![]() ![]() Poisoning, using commands against them, tripping, trapping, tricking, mind controlling, evil druids. Even ambushed, opponents should try to get out of animal reach or use a spell to confuse them. Allowing enemies to get approached and attacked by the animals should only work against mindless, low-int, or ambushed opponents. A single powerful character with a high AC or trick like Large size + Reach Weapon + Improved Trip will run rings around animals - a prepared hordemaster enemy or a spellcaster will do the same. ![]() It's because Man can think around animals, use traps, tools, and in DnD, spells. ![]() Man is the Apex predator of this world, and animals aren't. They'll all be dead by the time you managed to get them in motion. Making a Handled Animal use a Trick is a Move Action - in a situation where you can't use existing commands like "Guard" or "Attack", but have to re-order your animal minions, that is a fatal, fatal flaw. Archers up on ledges - PCs take cover or run away, but animals get pincushioned and panic and attack each other. Covered pits mean nothing to a Rogue, but to a charging wolf pack they spell doom. Mind Fog, Solid Fog, Glitterdust, Slow + Distractions, Silent Image, all kinds of other spells, all of them will smash bears and the like. Which your minions then Coup De Grace, to distract the PCs and force them to defend them. Ray of Stupidity will knock a bear down for the count, and Chained Ray of Stupidity will knock out a whole room full of animals. Fire panics most creatures, and in their haste to escape they can and will cut through their own ranks, even attack the PCs. Sure, they have high str and high HD, but they don't have the defenses and immunities and strategies of Player Characters. My Fix: Smart EnemiesĪnimals are not as good as PCs. It's a good sub-plot, and should be fun to run for both you and her. She should need, after you bring up various problems, cut her sleeping time and have her be fatigued from having to handle night emergencies, have her have to stay behind and look after a sick bear when the party really need her to leave right now, etc, to find some permanent place to keep the animals - with a nature-themed friendly npc, like a good farmer or trainer, a nymph or dryad, a druid in the forest - someone you've already introduced as one of the contacts story-linked to her character. In any case, the upkeep for one ranger should be 'too high'. In some cases it can require multiple handlers for each high-performance animal (although she's probably not keeping them to that high a standard). real animal trainers only have a few properly trained animals at any one time, especially those that train them for combat (see: police dogs, police horses) or stressful activity (show dogs, trained animals for movie shoots). Carting around a bunch of animals, some of which are meat-eaters, all of them used to having an area they hunt or graze instead of traveling, all of them requiring multiple uses of Teleport to shuttle around, all of them unable to get into cities, some of them getting sick, some of them picking fights with other animals, eating other trained animals, eating cart-horses, eating hirelings, getting jealous, getting into fights. Very good for verisimilitude, though, as it decouples the normal 'level=power' aesthetic of DnD and makes things a bit more realistic and varied, but a bit of a nightmare for a GM. With Charm Animal and the like, it becomes very possible for a low level druid or ranger to have a trained Dire Bear, which is, obviously, insane. Handle Animal has no real limit except the DCs required to train beasts, and finding some way to stop the beast from killing you in the meantime. You've accidentally run into something that Optimizers have intentionally used to break world optimization records.
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