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Old 02-19-2019, 06:00 PM   #1
Bai Shen
 
Join Date: Feb 2019
Default Animal Companions like Oberon from the Iron Druid Chronicles

I'm running a game of 150 point characters with 25 points of disads.

Several of my players have wanted to purchase Ally's. The human ones are easy. Stat them up as a 37 or 75 point character and done.

However, other of my players want animal companions. When I try to build those out as Ally's then they all end up as negative point characters. I'm just looking for a normal animal with a slightly higher than normal IQ and perhaps a telepathic link.

I don't want to have the players purchase them as Signature Gear as they're more than normal animals. As the players grow in points I want to have the animals gain more traits and abilities.

How can I stat them?

Thanks.
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Old 02-19-2019, 07:51 PM   #2
dcarson
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Default Re: Animal Companions like Oberon from the Iron Druid Chronicles

A negative number is less then 25% of the PCs points. So a base of 1 point. Yes they are not getting the maximum possible out of the Ally cost but one point is cheap.
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Old 02-19-2019, 09:51 PM   #3
Kelly Pedersen
 
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Default Re: Animal Companions like Oberon from the Iron Druid Chronicles

GURPS Supers introduced a useful rule for low-point cost Allies, as well - fractional point values for Allies with 5%, 10%, or 20% of your point value, which animal allies can often fit into. ("Point Values for Dependents and Allies", GURPS Supers p. 68).

Another trick is to bump up the animal's point value a bit with traits that don't necessarily come off as "powers" or make them obviously non-animalistic. For instance, I prefer to set pretty much all animal allies at IQ 6, no matter what their "realistic" IQ is, because most people really expect animal companions to act at least that intelligent. Another good point-soak is to give them levels of Luck and Serendipity. Since as NPCs, they're under your control, you don't have to worry about high levels of either trait being too unbalanced, and you can use them to justify various "dramatic coincidences" that seem pretty common with animal allies.
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Old 02-20-2019, 12:08 AM   #4
Dalillama
 
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Default Re: Animal Companions like Oberon from the Iron Druid Chronicles

An Ally with a negative point value is a Dependent. Which is absolutely what Oberon is to Atticus. Dependent doesn't mean the same thing as useless, it just means that the PC is going to be doing more of the taking care of part of things.
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