The Traits of a Pet

The Traits of a Pet
File:The Traits of a Pet (lorebook).png Hint: Discovered through Animal Handling
Category:	Stories
Area:	Serbule
Visibility:	Hidden Until Found

The Traits of a Pet is a Lorebook...

Content

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Prelude: Beginning Animal Handling

Neophyte animal handlers who want to use their pet in combat are often at a loss how to start. Well, that's easy: start by taming a pet. Each kind of pet needs a different taming regimen; talk to your local stablemaster to see what they recommend for your area.

Once you have a pet, take it into combat situations and let it fight! The important thing is to always feed your pet early on. Even if the pet doesn't seem to need it! This builds your bond with the pet and you'll soon learn other ways of interacting.

After you've learned the basics, like teaching your pet to Sic 'Em, it's time to start paying attention to your animals' traits!

Pet Traits

All pets have their own personalities, character, and quirks. Animal Handlers categorize pets by seven main traits:

Ferocity

Represents how threatening your pet is to enemies. A higher ferocity means your pet deals more damage with every attack!

Toughness

Determines the creature's maximum health. Tough creatures hang on to life even when they take brutal punishment.

Ruggedness

Is the pet's cantankerous spirit. In combat this determines their maximum armor.

Virility

Has very little effect on the battlefield, but is very important should you choose to branch into Animal Husbandry. Virility is the measure of how much your pet likes to breed, and how successful it is at reproducing. Pets with high virility are more likely to mate successfully, and they recover from breeding more quickly than other pets. Virility can also affect the sex of the offspring: a very virile pet is more likely to produce an offspring of the same sex.

Friendliness

Helps a pet bond with their current owner. As you care for a pet, you build up a special bond between that specific pet and yourself. A friendly pet will form this bond much quicker than an unfriendly pet. In addition, a friendly pet is more aware of their surroundings, which helps them evade burst attacks.

Enthusiasm

Is a rough measure of how much your pet craves excitement -- especially the excitement of combat. The more enthusiastic your pet, the more likely they are to really dive in and wallop the enemy, leading to more critical hits.

Intelligence

Helps the pet make the most of their experience with combat -- they learn more quickly. In addition, intelligent pets are more accurate with their attacks, which is helpful when fighting evasive enemies! Intelligence also has an important but surprising role in Animal Husbandry. When you breed two compatible species - like a bee and a wasp - the offspring will be either a bee or a wasp. The intelligence of the parents directly affects which type of offspring you get.

Trait Values

Each of these seven traits can range from 1 (very poor) to 100 (extraordinary). It's possible for a creature to have stats even higher than 100, but since values above 100 don't do anything extra, we represent that as "100+". Likewise, it's possible for a pet to be so bad at something that it's trait is less than 1, but numbers below 1 aren't any worse than 1, so we represent that as "< 1" ("less than 1"). 50 is the "average" value for each trait.

Traits are handy when comparing two pets of the same species, but less useful when comparing across species. Let's take Toughness, for instance: a grizzly bear with a Toughness of 1 would have 25% less health than a Grizzly Bear with an average Toughness (of 50). But that Toughness 1 bear might still have more health than a rat with a Toughness of 100! So animal handlers need to learn the ins and outs of each species in order to really make sense of trait numbers.

Traits are determined by the creature's genes, which means they won't change during the pet's lifetime (unless you're an insane wizard practicing illegal magic). So if you're going to train a pet for a particular purpose, it's wise to make sure their traits aren't terrible for that job. For instance, if you want your pet to protect you in combat, you want one with at least an average Toughness rating. But don't get caught in the trap of holding out for a pet with "perfect" genes. If you're taming wild animals, most of their genes will be pretty mediocre. You'll never find a perfect creature. And if you wait too long, you'll miss out on a lot of amazing animal partners. Remember that training will have a much bigger overall impact than the pet's genes! And your bond with the pet is what will truly turn you both into killing machines in battle.

Related Lore

Basics of Animal Husbandry

A book on advanced animal attributes.