Control of Animal Companion

[DaTexican]

So on multiple occasions, I have nearly killed my party and myself because we SEE a trap, but I have little to no way to get my animal companion to avoid it :/. Druids/rangers can speak to these animal companions in their native language. They can give them instructions such as, "Hug the wall, the floor will hurt you here" (which I have done a number of times). Now the Dev's can come back and say something like "Animals are not intelligent enough" or something to that extent, but based of real life animals, I feel they definitively are smart enough to follow some basic instructions like that, especially the ones in DND that are far superior to regular animals. I know that Wizards and the like can control their Familiars. It would be nice if we could as well . Pluss it adds a nice aspect of RP if you wanted to have a conversation with your animal companion or better yet have him contributing to a situation. I absolutly love the RP of my animal companion (currently done by typing in *Osiros* ~~~~~~~) and I have had may players tell me saying they loved his RP. I dont mind continuing to do that, but if you do decide to allow the control of animal companions, it would be a nice addition . IDK if you could reuse the code from Wizard familiars, but I figured It wouldn't hurt to ask. Too many druid/rangers have talked to me in tells about this, but no one ever asks on the forums so here I am

[Winter83]

Animal companion speech similarly to -familiar would be lovely to have. I emote my animal companion's actions through my character which is weird.

Control of them however can bring up balance issues. Utility animal companions have true sight.
Which will give rangers & druid that power also, they'd only need to possess the creature.

[DaTexican]

I see your point. While I agree with the balance issue, it also would make some realistic sense though too. *Please note i understand the balancing vs realism aspect * If your animal has truesight and sees a enemy sneaking up on you, would he not warn you? If you animal has lockpicking skills, would he not open the door for you if you asked him to, or at least he would try?

That all asside, I would be happy with just the ability to MOVE them so i could move them around traps or place them in positions say for a organized ambush.

[What_Evil_Lurks]

Until there is or is not a decision about this there are probably a few trap smiths that you could search out to come with you.

[DaTexican]

Thats true . I just have to have someone to disable the traps. I usually SEE them, and can avoid them as a player, but the animals just walk over em :/. We'll have to see what the Dev's say.

[Griefmaker]

Roigrin just needs to get her tree-hugging hin butt out of lala-land and snatched up Liam to help her out!

Actually, he is worse than a klutz with traps. So she needs to stop sucking and grab Liam and Larken (for those traps) so they can go do heroic things again.

Hin druidesses...hugging trees...doing nefarious things with tallies...reproducing with dwarves (okay, that is actually a step in the right direction in general, as more dwarves is a good thing)...and ignoring her kin. For shame!

[DaTexican]

Well, I wonder who Griefmaker is IG XD. Now that college started back up I don't have endless hours to play but I'll keep an eye out for you

[Valo65]

I think the Control Companion tool, which I suggested here would be great for solving this.

[SwampFoot]

I've actually not had a problem getting Bear the Badger to disarm traps on his own. Sometimes it takes a minute for him to spring into action but he gets it done. After the trap is gone its a simple matter of clicking the locked object to get him to open it.

As far as speech... what would a badger say? "I don't give a sh*t!", probably.

[Valo65]

I've actually not had a problem getting Bear the Badger to disarm traps on his own. Sometimes it takes a minute for him to spring into action but he gets it done. After the trap is gone its a simple matter of clicking the locked object to get him to open it.

As far as speech... what would a badger say? "I don't give a sh*t!", probably.

I first read that as "getting the bear or badger to disarm traps," and was wondering why the hell bears have disable trap.

I was literally about to make a druid just to laugh as my bear goes around disarming everything with its deft paws and mastery of engineering.

[Yellena]

Bears shouldn't have disable trap. Oo'
What lvl are you? So I can track it down and find out what happened.

Duh! Got trolled.

[Mithreas]

Beared, I think. There are no troll companions.

[Yellena]

You can aways give them a Potion of Mutation

[DaTexican]

Just incase some of you are confused, his badger is named "Bear" So he refers to it as "Bear the Badger" just to clarify

[The Kriv]

I made this suggestion in the old forums, perhaps it's time to revisit it again.

I used to play on a server that had a non-drop item named "Animal Control Widget"

what this item did was a couple of cool things.

1) it would "CALL" your animal companion or familiar TO you. Why? exactly for the reason the OP stated. You could make your companion 'STAY' ... then move to a position, avoiding danger, or keep it away from accidentally aggro'ing something bad... then you activate your "Animal Control Widget" your cursor turns into a target, which if you click on yourself, your companion/familiar pops to your side.

2) If your animal companion is 100% Health, you can 'store' your animal companion/familiar in the Widget... Why? well, since you can only 'call' your animal companion once per day, but you have a reason to send it away, or if you have to go somewhere that doesn't allow "companions" you can activate your Animal Control Widget, and it turns your cursor into a Target. THIS time, you click on your companion/familiar and it disappears (Rp'ed as sent away temporarily), then when you want to call forth your companion/familiar... you activate the widget... then target the GROUND, and your companion/familiar re-appears.


-this would be VERY handy on Arelith, especially if you are HIGH rest, and want to re-call your companion after dismissing it for RP purposes.

what the companion DOES NOT do, is call forth a companion if you did not "LOAD" the companion INTO the Widget FIRST... also... you CANNOT load up your widget if you companion is not 100%/FULL HEALTH. -this means that you cannot use the Widget to call a companion more than once... and you cannot infinitely call a companion if it dies in battle etc... you can only CALL the companion with the widget if you FIRST loaded the companion INTO the widget. (see how that works?)

Definitely was an AWESOME tool for RP for players that like to RP with their familiars/companions, and it doesn't tie your companion to the "REST" function... and helps keep your companion out of trouble, and/or "STUCK" on a far side of a transition in a large area.

[Winter83]

As far as speech... what would a badger say? "I don't give a sh*t!", probably.

-companion *The badger ignores the guard who is making threats to step on it*

The point'd be that you can *emote* through your animal companion, not through your own character.
Similarly how familiars have a -familiar command that allows the PC to emote-speak through them.

I can imagine that using the -companion command would automaticaly turn everything
into the animal language. So if you keep an emote, then you would have a normal emote. But say you want your animal compnaion say something like "Danger" it will come through it in animal language.

[DaTexican]

I made this suggestion in the old forums, perhaps it's time to revisit it again.

I used to play on a server that had a non-drop item named "Animal Control Widget"

what this item did was a couple of cool things.

1) it would "CALL" your animal companion or familiar TO you. Why? exactly for the reason the OP stated. You could make your companion 'STAY' ... then move to a position, avoiding danger, or keep it away from accidentally aggro'ing something bad... then you activate your "Animal Control Widget" your cursor turns into a target, which if you click on yourself, your companion/familiar pops to your side.

2) If your animal companion is 100% Health, you can 'store' your animal companion/familiar in the Widget... Why? well, since you can only 'call' your animal companion once per day, but you have a reason to send it away, or if you have to go somewhere that doesn't allow "companions" you can activate your Animal Control Widget, and it turns your cursor into a Target. THIS time, you click on your companion/familiar and it disappears (Rp'ed as sent away temporarily), then when you want to call forth your companion/familiar... you activate the widget... then target the GROUND, and your companion/familiar re-appears.


-this would be VERY handy on Arelith, especially if you are HIGH rest, and want to re-call your companion after dismissing it for RP purposes.

what the companion DOES NOT do, is call forth a companion if you did not "LOAD" the companion INTO the Widget FIRST... also... you CANNOT load up your widget if you companion is not 100%/FULL HEALTH. -this means that you cannot use the Widget to call a companion more than once... and you cannot infinitely call a companion if it dies in battle etc... you can only CALL the companion with the widget if you FIRST loaded the companion INTO the widget. (see how that works?)

Definitely was an AWESOME tool for RP for players that like to RP with their familiars/companions, and it doesn't tie your companion to the "REST" function... and helps keep your companion out of trouble, and/or "STUCK" on a far side of a transition in a large area.

This. plz plz plz.