If you want to base it on the rules, a third level ranger who chooses beast master could choose a wolf as his animal companion. That means you might want to wait until around level 3 before he can "use" the wolf not to set anything off balance.
If the player isn't a ranger or doesn't want to multiclass as one, I would have made a house rule, and let him pick up the beast master feat instead of one of his own classes feat at level 3.
Animal companions however are a hazzle. You - or should I say I - tend to forget that they are there. Like when the players have climbed a steep hill, and three ours later somebody suddenly asks - how did the wolf manage that. I would advice that you talk to the player, and that he/she takes responsibility for the wolf most of the time.
I would definitely let the players try to make the wolves into their companions, but it may not be easy. It would require feeding them and some Animal Handling checks, or something along those lines. Remember that these wolves are not exactly friendly from the get-go.
When I first went through LMoP as a player our DM let us try to tame them, and for a while we had them around, but at one point (when we started our next adventure in the big city) he had us let them go. His justification in-game was that they were still somewhat wild and wouldn’t fit in the city, but in all honesty I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason was because it would be tricky to manage three wolves on top of everything else.
And I’d say anyone can attempt to sway these wolves, but it may make more sense for some over others. For example, I’m about to be running Hoard if the Dragon Queen but I’m tying in Cragmaw Cave at the beginning as a sort of tutorial for new players. The party is a ranger, a druid, and a kobold warlock (guess who might have the most trouble taming a wolf). And like @GodrickGreat said, it will take the players some time of training the wolves before they become good assets in (and possibly out of) combat.
If a player is trying to be kind and humane to a chained up and cruelly treated wolf, and wants to keep it as a pet, I would probably reward the kindness by allowing it. It may be that the wolf has been too abused to be taken on an actual adventure (it might be very afraid of things now, jumpy etc.). But the player could maybe adopt it and keep it at his house or something. And like said above, it would not work in a city, because wolves are not dogs. But if he lived on a farm or something that could work.
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Worth noting that no Animal Handling roll can immediately turn an abused, feral wolf into a pet. That's just not realistic. It could allow the characters to calm the wolf and even release it back into the wild, though.
If the character wants to put time into caring for the wolf, it's probably better not to make it a combat animal (the character would be overpowered for a short time...then the wolf would die and it would be sad).
Worth noting that no Animal Handling roll can immediately turn an abused, feral wolf into a pet. That's just not realistic. It could allow the characters to calm the wolf and even release it back into the wild, though.
If the character wants to put time into caring for the wolf, it's probably better not to make it a combat animal (the character would be overpowered for a short time...then the wolf would die and it would be sad).
Agreed. Animal Handling is the first step, but not the solution.
...Unless of course you’re running a game for a younger crowd and just want to lean hard into the “rule of cool” just for the fun of it.
Is the "rule of cool" something like "stupid but epic"? Can I read something about it or it's just up to DM's fantasy? It isn't really balanced, is it?
One of my players attempted this during that campaign and my quick research at the time dictated that they could, but would have to make repeated animal handling checks...after getting mauled several times, they eventually let it go.
Yeah, I would have an animal handling check to calm it. Then feeding it would keep it around. But that would just give them a wolf that follows them to be fed. Moving on from there gets more interesting and depends how hard you want to play it. You could: 1: roll a d20 to see if it sticks around during combat. If it does, you control it, and it would attack pretty much anything that appears to threaten it. This is while it's untrained. 2: does it stick around over night or run away if left untethered? Animal Handling check I would imagine, with advantage or disadvantage based on how they have treated it. 3: animal handling checks to "train" the wolf. I would require repeated successes over a period of time to train it to do one simple thing, which the players would have to define. Fetch. Stay. Attack. Run. would all be simple things that maybe with 3 successful animal handling checks I would allow, but I would only allow 1 check per day or week. Whatever time frame you like. A week is more reasonable reality wise, but you may want to fast track it.
Lastly, they're a pain in the butt. As someone said, you often forget that there is an animal tagging along that the party has to think about. Can you just wander into a town with a wolf? Sure, it's tame (mostly) but no one else knows that. Climbing a rope becomes a bit more of an issue. Things like that. I would suggest sticking a picture of a wolf with the owners name on your DM screen as a prompt.
Have the player do a little research on what’s involved in taming an abused or feral animal And propose a reasonable set of game mechanics. No need for you to figure it all out on your own.
I think it would be fun to play where you gradually earn the animal’s trust and perhaps teach it simple commands. In the mean time, it may lash out at the character or others, try to leave, get in the way, etc.
Is the "rule of cool" something like "stupid but epic"? Can I read something about it or it's just up to DM's fantasy? It isn't really balanced, is it?
"Rule of Cool" is basically when a player wants to do something that's not technically allowed by the rules, but the idea is cool enough that you, as the DM, allow it anyway as an exception.
Like, "I can't run far enough to get to the baddie, so instead can I throw my goblin friend with his dagger at the baddie?" "Um, sure, roll for a ranged attack with an Extremely Improvised Sentient Weapon."
Is the "rule of cool" something like "stupid but epic"? Can I read something about it or it's just up to DM's fantasy? It isn't really balanced, is it?
*The Rule of Cool states: “If something is cool enough that nobody cares if it is unbalanced good or bad, then it’s too cool not to do as long as the DM says it’s okay.”
*To be clear, this is not an actual rule. But many people are of the opinion that Fun>rules. Those people do not play Adventure League.
If it just wants to be basically a pet, and follow him around for flavor, then sure. But I don't know if I'd allow it to be actually used in combat, or for scouting or what have you. It's a class ability for rangers (weak as it is), and it would be too OP to allow other classes to have it. Even if they want to spend lots of time training it. Just like I wouldn't let a fighter who found a spellbook be able to study it over time and then cast a spell. They only thing I'd think is if you developed a homebrew feat (a lot of them let you take a dip into a class feature from another class), then I'd let them use that.
If it just wants to be basically a pet, and follow him around for flavor, then sure. But I don't know if I'd allow it to be actually used in combat, or for scouting or what have you. It's a class ability for rangers (weak as it is), and it would be too OP to allow other classes to have it. Even if they want to spend lots of time training it. Just like I wouldn't let a fighter who found a spellbook be able to study it over time and then cast a spell. They only thing I'd think is if you developed a homebrew feat (a lot of them let you take a dip into a class feature from another class), then I'd let them use that.
I disagree. To me, boons outside from the game rules are exactly the things a DM should award in special cases. I wouldn’t give them the whole class feature. But 1 wolf as a basic companion (not upgrading over levels) seems more than reasonable given enough game time and successful animal handling checks. Stuff players can do inside the rules are for them to decide. Superseding those basic rules are how the DM gets to help make each of those cookie cutter characters feel unique and special.
Also, I would argue that, for a given game group, if there isn't a Ranger in the group, and no one in the group plans on taking levels of Ranger, then it really doesn't matter if Rangers are being supplanted or whatever you want to call it. I mean, the game designers shouldn't design something like this because yes, it would step on the toes of all Ranger characters in the game around the world. But in your campaign, if there are no rangers to have their toes stepped on then who cares what Rangers can do?
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I never said I was worried about offending rangers. The issue for me isn't about rangers, per se; it's about giving out a class ability to another class. I'm not saying you can't, obviously that's up to an individual DM and the group as a whole. I'm saying I wouldn't without some kind of investment from the player. If you want an out of the rules thing, you should give up something else (like the feat I suggested), to try and rein it back in.
Also, there's the precedent it could set, (which, of course, depending on the group may not be an issue). If you let one person do it, then someone else will want to. And with the OP saying he's new to D&D, I think he needs to be very careful about what he's allowing. There's been at least a few threads on these boards from new DMs who've given their PCs animal or human followers, and then don't know what to do because those followers are un-balancing the encounters. The first one may not be a big deal, but then it gets tough to say no to another player who wants to do the same thing.
I remember when I did CoS. I managed to befriend a squirrel who has red eyes and my character insisted it as a god in disguise (had to make a Animal Handling check every session for 3 weeks!). My character, not being a Beastmaster, couldn't use it in combat, but it was fun for role play. Me and the DM decided the Hiss (squirrel's name) did 1/1000 if a damage when he hissed at his enemy. So it was mainly there for RP purposes, and did nothing in combat.
So if I was the DM, I would personally allow it, but it couldn't attack or deal damage. The wolf would just be there, but might occasionally provide something good or bad (i.e. an inn that doesn't allow pets, or the wolf sniffs where the goblins were and leads you there) but these things would come in only once in a blue moon (but the bad ones more then good!).
As a new DM, I was put in a position where exactly this happened earlier today. One of the players is running a Half Ogre Barbarian (little home brewing there). He left his tribe because of the animosity and resentment aimed at him for his entire life. His only real friends (backstory) were the wolves the tribe raised for war, hunting, security, because he spent a lot of time with them. So he has proficiency in animal handling, and is familiar with wolves, and helping to train wolves. Low and behold when the party stumbles across the wolves in LMoP, he tried to calm them. He offered them food, and released them of their bonds. He was thinking they would just run away, but I had him roll a 20 for each wolf. 2 ran out of the cave and into the woods, 1 stayed as he rolled a 20. So I figure maybe there's something more to this wolf, and it now wants to stick around this Half Ogre. Should be interesting. Well, right up until levels go up and up and this poor wolf winds up getting obliterated later. Maybe there being something more to this wolf will be revealed then? But then this is the fun of being a DM, that being that I can tell the story, and so long as the dice agree with me there's not a whole lot of restrictions as to what is possible.
Compare the bestiary results for the Sled Dog from the Rise of Tiamat and the normal Wolf from the Monster Manual. I'll give you a hint - when humans first tamed and bred dogs they did NOT want weaker, smaller versions of the Wolf. They just wanted an obedient aka tame aka 'beta' worker (I hate the word 'beta', see spoiler).
The terms Alpha and Beta were created by a fool that could not tell the age of a creature with fur. He did not recognize Grandpa/grandma wolf, Father/Mother wolf and adult child wolf. They thought that the wolf in charge was in charge because of personality rather than age. So he called Grandpa "alpha" and created a myth that would have ******bags saying they were 'alpha males' for decades to come.
Hi there!
I'm totally new in DnD, and I ran module Lost Mine of Phandelver for my friends.
So, one of players want to take a wolf who was chained in goblin cave.
So how can I play it? Can a player have a wolf like fighting animal or something? What should he feed him? How should he care for a wolf?
Sorry for my English.
Thank you in advance!
It's your game, so if you allow it, yes.
If you want to base it on the rules, a third level ranger who chooses beast master could choose a wolf as his animal companion. That means you might want to wait until around level 3 before he can "use" the wolf not to set anything off balance.
If the player isn't a ranger or doesn't want to multiclass as one, I would have made a house rule, and let him pick up the beast master feat instead of one of his own classes feat at level 3.
Animal companions however are a hazzle. You - or should I say I - tend to forget that they are there. Like when the players have climbed a steep hill, and three ours later somebody suddenly asks - how did the wolf manage that. I would advice that you talk to the player, and that he/she takes responsibility for the wolf most of the time.
Ludo ergo sum!
I would definitely let the players try to make the wolves into their companions, but it may not be easy. It would require feeding them and some Animal Handling checks, or something along those lines. Remember that these wolves are not exactly friendly from the get-go.
When I first went through LMoP as a player our DM let us try to tame them, and for a while we had them around, but at one point (when we started our next adventure in the big city) he had us let them go. His justification in-game was that they were still somewhat wild and wouldn’t fit in the city, but in all honesty I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason was because it would be tricky to manage three wolves on top of everything else.
And I’d say anyone can attempt to sway these wolves, but it may make more sense for some over others. For example, I’m about to be running Hoard if the Dragon Queen but I’m tying in Cragmaw Cave at the beginning as a sort of tutorial for new players. The party is a ranger, a druid, and a kobold warlock (guess who might have the most trouble taming a wolf). And like @GodrickGreat said, it will take the players some time of training the wolves before they become good assets in (and possibly out of) combat.
If a player is trying to be kind and humane to a chained up and cruelly treated wolf, and wants to keep it as a pet, I would probably reward the kindness by allowing it. It may be that the wolf has been too abused to be taken on an actual adventure (it might be very afraid of things now, jumpy etc.). But the player could maybe adopt it and keep it at his house or something. And like said above, it would not work in a city, because wolves are not dogs. But if he lived on a farm or something that could work.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Worth noting that no Animal Handling roll can immediately turn an abused, feral wolf into a pet. That's just not realistic. It could allow the characters to calm the wolf and even release it back into the wild, though.
If the character wants to put time into caring for the wolf, it's probably better not to make it a combat animal (the character would be overpowered for a short time...then the wolf would die and it would be sad).
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Agreed. Animal Handling is the first step, but not the solution.
...Unless of course you’re running a game for a younger crowd and just want to lean hard into the “rule of cool” just for the fun of it.
Is the "rule of cool" something like "stupid but epic"? Can I read something about it or it's just up to DM's fantasy? It isn't really balanced, is it?
One of my players attempted this during that campaign and my quick research at the time dictated that they could, but would have to make repeated animal handling checks...after getting mauled several times, they eventually let it go.
Yeah, I would have an animal handling check to calm it. Then feeding it would keep it around. But that would just give them a wolf that follows them to be fed. Moving on from there gets more interesting and depends how hard you want to play it. You could:
1: roll a d20 to see if it sticks around during combat. If it does, you control it, and it would attack pretty much anything that appears to threaten it. This is while it's untrained.
2: does it stick around over night or run away if left untethered? Animal Handling check I would imagine, with advantage or disadvantage based on how they have treated it.
3: animal handling checks to "train" the wolf. I would require repeated successes over a period of time to train it to do one simple thing, which the players would have to define. Fetch. Stay. Attack. Run. would all be simple things that maybe with 3 successful animal handling checks I would allow, but I would only allow 1 check per day or week. Whatever time frame you like. A week is more reasonable reality wise, but you may want to fast track it.
Lastly, they're a pain in the butt. As someone said, you often forget that there is an animal tagging along that the party has to think about. Can you just wander into a town with a wolf? Sure, it's tame (mostly) but no one else knows that. Climbing a rope becomes a bit more of an issue. Things like that. I would suggest sticking a picture of a wolf with the owners name on your DM screen as a prompt.
Have the player do a little research on what’s involved in taming an abused or feral animal And propose a reasonable set of game mechanics. No need for you to figure it all out on your own.
I think it would be fun to play where you gradually earn the animal’s trust and perhaps teach it simple commands. In the mean time, it may lash out at the character or others, try to leave, get in the way, etc.
"Rule of Cool" is basically when a player wants to do something that's not technically allowed by the rules, but the idea is cool enough that you, as the DM, allow it anyway as an exception.
Like, "I can't run far enough to get to the baddie, so instead can I throw my goblin friend with his dagger at the baddie?" "Um, sure, roll for a ranged attack with an Extremely Improvised Sentient Weapon."
*The Rule of Cool states: “If something is cool enough that nobody cares if it is unbalanced good or bad, then it’s too cool not to do as long as the DM says it’s okay.”
*To be clear, this is not an actual rule. But many people are of the opinion that Fun>rules. Those people do not play Adventure League.
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If it just wants to be basically a pet, and follow him around for flavor, then sure. But I don't know if I'd allow it to be actually used in combat, or for scouting or what have you. It's a class ability for rangers (weak as it is), and it would be too OP to allow other classes to have it. Even if they want to spend lots of time training it. Just like I wouldn't let a fighter who found a spellbook be able to study it over time and then cast a spell. They only thing I'd think is if you developed a homebrew feat (a lot of them let you take a dip into a class feature from another class), then I'd let them use that.
I disagree. To me, boons outside from the game rules are exactly the things a DM should award in special cases. I wouldn’t give them the whole class feature. But 1 wolf as a basic companion (not upgrading over levels) seems more than reasonable given enough game time and successful animal handling checks. Stuff players can do inside the rules are for them to decide. Superseding those basic rules are how the DM gets to help make each of those cookie cutter characters feel unique and special.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
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Content Troubleshooting
Also, I would argue that, for a given game group, if there isn't a Ranger in the group, and no one in the group plans on taking levels of Ranger, then it really doesn't matter if Rangers are being supplanted or whatever you want to call it. I mean, the game designers shouldn't design something like this because yes, it would step on the toes of all Ranger characters in the game around the world. But in your campaign, if there are no rangers to have their toes stepped on then who cares what Rangers can do?
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I never said I was worried about offending rangers. The issue for me isn't about rangers, per se; it's about giving out a class ability to another class. I'm not saying you can't, obviously that's up to an individual DM and the group as a whole. I'm saying I wouldn't without some kind of investment from the player. If you want an out of the rules thing, you should give up something else (like the feat I suggested), to try and rein it back in.
Also, there's the precedent it could set, (which, of course, depending on the group may not be an issue). If you let one person do it, then someone else will want to. And with the OP saying he's new to D&D, I think he needs to be very careful about what he's allowing. There's been at least a few threads on these boards from new DMs who've given their PCs animal or human followers, and then don't know what to do because those followers are un-balancing the encounters. The first one may not be a big deal, but then it gets tough to say no to another player who wants to do the same thing.
I remember when I did CoS. I managed to befriend a squirrel who has red eyes and my character insisted it as a god in disguise (had to make a Animal Handling check every session for 3 weeks!). My character, not being a Beastmaster, couldn't use it in combat, but it was fun for role play. Me and the DM decided the Hiss (squirrel's name) did 1/1000 if a damage when he hissed at his enemy. So it was mainly there for RP purposes, and did nothing in combat.
So if I was the DM, I would personally allow it, but it couldn't attack or deal damage. The wolf would just be there, but might occasionally provide something good or bad (i.e. an inn that doesn't allow pets, or the wolf sniffs where the goblins were and leads you there) but these things would come in only once in a blue moon (but the bad ones more then good!).
D&D is a game for nerds... so I guess I'm one :p
Thank you all for answering. It's very interesting :)
I'm gonna come up with this something.
Merry Christmas :)
As a new DM, I was put in a position where exactly this happened earlier today. One of the players is running a Half Ogre Barbarian (little home brewing there). He left his tribe because of the animosity and resentment aimed at him for his entire life. His only real friends (backstory) were the wolves the tribe raised for war, hunting, security, because he spent a lot of time with them. So he has proficiency in animal handling, and is familiar with wolves, and helping to train wolves. Low and behold when the party stumbles across the wolves in LMoP, he tried to calm them. He offered them food, and released them of their bonds. He was thinking they would just run away, but I had him roll a 20 for each wolf. 2 ran out of the cave and into the woods, 1 stayed as he rolled a 20. So I figure maybe there's something more to this wolf, and it now wants to stick around this Half Ogre. Should be interesting. Well, right up until levels go up and up and this poor wolf winds up getting obliterated later. Maybe there being something more to this wolf will be revealed then? But then this is the fun of being a DM, that being that I can tell the story, and so long as the dice agree with me there's not a whole lot of restrictions as to what is possible.
Tell the player to buy a sled dog
Compare the bestiary results for the Sled Dog from the Rise of Tiamat and the normal Wolf from the Monster Manual. I'll give you a hint - when humans first tamed and bred dogs they did NOT want weaker, smaller versions of the Wolf. They just wanted an obedient aka tame aka 'beta' worker (I hate the word 'beta', see spoiler).
The terms Alpha and Beta were created by a fool that could not tell the age of a creature with fur. He did not recognize Grandpa/grandma wolf, Father/Mother wolf and adult child wolf. They thought that the wolf in charge was in charge because of personality rather than age. So he called Grandpa "alpha" and created a myth that would have ******bags saying they were 'alpha males' for decades to come.