Animal Training Option

[Slimcreeper]

Can't remember if I've posted this before, but I cannot get the search function to work for me so ...

Animal Training - Instead of Commands, the animal learns Roles, that include a number of tricks and skills. An animal can train in a number of Roles equal to the trainer’s rank. If the animal has more Roles than the trainer’s rank, the trainer cannot teach new Roles or refresh the animal’s old ones.

- Companion: the basic training package - obedience school. Includes fetch, heel, sit, and so on.
- Work: herding dogs, draft or pack animals, climbing monkeys and so on. All the boring stuff.
- Guard: protect an area or person until told otherwise, on its own auspices.
- Scout: range out and report back dangers or search for substances and geographical features that the animal could reasonably search for, such as a path up a steep slope or a river.
- Mount: will serve as a mount. The animal will move on the rider’s initiative, but not ride towards battle without a trick riding test or use its attacks except to defend itself. If it is attacked, the rider must make a trick riding test or the mount will buck its rider and bolt.
- Combat: will fight in combat. Animals not trained for combat will not generally move towards combat and will be completely controlled by the GM during combat encounters. Most animals have no interest in getting into a general melee.
- Hunt and Forage: working animals that help Name-givers get food. It is for falcons, hunting dogs, fishing bears, truffle pigs etc - the animal doesn't consume the food but brings it back or points it out to the Name-giver.
- Perform: cute pet tricks as chosen by the trainer. The animal learns a reasonable number of tricks that don’t need to be spelled out in advance.
- Skill Boost: +1 to a skill or talent the animal has or could reasonably learn, including its attack step. This is only available through the talent version of Animal Training, and can be taken multiple times.

The talent version only takes 1 day per training or refresh. The skill version takes 1 month for the initial training, and 1 day to refresh.

[Sharkforce]

hmmm.... entire roles in some cases seem very broad compared to what the existing rules offer. on the other hand, i can certainly relate to the feeling that the existing rules might be a bit restrictive, especially if you're facing a choice between giving an animal the full training that an animal trained for a certain task realistically would have or having a more powerful companion.

perhaps a compromise, where a Role can take up more than 1 rank worth of animal training? (my gut feeling is to go with two ranks equivalent, as i think most roles will have 2 things that an adept might want badly enough to consider spending a rank on it, and then a few other things that the role might require but which are not necessarily going to be valuable enough that a typical adept would be willing to spend one or more trick on; for example, you might want to train a hunting dog to track, and to chase/attack a target, both of which i suspect an adept might consider worthwhile uses, but things like training a hunting dog how to pick up a bird that has been shot down and bring it back without leaving teeth marks are the sorts of things where yeah, a hunting dog *should* know those tricks, but what player is going to spend animal training ranks on that?)

[Slimcreeper]

I could see a role taking up 2 slots, if a compromise is wanted. That seems reasonable.