Balancing taming animals

[mehs]

For reference I'm playing in pathfinder as a disney prin- a bard variant that uses perform (sing) to do animal empathy. We are playing in a jungle/caribbean setting and I also have speak to animals (aquatic) as a racial feature.

Essentially the problem I'm running into is how to balance using animal empathy to tame an animal and then the addition of a spell (wartrain mount) which then instantly (minute casting) trains the animal for a day (hour/level).

So for instance, I joined the campaign midway with 2 (nonmagically) trained sharks (cr 2). And then walking through a jungle, to a destination, I was able to (knowledge (nature)) find a panther (cr 3), befriend (animal empathy) and then essentially pick it up as a temp animal companion (wartrain mount).


And the thing my bard is actually specced (2 feats, skill ranks, 2nd level spell) into is a mass aoe 2-4 round frightened fear effect.

Is this too powerful? How to balance

[Xervous]

Well I’m seeing that you require actions (Presumably standard) to guide the creature, that it defaults to guard, and that they’re all dumb animals. They’ll do nicely as walls of meat but any intelligent opponent could be leading them astray. If archers open fire on you from the other side of an obvious pit trap the panther will beeline them, leaving you to command it to come back or do nothing and watch as it springs the trap.

I’m assuming you are low level, so a 3-4 hour buff will hardly last the full day and definitely won’t cover resting. If you get engaged then it’s a boon, if no combat happens during that span you just have a Leeroy Jenkins cat that is going to get slaughtered, and you’re down a spell slot.

[gijoemike]

I see no issues currently nor do I expect any issues in the future. In fact this builds power is about to cliff jump.


They are trained with 3 or 4 tricks, but you don't have a ranger or druids animal companion ability. You do NOT have an animal companion or the class ability. One of the things that ability lets PC do is guide that specific animal as a free action, and gives them a bonus on the check. You must take a standard action and roll a check. Thankfully it is CHA based. What is your bonus?

You can have those animals guard different people, but to get them to actively engage and enemy will take you multiple rounds of handle animal checks. Due to the spell cast they all have attack as a known trick. But that is a standard action to get them to do anything useful. Oh, they will NOT attack undead, or aberrations. That means you don't buff, use your fear affect, attack, or do anything useful. And that is an action per creature. And doing anything fancy means a decent chance you waste your action. Pushing is a full round action that is a base DC 25. Also, if the animal has any damage or subdual it increases the DC.

But as normal creatures they are low CR and HP. Soon, enemies will just kill them in droves. They exist only to soak up HP.

Also, Xervous has it right. They are dumb. They will be all over creation depending on who they are guarding. They will eventually be used against you by an intelligent advisory.

[mehs]

I have a +11 without any special bonuses, which is enough to do the normal 6 tricks wartrain mount gives even on a bat 1 even with the dc increase.

Though, correction, handling an animal is a move action, not a standard one. So the first round is typically me setting off my fear effect which buys at least two rounds as they run and does a large scale scale shaken effect which covers the field.

Though the fear effect req both a move and a standard to do, if I have part of it set up, then I could set it off and order panther to attack in the same turn.

Turns 2-3 I then can do stuff like ordering any animals to attack (unless the gm is being really specific, ordering multiple animals to attack a single target/group is all the same action), setting up buffs, and barding in general.

The real concern though is that the efficacy of this technique is limited only by what animal I find. At higher levels if I upgrade the animal empathy, it could have no practical limit.

I could easily enough get and then (nonmagically) train up to 3 animals at a time. The campaign has a ****ton of travel time and a month and a half has already passed in 3 sessions.

To put into reference, my character last sessions essentially walked face first into a blockade of enemies, so I disguised myself as essentially a local druid, chatted a bit, and then almost killed a level 6 chevalier and seriously harmed 6 level 2 fighters. The enemies hp being buffed by 50% for the campaign is the only reason I didnt kill the boss of the next encounter. If I cast heroism on the panther, he wouldve probably died. I am a level 5 bard.

[Psyren]

For reference I'm playing in pathfinder as a disney prin- a bard variant that uses perform (sing) to do animal empathy. We are playing in a jungle/caribbean setting and I also have speak to animals (aquatic) as a racial feature.

Essentially the problem I'm running into is how to balance using animal empathy to tame an animal and then the addition of a spell (wartrain mount) which then instantly (minute casting) trains the animal for a day (hour/level).

So for instance, I joined the campaign midway with 2 (nonmagically) trained sharks (cr 2). And then walking through a jungle, to a destination, I was able to (knowledge (nature)) find a panther (cr 3), befriend (animal empathy) and then essentially pick it up as a temp animal companion (wartrain mount).


And the thing my bard is actually specced (2 feats, skill ranks, 2nd level spell) into is a mass aoe 2-4 round frightened fear effect.

Is this too powerful? How to balance

At low levels this is strong, but without the scaling that comes from being a true animal companion, picking up random animals to do your bidding falls off a cliff in terms of usefulness pretty quickly. You can extend this somewhat with dire animals and dinosaurs but don't expect it to stay viable unless you're in a low-level campaign.

[hamishspence]

True - if the DM keeps dropping Advanced versions of regular animals for the player to "pick up" it might be extended pretty far though - until the point where the animals in question aren't supposed to be Advanced any more.

In an aquatic game, an Advanced Megalodon of 72 Hit Dice would have a CR of 27.

In practice though, being just a "beatstick", it might not be able to contribute very much.

[Xervous]

True - if the DM keeps dropping Advanced versions of regular animals for the player to "pick up" it might be extended pretty far though - until the point where the animals in question aren't supposed to be Advanced any more.

In an aquatic game, an Advanced Megalodon of 72 Hit Dice would have a CR of 27.

In practice though, being just a "beatstick", it might not be able to contribute very much.

Was it something like level 11 or 13 where all non flying beat sticks are effectively rendered hazards to be bypassed?

[hamishspence]

It's CR 11, yes, before advancement.

However, in the context of an underwater battle against one, you can't beat it merely by flying because there's nowhere to fly to. However you can beat it by going incorporeal, so same principle.

[mehs]

The campaign is a 1-14. It would be more or less over by the time that finding animals no longer works. While the main setting is the Caribbean, the mainland is essentially the Amazon on steroids, so it is very likely that I could find Dire or dinosaurs to work with.

[rel]

The usual balance for large armies of minions be they animals, undead, angels or 100gp of toughs from the local tavern is logistics.

Getting the mooks to the fight, protecting them from peasant mobs, feeding and watering them, securing and transporting their equipment, preventing an enterprising monster from eating the army when you enter town or the dungeon of narrow corridors without them, getting them to sneak around and so on.
And in combat, you have to command them, protect them from AoE, manage their morale, prevent them from being turned against you, complete your turns quickly enough that the other players don't veto your shenanigans and so on.

Bringing an army is a powerful tactic but in my experience, it's very difficult to do consistently.

If your GM gives you free reign and lets the army hang out in your inventory and beam onto the battle-mat at the start of each fight then sure, it's more power than you can normally get out of a single character.

If you're worried it's too much the best solution is to talk to the GM and other players out of game.

[Morty_Jhones]

I have done alot of campains using basic pets as a buffer and tbh you have hit the point where pets start to become less usfull in combat.

dont forget that a unridden 'pet' in combat has to make a DC13 will save to stay in combat if it is threatened. so after the 1st round it will be saving every round. so for an alpha strike there great. but after that they are just not reliable, there are ways of improving this but you just can't count on them.

Also easly available beasts tend to top out at about 50/60 hp. so big mobs and DPSers will tend to drop them in one round.

Add to that all the handel animal roll's and diplomacy checks you need to make each round, you tend to find as an handler your a rather static target. Fast or mobile aponents can easly get past your beasts and strike you directly.
rember being able to talk to an animal dosn't make you its master, it just shanges the check.

Also theres the big elaphant in the room....

your using CHARM magic to compel the beasts obedeance. i hope that when the spell runs out you are a good distance from the beast in question. cuss you can shure bet that when the spell runs out your pet panther is NOT going to be very happy about the **** you just pulled.