I'm GM'ing a RoTR campaign. One of my players is playing a Ranger and has chosen to get an animal companion (a wolf). Since he didn't think of a way to introduce the wolf himself, I made a short sidestory where the party rescued the wolf from wolfpack from which the wolf originated. They were trying to kill him due to an unnaturalness in one of his eyes (a whirling storm inside the eyeball).
I didn't really plan what impact the wolf would have, but later decided that the Ranger would wake up discovering a whirlwind in one of his own eyes and the ability to see through the eyes of his wolf (kinda like the share senses spell).
My party has been somewhat interested in finding the reason for these unnusual things, so my next idea is to tie the wolf to a part of the story in RoTR to make it all come together (e.g. the wolf might be a humanoid polymorphed and erased of his memories by a great wizard as a punishment or an experiment gone wrong etc.). The thing is I have a hard time to actually find a part in RoTR where something like this would fit in. Do the great members of this forum have any ideas? The requirements is that it makes somewhat sense with what has happened so far (the two first paragraphs in this post) and that it ties the companion to the story of RoTR.
FYI: The party is lvl 5 and is about to enter the Foxglove Manor.
So I'm a little confused by your description, so let me make sure I am getting this. The party saved the wolf with the weird eye, then the ranger woke up not long after that having the same weird eye as the wolf, and now they can do the share senses thing, and you are looking for a story reason for all this right?
The first thought that comes to mind is to go with the polymorphing idea. He was a Druid who lived in the forests near Hook Mountain, and when the Annis Hag coven moved in (the ones working with the Ogres in book 3), he fought them and they Baleful polymorphed him. Lets say he failed both saves, lost all his power, and the eye thing is a bit of his power coming out and connecting with the ranger because he is close to nature.
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the wolf might be a humanoid polymorphed and erased of his memories by a great wizard
Problem solved.
A funny thing happened when my players' party raided Thistletop. The party paladin had some entertaining interaction with the warhorse that is imprisoned on the island. I portrayed the horse as somewhat deranged and very, very angry, given its handling at the hands of the goblins. Well, the paladin kept trying to Handle Animal it into calm.
Well, the party dealt with the goblins and then started to head back to town. That's when they were confronted with the rope bridge. Plenty of hilarity ensued as the group started with "how the heck did the goblins get this horse across that?!?" and ended with "how the heck do WE get this horse across that?!?"
The party crossed one by one, and then the paladin tried to lead the horse. Snap. Rope broke. The paladin made his save to grab on and not fall to his death. I figured... fair is fair, so I gave the horse a Reflex save for similar.
Natural 20. The gods have spoken.
So I described this wild-eyed, angry horse that was gripping the remaining rope in its teeth, hanging in space, thrashing madly. I won't bore you with the details, but a few amazingly unlikely rolls later, the entire party - horse included - made it back to the mainland.
They sold the demented horse off... it was kind of unhinged and somewhat hostile. But it became a recurring story the heroes would tell, of this amazing climbing horse.
Much later, they were approached by a Sandpoint NPC, who asked them to buy back the horse. It had thrown and harmed everyone who had tried to buy it, and it was hurting his business. They agreed, unsure what to do about the problem they'd had a hand in creating, but unwilling to make the horseman NPC suffer. That was just as they hit 5th. And the paladin's player realized what I was doing just a hair too late.
Yup. "The horse" became his paladin mount.
I statted him up and kept some things secret from the player (with permission). The horse (still a bit mental) was never friendly, but it demonstrated clear intelligence, even drawing Iomedae's holy symbol in dirt once. I did all this to justify how that natural 20 and subsequent Climb checks could possibly have made sense.
Eventually they got a magic item to allow speak with animals and had a brief conversation, because it turned out the horse was just generally a surly person.
The tale was told, that the horse was actually a man, who was the sole survivor of a party of adventurers who were obliterated by <<see spoiler>>. The horse was going to be baleful polymorphed but Iomedae clearly intervened, altering the magic so he wasn't made into a bunny, but rather a powerful stallion, able to get away.
They've dealt with the mage since, and the horse continues to serve. Mechanically he's as a druid animal companion with one level of fighter. Type: humanoid (polymorphed human). Hasn't been a balance problem for me.
Final note for fun's sake... they asked him if he'd like to be turned back into a man and he ultimately declined, noting that "once you get used to <blank>ing horses, it's not so bad a life."
@Mark_Twain007
Sorry for the bad explanation, but you got it right. Your idea gave me food for thought, so thanks for that.
@Anguish
Thanks for the story. I wonder how much of that you made up on the spot during the game session. I find improvising very challenging myself.
I think I'll ponder over this a little more. Thanks for the inputs.
@Anguish
Thanks for the story. I wonder how much of that you made up on the spot during the game session. I find improvising very challenging myself.
I find things Just Happen, and the trick is to roll with it. If your players seem to find something particularly interesting, or funny, or touching, you need to find a way to wrap that back into the story, reinforcing it. It makes for a personal story.
In this case, I wanted each PC to have something "special". Some moment that's all about them. As the paladin approached the level where he'd get a mount, I recalled the famous horse and decided it needed to be written back in.
To be honest, Weck, the human polymorphed into a horse, is a thing I'd encountered when running an older Necromancer Games module. Maybe Wizard's Amulet. So I just adapted that to the needs of the current story.
Improv isn't hard if you stop trying to do it deliberately. I don't plan for specific conversations or phrases... I just have natural conversation at the table, and sometimes funny or touching things happen. All you need to do is set up the framework to allow it to happen. (Which, by the way, is what improv comedians do... they're very careful to almost never say "no" to each other, always giving the other person something new to build on.)