During our last session, I told one of my players she could have a pet and the she could think about what pet she wanted and let me know before we play again and she could start our next session with her new pet.
I have just read an email from her a little while ago. Basically, she is a Wizard, whose father is evil, and was trying to combine humans with other races to make the "perfect human."
She emailed me asking if her pet could be one of her father's creations that ran away from him and has been secretly following her all this time because she was nice to it and so it has this friendship kind of bond with her.
I thought that was cool and could potentially open up a story line where the father comes looking for the runaway, and so said that was cool and that she could have that and what did she want it to be.
I was expecting her to pick something like a wolf that could talk or something, something a little different but not too bizarre, however, in her reply she said she wants a "cat girl" as in the anime type cat girl.
I don't want to go back on my word and now say that she can't have her pet, but I have no idea how to make this "pet" that she wants.
I had thought about slapping some cat ears and a tail on a small human, and lowering it's intelligence to just above the level an animal, giving it a low HP and a low CON but a high DEX WIS score.
That just doesn't feel right though. It still just feels stupid.
Any ideas on how I can make a half human/cat pet, without actually giving her another full-blown character.
I am really stuck on this and if I can't come up with something, I am going to just have to tell her she can't have that, which I really don't want to do, because I still think that if I can get this balance of this pet right, it could still open up some interesting story.
You could try to say that this doesn't really fit with your world, but she could have a regular cat wish some human features. Maybe it has tiny humans hand and feets instead of paws.
You should also probably talk with her, this seems like a red flag of "we might not be looking for the same thing/play the same game", and these kind of issues should be resolved before play start, as it's better for everyone involved.
I would remind her that this new friend NPC she wants to introduce would still be controlled by You since you are the DM and players are not allowed to control more than one humanoid creature in order to maintain game balance. Also make it clear that this friend character would NOT be up for getting into life or death situations all the time b/c she is not trained to be an adventurer. So if she wants a character whom she can visit and interact with in-game once in a while, that's okay, but emphasize that it's Very different from having an extra NPC around all the time to help her.
Gotta be more careful about promising stuff that isn't in any of the published books in the future.
I would not burden myself with this task but instead ask the player questions.
"Interesting, how does this anime cat girl look like?" "How did their relationship form?" (it sounds a bit minimal now - she followed her after running away - why?) "In the experiments what characteristics where used from the cat, which from the human etc." "How would she behave typically?"
If the human side is described as dominant and she wants to make it an intelligent, strong and though character I would rule against it, turn it into an NPC or provide a compromise to the player which you think is fair and best fits the description. In your post I sense you might have a natural dislike to her having a companion human (commoner?) but in the long run you have to ask yourself if it will really be a big deal. If she's happy, if it makes sense for the story, just go with it. If you end up not liking it, there's tons of ways to fix it...
There are story pets and functional pets. If she wants a story pet, then just give it to her. It's for fun and doesn't affect anything mechanically. When combat starts, the pet just sort of fades into the background. If she wants a functional pet, you could either treat it as a monster like Tim said, or you could try building it up using the UA sidekicks system?
I'd let her swap Wizard's Arcane Recovery for the ability to have an improved Familiar, as per the Pact of Chain Warlock, and make the Cat Girl a Homonculus (https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/homunculus). Swap the Homonculus' bite for claws and let the cat girl speak . Up the movement speed to 30' and give her 30' climb speed in place of the Fly speed. Increase the Size to Small. Maybe remove the poison effect and let the Cat Girl shapechange into a normal cat as a bonus action instead.
Nothing game breaking and should hopefully make your player happy!
Why did you give this to them exactly? If it was something small then I would give them just a cat that can talk (use the cat stat block in the monster manual) but if it was something big then I would do what Aikireikinu said.
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The 6 most hated words in all of d&d history: make me a dex saving throw .
I'd let her swap Wizard's Arcane Recovery for the ability to have an improved Familiar, as per the Pact of Chain Warlock, and make the Cat Girl a Homonculus (https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/homunculus). Swap the Homonculus' bite for claws and let the cat girl speak . Up the movement speed to 30' and give her 30' climb speed in place of the Fly speed. Increase the Size to Small. Maybe remove the poison effect and let the Cat Girl shapechange into a normal cat as a bonus action instead.
Nothing game breaking and should hopefully make your player happy!
I like the general idea of this. However, I would say that this could be a really massive benefit for this one player. Having an improved familiar that speaks and is able to manipulate objects in Cat Girl form almost sidelines any player wanting to play Pact of the Chain Warlock at least until level 6. If this player is at all likely to min/max, or if you have a Warlock in your party already, this could cause some problems at the table.
I think you have to put aside your aversion to an anime cat girl and just give it to her.
It would make your player supremely happy. Just grab a cat, make it talk, done deal.
I agree, it could be some sort of Arcane experiment or something like that. If you allow it to talk I would limit the amount, i.e. 300 words like a dog understands. Not wax philosophic about the future of catnip on the Baldurs Gate Exchange.
I always try to follow the "Yes, but......" rule. "Yes we can make the cat work, but it's not going to be exactly how you think".
I might even write up a 12 list thing of annoying cat traits for random "Your cat coughs up a furball" would be funny when your party is trying to stealth into a situation.
I talked to my player and discussed what she wanted, and she liked the idea of having her "pet" be a unique NPC that she could visit. She also wanted something that would give her more roleplay opportunities and connect her more the world. For this reason, we decided to forgo the usual pet, and I have let her have an NPC instead.
She is still going to run away to be with the player's character, and she is going to help the party out a little bit. She will be an NPC ally along the way to their next part of the adventure (nothing game-breaking).
Natsumi will find a purpose for her talents and abilities along the way, however, and won't continue with the party. From that point, she will settle down in the place she chooses to make her home and will write letters to her friend, and the player's character will write letters to her.
She is going to pop up in the story every so often. I am also planning a story arc that is built around Natsumi. The father of the player's character comes looking for his creation and attempts to take her back with him. It does mean that my player isn't getting a pet that will travel with her, but in exchange, she is getting a unique NPC from her background.
There is only one problem! To make it fair, I am now going to have to give all the rest of my players a unique NPC as well. My big mouth always gets carried away LOL.
I would appreciate your thoughts on the homebrew, though.
I think you came up with a good compromise. My advice was essentially going to be that any interpretation of "cat-girl" in the anime sense is not a pet. They might be treated as pets in some cases, though hopefully the anime would touch on this throughout the story and have an arc where the protagonists must come to terms with the fact that this cat-girl is still a creature with intelligence and agency. If anything, the cat-girl is a ward in the care of our heroes until the cat-girl matures and can take care of herself. Because of these dynamics, a cat-girl just does not fall under the pet category.
That sounds like a really good solution! I'm glad everything worked out well.
Edit: The homebrew looks fine. Basically a level 5 Blade Pact Warlock, with a couple minor abilities.
I might suggest simplifying the falling Reactions and just give her a custom Invocation that lets her cast Featherfall on herself only without using a spell slot. Or giving her the Monk slow fall ability. Mainly because I tend to prefer to reuse existing mechanics if something already exists that has the effect I'm looking for.
There are story pets and functional pets. If she wants a story pet, then just give it to her. It's for fun and doesn't affect anything mechanically. When combat starts, the pet just sort of fades into the background. If she wants a functional pet, you could either treat it as a monster like Tim said, or you could try building it up using the UA sidekicks system?
I talked to my player and discussed what she wanted, and she liked the idea of having her "pet" be a unique NPC that she could visit. She also wanted something that would give her more roleplay opportunities and connect her more the world. For this reason, we decided to forgo the usual pet, and I have let her have an NPC instead.
She is still going to run away to be with the player's character, and she is going to help the party out a little bit. She will be an NPC ally along the way to their next part of the adventure (nothing game-breaking).
Natsumi will find a purpose for her talents and abilities along the way, however, and won't continue with the party. From that point, she will settle down in the place she chooses to make her home and will write letters to her friend, and the player's character will write letters to her.
She is going to pop up in the story every so often. I am also planning a story arc that is built around Natsumi. The father of the player's character comes looking for his creation and attempts to take her back with him. It does mean that my player isn't getting a pet that will travel with her, but in exchange, she is getting a unique NPC from her background.
There is only one problem! To make it fair, I am now going to have to give all the rest of my players a unique NPC as well. My big mouth always gets carried away LOL.
I would appreciate your thoughts on the homebrew, though.
Oh god I pity you:(
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The 6 most hated words in all of d&d history: make me a dex saving throw .
I would appreciate your thoughts on the homebrew, though.
Some details on the wording, and some probably a bit more relevant:
- I'm not sure if multiattack would allow 2 shortbow strikes ? Or if they have to be different attacks ? Attacks should probably have restriction, such as "Claws (hybrid form only)" and "Shortbow (humanoid form only)", see Wererat for pattern. Not sure why shortbow is 1d6+3, since it has +4 dex ?
- Chimaera's endurance should probably put you to 1HP instead of canceling the attack entirely, to be more in line with similar abilities.
- Unbreakable Chimaera: this is probably a matter of personal preference, but dice usually comes before fixed bonuses, so it would be 1d6+4 minutes and not 4+1d6
- I may miss something, but passive perception 14 ? Proficiency is +2, Wisdom is +1, shouldn't it be 13 ? Or is it intended ?
- Should it have proficiency in acrobatics ?
- 5d6 hit points average 17.5, not 22, considering a constitution of 10. Did it use to have a 12 constitution ?
- I would allow bite and claws to work off of Dex. See again Wererat for example.
- Maybe the invisibility should be "self only" ? It's free invisibility for 2 party members, twice per day, it seems a bit much to me.
- I would lower the int to reflect the limited language ability. Maybe a 7 ? I really like the language section by the way ! I think it's really cool.
This being said, I really like that you managed to reach a cool compromise with your players with something you can both enjoy ;) I also actually think it's that the other greedsters players want their own thing as well, it's a good sign when people are so invested before play even start ;)
Hi guys,
During our last session, I told one of my players she could have a pet and the she could think about what pet she wanted and let me know before we play again and she could start our next session with her new pet.
I have just read an email from her a little while ago. Basically, she is a Wizard, whose father is evil, and was trying to combine humans with other races to make the "perfect human."
She emailed me asking if her pet could be one of her father's creations that ran away from him and has been secretly following her all this time because she was nice to it and so it has this friendship kind of bond with her.
I thought that was cool and could potentially open up a story line where the father comes looking for the runaway, and so said that was cool and that she could have that and what did she want it to be.
I was expecting her to pick something like a wolf that could talk or something, something a little different but not too bizarre, however, in her reply she said she wants a "cat girl" as in the anime type cat girl.
I don't want to go back on my word and now say that she can't have her pet, but I have no idea how to make this "pet" that she wants.
I had thought about slapping some cat ears and a tail on a small human, and lowering it's intelligence to just above the level an animal, giving it a low HP and a low CON but a high DEX WIS score.
That just doesn't feel right though. It still just feels stupid.
Any ideas on how I can make a half human/cat pet, without actually giving her another full-blown character.
I am really stuck on this and if I can't come up with something, I am going to just have to tell her she can't have that, which I really don't want to do, because I still think that if I can get this balance of this pet right, it could still open up some interesting story.
Any thoughts guys?
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
You could try to say that this doesn't really fit with your world, but she could have a regular cat wish some human features. Maybe it has tiny humans hand and feets instead of paws.
You should also probably talk with her, this seems like a red flag of "we might not be looking for the same thing/play the same game", and these kind of issues should be resolved before play start, as it's better for everyone involved.
Click to learn to put cool-looking tooltips in your messages!
Maybe give her a Crag Cat from Storm King’s Thunder but bump it’s intelligence up to 6?
Professional computer geek
I think you have to put aside your aversion to an anime cat girl and just give it to her.
It would make your player supremely happy. Just grab a cat, make it talk, done deal.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
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"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
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I would remind her that this new friend NPC she wants to introduce would still be controlled by You since you are the DM and players are not allowed to control more than one humanoid creature in order to maintain game balance. Also make it clear that this friend character would NOT be up for getting into life or death situations all the time b/c she is not trained to be an adventurer. So if she wants a character whom she can visit and interact with in-game once in a while, that's okay, but emphasize that it's Very different from having an extra NPC around all the time to help her.
Gotta be more careful about promising stuff that isn't in any of the published books in the future.
I would not burden myself with this task but instead ask the player questions.
"Interesting, how does this anime cat girl look like?"
"How did their relationship form?" (it sounds a bit minimal now - she followed her after running away - why?)
"In the experiments what characteristics where used from the cat, which from the human etc."
"How would she behave typically?"
If the human side is described as dominant and she wants to make it an intelligent, strong and though character I would rule against it, turn it into an NPC or provide a compromise to the player which you think is fair and best fits the description. In your post I sense you might have a natural dislike to her having a companion human (commoner?) but in the long run you have to ask yourself if it will really be a big deal. If she's happy, if it makes sense for the story, just go with it. If you end up not liking it, there's tons of ways to fix it...
Minimally Tabaxi commoner. Simple.
There are story pets and functional pets. If she wants a story pet, then just give it to her. It's for fun and doesn't affect anything mechanically. When combat starts, the pet just sort of fades into the background. If she wants a functional pet, you could either treat it as a monster like Tim said, or you could try building it up using the UA sidekicks system?
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I'd let her swap Wizard's Arcane Recovery for the ability to have an improved Familiar, as per the Pact of Chain Warlock, and make the Cat Girl a Homonculus (https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/homunculus). Swap the Homonculus' bite for claws and let the cat girl speak . Up the movement speed to 30' and give her 30' climb speed in place of the Fly speed. Increase the Size to Small. Maybe remove the poison effect and let the Cat Girl shapechange into a normal cat as a bonus action instead.
Nothing game breaking and should hopefully make your player happy!
Why did you give this to them exactly? If it was something small then I would give them just a cat that can talk (use the cat stat block in the monster manual) but if it was something big then I would do what Aikireikinu said.
The 6 most hated words in all of d&d history: make me a dex saving throw .
I like the general idea of this. However, I would say that this could be a really massive benefit for this one player. Having an improved familiar that speaks and is able to manipulate objects in Cat Girl form almost sidelines any player wanting to play Pact of the Chain Warlock at least until level 6. If this player is at all likely to min/max, or if you have a Warlock in your party already, this could cause some problems at the table.
The cat girl's name is obligated to be some form of "Nina Tucker" of course.
Fair enough. I'd say that's good advice in general for the DM to discuss something like this with the table and make sure everyone's OK with it.
I suspect that the loss of Arcane Recovery will more than offset the cat girl, but that's hard to measure.
I agree, it could be some sort of Arcane experiment or something like that. If you allow it to talk I would limit the amount, i.e. 300 words like a dog understands. Not wax philosophic about the future of catnip on the Baldurs Gate Exchange.
I always try to follow the "Yes, but......" rule. "Yes we can make the cat work, but it's not going to be exactly how you think".
I might even write up a 12 list thing of annoying cat traits for random "Your cat coughs up a furball" would be funny when your party is trying to stealth into a situation.
Hi Guys,
I talked to my player and discussed what she wanted, and she liked the idea of having her "pet" be a unique NPC that she could visit. She also wanted something that would give her more roleplay opportunities and connect her more the world. For this reason, we decided to forgo the usual pet, and I have let her have an NPC instead.
We brewed this together: https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/445880-natsumi-chimaera
She is still going to run away to be with the player's character, and she is going to help the party out a little bit. She will be an NPC ally along the way to their next part of the adventure (nothing game-breaking).
Natsumi will find a purpose for her talents and abilities along the way, however, and won't continue with the party. From that point, she will settle down in the place she chooses to make her home and will write letters to her friend, and the player's character will write letters to her.
She is going to pop up in the story every so often. I am also planning a story arc that is built around Natsumi. The father of the player's character comes looking for his creation and attempts to take her back with him. It does mean that my player isn't getting a pet that will travel with her, but in exchange, she is getting a unique NPC from her background.
There is only one problem! To make it fair, I am now going to have to give all the rest of my players a unique NPC as well. My big mouth always gets carried away LOL.
I would appreciate your thoughts on the homebrew, though.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
I think you came up with a good compromise. My advice was essentially going to be that any interpretation of "cat-girl" in the anime sense is not a pet. They might be treated as pets in some cases, though hopefully the anime would touch on this throughout the story and have an arc where the protagonists must come to terms with the fact that this cat-girl is still a creature with intelligence and agency. If anything, the cat-girl is a ward in the care of our heroes until the cat-girl matures and can take care of herself. Because of these dynamics, a cat-girl just does not fall under the pet category.
That sounds like a really good solution! I'm glad everything worked out well.
Edit: The homebrew looks fine. Basically a level 5 Blade Pact Warlock, with a couple minor abilities.
I might suggest simplifying the falling Reactions and just give her a custom Invocation that lets her cast Featherfall on herself only without using a spell slot. Or giving her the Monk slow fall ability. Mainly because I tend to prefer to reuse existing mechanics if something already exists that has the effect I'm looking for.
I would also just re-skin a Sidekick for that :)
More Interesting Lock Picking Rules
Oh god I pity you:(
The 6 most hated words in all of d&d history: make me a dex saving throw .
Some details on the wording, and some probably a bit more relevant:
- I'm not sure if multiattack would allow 2 shortbow strikes ? Or if they have to be different attacks ? Attacks should probably have restriction, such as "Claws (hybrid form only)" and "Shortbow (humanoid form only)", see Wererat for pattern. Not sure why shortbow is 1d6+3, since it has +4 dex ?
- Chimaera's endurance should probably put you to 1HP instead of canceling the attack entirely, to be more in line with similar abilities.
- Unbreakable Chimaera: this is probably a matter of personal preference, but dice usually comes before fixed bonuses, so it would be 1d6+4 minutes and not 4+1d6
- I may miss something, but passive perception 14 ? Proficiency is +2, Wisdom is +1, shouldn't it be 13 ? Or is it intended ?
- Should it have proficiency in acrobatics ?
- 5d6 hit points average 17.5, not 22, considering a constitution of 10. Did it use to have a 12 constitution ?
- I would allow bite and claws to work off of Dex. See again Wererat for example.
- Maybe the invisibility should be "self only" ? It's free invisibility for 2 party members, twice per day, it seems a bit much to me.
- I would lower the int to reflect the limited language ability. Maybe a 7 ? I really like the language section by the way ! I think it's really cool.
This being said, I really like that you managed to reach a cool compromise with your players with something you can both enjoy ;) I also actually think it's that the other
greedstersplayers want their own thing as well, it's a good sign when people are so invested before play even start ;)Click to learn to put cool-looking tooltips in your messages!