

The only real major hiccup is that a lot of pet-like NPCs aren’t intelligent enough and don’t understand speech.
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To interact with them, the PC must convince the pet to aid as they would anyone else, and the DM dictates the results. If they are intelligent and understand language (e.g., a baby dragon), they are literally just NPCs – the players can interact and coordinate with them by talking and controlling them through game mechanic skills, like persuasion and deception. Pets as NPCs are simple to manage – you just treat them as a character that is moving with the party. You’ll find that there’s a spectrum of rules that address both of these situations – and many in between.

On one end, you have a pet that is more or less part of the game world that the DM entirely controls, and on the other, the pet is integrated almost completely in a PC that the corresponding player controls. These two perspectives are two ends of a spectrum between DM and player control. Even during “social interactions”, an animal companion’s personality is more a reflection of their PC than an independent creature. A beast master’s animal companion is an extension of their corresponding PC, being controlled directly by them and also a significant part of their powers and personality. If a player adopts an owlbear cub and wants to raise it, that player’s interaction with the animal is going to be similar to interacting with a character, albeit an adorable, ferocious, and unpredictable one.Īlternatively, you can think about pets as features – integrated parts of a Player Character (PC). One way is to treat them as NPCs – individual semi-sentient entities that the players interact with and the DM controls.
