PC of the game I just acquired has a few Roc’s he want’s to train. After some back and forth I noticed that animal training says animals can learn up to 2d4 tricks. War mounts need 8 tricks.
Plain and simple I would roll them and that’s how many ticks they can learn but they are Sentient and theoretically smarter than normal animals. Cab they learn more tricks or only the best of the best can become Warmounts?
Also how long should it take for a Roc to reach Adult hood from freshly hatched? Looking at the Black Vulture, a 8 – 9.5 feet wingspan, weight: 15 – up to 27 lb creature that becomes a fledgling in about 100 days seemed the best place to start. Should it take longer than that or shorter?
This actually reminded me of a semi-related question that I never remembered to post.
How much should an untrained or young (or, most likely, both) animal/monster cost?
Thanks to D@W we have costs for fully trained everything, but not the untrained ones.
(This came up when we found a hydra’s lair, snuck in, and looted its eggs. The hydra was pretty mad about it, but a quick web spell blocked the passage long enough for us to run away. Our Judge came up with a price, and this was all resolved months ago, I’ve just always been curious what the ‘official’ number would be.)
All of this information is being compiled in Lairs & Encounters!
Lifespan: Lifespan indicates a creature’s age at the end of each age category, in order Baby/Child/Adolescent/Adult/Middle Aged/Old/Ancient. For instance, if a creature’s lifespan is designated 4/8/12/24/36/43/50 then it is a baby from 0 to 4 years; a child from 5 to 8 years; a youth from 9 to 12 years; an adult from 13 to 24 years; middle aged from 25 to 36 years; old from 37 to 43 years; and ancient from 44 to 50 years. Creatures with short lifespans tend to be more valuable as babies and children, while creatures with long lifespans tend to be more valuable as adults.
Adult/Child/Baby Value: The typical market price in gold pieces at which an untamed, untrained creature of that age could be bought or sold. Adolescent creatures are priced as adults. Eggs are priced as babies. If the value listed is “-“, then untrained creatures of that age are essentially worthless. As such they will not usually be available to buy, as supply doesn’t exist without demand.
Creatures that mature quickly are generally most valuable as children. At that age, they can be readily trained and then quickly put into service, owing to their short age-to-maturity. Creatures that mature slowly and/or are expensive to maintain are often captured as adults. The additional time and cost of training an adult can be worthwhile if it will take a young creatures years to mature, during which it must be fed and cared for. Elephants, which take eight years to mature, were captured and trained as adults for this reason.
Giant Roc: 22/45/250/450/785/1000; child value 238,000; egg value 119,000
Large Roc: 11/22/120/220/385/500; child value 68,000; egg value 34,000
Small Roc: 7.5/15/82/150/262/375; child value 24,750; egg value 12,375
Rocs are sapient so all of them can be trained as war mounts.
Hydra: 3/6/33/60/105/150; hydra eggs would cost 225gp to 2,225gp each, for the 6- to 12-headed hydra.
Dang. That really outstrips the treasure type of the adults.
Small Roc: (I,M): ~11,250
Large Roc: (K,P): ~22,000
Giant Roc: (M,P): ~25,000
Hydra: (I or K): 3,250 to 5,000
We’ll have to add a “Mating Season” entry to each monster, because Knowledge (Fantastic Biology) is about to become the sages’ go-to.
Notes on incubation times for the egg-layers would be handy (and size of egg!), mainly because of all the hilarity included for a pack of adventurers trying to care for the eggs, and an unexpected hatching (of basilisks) while trying to get them to a market that can buy them.
What we really need now is some sort of fantastic creature that replaces one or more eggs in someone else’s nest, and all of a sudden something with a breath weapon or save-or-die pops out of a harmless cache of roc eggs, or what have you.
Like cowbirds do…ok, just looked that up. Brood parasite is what that’s called.
Lairs and Encounters was already the Autarch release I was most looking forward to.
You’ve manage to heighten that anticipation even more.
I love Dwimmermount and consider it one of the most fantastic sandbox settings ever published but my favorite thing about its release is the way you folks are now free to devote your time and energy to other projects.
I am sure certain monster rights groups will argue just that!
But yes, the D@W Campaign book states: Creatures of sentient intelligence can be bought and sold as property (slaves) only in chaotic realms where slavery is permitted. Otherwise they must be hired as mercenaries.
