Animals as Henchmen

Haha, you’ll definitely want to be wary of the amount of wardogs you purchase, lest you end up with a Doomsday Pack ala KODT.

I’m raising this thread form the grave (think Pet Cemetery).

Anyhoo, another question about animal henchmen. Do they get a share of treasure? I can easily explain the monthly wage for upkeep, but what might an animal need 100’s or 1000’s of gp on top of that for?

a nice platinum collar with diamonds? a winter coat with ermine? once per weak to the dog-hair-cutter…seriously good question and i have no idea. i would not give the animal actual treasure (only XP-share)…

If the animal lives for less time than you, that could be the cost of raising and training a brood such that Sparky II can stand ready to take her father’s place when old age takes him. And in that vein: the money could be money spent on superior feed, lavish living spaces (as many people will spend on their beloved pets), and a host of trainers/breeders for regular maintenance during adventuring downtime.

Perhaps the money is spent on shiny things for the nest, 50-pound bags of catnip, and similar luxuries?

Already seen this:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Dog_Armour.jpg&filetimestamp=20081107034146

As with all henchmen, animal henchmen count as if they got a 1/2 share of treasure for purposes of dividing XP. They do not need to be actually allocated a share of treasure by the party.

(True story: One of my gaming groups once actually came close to dissolving over a heated debate as to whether a player's War Dog henchman was deserving of a share of treasure.)

 

so when one is “negotiating” with the animal companion to call them into service or having them make loyalty checks, it’s best to assume they don’t even get the 15% of a share of treasure?

That makes sense, of course. My original thought was that the players might see the animal henchmen as a better deal as they are less of a drain on the coffers. But after thinking about it, animals have more than a few obvious disadvantages over people.

Do animal henchmen from Beast Friendship actually receive XP and increase in HD, or is that one of their disadvantages? We’ve had war dogs not ‘level’, but they’ve also been handled without Beast Friendship…

Alex answered that in the reply to the OP, actually.

Since Beast Friendship can get you animal henchmen, doesn’t that mean that you can make an animal henchman a vassal of your domain? I now present Baron Fido!

This might be a little too silly.

Maybe just Consul Incitatus …

Seriously, google it.

So as the animals improve in HD, do they ever improve their AC and Damage? A 14th level wolf that inflicts 1d6 damage with no bonuses seems wrong to me, especially since he needs more XP to get there than a Fighter.

on the upside, the 14th level wolf would hit on a 0+ instead of a 1+ like the 14th level fighter, and it would also have 5 more hit dice than the fighter.

So that’s worth 24 million xp? I’m not sure if it is.

If you can find credible historical accounts of a horse competently managing the day-to-day affairs of a fief containing hundreds of human families, then I’d consider it.

Hire a castellan. :stuck_out_tongue:

If you want animal henchmen to get more powerful with increase in HD, what I would recommend is looking at the scaling of a dragon’s claw/claw/bite attacks, or the similar scaling you see in the various HD of bears and cats.

For example, let’s say that AJAX is a war-dog with 2+2 HD and one attack dealing 1d6 points of damage.

We note that black bears (4 HD) deal 1d6 damage with their bite, while grizzlies deal 1d8 damage at 5 HD, cave bears deal 1d10 damage at 6 HD, and polar bears deal 2d6 damage at 7 HD.

So you might allow Ajax the war-dog’s damage to increase similarly as his HD increase.

We don’t need credible accounts- ACKS is a game about myths and legends.

To that end, I present Puss in Boots.