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Personally, there is a very thin line between that and a cavalier that beats his AC mount. Selling your human friend to a new owner for gold is called slavery, but selling your animal friend is called...good business? Guess it depends on what sort of campaign you enjoy running.
I would say sure, except he maintains his bond with the animal. Ie- he doesnt get a new one.
Technically, he should be able to, but technically, the power wasn't intended for druids and sylvan sorcerers to run a black market exotic animals ring either.
Either than a fey power finds the act offensive and curses him to have animals dislike him until he makes this right.
In short, my answer would be.. um, no.
I would say if you can buy it, you can sell it. However, a 'Companion' and a 'Mount' are different. Atleast to me, companion is like you trusted animal pet that you adventure with. A mount is just an animal you use as you please, if the mount dies, you just buy a new one. If your companion dies you weep for months and kindly bury it with a nice grave stone and have terrible night mares of how it was your fault.
It does seem ultimately up to a GM.
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Actually had this come up in a 3.5 game I was in back in the late 90s, and the GM made the character rethink what he did by allowing him to do it once. It was a raptor, and within a week of the sale, half eaten bodies started showing up around the city, including the new 'owner.' Raptor didn't like the new owners and because of all the training it had recieved by the druid it was smart enough to know that it was more deadly than most people in the city. Sum things up, guards kill raptor, arrest druid for selling an exotic animal without a license, fine him X gold (X was twice what he received for selling the raptor) and he swore never to do it again. All pretty realistic, and valid. Good mini story arc too.
If I were DM I would pay you in cheese wheels. Or... you could get actual coin and lose the class feature.
I think I'd probably rule it similarly to an actual druid who ceases to revere nature, in that they lose the class features (in this case, only the animal companion) and can't gain a new one unless they atone.
I know Sorcerers obviously aren't divine (hence why they wouldn't lose anything else) but it's still based off the druid connection to nature, and if they show a huge disregard for their single bond to nature, then it makes sense that bond no longer would function for them. That's probably what I'd do anyway.
I think the proper response involved druids local 407 and sharp pointy sticks where the sun doesn't shine.
You do NOT violate a sacred trust between yourself and your animal companion for a quick one time cash infusion.
You sell the animal and tell it to meet you a mile down the road, then you both run like hell...
Tell him 'Sure, you can sell it, but you'll have to pay for your Animal Companion from your starting gold.'
I'd say it becomes very difficult to sell it as a riding mount. As soon as it stops being a companion it becomes a normal version of the roc. Rocs are normally pretty wild creatures, unsuitable as mount without significant training.
No doubt, the attempt is cheesy as hell. It would be perfectly acceptable for you to just disallow it, but alternatively you might get some interesting gameplay out of making consequences instead.
- I really like Alcomus' suggestion of letting the monster start killing innocent, and him getting a fine or just having to refund the money, if the players solve the problem.
- An alternate solution is to have the Roc return when he makes his ritual to get a new companion. Their bond simply isn't over yet, so he get it back. But now he is a roc-thief...
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I'd say it becomes very difficult to sell it as a riding mount. As soon as it stops being a companion it becomes a normal version of the roc. Rocs are normally pretty wild creatures, unsuitable as mount without significant training.
No doubt, the attempt is cheesy as hell. It would be perfectly acceptable for you to just disallow it, but alternatively you might get some interesting gameplay out of making consequences instead.
- I really like Alcomus' suggestion of letting the monster start killing innocent, and him getting a fine or just having to refund the money, if the players solve the problem.
- An alternate solution is to have the Roc return when he makes his ritual to get a new companion. Their bond simply isn't over yet, so he get it back. But now he is a roc-thief...
These are all clever ideas, but to be fair the player, the GM should warn him that this is not how animal companions are meant to be treated, and that consequences will follow.
The player may be cool with that and see it as a neat roleplay opportunity to develop the greedy character. On the other hand the player may have an attitude of "If you weren't going to let me do something, just say so. Don't get cute and technically allow it while actually sabotaging it and wasting all of our time."
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Or you could let him sell the Animal companion and carry on. Then, one day in the future, when he is walking out in the open spaces, you can just say to him "Rocs fall and you die", as his old animal companion and his new family plummet out of the sky on top of his head. :P
There is absolutely nothing to stop him from selling it. The idea that he can't release it doesn't make sense either.
He sells it. It gets caged, bound, tethered, or whatever. He releases it.
That said, it will destroy your game as he can make all that coin every 24 hours. I, like others, would not allow it as GM.
Except, I would let him do it once. I would make sure no other animals became his companion. He would effectively lose the skill for the coin. Then I would make it come back to haunt him. It might be the Roc or just the person he sold it to, but the action would haunt him. And finally, I would allow him a chance to atone for it. It would be a quest and he would lose something of value to get it back. It may not be the exact price that he sold it for, but it would hurt.
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From a rules perspective, there may not be rules that prevent it, but there may be consequences that make it an undesirable act. From a rules perspective, the nature of what happens to dismiss it are undefined. It isn't unreasonable to say that the animal has to be present. In any case, the options become:
1) if animal has to be present, he dismisses the companion then sells the resulting unimproved beast. Life goes on, but recurrences may result in consequences from abuse including possible loss of critter.
2) if animal has to be present, sells the AC then dismisses. Buyer is pissed for him messing with his property. Possible abuse, having sild AC into slavery, and NPC related consequences.
3) if animal has to be present, he sells and dies not dismiss. Now has sold critter into slavery and has no critter.
4) if animal doesn't have to be present, he sells and does not release. Slavery and no critter.
5) If animal doesn't have to be present, he sells then dismisses. Slavery and possible NPC response to fraud.
If the term slavery doesn't work for people, insert term for selling loyal critter into ownership.
Ultimately, he has possible loss of power(s) as well as possible NPC reply. The rules aren't the only reason to choose a course of action.
As soon as the animal companion is released by the druid (or sorcerer), it reverts back to its original animal abilities, with no training, etc.
So if he was selling them, he would quickly gain a reputation of selling untrained animals and lying about his stock. If there wasn't a local law to enforce such illegal activities, there would surely be an angry mob trying to hunt him down.
Also, why is he trying to sell a medium or large sized Roc (the limit for an animal companion) as if it were a gargantuan sized Roc (what is being sold in the books)?
Personally, there is a very thin line between that and a cavalier that beats his AC mount. Selling your human friend to a new owner for gold is called slavery, but selling your animal friend is called...good business? Guess it depends on what sort of campaign you enjoy running.
I would say sure, except he maintains his bond with the animal. Ie- he doesnt get a new one.
Technically, he should be able to, but technically, the power wasn't intended for druids and sylvan sorcerers to run a black market exotic animals ring either.
Either than a fey power finds the act offensive and curses him to have animals dislike him until he makes this right.
In short, my answer would be.. um, no.
This ^
Emphatically, No
Selling your animal companion would be in 99% of circumstances metagaming , (99.9% at such a low level), to the point you could almost use it as an example under the definition of metagaming.
In order to do it at all and not be metagaming you'd have to be most likely NE (but CE might work too), and still need to justify it even beyond that (PnP isn't an MMO), AND it is an abuse of something not covered by the rules it should be responded to by the GM with something balancing also not covered in the rules.
I like the "you can't replace it, enjoy your money you now have no animal companion" option, though I think the "divine forces of nature find a way to make you pay" is the more rules acceptable way to handle it.
edit: In a Golarion setting, I can imagine several of the gods and greater beings (the super beings of the first world from the inner sea world guide for example) would have means to detect such a rare and extreme violation if the player ever rose to a noteworthy level down the road, and certainly the vast majority of rangers/druids/etc that find out of it would have issue in any setting and knowledge checks could lead NPCs to finding what the player had done.
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Yike. Mistype on my part. Getting old. I guess it was in the 2000's, but I distinctly remember that it was 3.5, and that people were still listening to Nirvana alot... Well, I was...
All in good humor, bro.
Personally, I stopped listening to Nirvana in 1992, but that involved a night in jail and non-stop Nirvana Ohrwürmer. I guess that was just me, too.
Selling your animal companion for money is clearly an alignment violation for those that are good. As stated, it is tantamount to slavery. The animal generally defends you and is loyal, and in return, you sell it. I also agree that familiars/animal companions would have to be released from service before a character could even try and sell them. If not released then the PC either can't get a new companion, or it just comes back of its own accord. On a personal level, as a Celtic Druid, the very idea of this is just wrong as well. There are plenty of ways for PC's to make money, this should not be one of them. Though, it could be a funny plot hook where the animal to come back for REVENGE!
You can sell your animal companion but once it stops being your companion it loses all its nice tricks i.e. no longer trained so basically you defruaded the buyer.
So as a GM I'd let him do it once than have the buyer go looking for him to take his money back because of the fraudulent sale.
Its always funnier to say yes and slap the person in the face with their own idea than to just say no ;)
he does it several times and the next time he tries to sell one I'd have a sting operation and an undercover city agent arrest him for it.