Re: Animal Trainnig vs Animal Talk
Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 5:43 am
One more post, because I want to expand and refine one point.
Arguably, the Griffin is the coolest and most prestigious mount available. It is also the most expensive. There are tougher and stronger mounts, mounts that have higher challenge ratings, but everybody gives respect to the griffin rider. If you want to signal that an NPC is a tough and brave hombre, probably a Warden or a Master, have him ride up on a Griffin.
But a Griffin is only a 5th circle challenge. Most any 5th circle party with a BM or a Cav could find and Dominate/Bond a solo Griffin with very little difficulty. I mean yes, it could be a very fun adventure, but lets face it, it is not really that difficult. And if you want a Griffin Animal Companion, that sounds like a great idea, tell your GM your character wants to go Griffin hunting.
But like I said, Griffins are the most prestigious mounts. You don't see a lot of Journeyman BM or Cav riding Griffins. You tend to see Wardens and Masters riding Griffins. Maybe a very few elite military units. Why arn't most Journeyman BM and Cav riding Griffins? I mean the PC journeymen want to do it, why isn't everybody else?
That is where the "must capture young" rule fits in nicely with this observed behavior of not every 5th circle BM riding around on a griffin. Plan ahead. At 5th circle, capture a griffin hatchling or 3. Then spend the next several years ether adventuring with a juvenile Griffin Animal Companion (fun, but it has complications), or make arrangements to stable it while you are having adventures and train it during your downtime. Around the time you make Warden, you will have an adult Griffin Mount to ride. It is not that you can't have a Griffin Mount. It is just that you can't have a Griffin Mount until several years after you capture a young Griffin.
This seems like about the correct progression to me.
I hate to say it, but Sharkforce, you always seem to ether grab hold of the wrong end of every stick, or totally ignore my points while using fallacious arguments to build up strawmen. I am going to waste some time demolishing some of the strawman arguments because it is so fun and easy.
Wrong end of the stick:
Nobody is suggesting that there is immutable biology that a griffin suddenly develops an inability to serve as a mount at adulthood. Nor is anybody suggesting that adult Griffins suddenly develop an absolute hatred of the idea. That is the wrong end of the stick. We are suggesting that almost all animals (including horses) are born with an aversion to serving as a mount. Not wanting to be a mount is not a learned behavior that the other horses are teaching it. It is instinctive. Horses trainers find it fairly easy to overcome this aversion, but even after millennia of domestication, each individual horse must be individually broken of this aversion. It took me a few seconds on google to find an article where the author mentions that some people think that a nine year old horse is to old to be rider trained, but she argues it just takes a different technique.
Have you ever heard the saying "you can't teach an old dog an new trick"? That is totally incorrect of course, but training an old dog is usually different and/or harder than training a young dog. Training a dog is considered an easy task, but some people can't manage to train an old dog new tricks, even if they can teach young dogs tricks. It's harder, even with dogs and horses.
So my point is that all Griffins are born with an extra-ordinarily strong aversion to serving as a mount for namegivers. However trainers can overcome that aversion in a young common Griffin. They can't overcome that aversion in an adult common Griffin, or a Jungle Griffin of any age. Doing so is not theoretically impossible, but it would be a legendary feat of training.
Fallacious Arguments and Strawmen:
I can't find anything in the current edition of rules that states that most magic effects end when the Adept dies. I found a section where it mentions that spells that require concentration end when the caster dies (of course), but actual spells, it says, continue until the duration expires or the effect is actively dispelled. I don't see anything that suggests that all effects of Adept Talents end when the Adept dies. In a quick perusal of the Talent list I only found a few that even could meaningfully persist after death. Of those I would say that most (Animal Training, Animal Bond, Battle Shout/Bellow, Forge Blade/Armor) probably ought to persist until their normal expiration times. Others like Dead Fall and Frighten I might rule ether way depending upon circumstances (if the target saw the person who is Frightening them be killed, it would probably make them less frightened. But if they ran away and did not see the death, I would think they would keep running away).
So anyway, unless you can actually point to a ruling that seems to indicate that long term Talent Effects stop working when the adept dies, I would have to say that the whole argument is Fallacious as it is based upon a not proven assumption.
Another Fallacy is that "Adepts = Adventurers". You are correct that the authors did not deem it worth their while to detail out how long-lasting training worked, they merely mentioned that somebody did it. The information was judged not needed for Adventurers. But to leap from "the information is not needed Adventuring" to "Adepts can't be doing the work" to "Thus it must be the training Skill" is making some unfounded leaps. There are non-adventuring Adepts that might be doing the training.
So I agree that the Animal Training Talent rules are Weird. I agree that the Animal Training Skill rules are far Weirder (especially in that they are almost exactly like the Talent rules). And I agree that there are no published official rules for training young animals where the training lasts a lifetime. My own house-rule interpretation of the later is that it is a variant of the former - that there might be more to the Animal Training skill and/or talent than is printed in the rules simply because some aspects of the skill and/or talent are not very useful for adventuring. For no other reason than that it seems like the simplest course to me. But I am fully willing to grant that others might arrive at radically different methods.
Once again, long lasting training exists. It is a thing. The rules for this training don't exist. So each GM is free to ether ignore the topic as a background activity, or , if the players want to make it a foreground activity, make up whatever they want. But this would be a table specific extension. You can't argue that it must be this, and can't be this other, and that certain things could not possibly work. it's a game. And invalidating something that is in the rules because of how you think that something that is not in the rules might be, seems like a stretch.
This is actually a very important point. But even here the "must capture young" rule works very well.Sharkforce wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 6:50 ami would also make the argument on the basis that it's pretty lame if the only way for a cavalryman to ever get a griffin is to buy one, with no real chance of taming it themselves, when they can tame basically every other suitable mount in existence for themselves if they can find one, but that isn't a rules-based argument; the quest to find and tame a griffin sounds much more exciting than the quest to get enough money to buy one that somebody else tamed for you.
Arguably, the Griffin is the coolest and most prestigious mount available. It is also the most expensive. There are tougher and stronger mounts, mounts that have higher challenge ratings, but everybody gives respect to the griffin rider. If you want to signal that an NPC is a tough and brave hombre, probably a Warden or a Master, have him ride up on a Griffin.
But a Griffin is only a 5th circle challenge. Most any 5th circle party with a BM or a Cav could find and Dominate/Bond a solo Griffin with very little difficulty. I mean yes, it could be a very fun adventure, but lets face it, it is not really that difficult. And if you want a Griffin Animal Companion, that sounds like a great idea, tell your GM your character wants to go Griffin hunting.
But like I said, Griffins are the most prestigious mounts. You don't see a lot of Journeyman BM or Cav riding Griffins. You tend to see Wardens and Masters riding Griffins. Maybe a very few elite military units. Why arn't most Journeyman BM and Cav riding Griffins? I mean the PC journeymen want to do it, why isn't everybody else?
That is where the "must capture young" rule fits in nicely with this observed behavior of not every 5th circle BM riding around on a griffin. Plan ahead. At 5th circle, capture a griffin hatchling or 3. Then spend the next several years ether adventuring with a juvenile Griffin Animal Companion (fun, but it has complications), or make arrangements to stable it while you are having adventures and train it during your downtime. Around the time you make Warden, you will have an adult Griffin Mount to ride. It is not that you can't have a Griffin Mount. It is just that you can't have a Griffin Mount until several years after you capture a young Griffin.
This seems like about the correct progression to me.
I hate to say it, but Sharkforce, you always seem to ether grab hold of the wrong end of every stick, or totally ignore my points while using fallacious arguments to build up strawmen. I am going to waste some time demolishing some of the strawman arguments because it is so fun and easy.
Wrong end of the stick:
Nobody is suggesting that there is immutable biology that a griffin suddenly develops an inability to serve as a mount at adulthood. Nor is anybody suggesting that adult Griffins suddenly develop an absolute hatred of the idea. That is the wrong end of the stick. We are suggesting that almost all animals (including horses) are born with an aversion to serving as a mount. Not wanting to be a mount is not a learned behavior that the other horses are teaching it. It is instinctive. Horses trainers find it fairly easy to overcome this aversion, but even after millennia of domestication, each individual horse must be individually broken of this aversion. It took me a few seconds on google to find an article where the author mentions that some people think that a nine year old horse is to old to be rider trained, but she argues it just takes a different technique.
Have you ever heard the saying "you can't teach an old dog an new trick"? That is totally incorrect of course, but training an old dog is usually different and/or harder than training a young dog. Training a dog is considered an easy task, but some people can't manage to train an old dog new tricks, even if they can teach young dogs tricks. It's harder, even with dogs and horses.
So my point is that all Griffins are born with an extra-ordinarily strong aversion to serving as a mount for namegivers. However trainers can overcome that aversion in a young common Griffin. They can't overcome that aversion in an adult common Griffin, or a Jungle Griffin of any age. Doing so is not theoretically impossible, but it would be a legendary feat of training.
Fallacious Arguments and Strawmen:
I can't find anything in the current edition of rules that states that most magic effects end when the Adept dies. I found a section where it mentions that spells that require concentration end when the caster dies (of course), but actual spells, it says, continue until the duration expires or the effect is actively dispelled. I don't see anything that suggests that all effects of Adept Talents end when the Adept dies. In a quick perusal of the Talent list I only found a few that even could meaningfully persist after death. Of those I would say that most (Animal Training, Animal Bond, Battle Shout/Bellow, Forge Blade/Armor) probably ought to persist until their normal expiration times. Others like Dead Fall and Frighten I might rule ether way depending upon circumstances (if the target saw the person who is Frightening them be killed, it would probably make them less frightened. But if they ran away and did not see the death, I would think they would keep running away).
So anyway, unless you can actually point to a ruling that seems to indicate that long term Talent Effects stop working when the adept dies, I would have to say that the whole argument is Fallacious as it is based upon a not proven assumption.
Another Fallacy is that "Adepts = Adventurers". You are correct that the authors did not deem it worth their while to detail out how long-lasting training worked, they merely mentioned that somebody did it. The information was judged not needed for Adventurers. But to leap from "the information is not needed Adventuring" to "Adepts can't be doing the work" to "Thus it must be the training Skill" is making some unfounded leaps. There are non-adventuring Adepts that might be doing the training.
So I agree that the Animal Training Talent rules are Weird. I agree that the Animal Training Skill rules are far Weirder (especially in that they are almost exactly like the Talent rules). And I agree that there are no published official rules for training young animals where the training lasts a lifetime. My own house-rule interpretation of the later is that it is a variant of the former - that there might be more to the Animal Training skill and/or talent than is printed in the rules simply because some aspects of the skill and/or talent are not very useful for adventuring. For no other reason than that it seems like the simplest course to me. But I am fully willing to grant that others might arrive at radically different methods.
Once again, long lasting training exists. It is a thing. The rules for this training don't exist. So each GM is free to ether ignore the topic as a background activity, or , if the players want to make it a foreground activity, make up whatever they want. But this would be a table specific extension. You can't argue that it must be this, and can't be this other, and that certain things could not possibly work. it's a game. And invalidating something that is in the rules because of how you think that something that is not in the rules might be, seems like a stretch.