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It's a question that's been buzzing around my head for a bit.
This thread is for exotic pets of all sorts in Pathfinder. Did your ranger decide that the little fungus leshy following them around would be a perfect mascot? Or perhaps that cacodaemon trying its best to bite the sorcerer is too (oddly) adorable to put down? Maybe that druid thought an owlbear cub would make for a perfectly trainable house pet. I'd love to hear 'em all!
I'll go first--my Iron Gods party here on the boards has recently adopted a blindheim as a pet. It attacked them first, but after they reduced it to about 1 HP, it acted like any wounded animal would and cowered in the corner of its cave. They felt quite guilty about it, healed it, fed it, bandaged it up, and later decided to name it Waffles.
A very large number.
Also: dot.
I'd love to hear a sample. :)
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My son picked up a Blink Dog pup on an adventure because it was starving and raiding the party for food. He felt bad for it and purposely started feeding it to gain its trust. It never helped out in combat or anything like that, and unfortunately, after that adventure I never really heard about it anymore.
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My Iron Gods group had two "pet" hedgehogs...which were actually baleful polymorphed enemies. We didn't take very good care of them, though, so they probably got blown up by some of the various explosives that were being chucked at us over the course of the adventure.
I think a winter wolf and a dragonkin don't really count as pets. :D
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A steam mephit as ship's boy. Convincing it to give up anthropophagy was the easy part; not shrinking their clothes with steam or stealing the alchemists' supplies for obscure purposes took longer.
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"Babblefish", a grodair rescued by the gnome rogue in my Shattered Star campaign. They kept it alive through the end of the campaign.
The other 'pet' I recall was a ridiculously powerful demonic entity able and eager to grant wishes. It is, however, quite fond of being a rather fat, lazy house cat with hidden thumbs on its forepaws. Think Garfield with a shadowy theme and a bit of a mean streak. The players took quite a liking to it, and it to them. However, NPCs who "agreed to make a deal" often wound up on the proverbial wrong end of any badly worded wish.
"I wish to be beautiful for all eternity!" "Granted!"
*pouf* The grantee became a nigh-indestructible salt shaker of flawless clear crystal, dispensing salt through their upturned face. The grantee's soul is quite alert and aware of what it became, destined to go insane especially as it felt every grain of salt that passed through its eyes, nose and mouth. The demon-kitty likes salt on its sushi. ;)
"I wish to be beautiful for all eternity!" "Granted!"
*pouf* The grantee became a nigh-indestructible salt shaker of flawless clear crystal, dispensing salt through their upturned face. The grantee's soul is quite alert and aware of what it became, destined to go insane especially as it felt every grain of salt that passed through its eyes, nose and mouth. The demon-kitty likes salt on its sushi. ;)
...that's positively demented.
I'm keeping that for later. :)
The novel Wishing Season by Esther Friesner had a sadistic genie with a twisted sense of humor like that. One briefly related example involved a woman who wished for beauty that men would admire. The genie turned her into the most beautiful horse the world had ever seen.
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We've been playing demented Pathfinder-in-space game. It started as a fill-in game and we basically go walking about and five enemies of our CR appear and attack us. They are all being hired by a conspiracy between the unified fiend brigade, the chromatic coalition, the drow matriarchy, the dwarven clans, and the ray gun manufacturing league.
After getting jumped by five mature adult blue dragons, we killed the first four and began interrogating the last one. He was a mercenary and he was hired through a messageboard. He didn't know anything about his employers. So we introduced ourselves as his new employers. Larry the Dragon* gets a half-share of the treasure we get. He also gets one level for every two that the players get. It's fun having a dragon around. We even gave him a room when we made our own demiplane at 17th level.
*Moe, Curly, Shemp and Joe all died.
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One local game had my tiny plant critter (this was BTG - Before Tiny Groot) adopt three infant gremlins that had (for the moment) survived the deaths of their parents by the rest of the party. "Maple, they're maneaters!" 'Dey is babies.' "They're monsters!" 'I am a monstew, Guiwdmastew waised me fow baby...'
Raising three at-will-invisible, telepathic-among-themselves, cunning, morally complex predators was interesting. Take one out to meet the locals and socialize/normalize, and the other two tag along, invisible.
They named a pet pig 'Ham'. Took loving care of him, played with him like a sibling.
Cautioned not to stare too long at people, they now count silently to figure out how long is too long, but one of them will say aloud, 'Seven', then run away.
They'll all run through the house, chasing Ham, or him chasing them, maybe visible, maybe not, and considerately one will return to the room they've just run through, where a visitor is being entertained, to reassure, "Nothing is on fiwe."
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In a D&D3.5 game, the GM gave my wizard a sentient, ambulatory book that could convey messages from her mother (also a wizard) to her. It couldn't speak since it didn't have a mouth, but it could write messages on its pages. It couldn't do anything harmful to anyone aside from kicking them in the shins, but it was a handy way for the GM to give the PCs information, and he imbued it with a lot of personality.
In another 3.5 game early on, the PCs had to go fight some kobolds. The beguiler ended up charming a kobold into staying with the party, and the paladin eventually took the kobold under his wing and converted him to good. We nicknamed him "The Finisher" because he was usually the one who executed the final fatal blow on any monsters we fought.
In one of our current Pathfinder APs, the shaman's spirit animal is a monkey, who is actually the spirit of one of his ancestors so the PC addresses the monkey as "Uncle." The monkey has more HP than my wizard and keeps 'borrowing' her 1st-level wand of magic missile to use it himself.
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Each other.
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8 blur dogs...aka war dogs with the alchemical creature template applied
A blonde mastiff with the cursed creature template
A dream web spider (treated like a pet dog, belongs to vermin blooded sorc) (yeah, not a diamond spider, not YET anyway :) )
A scarlet spider swarm (worn as..a cloak, vermin bloodline sorcs are FUN)
A giant spider (said sorc's, who happens to be a mite, mount)
A rope dragon (lives on the privateer vessel the party is crew on)
A Calligraphy Wyrm (familiar to a peri blooded aasimar fire magic loving evoker wizard, loves to flaunt it's broad knowledge)
The party is REALLY excited to try and breed true the blur dogs
Almost forgot, there is a non-evil juju zombie NPC who rides a taxidermy grizzly bear
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In my Freeport campaign, I had the party encounter a ghost eater, which is a halfling-sized magical beast that can detect undead and whose natural attacks count as magic and ghost touch vs. undead. (It originally appeared in Creatures of Freeport, for v.3.5, and was updated to Pathfinder in the new Freeport Bestiary.) The party tried to befriend it, and the druid was sad that she couldn't adopt it as an animal companion.
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At some point before I joined a friend's AD&D 2E game, the party had captured a doppelganger and reformed it. It started to worship the god of truth, refused to ever use its shapechanging ability again (despite the fear and hate it commonly encountered in its natural form). At the time my character met him, the doppelganger had been living at the temple for some time, learning to become a cleric.
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The party in the Iron Gods game I ran adopted a voonith. He surrendered to them to save his own skin, but the psychic gave him enough food and ego-fluffing to win his loyalty. When they got back to Torch, he custom-ordered the little guy a tuxedo and made him his butler.
He had to tell the voonith he wasn't allowed to eat the town toddlers.
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My Skull and Shackles group successfully "adopted" two parrots, one tidepool dragon, three will-o-wisps, a malenti sahaugin, and a cluster of cannibal bleachlings. Sadly we couldn't get the aboleth to join us, though he was talked around into at least a non-hostile associate.
Pretty much anything we encountered that had an INT score we attempted to recruit with a "Have you ever considered piracy?"
While there are no strange creatures in my group (just reg'lar humanoids from the core book with a few house changes) I guess I can say they adopted each other.
During our Skull & Shackles campaign, towards the end, my druid's animal troupe consisted of:
2 Triceratopses
12 Pteranodons
1 Giant Anaconda
2 Spinosarus
1 Tylosaurus
2 Megolodon Sharks
Most of which were acquired from the Island of Empty Eyes.
Our ship was modded with a carrier deck for the Pteranodon 'squadron' while the Tylosaurus and Meglodons were our subsurface escort group.
My DM said he was okay with all the animals but I suspected he was irked by it.
Not Pathfinder but one of my characters adopted a horse size, fire breathing, flying wolf.
She also created a plant cat for the bases security system.
She has wanted to adopted a large genetically created creature...and a large giant size flying snake...that also breaths fire. But the Party said No... :(
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A Cerebric Fungus.
Even I was surprised by that one.
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The party had to go out and explore several hexes for a low level Pathfinder AP, and I didn't have a horse. I made puppy dog eyes at the stablehand and winked at him, then asked if there was any way I could borrow a horse. He said I could use "Old Bessie over there."
I then leveled up, and gained access to the paladin divine bond. One guess as to what my new mount was. Seems Old Bessie was a much better horse than the stablehand realized, or maybe the horse was suddenly blessed by Arshea.
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This is technically multiple parties that I've GM'd for over the last couple of years. If any of them see this, you know what you've done.
Not all of these are necessarily pets, some are just odd adoptions and recruitments.
1. A tribe of grindylows that, when finally put in a situation of relative safety and structure, quickly grew from a meager three dozen to several hundred fiercely loyal and violent "squid-mice-toddlers"
2. A gargoyle wizard with a fear of violence and a love of unusual spells. They gave him a boat and had him follow them around researching new ways to magically equip their ship.
3. An erotophobic succubus who offered her profane bonus in exchange for a job in which the standard fare would not be asked of her. They had her work as a secretary and assistant librarian for the gargoyle.
4. A nymph who's heart tree had been cut down and used as the mast for a ship. They killed the person who had cut down her tree, made her captain of the ship, and recruited her into their armada.
5. A gnome were-elephant
6. A very cowardly, but very intelligent swarm of rats. It saved multiple people's lives, largely by carrying them from harm. But more often than not, they were just unable to convince it to do something dangerous and it caused more chaos than it solved.
7. A berbalang that spied for the party in exchange for not having it's nest hunted down.
8. Two separate goblin tribes that were given careful lessons on how to behave in polite society that they never, ever followed.
9. An entire coven of hags, who proceeded to follow the party and perform great evil around them. Approximately half of the party was aware, and when they realized that said evil was profitable, they worked with the coven to hide it from the rest of the party. More on this to follow.
10. A trio of intelligent ravens, constantly competing for the party's favor. They regularly shore up the defenses for the party's more dangerous magical items, wanting to be the one to have made the best maze of puzzles, traps, and beasts, because the party is offering treats and rewards to the one to do the best job.
11. An Ettin. Horrendously evil, the party decided that her goal of being a witch was too cute to have her killed, and so they took the time to train her themselves.
12. A night hag. She followed the party everywhere and used soul bind on everything the party killed, including entire armies at several points. She's been cutting the party in on the profits whenever the party seems short of cash, but less than half of the party is aware of the source of income, and they are determined to make sure that the other half does not find out.
13. A witchfire. The party necromancer greatly enjoyed talking to an intelligent undead that she did not have to bind, although the entire party did not expect an undead quite this willful.
14. A green hag. The party has been too entertained by her antics to kill her so far, but if they hear many more rumors of her stealing children, they won't keep her around long.
15. An Upasunda. Began travelling with the party on the pretense of being able to find more dangerous things to fight and to hone her martial capabilities. The party is terrified of upsetting her, and tend to designate at least one combat per dungeon to let her fight on her own.
16. A clan of dragonkin (estimated 2000). After interceding in what would have been a very bloody battle, the party was able to get a clan of dragonkin to swear fealty, and occasionally use them as shock troops when going up against other armies.
17. A tribe of Adlet (estimated 200). The party rescued one of their most prominent shaman's and seeress' in the wilderness and followed her instructions to kill a tyrant who had been oppressing the tribe. The tribe has sent a portion of their number to help the party in their quest to repay the debt.
18. A regimented and fully equipped army of 10,000 triaxian barbarians, whose general is a 10 legged bear. This was more of an emergency diplomatic maneuver for the party than anything else. They promised the general more lands to conquer, and a way off of Triaxus so that there would be new lands to conquer, so long as he aided them in a series of battles. His numbers have dwindled greatly in those battles, as his barbarians were not well equipped for what came next, but they are indeed off of Triaxus.
19. Sea Kraits. Nobody is really sure how many. Multiple swarms, kept in barrels and fed regularly. It was funny how much gold they spent feeding them right up until the necromancer made special Host Zombies for them to live in out of dead frost giants, and then it was terrifying.
20. A dire crocodile that they bought from an overly enthusiastic veteranarian.
21. A giant owl purchased from the same veteranarian, who they needed to cast regenerate on to heal fully, but now helps keep their menagerie of mundane animals behaving.
22. Not so much recruiting a ghoul as willfully allowing most of a crew of pirates to become infected with ghoul fever and then making certain that they retained their memories after transitioning into unlife. This was done mostly "for the aesthetic."
23. A large group of sprites functioning as enemy spies were kept as both allies and friends by bribing them with a constant supply of milk and cream. The party even bought dairy goats and cows to keep them happily drunk when moving into areas where they wouldn't be able to shop regularly.
24. Every single cook that they ever met! They bribed, bartered, and cajoled every single one of them until they had the best team of chef's from across the stars working for them, this included a backwoods half-orc, a dragonkin, a hag, and a naiad.
25. A mandragora which had been infused with a child's soul. Although definitely tainted with evil, they gave it it's own room and allowed both it and it's assassin vine pets to live something relatively close to a normal child's life.
26. An entire factory town from the russian country side. They paid everyone 10 times the standard daily wage, along with a daily stipend for family members not working, and even allowed them to unionize, provided they moved their homes and all of the factory equipment into a "company town" in a demiplane, and built tanks and modern firearms for the barbarian army and dragonkin to use in battle and helped teach them how to use them. They have plans to recruit other towns in this way to boost production.
27. Almost any minor fey or household spirit that didn't try to kill them, including a large number of sprites, domovoi and dvorovoi. Yet they constantly profess a profound hatered for fey, although that is likely just because various party members have (knowingly or unknowingly) traded fey the ability to fasten their shoes to their feet, the awareness of turnips and that they exist, the ability to hear music, their life's story, their birth (everyone involved forgot they exist and they lost all heritage based effects), their youth (immediately advance an age category), their hand in marriage (the fey traded it to someone else, the character is now married to a fool), and an NPC in the party traded for an artifact and the party is terrified to find out what the cost is because it hasn't come up yet.
28. The ghost of a cat, which the party helped to reincarnate. After some exceedingly improbably dice rolls it became an ethereal dragon and is now serving as an improved familiar for one of the party members.
29. A megalodon which was never truly tamed, but rather fed often enough that it eventually understood that following the party would lead it to more violent ship battles where it could feed on the bodies of all who fell overboard. The party would regularly chum the water to keep it relatively close, and it occasionally grew impatient and began to chew through the hulls of ships that had begun to sink.
30. So. Many. Undead. They have seriously never gotten tired of making undead, especially if they have weird powers or can be used as vehicles for their other friends and companions.
There are definitely more that I'm forgetting, and this doesn't even touch on the "normal" people and creatures that they've recruited. My players have always kept me on my toes in other situations, but my word do they like to keep an exciting entourage.
This is technically multiple parties that I've GM'd for over the last couple of years. If any of them see this, you know what you've done.
Not all of these are necessarily pets, some are just odd adoptions and recruitments.
** spoiler omitted **...
That sound was the bar being raised.
That sound was the bar being raised.This is technically multiple parties that I've GM'd for over the last couple of years. If any of them see this, you know what you've done.
Not all of these are necessarily pets, some are just odd adoptions and recruitments.
** spoiler omitted **...
I tend to let the party attempt most anything. Sometimes it's extraordinarily difficult, but it's usually possible. I have a few specific players who are so enamored by this that they try and befriend virtually every potential combat that the party encounters, regardless of how evil it is or how much that creature's goals are counter to the party's goals. These players' characters are very persuasive and very good at making gold, so they tend to be able to make it work, at least for a while. A lot of what I listed came back to bite them pretty terribly when they stopped investing time and energy in those people/creatures and they felt neglected or cheated in one way or another.
So I don't know that it's the bar being raised as much as it is just a different style of play. I'm quite fond of it, but it does lend itself to...weirdness...
*I* would love to play in a game like that... though I'd probably be a bit more picky about letting the evil ones live. :D
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A couple noteable adoptions:
We adopted the cereberal fungus that lives in the ship under the starting town. My character (a hunter/warpriest) has a fascination with it, and refused to kill it. Since it eats biological stuffs, it has free reign to roam in the ship, and eat the other fungus, corpses and other such things. It's pretty much a win/win for us. We have a nasty, intelligent guard for our ship, and it does housekeeping.
I'm running this for my group, and they've adopted the "puppy" they found in the ghoul area. The group had a really good fight with the ghouls in that area, and the "puppy" decided to keep up the facade and stay with them for it's own survival. None of them suspect it is not what it appears to be. I don't know how long it will decide to remain with them, but for the time being "Jeff" is a sort of mascot.
We took the side of the kobolds in their battle versus the mites. Mikmek (not sure if that's his name in the module or if the GM changed it) is a part of the group, and is earning experience fighting along side us. Because of our help, we have a town in our kingdom that's predominantly kobolds that mine silver for us.
Owl bear in Kingmaker, also Munguk the hill giant (he rode the owl bear!)
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Owl bear in Kingmaker, also Munguk the hill giant (he rode the owl bear!)
Oh yeah! We befriended Munguk in our Kingmaker, but we've never freed him from whatever holds him to the fort where we found him. We also befriended a black dragon, and our fighter keeps trying to make friends with all the fey, even the evil ones.
We bribed Munguk with 1. lots of beer, 2. lots of roast animal, and 3. the promise of girl hill giants.
We ended up with a small settlement of hill giants, led by Munguk (we got him a circlet to make him more intelligent)
ours was a very tolerant kingdom
Kobolds, dwarves, hill giants, lizard folk, fey, thawn, and more along with more standard races.
Woodhaven was a hell of a kingdom...need to finish that game some day
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Our party's investigator adopting a female goblin sure was strange. He put a wig on her, dressed her in fancy dresses, bribed her with pickles so she behaved, and generally doted on her. We could never figure out if she was his pet, lover, or adopted daughter, mostly because we couldn't work up the courage to ask the character, and the player would never tell.
Back in a Dragonlance campaign I was in, our party adopted a gully dwarf named Stink who ended up being the party's cook. We used our only resurrection spell to bring him back when an angry minotaur killed our beloved malodorous cook for stealing his boots to add flavor to our nightly stew. When asked how many times he had done something like that, Stink's reply was a look of confusion and the word "two?". We never ate Stink's cooking again.