Druid/Rangers and Animal Empathy

[Purist]

I came up with this idea, based on the actual OCR sytem, reggarding NPCs and Outcasts (High OCR).

Can we have Animal Empathy rolls to check if certain hostile animals will attack the player? It's a pain to witness wolves, craig cats, etc, attacking druids.

[respawnaholic]

Alot of otherwise hostile animals are neutral to druids and rangers.

Bears
Boars
Snakes
Lots and lots of otherwise harmless animals

Still. Its not a bad idea overall. Might make dumping lots of points into animal empathy really worthwhile.

[shadymerchant]

I've always been surprised by the general lack of predators around Barovia, and the relative weakness of even the ancient dire bear in particular. There's some scary things to run into around the country, but wild animals isn't one of them. Druids do kind of lose out in that regard.

[EberronBruce]

Animal Empathy doesnt work on the werekind. So far I like the animal AI here. It is some of the best I have seen.

[Badelaire]

Animal empathy only works on creatures classed as animals, beasts or magical beasts. I've seen systems where a druid or ranger auto-rolls animal empathy when encountering an otherwise aggressively hostile creature of the pre-mentioned sub-types. Failure means the animal continues to be hostile, success turns it neutral.

[Lucadia]

oh no auto rolling system would be terrible, Luca would make every animal in the vicinity hostile and come running

[Badelaire]

oh no auto rolling system would be terrible, Luca would make every animal in the vicinity hostile and come running

It only affects the druid. You're effectively trying to roll against whether it continues to be "red" hostile to you or is turned "blue" neutral, regarding your druidy/rangery presence as no threat to it.

[Mark Johansen]

Back when i played on the anphilla server, they used a script that made all the animals in the vacinity of a druid neutral to all, as if the druid managed to keep the animals calm. i could see the fun in something like this added to the server.

[Vissitude]

While the idea is nice, let us not forget that we're in a dread realm here. Some of the animals may be hostile because they are corrupt, or maddened, or otherwise just starving (Emaciated animals) and while a druid might normally be able to calm a few, when you're starving telling someone "shh shh it'll be alright" is only patronizing sometimes. LOL

[Bluebomber4evr]

I came up with this idea, based on the actual OCR sytem, reggarding NPCs and Outcasts (High OCR).

Can we have Animal Empathy rolls to check if certain hostile animals will attack the player? It's a pain to witness wolves, craig cats, etc, attacking druids.

Keep in mind that Strahd has control over some of those animals, e.g. wolves. Canonically he should even be able to exert this control over a druid's or ranger's animal companion if it's a wolf, although I don't think the NWN engine has a way to do this.

The rule of thumb is that the demiplane of Ravenloft is not a wholly natural place and a druid's or ranger's normal closeness to nature is not always a given in this setting, much like a cleric no longer has a closeness with her deity.

[Ercvadasz]

I came up with this idea, based on the actual OCR sytem, reggarding NPCs and Outcasts (High OCR).

Can we have Animal Empathy rolls to check if certain hostile animals will attack the player? It's a pain to witness wolves, craig cats, etc, attacking druids.

Keep in mind that Strahd has control over some of those animals, e.g. wolves. Canonically he should even be able to exert this control over a druid's or ranger's animal companion if it's a wolf, although I don't think the NWN engine has a way to do this.

The rule of thumb is that the demiplane of Ravenloft is not a wholly natural place and a druid's or ranger's normal closeness to nature is not always a given in this setting, much like a cleric no longer has a closeness with her deity.

Actually it is written that even if a darklord gets control over the animal companion they will still not attack the druid or ranger, but instead run away(it is how they handle the conflict of their loyalty that lies with the ranger or druid, and with the dominator). Just like that the animal companion is not a dreaded creature, unless the druid or ranger is evil, or when turns to evil, at which point the animal companion leaves the company of the ranger and thereafter only dreaded creature animal companions may be called upon, if the ranger has any animal companions left to get.

[respawnaholic]

I've always been surprised by the general lack of predators around Barovia, and the relative weakness of even the ancient dire bear in particular. There's some scary things to run into around the country, but wild animals isn't one of them. Druids do kind of lose out in that regard.

Regular animals suffer from the same problem animal companions do. They have ACs in the mid teens. A 5th level fighter or so can hit them regularly and often with just average rolls. Most also have saves in the single digits clear across the board. In the case of an ancient dire bear having 300 hit points is nice, but its no substitute for a real AC. Most animals dont really have alot points in things like discipline to keep from getting knocked down either. A bear with 300 hit points isnt going to put up much of a fight with an AC of 15 because its not too hard to keep it in a state of constant knockdown. In the case of bears they tend to spam powerattack too which isnt helping them since they tend to be swatting at things with at least twice the armor class they have. Adding some skills and feats to some of the more mundane animals would go a long way to toughening them up some.

To use my ranger PC as an example if I forget to unsummon his animal companion it can literally go from full health to dead faster than I can unsummon it simply because its armor class is so low and it has no fighter skills (such as discipline) to defend itself. This is a 12th level creature with 90 HPs, a pretty good BAB and solid damage output. It just tends to keel over and die if you so much as look at it funny. I wont even go into what happens when magic starts entering the equasion....it goes from sad to downright absurd. Pretty much every regular animal, and even most of the magical ones suffer from this exact same problem.

Want to have some (sick) fun? Go dominate an ancient dire bear and let it fight a werewolf...not a mountain loup garu or even a lowland loup...just a regular werewolf that any 5th level character can take with even odds. The bear is doomed because it cant hurt the werewolf and the werewolf will hit it on pretty much any roll but a 1.

[Ercvadasz]

I've always been surprised by the general lack of predators around Barovia, and the relative weakness of even the ancient dire bear in particular. There's some scary things to run into around the country, but wild animals isn't one of them. Druids do kind of lose out in that regard.

To use my ranger PC as an example if I forget to unsummon his animal companion it can literally go from full health to dead faster than I can unsummon it simply because its armor class is so low and it has no fighter skills (such as discipline) to defend itself. This is a 12th level creature with 90 HPs, a pretty good BAB and solid damage output. It just tends to keel over and die if you so much as look at it funny. I wont even go into what happens when magic starts entering the equasion....it goes from sad to downright absurd. P

It is a sevent level creature. Since you gain it on level 6 as a ranger. So your actualy ranger level -5 is its actual level, whereas its raise cost is your level -100 gold if i know well.

[Bluebomber4evr]

I came up with this idea, based on the actual OCR sytem, reggarding NPCs and Outcasts (High OCR).

Can we have Animal Empathy rolls to check if certain hostile animals will attack the player? It's a pain to witness wolves, craig cats, etc, attacking druids.

Keep in mind that Strahd has control over some of those animals, e.g. wolves. Canonically he should even be able to exert this control over a druid's or ranger's animal companion if it's a wolf, although I don't think the NWN engine has a way to do this.

The rule of thumb is that the demiplane of Ravenloft is not a wholly natural place and a druid's or ranger's normal closeness to nature is not always a given in this setting, much like a cleric no longer has a closeness with her deity.

Actually it is written that even if a darklord gets control over the animal companion they will still not attack the druid or ranger, but instead run away(it is how they handle the conflict of their loyalty that lies with the ranger or druid, and with the dominator). Just like that the animal companion is not a dreaded creature, unless the druid or ranger is evil, or when turns to evil, at which point the animal companion leaves the company of the ranger and thereafter only dreaded creature animal companions may be called upon, if the ranger has any animal companions left to get.

I didn't say the animal companion would attack, just that the darklord should be able to dominate it. The NWN engine can't really allow for that.

[Ercvadasz]

I came up with this idea, based on the actual OCR sytem, reggarding NPCs and Outcasts (High OCR).

Can we have Animal Empathy rolls to check if certain hostile animals will attack the player? It's a pain to witness wolves, craig cats, etc, attacking druids.

Keep in mind that Strahd has control over some of those animals, e.g. wolves. Canonically he should even be able to exert this control over a druid's or ranger's animal companion if it's a wolf, although I don't think the NWN engine has a way to do this.

The rule of thumb is that the demiplane of Ravenloft is not a wholly natural place and a druid's or ranger's normal closeness to nature is not always a given in this setting, much like a cleric no longer has a closeness with her deity.

Actually it is written that even if a darklord gets control over the animal companion they will still not attack the druid or ranger, but instead run away(it is how they handle the conflict of their loyalty that lies with the ranger or druid, and with the dominator). Just like that the animal companion is not a dreaded creature, unless the druid or ranger is evil, or when turns to evil, at which point the animal companion leaves the company of the ranger and thereafter only dreaded creature animal companions may be called upon, if the ranger has any animal companions left to get.

I didn't say the animal companion would attack, just that the darklord should be able to dominate it. The NWN engine can't really allow for that.

Well but since usually for a Darklord to appear or to be posessed a DM is needed it is quite easy, the DM just asks the player to unsummon his animal companion and will be rp-d out that it was dominated, and thus ran away. Well is how i would imagine such an encounter to happen. Also the dm may actually restrict the player to summon his or her animal companion for a time, as long as the creature is dominated.

[Purist]

Or the player simply unsummons his companion and a DM spawns another animal,  with the exact appearance, which the DM effectively controls, and from there on RP can take place reggarding the dominated aspect of the creature.