Do you have a party of players who want to befriend every critter and monster they come across? Then this collection is for you!
Including rules to allow player characters of all classes to adopt pets, five tameable pets from the Elemental Planes, new mechanics to help manage pets, motivated encounters to spice up random encounters with creatures, and ending with a mini-adventure featuring the eccentric Lady Philomina—who keeps rust monsters as pets.
Originally published in PDF in EN5ider Magazine, we're bringing you this collection of pet themed resources for your 5th edition games.
Gamemaster Characters: Recruiting Followers & Pets. After finding an orphaned baby displacer beast, enlightening the misguided apprentice to a mad wizard, or helping a lonely dire lion heal an injury making it aggressive there are many adventuring groups that won't want to abandon a wayward NPC or monster—instead they'll plead to include it in the party. Let them and use this section to guide the process, utilizing the mechanics for Morale, Goals, and Recruitment to determine how long a GMC (gamemaster character, one shared between the GM and the PCs) sticks around, how loyal they are, and when it's time for them to go. Designed by Tyler Omichinski, illustrated by Rafael Benjamin.
Player Pets: Rearing Wild Animals and Training Domesticated Animals. Rules for adopting, purchasing, and training pets, from dogs to wolves to giant fire beatles and constrictor snakes. How to gain their loyalty and teach them tricks or tasks, while ensuring that the Ranger's animal companion or spellcaster's familiar remains the more potent option. By Jensen Toperzer.
Motivated Encounters. Add spice and variety to your random encounters! This article helps you to randomly determine the aims and actions of encountered creatures with a table which covers 40 encounter motivations including merrymaking, suffering, wounded, escaped, and many more. Running into orcs is one thing; running into orcs busy constructing a shrine is another! By Connors; illustrated by Cat Lu.
Monstrous Menagerie: Elemental Pets. While elementals are fun creatures to include in a combat due to their primal powers, 5th Edition is sorely lacking in variety for them among the lower challenge ratings. This section introduces some new monsters to fill that gap: lightning sparrows, dust bunnies, bubble puppies, mud cats, and roots! These are somewhat whimsically-named creatures with cantrip level attacks, glass jaws, and unique death effects similar to mephits, allowing for them all to more flexibly fit into multi-creature encounters at even the lowest of levels. This supplement includes statistics for all 5 creatures, as well as a brief description of their habitats and behaviors. Written by Jacob Gobhar; illustrated by Herman Lau.
Mini-Adventure: The Lady of Rust. There's always that weird noble, right? The one that insists on wearing some obscure scent, or only eats pastries, or refuses to travel without their own carriage, or keeps rust monsters as pets. Eccentric people like Lady Philomina—who keeps rust monsters as pets. This peculiar woman's strange quirk has more motive than simply being unique and rich however, and the adventurers will gradually uncover it as they investigate the situation with local silver mines that has sent the local economy off-kilter. Designed by the lupine Will Gawned, illustrated by Guilherme Sommermeyer, with cartography by Dyson Logos.
- from the publisher's blurb