[RPG] Are purchasable animals overpowered

animalsbalanceeconomyequipmentpathfinder-1e

I have recently discovered that you can buy a large variety of rather strong creatures for very cheap amounts. A character that is moderately specialized in handle animal can easily get a +15 by level 3. And for the price of a +1 weapon, they can instead get a Mastodon. This monster of a creature has 14 HD and can reasonably be combat trained by the character. This monster has a +20 to hit, and does a lot more damage than anyone at that level should be able to pull off. This problem could be made even worse if the character making the purchase has access to a spell like animate dead. These are much stronger than creatures at the level it would be castable, and make for cheap strong minions. (Ignoring story consequences.)

Is there something I am missing about these animals and why they are priced so low in comparison to other equipment and gear that is much less powerful?

Best Answer

The part you're missing is

(ignoring story consequences).

I've played with a party who were really amused about the idea that they could buy an Elephant, and then did (and named it Bongo) and brought it along on their travels. The result of them doing this was:

  • losing a bunch of money on buying food and stabling
  • constantly having to think about how to bring it along to the next location
  • being trivially tracked by everything so inclined
  • having to deal with setting up camp with something that doesn't fit in the average camp site, let alone inside a Tiny Hut
  • having to run out of their Tiny hut to protect Bongo when they were ambushed at night, instead of just waiting it out
  • having to leave it behind with a bunch of magical wards whenever they approached any kind of structure

In the end, they had it for probably half the campaign and I think it got into combat only once. The rest of the time, it was just a huge headache to deal with all the logistical challenges of bringing a Huge Animal into any kind of place designed for Medium Humanoids.

They really loved that elephant though, so I'm glad they bought it ;)

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