Sunday, January 10, 2021

Dog Moods

All dogs are good, but some are better at following an adventurer's orders. Dog "hirelings" do not have a loyalty score, rather they have a "good" score and a quirk. When given a simple order, roll a d6 and add the dog's good score. Higher is better. Most dogs range from -1 to +1 good. The goodest dog in the land might be +2. The gooder the dog is, the more expensive to purchase from a trainer. 

Roll a d20 for each dog the trainer is able to sell at the moment; the owner probably has a good idea of what kind of animal they're selling. Each quirk has an optional physical descriptor and an optional rule applied to it, but don't sweat these if you don't want to.

(Note: there is no reason you could not adapt this to all hirelings, but people are sometimes complicated.)
art by Eran Fowler

d20 Dog Quirks
  1. Curious: +2 Good when finding trouble.
  2. Quiet: can smell the dead from far off.
  3. Hard-boiled: +1 tracking and innate sense of justice
  4. Yippy: +2 Good when guarding, -2 Good when silence is needed.
  5. Stygic: can speak an obscure language, no sense of humor.
  6. Unflappable: +1 Good when traversing obstacles.
  7. Cowardly: won't get within 50 feet of evil smells.
  8. Growly: +1 Good to charge something.
  9. Shepherd: +1 Good to protect care hirelings and animals.
  10. Tendril'd: can read minds, no sense of right and wrong.
  11. Playful: +1 Good to charm.
  12. Terrier: +1 Good to attack small things.
  13. Coal Hound: unharmed by fire.
  14. Campaigner: +1 equipment slot.
  15. Comforting: grants a bonus on recovering from mental and physical wounds.
  16. Sensitive: detects diseases, pregnancies, parasites, and the like.
  17. Social: other dogs get +1 good when following the same order as this dog.
  18. Retriever: +2 Good when fetching something.
  19. Veteran: roll a random tall tale for this good good dog.
  20. Roll twice and combine.

2 comments:

  1. Have I gone crazy or does your d20 list only have 19 options? Am I losing my mind?

    ReplyDelete