Animal companions for everypony AKA pets

Supid title minimum character limit.....

Are we going to implement a pets system, and if so do we have any ideas? I was thinking it could be an everypony Utility that provides some sort of bonus to something depending on the pet.

Thoughts?

Maybe it's a Talent you get from leveling up? Though, despite the pet episodes, on the whole it doesn't seem like any of the pets really do anything. Might be just as good to leave it as a purely flavor/stuff you own thing.

I actually thought about this idea for some time before metaphorically throwing up my hands and leaving it alone. Let me explain my train of thought:

I wanted choosing a pet to have an effect on gameplay to open up more interesting choices, but only a very small one so that pet-less ponies wouldn't be automatically handicapped compared to those with pets (since Twilight and Rainbow seemed to do just fine through the first season).

One thing I really like about the Pony Tales system is that, apart from some racial utility talents, characters are very, very flexible in how they can be built. You can choose any combat talents you like, there are a number of everypony talents, you can choose your Element, you special move, and so on. You don't have to choose between a cool character and a powerful one. The reason this works, I think, is because ponies are more similar than they are dissimilar (plus the ability to rename talents to give a better-fitting flavor).

Pets, on the other hand, are extremely dissimilar from each other. If pets are allowed in combat, how do you balance a pet like Gummy with a pet like Philomena? It would also complicate things a lot because it could potentially double the number of participants if everyone in the party had a pet. I thought about introducing a pool of combat talents just for pets (maybe utilizing more d4's and d6's for damage), but it would just seem weird to have Tank be able to do the same amount of damage as Winona or Philomena (now that we've seen the kind of stuff phoenixes can do). I thought about having specific combat talents for each kind of pet (like racial abilities) and just having some pets be more defensive (like Tank), but then you'd be choosing a pet for it's attributes, not for what kind of animal you want.

I considered having pets be more asymmetrical, having some be good at combat while others could have potentially unique utility talents and no combat abilities, but again, if you're a fighting type but you really love turtles tortoises you have that same conflict between what kind of animal you like and what kind of abilities you want to get, which goes against the spirit of Pony Tales.

Then I thought that maybe pets could be strictly non-combat, and just give an extra utility talent that could be chosen from a pool of pets-only talents or something along those lines. But it just didn't seem very realistic to have, say, a dog or a phoenix for a pet and have it standing around idly while its owner is fighting for their life. If Applejack got attacked by something you can bet Winona would be by her side.

At this point I came up with the idea that pets wouldn't actually accompany their owners, because in the show no-one's pets really accompany them on any major adventures (barring Owlowiscious in Owl's Well that End's Well). Of course, that left me with two additional problems: how having a pet that's left at home could have any effect on players, and how to balance the wide range of abilities among pets.

The final concept I came up with was that of Personalities. You could pick a pet and its Personality, which would provide your character with a small (probably +1 to one skill) bonus. The idea would be that dealing with your pet's personality would make your character better at something to do with it. For instance, having a pet with an Energetic personality could give you +1 to Stunts checks, a Nervous personality could give +1 to Persuasion checks, a Daredevil personality could give +1 to Heal checks, and so on and so forth. The main problem is that it works in a "you have a pet that you interact with at home but leave behind for adventures" sort of way, which might not work so well for characters that are wanderers or otherwise have no specific home. Adventurers would probably want to bring their pets with them, too, and it doesn't really take that into account.

So...that's about as far as I got before I started going 'round in circles mentally. I still really like the idea of having pets as I think it adds a nice bit of flavor, and I like the idea behind the Personality system I came up with, but I'm just not sure how well it would actually work in game. Perhaps it should just be a flavor thing for now, but pets could unlock additional abilities (or bonuses for their owners) upon level up. I don't know. Anyone else have other thoughts?

Hum, yes i see the problem. How do you make pets mechanicly important without them upsetting the balance of the game. And then theres the fact that the show hardly shows them anyway, implying that they are left at home. And it wouldnt make sense to bring your pet on an adventure, nor to leave it at home and still benefit from it.

Maybe if in game, you befriend an animal and you devlop some sort of bond with it, giving you its personality boost and then it moves into your house. That way it rewards roleplaying rather than character creation, and pushes the whole "friendship is magical" deal. And if we make the boost small, like a +1, and encourage it to arise in natural gameplay, for exmpale, fighting a manticore, only to discover it was hunting a rabbit who then befriends you. The pony who saved it would bond and gain something like 'the soul of the [personality] rabbit' getting a +1 to that personality boost. And then PH can discus what kinda pets players want/dont want and let them appear without diverting the game on a pet hunt. And the reason that pets stay at home is that whilst they love you, they are still independent beings.

Another thing to keep in mind is the talent Animal Speak. It might be kinda strange to have someone with that talent conversing with other ponies' pets even if they've never met before. Maybe if everyone got some sort of free, more powerful Animal Empathy specific to their pet...

As an addendum to my earlier post, it's possible to get rid of pretty much all the problems if pets don't provide any mechanical advantage and simply remain role-playing flavor. It's not quite as fun, but it does make it easier.

The idea of pets arising out of gameplay rather than being chosen at the start is certainly interesting and should probably be allowed no matter what is finally chosen for them mechanics-wise.