Helping a monster cohort to feel like people.

[DRD1812]

Suppose you've got a monster cohort. Your sparkle pony might be a "magical beast," but it's got human-level intelligence, languages known, and the personality of a pampered noble. For all intents and purposes (aside from a share of the loot), this is another member of the party. The problem is that they still look like an animal.

So here's my question. How do you help a non-humanoid feel like people? If you're on an incognito mission, the indignity of a stable for your unicorn or a bowl of offal for your blink dog might be acceptable. But when there are no beds for young dragons in ye olde inn, how can a PC go about placating their picky monster-bro?

Comic for illustrative purposes.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Non-verbal acting skills, body language, drawings and so on, until the creature gets the gift of speech at which point there's a lot of sassy backtalk. There've been games when I've run wizards with these kinds of familiars where I am essentially RPing 2 different characters.

Oftentimes magical cohorts come with magic built in, and I love a Valet Archetype familiar for this. They get Prestidigitation and open/close at will. Imagine a sassy, pampered, magically intelligent owl being told "you go sleep in the barn for the day; I don't want to attract attention to myself."

Suddenly a drink gets spilled from 10' away; a crude middle finger drawn in bright red appears in the middle of the table the PCs are sitting at. Looking at the bird, it SOMEHOW has it's eyebrow arched incredulously while it's wings are folded in indignance. Everyone's clothes start stinking of boiled cabbage. "Mr Nails, stop it! Behave yourself. I promise, after today you won't ever be stuffed in some smelly hayloft but for now we NEED this!"

Good times.

[DungeonmasterCal]

Weirdly enough, in all my decades of gaming this has never really come up.

[Evilserran]

Usually if a familiar cant go somewhere I use the familiar pocket, but i have had characters refuse to enter a place that won't let their animal companions in, to the point where i once paid 10x the price just to use the window. I sat on my Axebeak as it drank from the table and ate some food, occassionally passing me some ale. Good times.

[McDaygo]

DRD1812 wrote:

Suppose you've got a monster cohort. Your sparkle pony might be a "magical beast," but it's got human-level intelligence, languages known, and the personality of a pampered noble. For all intents and purposes (aside from a share of the loot), this is another member of the party. The problem is that they still look like an animal.

So here's my question. How do you help a non-humanoid feel like people? If you're on an incognito mission, the indignity of a stable for your unicorn or a bowl of offal for your blink dog might be acceptable. But when there are no beds for young dragons in ye olde inn, how can a PC go about placating their picky monster-bro?

Comic for illustrative purposes.

So for the other ones I made them feel as comfortable as possible if a stable or special food.

For young dragons though due to their superiority complex of being a dragon those would never do as they are highly intelligent and proud. You glam it up (prey your party is high enough level with a spell caster that can create something to make a stable seem extraordinary or you reward them by playing to their greed. I’ve had a player purchase thier young dragon their own type 1 bag of holding to use as the dragons traveling hoard. The young dragon got his share of the shiny loot in exchange for behaving well enough.

While it was a cohort I controlled it still and it was “loyal” to the character it wasn’t a mindless slave. It gave the party some clear boundaries: don’t loot from my horde, with some other silly ones for flavor like if the enemy is a construct he gets first dibs on parts (players later discovered he would break them down to build mini action figures that it would play with when it believed no one was around). Oh Good Old Kro’Mar the magnificent. I may introduce him to a new party.

[VoodistMonk]

Exact same way as you deal with having a Goblin or a Drow or, in some places, a Kobold in your party...

You really politely tell the innkeeper that if they don't treat your companion with dignity and respect, you will break their hands. If your companion can use their own room, pay for your companion to have their own room. Flip the barkeep an extra nickel with a wink, and there's usually no more problems.

Or... you let them sleep in your bed, and you take watch. Or they sleep in your bed, and you sleep on the floor. Or you both sleep in the same bed, and that's how we get little half-dragon/unicorn things.

So, how have I dealt with this and seen others deal with it?
Step 1: Diplomacy/Intimidate
Step 2: bribery/pay extra gold
Step 3: Bluff/Disguise
Step 4: burn it all down/sleep in the woods

Starting barfights and burning down the inn is the ultimate vengeance for the disgrace to your companion's honor. And as the fire rages in the background, you make the barkeep lick your companion's boots... but your companion doesn't wear boots, so you make the innkeeper give your companion their boots... then lick the boots that used to be theirs. Repent, peasant. Apologize. Beg for forgiveness, knave!

[Mark Hoover 330]

When I GM I homebrew, and usually I design most "adventurer friendly" locales around ACs and Familiars. If your town or city is cosmopolitan enough to have wizards with talking cats on their shoulders, why not make an extra GP off 'em? Taverns with special food/drink vessels for pets; accommodations to groom and pamper such intelligent creatures; special serving rooms with a measure of privacy so your Large-sized AC can hang out with the party while they plan adventures.

Think about it: one of my games features a wizard with a Tiny dragon on his shoulder and a paladin with a Large sized war bull. Another game has an elf wizard talking to his thrush while a druid has her Large Cat AC with her wherever she goes. My last game has another druid with a Medium sized Cat AC, a witch with an owl and a paladin on the finest horse the city has ever seen.

While the horse and war bull don't always go INTO establishments with the PCs, the other ACs do. If this is a world where we're saying any Large Town might have a caster high enough level to bring someone back from the dead, there's gotta be plenty of places where these kinds of helpful creatures are common to the area.

[DRD1812]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

When I GM I homebrew, and usually I design most "adventurer friendly" locales around ACs and Familiars. If your town or city is cosmopolitan enough to have wizards with talking cats on their shoulders, why not make an extra GP off 'em? Taverns with special food/drink vessels for pets; accommodations to groom and pamper such intelligent creatures; special serving rooms with a measure of privacy so your Large-sized AC can hang out with the party while they plan adventures.

It's odd that Tolkien thought of it, but the rest of us tend to leave 'em out of our games.

"If you're looking for accommodation, we've got some nice, cozy, hobbit-sized rooms available. Always proud to cater to Little Folk."

You've got to wonder whether it's worth the investment though. I mean, what kind of return could an inn-keeper expect to get on a colossal sized room? I imagine that mess would only work in super-metropolises.

[Zepheri]

that is good suggestion and all. but you guys dot give and example based in the aligement of the pc and the npc. if you are caotic good and the cohort is a red dragon how do you act in this case?

[Mark Hoover 330]

Zepheri wrote:

that is good suggestion and all. but you guys dot give and example based in the aligement of the pc and the npc. if you are caotic good and the cohort is a red dragon how do you act in this case?

There's generally a lot of yelling, accusatory language directed at me, the GM, for putting a red dragon in front of the party that they can't defeat, and so on.

I don't give examples of such extreme cross-aligned situations b/c they don't come up. Inkeepers and taverners in my games make accommodations for "pets" that are generally between Diminutive and Large size and function as class abilities of the PC or NPC they are the extensions of. In the case of these kinds of creatures, the alignment is generally in line with the PC/NPC; in the case of an Improved Familiar or a Divine Bond, the alignment needs to be a direct match or a least a 1-step difference only.

I don't have inns that cater to the necromancer leading a cadre of shambling, maggot-ridden corpses or clattering skeletons; they'll get the Star Wars treatment: your UNDEAD will have to wait outside! I also don't have players with Colossal sized cohorts. If the campaign had gotten THAT high level (hasn't happened once in over a decade of running this system), chances are the PCs aren't staying overnight in a hostel.