Rules

The Beastmaster’s Manual

Fantasy tales are filled with stalwart animal friends that are a vital extension of the hero themselves. Such paragons of virtue as Argos and Odysseus, Naga and Korra, and even Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. These obviously exceptional animals have that extra something regular examples of their breed and experience lack. 

In the rigours of Classic D&D adventures our animal friends do not fair well, being used for little more than luggage carriers, mounts for fast travel, or in bleak times, as emergency rations. It’s time for that to change. As the AD&D system stretched into the 3.x to 5th editions some benefits were bestowed on animal companions, granting them supernatural powers, but do you have to be a druid or a ranger to have a really cool dog? How come a sylvan scout cannot have a bear for a loyal friend?

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The Failure of Choice

With the Great D&D Module play through coming to an end before the end of the year, I talked to the group about what we should do next. When I put forward The World’s Largest Dungeon as an option, it was an instant winner. So, while the module playing runs down, players started talking about what they might like to play in the next campaign, and that’s where things started going sideways.

After debating on whether to use The World’s Largest Dungeon in it’s native D&D 3.5e or converting to Classic D&D, I recommended we go with 3.5e so the module can be enjoyed as intended. However, 3.5e isn’t a few books, but an entire library of books, and the options for characters started to really get out of hand. What follows is a severely truncated version of events and a few warnings about how too much choice can be crippling to the art of Role Play.

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