
    J-H's Avatar

    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Texas
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Taming critters and keeping them around.

    5e is all about keeping it simple. I'd go with a simple progression chart over time. Something like this:

    It takes a week to train the monkey to obey simple non-combat instructions. Each day, spend at least four hours with the monkey and make an animal handling check. The goal is to accumulate at least 70 points by the end of the week. Any Animal Handling result of less than 10 results in no progress or points being counted for the day.
    It looks like your player has a modifier of +3.
    Average results for a day are:
    30% chance of 6 or lower, no progress.
    70% chance of progress ranging from +10 to +23 (average: 16.5)

    16.5 x .7 x 7 days = average result of 80.85

    This can be boosted via the Help action (granting advantage, may want to limit to someone proficient in Animal Handling) or circumstance bonuses, such as another trained monkey or feeding it lots of extra treats. The player's base chances of not succeeding are less than 50% but still substantial, but it looks like this is a non-proficient PC. An inexperienced character training an animal for the first time should have real a chance of failure.

    This may a bit oversimplified for you, but it's something that represents the time investment without taking up a ton of time on a one-time-use table or lots of dice rolling.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Bugbear in the Playground
    Join Date
    Nov 2015

    Default Re: Taming critters and keeping them around.

    Focus on comic relief.

    There’s not much a mischievous monkey couldn’t get into, and with so much darker dark in most games, a little levity goes a long way. Figure a few basic and unsophisticated things the monkey and or goat could do for a laugh and break them out when you need to.

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Halfling in the Playground
     
    NecromancerGuy

    Join Date
    Nov 2018

    Default Re: Taming critters and keeping them around.

    A huge help to training is if there's a druid in the party. Using Speak with Animals to explain exactly what you want them to do in order to get the treat can seriously speed up the training process.

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    ClericGuy

    Join Date
    Jul 2015
    Location
    New Zealand
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Taming critters and keeping them around.

    Keep it simple. Calming an already-domesticated creature takes hours. Taming a wild creature takes days. Some creatures can't be tamed unless you've raised them from young. For example, big cats, chimpanzees. Some creatures can't be tamed at all.

    Also, the bigger the creature, the more its food and lodgings costs.

    And importantly - none of these do anything in combat.

    Training a creauture to be useful in combat is a lengthy and expensive process. There's a reason warhorses are five times the cost of a riding horse (and that's a horse, a creature that has been domesticated for millenia).

    Also, if a player really wants their character to have a combat-capable animal, I point them at beast master ranger or shephed druid or something like that. In other words, if they want something that greatly contributes to combat, they need a class feature. I don't want characters buying a wardog and suddenly gaining the same things a beast master ranger gets.

  6. - Top - End - #6
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    BlueKnightGuy

    Join Date
    Jul 2017

    Default Re: Taming critters and keeping them around.

    You could dig out an old OSR document from
    D&D basic or something similar.

    There used to be an animal trainer NPC the PCs could hire to manage animals, usually dogs or falcons, but could at greater expense handle larger or more exotic game.

    It can be a decent and flavorful resource sink for the party. In a high level game I am currently in, our party has a Stronghold, with a menagerie of sorts that has become a pet project for a pair of the PCs.

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