Would you let a PC play as an animal?

Although I find this disgusting, i'm glad that these people can find their own special place to socially interact with one another without fear.

Not outside a real joke of a campaign

Yes it keeps the potential serial killers from becoming actual serial killers.

Ars Magica: Yes, as an intelligent Companion, but I'd make it clear that it would be incredibly awkward and resctrictive. Or just play a Bjornaer who spends most of their time as their heartbeast. I had a PC who did that. It was fine, as she could be human when she needed to be.

L5R: Dear Fortunes, no. Rokugan isn't even friendly to foreign humans, let alone non-human animals.

RuneQuest: You can be a duck.

To expand, our group dog had his own class with feats, skills and equipment.

>equipment: mouth
Something small enough to carry on his mouth, most of the times however he went biting.

>equipment: head
Helmets, he liked using a horned one for charging.

>equipment: right ear
>equipment: left ear
Rings, just like humans. They were pierced by them.

>equipment: neck
An amulet or magical necklace.

>equipment: torso
Torso armor.

>equipment: legs
Armor plates with boots.

>racial: scent
For being a dog.

>feats: iniative, run, track
>skills: hide, jump, listen, move silently, spot, survival, some others
Inspired by hellhound, he later picked other canine related feats.

He also carried a small pouch on his body, which he used to bring items to the party as a living mule. Just like those rescue dogs. He was rescue, tracking and attack dog at the same time.

Ah, he didn't talk. But we usually get what he wanted to say.

There's also the option of playing a Magic or Faerie animal, since they can usually get around the restriction of "can't speak or use hands."

Shit, with Magic characters, you could probably play a sword and have it turn out well enough if you had a group that was willing to work with it.

>play as a sword
>you can turn from character into equipment at will
Sounds cool. I'm gonna steal this.

Intelligent animals in ArM are usually Magic or Faerie, so I thiught that was implied. (Allowing Divine or Infernal PCs raises whole other problems that require solutions of their own.)

>living mule
That implies dead mules can deliver things

not a sexy one like that no

If you are a necro.

If they can't, you're not necromancing hard enough.

>not having a horse with CHA 20

Perhaps. Depends on the context--system, what sort of campaign, what sort of animal.

Considering that an example Grog given in one of the books is a normal dog, it's not even a given that the animal would be intelligent. I missed that it was there the first time around, so I wasn't sure.

Also, yeah, angels and demons really don't work so well unless you ignore a few assumptions or play some absolutely damned infernalists. There's also no proper rules, but you could probably mess with the rules for making Faeries for it.

Only if they're actually a Druid or a race/intelligent monster that has access to Change Shape

I completely forgot about Grogs. Although now that I think about it, if I every get to play in a sufficiently silly ArM game, I'm going to play a talking cow that unconvincingly insists it's a human. (Yes, it's a mediaeval version of the skateboarding cow from asdfmovie.)

Most animals could actually fit in most campaigns.

My horse was literally a DMPC. Animals can think and act by themselves, far more than just a line in the mount tab.

I played as a Watchwolf in a long-running Ravnica campaign throughout highschool. Basically a Dire Wolf with levels in Ranger and an Elven cleric for his rider.
Probably one of my favorite characters I've ever played in Pathfinder.
FYI I'm not a furry, but there was one in our group. I wonder if he was jealous I could pull if off without making it weird?

That sounds cool. Any specific encounters worth sharing?

i guess its ok as long as noone notices

>1491 D.R.
>not having a party zonkey as a feedless pack animal that never scares and runs off
shiggity

>Would you let a PC play as an animal?
>Would you let a PC play
>let a PC play
>PC
>player CHARACTER
>not player
No, I would never let a player character play a different game inside my game.

We chased Ulasht, the Hate Seed down Tin Alley. My Wolf ended up doing the most damage to the legendary hellion, but at one point I was flung off a cliff and had to rely on an unknown potion to save me. Luckily it was a random teleportation potion that the DM is personally fond of no matter the campaign.
We explored an ancient Rakdos Death Temple, and a player only lost a hand. It was full of insane ghosts and tortured zombies with metal spikes and shit for hands and feet.
We survived not one, but two zombie apocalypses both caused by a different guild. One was caused by Dimir agents to cover the breakout of a prisoner, and another was caused by Rakdos starting to wake up (thanks to one player touching heart-shaped crystal within that Rakdos temple.
My character was sort of like Scooby Doo with anxiety, since I wanted Watchwolves to not live as long as most other races. He's really concerned about growing old and dying without getting revenge for the Rakdos torturers that killed his former rider.
He also like to get drunk with the two Gruul members of the party, a mute barbarian and her scrawny goblin-blooded human skald buddy who translated for her when she needed to speak (which was rarely).

Probably not, but almost entirely because that's not an appropriate choice for any of the games that I'm running or have plans to run.

...

Friends invited me to a GURPS viking game that we knew I could only make like half the sessions to. So, it being GURPS and Vikings, I made a talking raven, who knew lore and stuff. So it was easy to be there for some games and not for others in-character. Was fun.

I always wanted to be an intelligent sword, though you'd have to partner with the right player.

In one Mutants & Masterminds arc we had a guy play an intelligent sword that possessed people. In another one we had a sentient car (another guy played his buddy cop). So yeah in a system where it works, sure. In something like D&D? Nah, it doesn't fit seamlessly into either the assumed to e or mechanics very well.

So like Megatron from Transformers?

Or half the characters from Soul Eater?

I played with a group in a piratey sort of game where one of the players decided to be a dolphin. The rest of us tried to persuade the DM against this, but he agreed. We worried that he'd be useless, since he wouldn't be able to do anything on ships or on land. DM and Dolphin guy just smile and say not to worry.
>worry.jpg
So everything is cool at first, friend 1 and I manage to steal a boat and friend 2 finds out where some treasure is buried. Dolphin guy somehow manages to buy himself a pistol and some rope which he makes us carry. When I ask how the hell he managed to buy, let alone carry, anything when he's a dolphin, the gm tells me to just relax. Keep in mind he can't even fucking speak.
Now it turned out that treasure friend 2 found was at a heavily guarded fort, so we decided to bail instead of getting killed, but dolphin guy gets pissed at us for "abandoning the mission", and attacks one or their ships. Unexpectedly, the gm rolled four sets of dice and said "The ship sinks, a massive hole torn in its side".
This russled my jimmies pretty hard, and I asked how the hell a dolphin can blow holes in ships, to which both the gm and dolphin guy answer "He's a monk".
At this point I'm trying not to be a dick to this clearly unwell person, so I just go with it. So now we're being chased by a small fleet of pirates, and our dolphin ally decides now that every one of them is on our tail it'd be a good time for him to run, and he swims off without us. Now both my other friends are mad, too, so we tell him (in character) how pissed we are. We end up getting our ship sunk, and friend 2 gets a broken leg, but miraculously we escape death and the pirates sail away.
Then we see dolphin guy. Friend 1 asks him to take us to land, but he says no. He then procedes to describe how he's going to rape us for mistreating him. I couldn't take any more and walked the fuck out at that. Haven't played dnd or anything similar since.

Fuck you Joe.

fpbp

IIRC, Blue Rose enables this kinda thing; there's setting antics and psychic powers involved, but it's part of the core book.

Then again, it's based on Heralds of Valdemar; let that color your opinion. It's also the setting that's best described with the word 'Venisonocracy'.

Then again, there is the obvious point.

>Humans are animals. Therefore, there's only a few systems where you can't play an animal.

I had a player argue with me for like two hours about how he should be allowed to play a fucking talking constrictor snake. Finally I just said fuck it and let him because it was 3.5 and I knew there was no way he'd survive even one full session.

He died the first session, in the first half hour then bitched at me afterward for targeting him specifically.

But like, what do you expect when you're a fucking giant talking constrictor snake with no class levels and you try to intimidate an orc tribe by "taking their leader hostage"? Of fucking course they're going to hack you up! And the party is not in any way at fault for not assisting you!

Maybe describing how the orcs turned him into "snake steak" and "making" the party dig in in a peacemaking bonfire was a dick move but it seemed funny at the time.

Sure. I had a player once who played as a swarm of semi-intelligent rats working in unison. They wore a trenchcoat.

Good players can do it well. Bad players are, well, bad. Nothing wrong with the idea itself, for most campaigns.

Personally? Yes. That's a character choice, and up to whichever PC is DMing for the party.