Yah. Upon limping back to town, Olik's first order of business was to place an order for a new wand. (Since this was a fairly small town, though, he had to pay a surcharge for a merchant to fetch one from the big city of Marramar (sp?). This isn't one of those towns where every item in the DMG is available for sale at Ye Olde Magic Shoppe on the corner. ;) )
Okay, that was his SECOND order of business. His first was a bit weirder. On the route back from the dungeon at Thistletop, we ran into THIS in the woods:
Basically, it was a goblin druid and his animal companion, a "firepelt cougar." The goblin druid dropped a "tangle" spell on the party that only caught two of us (Olik being one of them) and unleashed the cat on us, but I guess after so many bad die rolls it was only natural that we'd get in some good ones, and the cougar went down pretty quickly -- but it didn't go down so far that it was outright DEAD, and the combat was over quickly enough that Olik, on a whim, rushed over and stabilized the cat.
Why? Because, good grief, it's a big purple cat with fiery red stripes, and it looks AWWWWESOME. Plus, thanks to Versatile Performance, and a ridiculously maxed-out Perform skill, Olik gets +17 to Handle Animal. My thought was, hey, maybe this druid didn't have much loot on him to make this encounter worth our while, but surely that awesome CAT would be worth something!
So Olik managed to haul the wounded kitty on a travois, and back in town made arrangements for boarding. No one was the least bit interested in buying, however (on a meta level this was probably because there was no entry on "how much is this creature worth if you capture one to sell in town?" for the GM) so Olik's Plan B was to nurse the thing back to health, train it NOT to try to eat him, and eventually train it to do tricks to aid Olik in his performances in town. (According to the rules, that's 5 weeks of work and a DC of 15, and since I have *+17* to the roll, it means I just have to roll anything but a "1.")
Training the cat as a battle-cat for adventures would be a fool's errand, I think. For one thing, unlike an Animal Companion included as a class benefit for a Druid or Ranger, the battle-cat would NOT gain experience and levels.
(Also, stat-wise, a "Fire Pelt Cougar" is just a Leopard with a bizarre fantasy color scheme. Reading up on the "fauna" native to the region we're gaming in, it looks like this is a common theme: take some ordinary animal, give it some fancy-sounding adjective to add to its name, and some unusual color to paint the mini in. So, a "storm raptor" sounds very scary, and its coloration scheme sounds awesome ... but its stats are exactly the same as for a standard Pathfinder bestiary "eagle.")
We've already witnessed that Garfield the Tiger (who *does* level), while being somewhat useful as a "tank" at the start of a new adventure, is fairly limited offensively. (That is, he rarely hits anything, and if it's anything with Damage Resistance, his claws and bite usually end up with 0 points of damage getting through ... and judging from precedent, we're going to be up against many more enemies with Damage Resistance.)
So ... I think Olik will be keeping the kitty-cat in town as just a strange "conversation piece," and once he trains the cat enough to do some tricks, maybe I can persuade the GM to see if it could give me a competence bonus on earnings for performances -- maybe enough to offset how much it costs to keep the big kitty fed and happy while in town. ;)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2018-01-30 02:35 pm (UTC)Okay, that was his SECOND order of business. His first was a bit weirder. On the route back from the dungeon at Thistletop, we ran into THIS in the woods:
Basically, it was a goblin druid and his animal companion, a "firepelt cougar." The goblin druid dropped a "tangle" spell on the party that only caught two of us (Olik being one of them) and unleashed the cat on us, but I guess after so many bad die rolls it was only natural that we'd get in some good ones, and the cougar went down pretty quickly -- but it didn't go down so far that it was outright DEAD, and the combat was over quickly enough that Olik, on a whim, rushed over and stabilized the cat.
Why? Because, good grief, it's a big purple cat with fiery red stripes, and it looks AWWWWESOME. Plus, thanks to Versatile Performance, and a ridiculously maxed-out Perform skill, Olik gets +17 to Handle Animal. My thought was, hey, maybe this druid didn't have much loot on him to make this encounter worth our while, but surely that awesome CAT would be worth something!
So Olik managed to haul the wounded kitty on a travois, and back in town made arrangements for boarding. No one was the least bit interested in buying, however (on a meta level this was probably because there was no entry on "how much is this creature worth if you capture one to sell in town?" for the GM) so Olik's Plan B was to nurse the thing back to health, train it NOT to try to eat him, and eventually train it to do tricks to aid Olik in his performances in town. (According to the rules, that's 5 weeks of work and a DC of 15, and since I have *+17* to the roll, it means I just have to roll anything but a "1.")
Training the cat as a battle-cat for adventures would be a fool's errand, I think. For one thing, unlike an Animal Companion included as a class benefit for a Druid or Ranger, the battle-cat would NOT gain experience and levels.
(Also, stat-wise, a "Fire Pelt Cougar" is just a Leopard with a bizarre fantasy color scheme. Reading up on the "fauna" native to the region we're gaming in, it looks like this is a common theme: take some ordinary animal, give it some fancy-sounding adjective to add to its name, and some unusual color to paint the mini in. So, a "storm raptor" sounds very scary, and its coloration scheme sounds awesome ... but its stats are exactly the same as for a standard Pathfinder bestiary "eagle.")
We've already witnessed that Garfield the Tiger (who *does* level), while being somewhat useful as a "tank" at the start of a new adventure, is fairly limited offensively. (That is, he rarely hits anything, and if it's anything with Damage Resistance, his claws and bite usually end up with 0 points of damage getting through ... and judging from precedent, we're going to be up against many more enemies with Damage Resistance.)
So ... I think Olik will be keeping the kitty-cat in town as just a strange "conversation piece," and once he trains the cat enough to do some tricks, maybe I can persuade the GM to see if it could give me a competence bonus on earnings for performances -- maybe enough to offset how much it costs to keep the big kitty fed and happy while in town. ;)