Keeping Close to Your Pets to see if They're Adventure Ready
/I'm a big fan of offbeat internet humour that brings game logic into the real world. The Unraveled series by Polygon has been doing just that for years. I've also learned a lot about video editing from its delightful host Brian David Gilbert.
My favourite episode of that web series also happens to be the one which links back to Dungeons and Dragons the most closely. The video is a few years old, but its mass of views keeps it immensely relevant and the activity inside is a lot of fun.
Pet Hit Points
Calculating your pet's HP and level is indeed a great way to become close and connected with your hair baby (or scale baby, or leaf baby). It's also handy to know the overall power level of all the people in your immediate party to make sure you're optimised for whatever chaotic mess the universe will throw next.
My Cat Mimi in her nest - photo by Adam ray
I think it's high time I did some animal magic, and calculated the HP of my cat Mimi. Mimi is one of my favourite people in the world. She was adopted from the Cat's Protection League, after being rescued from a not-nice start as a stray. She went from very wary, to very loving in a few months, but her natural instincts to hunt and be generally mistrusting of strangers.
So, we're going to apply a little gaming logic to get a scientific read on my cat's level and hit points. Obviously we have the stat blocks for cat's and dogs in the back of the Monster Manual but that's for NPC pets, a player character like yours and mine, as well as familiars and Ranger Companions have many more.
In terms of the classes which work best for pets; Barbarian, Cleric, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue, I feel that Barbarian is the best fit for my Mimi. She's not stealthy, she's very chatty, and she demands attention constantly.
my filled in data sheet for mimi - HP Behavior Data Sheet created by brian david Gilbert and olivia wang
She gained many points in funny vocalisation, and by lightly attacking for attention, she got quite a lot of XP in “impolite action”. She's recently been demanding playtime from us, and even though she has an array of sophisticated cat toys, her favourite is a length of elastic. The endless hours of her chasing the string instead of the bigger toys truly shows her uncaring towards smart things.
Number Crunching
When you boil down the actions, you multiply them by their weight, and you get your pet's level. Then a modifier according to your pet's type gives you your pet's HP in PC character terms.
I observed Mimi the cat for 6 hours and concluded she's a level 28 Barbarian. Which means, according to this table, she has a whopping 235 hit points. I feel closer to her all the more, just knowing this key and important detail, but I feel that some amount of power gaming is in order to up her numbers.
Now we want to hear from you. Will you do this calculation with your pets? What offbeat gaming logic do you think could be applied to normal life? Let us know in our discord server or in the comments below.
Adam Ray contributes much for adventurers here on Apotheosis Studios. As co-founder of fantasticuniverses.com, he writes about card gaming and PC gaming to a corner of the internet he carved out himself. On Youtube, he can be found game mastering for No Ordinary Heroes, or editing the antics on The Hostile Atmosphere. Follow his Twitter @IzzetTinkerer.
