The topic of the usefulness of a dog or dogs on an adventure is probably as old as gaming. I can remember a Dungeon Master getting all bent out of shape because my friend wanted her character to bring a dog along on early OD&D adventure. He finally told her that she could but "I will kill it the first chance I get." It turns out that he had nothing against dogs but he was afraid that he would not be able to handle the complication that would ensue. Like all of us in that game, he was a beginner and there were no rules for dogs that he knew of. I would like to start a discussion of the use of a dog in a fantasy RPG. I have been playing and running RPG since 1979 and trained dogs professionally. I trained and owned dogs that would have been very useful on the right sorts of adventures but the dogs I have now, Samantha Shi-Tzu and Sophie Iguana's Bane would not be useful, unless chasing iguanas away from your mangoes is a big part of your campaign.
The primary advantage of having a dog along on an adventure lies in its senses, which can give warning when the characters suspect nothing. The problem with this advantage is that an untrained dog will tend to give warning when nothing more alarming than some deer browsing nearby or an iguana strolling near your camp is going on. This can lead to the loss of sleep and the loss of confidence in the dog's ability to warn. The answer to this is training. Training dogs can be a skill in a skill-based system. If one of the characters has it, he or she can invest some time and effort into training the dog. Another way to wind up with a trained dog is for the character to be someone of a high enough social class that her or his family has a dog-trainer on their staff or have enough cash to hire someone to train the dog or to buy a trained dog. The character will still need to pick up the skill to handle the trained dog. The training can be focused on giving the alarm only when certain specific menaces are detected or on not giving the alarm when a fairly large number of harmless beings are detected. The flaw in the former approach is that a menace other than what you trained the dog for may appear. The problem with the latter is that there will always be some harmless critter that the dog doesn't know not to bark about. However, either of these methods will give you pretty reasonable alarm dog.
If it is well-trained, a little floof dog that can ride in a saddle-bag can be about as good at this job as a mighty boar-hound and a lot easier to conceal and feed.
Then there is the question of what you want the dog to do if and when it detects a menace. The default action is barking and that is what you will get if you don't train for something else. A dog can be trained to make a little chuffing noise and make eye-contact with its handler if the handler is awake or to go to the sleeping handler and wake him or her up. Alternatively, the dog could be trained to get the attention of whoever is awake if the handler isn't. This is extensive training but well worth it.
So how good is a dog at detecting a menace? I want to keep this system-independent as far as possible so I will just say that a dog that is awake is a bit more likely to detect a menace than a sentry when it is light out and nearly half-again as likely if it is dark. And that is presuming an alert sentry. A sleeping dog is half as likely to detect a menace in daylight as a sentry who is awake and almost as likely if it is dark.
There are other uses for a dog on an adventure and I will be talking about them later.
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https://sites.google.com/site/grreference/
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978276Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978276The topic of the usefulness of a dog or dogs on an adventure is probably as old as gaming. I can remember a Dungeon Master getting all bent out of shape because my friend wanted her character to bring a dog along on early OD&D adventure. He finally told her that she could but "I will kill it the first chance I get." It turns out that he had nothing against dogs but he was afraid that he would not be able to handle the complication that would ensue.
Like all of us in that game, he was a beginner and there were no rules for dogs that he knew of. I would like to start a discussion of the use of a dog in a fantasy RPG. I have been playing and running RPG since 1979 and trained dogs professionally. I trained and owned dogs that would have been very useful on the right sorts of adventures but the dogs I have now, Samantha Shi-Tzu and Sophie Iguana's Bane would not be useful, unless chasing iguanas away from your mangoes is a big part of your campaign.
The primary advantage of having a dog along on an adventure lies in its senses, which can give warning when the characters suspect nothing. The problem with this advantage is that an untrained dog will tend to give warning when nothing more alarming than some deer browsing nearby or an iguana strolling near your camp is going on. This can lead to the loss of sleep and the loss of confidence in the dog's ability to warn. The answer to this is training. Training dogs can be a skill in a skill-based system. If one of the characters has it, he or she can invest some time and effort into training the dog. Another way to wind up with a trained dog is for the character to be someone of a high enough social class that her or his family has a dog-trainer on their staff or have enough cash to hire someone to train the dog or to buy a trained dog.
The character will still need to pick up the skill to handle the trained dog. The training can be focused on giving the alarm only when certain specific menaces are detected or on not giving the alarm when a fairly large number of harmless beings are detected. The flaw in the former approach is that a menace other than what you trained the dog for may appear. The problem with the latter is that there will always be some harmless critter that the dog doesn't know not to bark about. However, either of these methods will give you pretty reasonable alarm dog.
If it is well-trained, a little floof dog that can ride in a saddle-bag can be about as good at this job as a mighty boar-hound and a lot easier to conceal and feed.
Then there is the question of what you want the dog to do if and when it detects a menace. The default action is barking and that is what you will get if you don't train for something else. A dog can be trained to make a little chuffing noise and make eye-contact with its handler if the handler is awake or to go to the sleeping handler and wake him or her up. Alternatively, the dog could be trained to get the attention of whoever is awake if the handler isn't. This is extensive training but well worth it.
So how good is a dog at detecting a menace? I want to keep this system-independent as far as possible so I will just say that a dog that is awake is a bit more likely to detect a menace than a sentry when it is light out and nearly half-again as likely if it is dark. And that is presuming an alert sentry. A sleeping dog is half as likely to detect a menace in daylight as a sentry who is awake and almost as likely if it is dark.
There are other uses for a dog on an adventure and I will be talking about them later.
Hopefully when you talk about them later you might try some actual spaces between paragraphs, like in the quote, so it's not a wall of text that is difficult to read and therefore unlikely to be read by as many folks as you might want.
Dogs are one of those things that the DM and the player need to have a near identical understanding of what they do. So thanks for the description.
I allow war dogs in OD&D, but they are a mixed blessing. They need a handler to be fully useful. Otherwise, its the PC who can't handle the animal well and it will die easily. In OD&D, I give them 1D6-2 HP, +0 bite that does 1D6-2 damage. So, great sense of smell and tracking, but probably gonna die in the first blow.
For OD&D, just make them effectively a new type of 1st level 'men' monster with no armor and a dagger (if variable weapon damage) but let them have the high level fighter ability to sense magic creatures. Low (effective) morale checks if not lead by a handler.
All I have to contribute is something you may cover later in 'other uses'.
In my current Ancient Egyptian campaign (run with Barbarians of Lemuria) one of the PCs acquired the dog of a murder victim - he is a medjay (policeman) and was investigating the death. The adopted the dog as the victim's wife hated the Nubian hound and so it had become homeless. While not a tracker or trained guard dog, Set warned everyone at the medjay's home of an attack by undead, called up by a necromancer. A retired NPC watchman hired by the PC is now training the dog to be a proper guard dog. It will probably be rubbish at this, as it's being trained when too old, but that in itself is a useful device for false alarms, jokes, etc.
Also, the PC bought a bitch and gave one of the powerful patron NPCs one of the resulting puppies - the NPC had fond memories of a childhood pet. So, all good for keeping in with the movers and shakers of Thebes.
Dragon had at least three articles on pets for D&D and adding some fantasy dog breeds too. Even an article for playing animals/pets/familliars.
Of course Harn has an article for that.
Columbia Games (http://columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/harn/cfg/single.cfg?product_id=4617)
RPGNow (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/58797/Dogs?term=Dogs&test_epoch=0)
I admit I still run wardogs as 2 HD combatants, and just accept the fact they're outright stronger than first level characters. PCs need a few breaks in old school play, and wardogs are one of them.
I'm not entirely satisfied with having them always do just what the owner's player wants in combat. For a while I was rolling morale to see whether they'd attack the right target, but the main war dog wrangler invested in animal handling as a proficiency and I figured he could get his beasts to do as he wished with that.
Quote from: Harlock;978277Hopefully when you talk about them later you might try some actual spaces between paragraphs, like in the quote, so it's not a wall of text that is difficult to read and therefore unlikely to be read by as many folks as you might want.
Hopefully when you quote someone later you won't quote the entire lengthy post that's directly above your own reply, which has no upside whatsoever, and only serves to make your own post tedious to scroll past.
Quote from: Spinachcat;978286I allow war dogs in OD&D, but they are a mixed blessing. They need a handler to be fully useful. Otherwise, its the PC who can't handle the animal well and it will die easily. In OD&D, I give them 1D6-2 HP, +0 bite that does 1D6-2 damage. So, great sense of smell and tracking, but probably gonna die in the first blow.
That is why I didn't start with a dog's usefulness as a combatant. A dog can be better than what you describe here but not much better. Combat comes after alarm, and tracking. That is also one advantage of a small dog. You will probably keep him out of a fight.
Quote from: Harlock;978277Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978276Hopefully when you talk about them later you might try some actual spaces between paragraphs, like in the quote, so it's not a wall of text that is difficult to read and therefore unlikely to be read by as many folks as you might want.
Thanks for the heads up.
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https://sites.google.com/site/grreference/
The thing with dogs is they are pretty much only useful in real life against people who are wearing normal clothing. Anything more, padded clothing or leather, and a dog can't harm you. Hell if you have metal armor, it would harm the dog.
On the flip side, they don't have any sort of defense. Even on heavy furred dogs like a Great Pyrenees or Newfoundland, it's protection against the cold, not so much any sort of blow.
They might be useful game rules wise due to how D&D handles combat (unless you use the weapon vs armor adjustment table and I don't think they have one for dogs), but I don't think they would actually be much practical use.
Alone maybe. Bulldogs were trained to hold bull's throats still and near the ground so that the butcher can get a "humane" kill with the knife.
So if the dog has your foot/leg (while twisting it to knock you down) and you are facing some-one with shield and sword you're pretty screwed.
I've seen leathers for dogs (not sure how historical this is).
In my 1980s Runequest campaign (based on Griffin Mountain) all the primitive Balazaring characters had dogs. They were very useful for hunting and tracking, were sometimes helpful for avoiding ambushes while traveling, and were very useful for guarding their camp especially at night.
I remember years ago having a wizard who took 3 war dogs around with him as little bodyguards. They had barding and everything. It was good fun. They didnt last long however.
Did any of the people who have been 'splaining to me how useless dogs would be in combat read the initial post in this thread? If so, what about the dog's ability to sense danger and give an alarm strikes you as useless?
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https://sites.google.com/site/grreference/
I haven't read it myself, but there's the book "Dogs of the Conquest", about the dogs the Spanish conquistadores used in the Americas.
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Quote from: Dave R;978335Hopefully when you quote someone later you won't quote the entire lengthy post that's directly above your own reply, which has no upside whatsoever, and only serves to make your own post tedious to scroll past.
Hopefully the OP and others: obviously not the thick-skulled, mono-brows such as yourself, mind you; understood that I broke it up so people could and would read it as well as give the OP an idea of how it might look. And lo, OP appreciated it.
AD&D 1e & 2e is AWASH in animal companion discussion and discrete (cannibalizable) sub-systems. As are Dragon magazine and splats like Wilderness Survival, Ranger Handbook, etc. One of the better tools was Animal Training Time to learn tricks, and how many Tricks per Int point an animal can retain.
5e D&D has a useful simplification for animal senses, using their own Skills, and Features that grant X senses Advantage.
Overall, those tools covered animals so well I just port the ideas to games absent of them. Never had a problem with this subject as it was so well covered.
Hope this helps!
I would allow a dog as a follower you don't have to pay, but doesn't really follow instructions. It would probably be best to work out a very strict priority tree for the dog, and make sure to give it at least one bad trait, and then allow a trainer to slowly train very specific tricks. The issue will be that some players think dogs are sentient, wandering heroes who can fly balloons, deliver babies and understand the essential nature of humanity. They want The Littlest Hobo as their dog companion, and get very annoyed when the DM doesn't allow that.
Quote from: Opaopajr;978618AD&D 1e & 2e is AWASH in animal companion discussion and discrete (cannibalizable) sub-systems. As are Dragon magazine and splats like Wilderness Survival, Ranger Handbook, etc. One of the better tools was Animal Training Time to learn tricks, and how many Tricks per Int point an animal can retain.
5e D&D has a useful simplification for animal senses, using their own Skills, and Features that grant X senses Advantage.
Overall, those tools covered animals so well I just port the ideas to games absent of them. Never had a problem with this subject as it was so well covered.
Hope this helps!
I read all of that materiel except 5E and possibly some of the "Dragon" artiicles. If I
thought they covered dogs very well, I would not have bothered. So, no, it didn't help.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978703I read all of that materiel except 5E and possibly some of the "Dragon" artiicles. If I thought they covered dogs very well, I would not have bothered. So, no, it didn't help.
We don't know what you have read. Nor do we know your exact purpose for this thread (there wasn't exactly a question asked). Opaopajr was awfully nice for trying to be helpful, wasn't he? Too bad it doesn't meet your needs. If you have any questions, requests for critiques, or for our own experiences, please let us know.
Otherwise, what does everyone want to do, just talk about dogs?
Quote from: Coffee Zombie;978678The issue will be that some players think dogs are sentient, wandering heroes who can fly balloons, deliver babies and understand the essential nature of humanity.
Brehms Tierleben (the German standard reference for animals, 1887), about the poodle:
"Der Pudel hat ein außerordentlich scharfes Wahrnehmungsvermögen. Nichts entgeht ihm, und darum heißt er gescheit. [...] Er kann wirklich trommeln, Pistolen losschießen, an Leitern hinaufklettern, frei mit einer Schar Hunde eine Anhöhe, die von anderen Hunden vertheidigt wird, erstürmen und mit Kameraden eine Komödie spielen lernen."
"The poodle has exceptionally sharp senses. Nothing escapes him, therefore we call him smart. [...] He really can drum, fire pistols, climb ladders, freely with a pack of dogs storm a hill that is defended by other dogs, and learn to perform a comedy with his comrades."
Quote from: Willie the Duck;978719We don't know what you have read. Nor do we know your exact purpose for this thread (there wasn't exactly a question asked). Opaopajr was awfully nice for trying to be helpful, wasn't he? Too bad it doesn't meet your needs. If you have any questions, requests for critiques, or for our own experiences, please let us know.
Otherwise, what does everyone want to do, just talk about dogs?
Yes, I wanted to talk about dogs in an RPG, particularly fantasy, environment. I didn't think that the subject had been adequately and accurately covered already and I still don't. I thought I would get answers, critiques, accounts of reader's own experiences without specifically asking for them and I have. Several people have responded by talking about dogs and I find that helpful, even when we disagree. Another person demonstrated why the formatting I had used hadn't worked and I found that
very helpful. I read the couple of "all that has been covered before" posts as "shut up because I can't just not follow the thread; I have to tell you to shut up." Maybe I'm an old grouch.
By the way, were you a duck in a RuneQuest campaign?
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The gods...the gods may forgive much, to a truly penitent heart."
Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. "The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves." Lois McMaster Bujold _Paladin of Souls_
Before going into the second use of a dog on an adventure, I would like to mention one other thing. Modern dog breeds probably don't exist in most settings. However, dog types do exist. You and your GM can work out what types of dogs are available.
Detecting a menace while the group is traveling requires that the dog keep up with the group. If it is riding in a saddle-bag, it isn't going to be much use in that role. Fortunately, keeping up with a group of humans is not a daunting task for most dogs except for toy breeds, dogs with very short legs and dogs so massive that it impacts their mobility. Even normal movement on horseback will not leave an athletic dog behind.
In very open country, a dog is less likely to detect a problem than a man. I think many of us have had the experience of seeing a cat or another dog long before the dog that was walking with us did so. However, the dog becomes more likely to spot a problem if there is sufficient long grass, brush or other obstacles to render sight less useful.
In forests, especially new growth forests with lots of cover, a dog's ability to detect menaces is much better than a human's.
On a mostly empty street ii a town or city, we come back to the open-country situation. The dog will be better at detecting menaces in cover but a human will have the advantage when the menace is out in the open.
On a crowded street, a dog's chance of spotting a menace is much better than a human's. However, the problem of distractions, which is also a problem in a forest or on an empty street, is at its greatest in this situation. This problem can be reduced, but not eliminated, by training and training ought to cost the character something tangible in the campaign.
:) Well, all that stuff that you already read from AD&D covered that. So... Yay! :D
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978754I read the couple of "all that has been covered before" posts as "shut up because I can't just not follow the thread; I have to tell you to shut up." Maybe I'm an old grouch.
That's one way to read it. I read it as "there's plenty of material from 1e/2e/5e/Dragon you might be interested in, if you like."
QuoteBy the way, were you a duck in a RuneQuest campaign?
Nope, character from Larry Elmore's
Snarfquest (dragon with amnesia).
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978276So how good is a dog at detecting a menace? I want to keep this system-independent as far as possible so I will just say that a dog that is awake is a bit more likely to detect a menace than a sentry when it is light out and nearly half-again as likely if it is dark. And that is presuming an alert sentry. A sleeping dog is half as likely to detect a menace in daylight as a sentry who is awake and almost as likely if it is dark.
It is difficult to keep this system-independent.
A guard dog is good at spottting intruders. A tracking dog is good at trackong by scent. A bulldoog is good at ripping a bull's htroat out or hanging onto its windpipe and choking it.
How good depends entirely on the system. A skill-based system would give dogs skills, the better the skill the better the dog is at doing something. A level based system would give a dog a certain level equivalent, but some would be higher-level dogs than others.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978276There are other uses for a dog on an adventure and I will be talking about them later.
Glorantha has dogs used as helpers for hunters, guard dogs and so on.
As noted earlier, most breeds didn't exist 200 years ago. We've only just gotten busy at making ridiculous dog caricatures, so it's all a question of game effects and trade-offs.
How often do you want your pretend canine to detect pretend menaces in your pretend world?
10%?
25%?
50%?
75%?
Decide.
Assign drawbacks/consequences.
Inform players.
Play.
Adjust the above as necessary.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978276The topic of the usefulness of a dog or dogs on an adventure is probably as old as gaming. I can remember a Dungeon Master getting all bent out of shape because my friend wanted her character to bring a dog along on early OD&D adventure.
Great topic! In the last few campaigns I've run, there's always one player who wants a dog. In my current ASE campaign, a player bought and brought a real war dog, and without question, it's more than pulled its weight in combat. In a different campaign, that might present a problem, but since this party consists of three thieves, they really need his help.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978276The primary advantage of having a dog along on an adventure lies in its senses, which can give warning when the characters suspect nothing.
I hadn't considered this. Since my PCs are all thieves and we play with a perception stat for these sorts of things, I probably won't have the dog contribute on that front.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978276The answer to this is training. Training dogs can be a skill in a skill-based system.
I use a skill system based on LotFP, and one of the skills I've added in Animal Handling. It's an extremely useful and broad skill! I've had the player roll it whenever he wants to do something even slightly complicated with the dog, like be stealthy. It's always fun when he fails.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978276If it is well-trained, a little floof dog that can ride in a saddle-bag can be about as good at this job as a mighty boar-hound and a lot easier to conceal and feed.
Again, that's a very sensible idea.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978276So how good is a dog at detecting a menace?
Good question. I'd probably focus on situations where their sense of smell can really be useful. A lurking ambush of stinking orcs would be a perfect situation for it. Since I have a perception stat (actually two perception skills; one passive and one active), I would probably just assign the dog an above-average perception for situations where scent isn't playing a role.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978276I trained and owned dogs that would have been very useful on the right sorts of adventures but the dogs I have now, Samantha Shi-Tzu and Sophie Iguana's Bane would not be useful, unless chasing iguanas away from your mangoes is a big part of your campaign.
I'm listening...
As Sotakss points out, it is difficult to keep this system independent.
Edgewise, you are running for a party of thieves. If your thieves are high-level, this might not be true, but the dog's perception might be better than theirs if it is dark and/or there is a lot of cover around. As an example from my own system, Awareness (the same idea as Perception) is rolled on % dice and rolling below your Awareness score is a success. This is adjusted by giving the character a number of rolls, depending on circumstances.
In the open when spotting someone or something on the horizon, a human might get three rolls, a human on horseback can see farther, so he gets four. The dog, being on the ground and not having such good eyesight might get one roll or might have to roll twice and make it both times. Generally, I would not bother rolling for the dog unless the humans had all failed and it would be tragic if no one saw what is there to see.
On the other paw, if some men and a dog are moving down a dark alley at night and what they have to spot is behind what looks like a random discarded easy chair, I would probably give each humans one roll and the dog three or four, four if the dog had been trained to alarm on the specific kind of being that was hiding there.
If your thieves ever enter residences where they aren't wanted, the Awareness/Perception of any resident dog(s) ought to come into play.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978754Yes, I wanted to talk about dogs in an RPG, particularly fantasy, environment. I didn't think that the subject had been adequately and accurately covered already and I still don't. I thought I would get answers, critiques, accounts of reader's own experiences without specifically asking for them and I have. Several people have responded by talking about dogs and I find that helpful, even when we disagree. ...
I have played PCs with dogs, and have run games where PCs have had dogs. But I don't play D&D (I tend to play GURPS or TFT) so my context is different. In general I have seen no particularly problematic issues with dogs in those games, as the games tend to be about playing out situations with logical mechanics, so as long as there isn't a problematic gap in how to do that between player and GM, things are fine. The potential issues I've seen have mostly been mentioned:
* In an abstract combat system, how the dog is handled may be an issue for realism/balance. In TFT & GURPS, it's unlikely to be an issue because there are reasonable stats for dogs, wolves, dire wolves, etc., so almost any dog is going to stay where it belongs in stats if the GM knows what he's doing at all, and/or follows those stats.
* If a player wants their dog to be super-canine like Lassie or Rin Tin Tin, they may get disappointed if the GM doesn't want to indulge that.
* If a player wants their dog to be more formidable than a dog in combat, or not to be vulnerable and likely quickly killed in combat with groups of men with weapons, or monsters etc., they may be disappointed when they get killed. To me that's a feature, not a problem. As a player, I have tended to keep the risk to my dogs in mind and try to keep them out of the more dangerous situations. I also accept that the dog's liable to get killed sooner or later unless I leave it behind a lot.
* As with other animals in an adventuring party, there can be some issues of attachment and dangerous situations and how to handle them, which can either be interesting or annoying to different players. i.e. Keeping them alive may mean keeping them out of certain situations, which means making arrangements to split from them, etc.
* What you wrote about dog senses and behavior and the skill of training dogs and the skills of dogs is all a natural fit for GURPS. There are rules for their senses and skills and carrying capacity and so on. I am not aware of a great article going into detail on dogs (there is one for horses), but there may be one I don't know of. In the games I've played, the dogs who survive tend to get some detailed attention but the GM and player usually just collaborate on how that goes.
Dogs can see in the dark, but generally their eyesight isn't that great in the animal kingdom. It's the dog's sense of smell and hearing that is far superior.
You look on youtube and you'll see lots of videos of people's cats sneaking up on their dogs.
1. Many "companion breeds" are not bred for senses and guarding.
2. The cat lives there. The dog is used to smelling and hearing the cat all day long.
3. Cats are fucking quiet. :D
There is hardly any chance for a human to sneak up on a trained guard dog, from downwind...practically impossible. There's a reason people have lived with first wolves and then dogs for over 30,000 years by some estimates.
Just think of what people use dogs for now, and apply to your PC. But remember, working dogs die on the job, even today.
BTW, horses are incredible watch animals too. If a horse smells something it doesn't know or like, it does like a sneeze to flush it's air passages to take in a deep breath. That is loud. If you've never been on farm before, in the middle of the night that shit will wake your ass up.
One of the bigger challenges about pets of all sorts (this includes Charmed victims, henchmen, robots, & nowadays drones) is the aspect of Player Power Projection Without Risk. There's a temptation that these NPCs become seen as an extention of the PC's thought processes, all tactical rationality included. That's the GM's job to nip that in the bud with keeping the "pet" with a separate sheet and partially retained autonomy. (This partial autonomy is not really possible with mindless drones, but those are mitigated by sensory dislocation, "data noise," and parallel processing response delay.)
What helps GMs roleplay this is when you keep in the forefront of your mind: "outside of obedience to a current direct command, what would motivate me if I were a [insert pet here]?"
That headspace logic helps explore enough motive disagreement with the PC that "pets" no longer becomes a mindless extention to their PC's tactical power. It's system neutral and tends to shut down video game thinking dead on arrival.
Quote from: CRKrueger;979264BTW, horses are incredible watch animals too. If a horse smells something it doesn't know or like, it does like a sneeze to flush it's air passages to take in a deep breath. That is loud. If you've never been on farm before, in the middle of the night that shit will wake your ass up.
Apparently, so are geese. They make a loud honking when strangers come close. My mother-in-law kept geese and you always knew when someone was walking up the road.
Quote from: soltakss;979286Apparently, so are geese. They make a loud honking when strangers come close. My mother-in-law kept geese and you always knew when someone was walking up the road.
And crickets, which shut the hell up when someone's near. As a bonus, crickets eat less and the intruder might not know an alarm is "sounding".
Quote from: Edgewise;978851Quote from: WillInNewHavenI trained and owned dogs that would have been very useful on the right sorts of adventures but the dogs I have now, Samantha Shi-Tzu and Sophie Iguana's Bane would not be useful, unless chasing iguanas away from your mangoes is a big part of your campaign.
I'm listening...
Me too, I'd like to hear more about those Connecticut mangoes! :)
Having been around hunting dogs a bit and watching them work, I could see where dogs could fit in certain situations. I've hunted over some dogs (can't recall the breed, but a type of Italian bird dog) that worked quietly a good distance away and hold point til you got up to him, then flush the bird when you gave the command. Have hunted over other dogs that would go bonkers and flush everything in a mad rush. If you do some research, you can find dogs used in hog hunting- something I have no experience with.
Are the PC's using the dogs to find and root out stuff? Are they looking for them to grab hold of larger creatures so those with stabby weapons can come in and finish the job? Single dog or a pack? I've read some hunting stories of guys who would go after big cats with dogs- the dogs did get killed a bunch it seemed.
Oh, and Will- fellow Nutmegger here:)
Quote from: Coffee Zombie;978678The issue will be that some players think dogs are sentient, wandering heroes who can fly balloons, deliver babies and understand the essential nature of humanity. They want The Littlest Hobo as their dog companion, and get very annoyed when the DM doesn't allow that.
This, pretty much. Just like when players want a gunpowder weapon in D&D they want a Desert Eagle, not a "hande cannon," and when they want to play a dragon as a PC they want a full grown dragon with all its powers at the beginning.
I'd love to see players try to bring a dog into the dungeon. Heh heh heh...
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;978564Did any of the people who have been 'splaining to me how useless dogs would be in combat read the initial post in this thread? If so, what about the dog's ability to sense danger and give an alarm strikes you as useless?
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https://sites.google.com/site/grreference/
Oh, wonderful, your dog's barking echoes throughout the entire level.
"Lunch!" thinks the kobolds.
"Lunch!" thinks the orcs.
"Snack!" thinks the ogre.
"Gloop!" thinks the Ochre Jelly.
Quote from: Zalman;979602Me too, I'd like to hear more about those Connecticut mangoes! :)
Moved to south Florida when I retired last May. We have a mango tree in the yard that produces and _embarrassing_ number of mangoes. I was thinking of running a session like Hitchcock's "the birds," only with mangoes. But I couldn't give figure out what attacks to give them and making them into chutney and salsa solves the problem.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;979635Oh, wonderful, your dog's barking echoes throughout the entire level.
"Lunch!" thinks the kobolds.
"Lunch!" thinks the orcs.
"Snack!" thinks the ogre.
"Gloop!" thinks the Ochre Jelly.
That's why dogs trained to give the alarm without barking are so valuable, as I mentioned before. It isn't that difficult a job to train them to do that. The problem comes when you
need the dog to bark because you aren't right there beside it and you've trained it not to.
Formidable wildlife has largely learned that a barking dog means "armed men," which is both good, when you want them to run away and they do, and bad, when they've been warned that you are there and they don't run away.
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https://sites.google.com/site/grreference/ .
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;979634This, pretty much. Just like when players want a gunpowder weapon in D&D they want a Desert Eagle, not a "hande cannon," and when they want to play a dragon as a PC they want a full grown dragon with all its powers at the beginning.
I'd love to see players try to bring a dog into the dungeon. Heh heh heh...
Precisely.
So having a dog companion is about setting and agreeing to the expectations. Or, like I suggested, game it up. Dogs are darned clever, a lot smarter than most people give them credit for, and they can be intelligent and caring companions, adept protectors and be trained for a wide variety of support tasks. But they just can't do some things, and training certain concepts into dogs is very difficult. Not to mention many of the "tricks" we can train dogs for do not necessarily work when you add martial combat to the mix. War dogs trained to stay in combat need handlers, they can't understand "attack the weakest kobold, but leave the ogre to the paladin". They can understand "attack the foe I'm pointing at!".
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;979676Moved to south Florida when I retired last May. We have a mango tree in the yard that produces and _embarrassing_ number of mangoes. I was thinking of running a session like Hitchcock's "the birds," only with mangoes. But I couldn't give figure out what attacks to give them and making them into chutney and salsa solves the problem.
Ha, congratulations. I grew up in South Florida myself, so I'm well-familiar with the Attack of the Mangoes. A miasma power wouldn't be far-fetched.
Quote from: Coffee Zombie;979706Precisely.
So having a dog companion is about setting and agreeing to the expectations. Or, like I suggested, game it up. Dogs are darned clever, a lot smarter than most people give them credit for, and they can be intelligent and caring companions, adept protectors and be trained for a wide variety of support tasks. But they just can't do some things, and training certain concepts into dogs is very difficult. Not to mention many of the "tricks" we can train dogs for do not necessarily work when you add martial combat to the mix. War dogs trained to stay in combat need handlers, they can't understand "attack the weakest kobold, but leave the ogre to the paladin". They can understand "attack the foe I'm pointing at!".
Noticing where you are pointing is one thing that dogs do very well. You can raise a wolf from puppyhood and it will
never notice that you are pointing. The subject of dogs in combat brings up the most important thing you can teach a dog, which is not to close with the enemy. Envisioning war dogs that rush in as soak-off troops is all very well, if you have an unlimited supply of dogs.
If you don't, you have to look at alternatives. While some types of dogs were trained to close with game animals and either kill them themselves (terriers with vermin, otterhounds, coonhounds, staghounds, wolfhounds) and others closed and then kept the animal occupied while humans killed it (boarhounds, possibly ridgebacks) several types avoided contact and managed to keep the animal distracted and occupied. Norwegian elkhounds are a great example. They bounce around a moose like they were on springs until the hunter can finish the job. My friend's Airedale would do this with a cow, although we didn't want him to, as we were not hunting the damn cow, and it was very risky for the dog.
If being difficult to hit (as opposed to being well-armored) means anything in a game's rules, it is fairly easy to model this style of fighting.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;979775... While some types of dogs were trained to close with game animals and either kill them themselves (terriers with vermin, otterhounds, coonhounds, staghounds, wolfhounds) and others closed and then kept the animal occupied while humans killed it (boarhounds, possibly ridgebacks) several types avoided contact and managed to keep the animal distracted and occupied. Norwegian elkhounds are a great example. They bounce around a moose like they were on springs until the hunter can finish the job. ...
I did not know the last!
It backs up a thought I've had before, though. Given we manifestly have bred dogs to face boars, bears and elk in our world, what would we have bred them to face in a fantasy world? Orc dogs, zombie dogs, owlbear dogs? Using boars for scale, I think any of those are possible. So dogs in combat may not be implausible, but channeled more through specific dog breeds for specific monsters than "2 HD wardog".
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;979677That's why dogs trained to give the alarm without barking are so valuable, as I mentioned before. It isn't that difficult a job to train them to do that. The problem comes when you need the dog to bark because you aren't right there beside it and you've trained it not to.
"What that, Lassie? There are some orcs in the next room and the door is trapped? Good girl!".
Quote from: Dave R;979862It backs up a thought I've had before, though. Given we manifestly have bred dogs to face boars, bears and elk in our world, what would we have bred them to face in a fantasy world? Orc dogs, zombie dogs, owlbear dogs? Using boars for scale, I think any of those are possible. So dogs in combat may not be implausible, but channeled more through specific dog breeds for specific monsters than "2 HD wardog".
If you can bring down a Bull with a dog, then you can bring down most D&D-style creatures.
However, what happens when you have brought your owlbear dog and face a shadow mastiff instead?
Quote from: soltakss;980505"What that, Lassie? There are some orcs in the next room and the door is trapped? Good girl!".
I had a player in a Savage Worlds campaign who picked the Edge "Animal companion" and got his character a dog, and I would totally have allowed something like that - at least the orc part if the dog had passed his perception check.
That's even the example I gave when the player asked what the dog could do: "You spent an Edge on it! It's Lassie!"
If a character had simply bought a dog, he would have got a simple dog.
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;979676Moved to south Florida when I retired last May. We have a mango tree in the yard that produces and _embarrassing_ number of mangoes. I was thinking of running a session like Hitchcock's "the birds," only with mangoes. But I couldn't give figure out what attacks to give them and making them into chutney and salsa solves the problem.
Just borrow heavily from
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1219[/ATTACH]
(made right here in San Diego)
Pass the ketchup.