Ranger Animal Companions

[WizWom]

In PnP D&D, a ranger could "attract" animal companions at L 9 or somthing.

 

They would have to go and serach them out, and befreind them, but once they had, the companion helped them.

 

Now, the game does NOT have the mechanics to handle more than one creature, but I think AddFamiliar() could be used to make animal companions stick with the party.

 

I suppose one could also do it for subdued dragons, or a paladin's Mount (not that that would be useful) or make a single major summons follow the party zone-to-zone.

[seanas]

heh: i'm getting visions of Charlotte. oh dear god, i'm getting visions of Charlotte.

 

FWIW, Charlotte is an NPC added by Shadows over Soubar - she's a ranger, and she has three animal companions. they're added/ maintained via baldur.bcs, and - leaving aside their laughably bad combat scripting - they cause the game to slow to treacle-speed. one of the very first fixes i made for BP was to remove those bloody animals: so please, use Charlotte as an example of how not to implement companion animals.

 

NEJ2 also adds a companion animal: it makes Boo a companion for Minsc, from memory using AddFamiliar() to keep track of Boo across areas. this component of NEJ2 (at least when it's played in BP games) is notoriously flaky. this would be another example of how not to implement such a component.

[WizWom]

Silly.

No additional scripting needed.

This would use the game engine Familiar slot, and the game engine would handle it automagically with existing code.

 

But it seems AddFamiliar() doesn't really work, so I guess it's a bust.

 

Likely AddFamiliar only works with creatures in the Familiar list in Baldur.GAM - no, using AddFamiliar() on a created PsuedoDragon did not bring it along on transitions from area to area.

 

Hrm, there seem to be some sneaky scripting tricks which I didn't account for. but the moving is done by the baldur.bcs for normal familiars - and I have no idea how the script variables are SET for those transitions to get triggered.

 

You _can_ use a ReallyforceSpell and polymorph on the resultant familiar to get a familiar that looks like whatever you please, but it keeps the familiar's stats. I suppose you could change those by script and/or spell.

[seanas]

But it seems AddFamiliar() doesn't really work, so I guess it's a bust.

 

Likely AddFamiliar only works with creatures in the Familiar list in Baldur.GAM - no, using AddFamiliar() on a created PsuedoDragon did not bring it along on transitions from area to area.

 

Hrm, there seem to be some sneaky scripting tricks which I didn't account for. but the moving is done by the baldur.bcs for normal familiars - and I have no idea how the script variables are SET for those transitions to get triggered.

 

as i said: this has already been tried, once with scripting, once using AddFamiliar(). neither gives good results. if it could work (without ugly hackjobs), that'd be great.

[Chev]

What about Boo?

 

Look at Boo in NeJ2