As I have said in some other thread I am doing a little side trek for my players on their return from the Test of the Smoking Eye to the material plain. They have miraculously plane shifted to near the capital city (Rel Mord in my case).
The side trek will foreshadow or at least introduce a little back history on Shatterhorn. It will be brief and help them get some much needed xp (3 characters at lev 11, 2 at lev 10).
Two of my players have already expressed interest in determining whether they can retrieve their "animals." The Ranger had a dog animal companion who never entered the starry mirror in Vaprak's Voice (at least not as far as he knows). The Sorcerer has a bat familiar who he told not to enter the starry mirror.
Here we are a few weeks later and they are back on the material plain. How would you as a DM handle the reaquiring of these animals?
The players completely cleaned out Vaprak's voice but for Kymzo, the steam mephit.
My initial gut reaction is to say "no way" on the dog, and there is a decent chance on the bat. Without going into too much detail, this will cause the Ranger player to freak out. Not that I care that much, but I want to be fair. I can handle the fallout if there is any.
What do you think? How can I make it seem absolutley fair to both players? Are you like me and feel the survival of the bat is more likely than the dog? Would you handle it with some sort of roll, or just DM fiat?
E.
I would let them recover thier animal companions/familiars, since these creatures are part of the class abilities of each character.
It's simple enough to assume that a familiar has an innate sense of which direction to go to reunite with it's master.
An animal companion may or may not have the same innate sense, but it isn't a normal animal, so again there's no reason why it couldn't find it's way back to it's master.
We've all heard those urban legends about a family moving to another city and having a pet show up on the doorstep after a time.
Another option is to adopt the rules regarding a Paladin's special mount for familiars and animal companions, to make things easy when the beasts can't come along.
I am a big fan of Rules As Written, but I think it always needs to be tempered by a lens of 'what is fun?'
So the question is here would it be more fun for the individuals or group for the characters to get their animals back or to have them loose them?
I have to say I see little to no fun in the loss of the dog. I am not really sure what you are hoping for here.
I would most definately let them get them back.
Sean Mahoney
It sounds like a side quest to me, but they're going to have to work for it.
The bat shouldn't be a big problem, since he's a familiar and has a telepathic link as long as they're on the same plane.
But the best would be to have the ranger think his dog is gone, have him go on the quest to find him, and at some odd moment (he's drowning his sorrow in the tavern) have the door open, and Fido, mud covered, with numerous wounds and scabs, maybe even missing an eye or part of his ear is chewed off, wanders in with the next band of travelers, crosses to his master and puts his head in the ranger's lap, hoping to be petted.
I'm tellin' ya, there won't be a dry eye in the house.
Good ideas. I had begun brainstorming a few of my own along those lines.
I guess I need to temper my kneejerk reaction as too the unliklihood of surviving the dangerous areas surrounding the demonskar, the Gnoll-filled forest and beyond.
I will use it as a nice story element. I in fact might try to have the bat familiar keep an eye on the doggie and once the telepathic link is restablished, get the bat to help lead them to the dog. Perhaps the dog (named Bark by the way) stumbled out of the forest into Red Gorge barely alive and was nursed back to health by a pretty, young farm girl/woman. (It's starting to remind me of a Seinfeld episode.)
E.