D&D: Five Ways to Care For That Monster Your Party Adopted
D&D parties adopting some weird little gremlin monster is a tale as old as time. But here’s what to do when it happens to you.
Play more than one game of D&D and you’ll stop being surprised when the party sees some horrible little or big monster and decides that, despite having met them for only a day or perhaps even fought against them for two or more rounds, they would murder the world to prevent harm from coming to them. Maybe you found a Cruthik that followed you home, or a tiny Xorn that just wants to eat your coins. Maybe you found a Grey Render. Or a Girallon and realized it could wear a friendship bracelet from each member of the party.
What the monster is, doesn’t matter. But what do you once you’ve adopted a creature? Here are some handy things.
Teach it some Tricks
The first thing every party should do once they’ve adopted a monster, is try to convince the DM that the Animal Handling skill is at play here. Now, in order for this to work, one of you needs to be proficient with the Animal Handling skill, otherwise any arguments are going to fall apart.
But often, just having the skill and wanting to use it is going to be enough to convince most DMs to let you teach your purple wormling how to burrow through the ground leaving a little bugs bunny style message that says “hello”. Or “some pig”.
And generally the more useless in combat the trick, the easier it is to convince your DM. Do stuff like this and your monster, suddenly, has a sense of personality. And the DM will have to play it, but it’s a win-win scenario. Your monster gets cuter and the DM has an NPC that YOU ALREADY LIKE that they get to play.
Get some Equipment Made
A big part of D&D is that it’s basically just playing dress up but with extra steps. So yeah. Take some gold and your most persuasive character to a blacksmith or leatherworker or whatever and commission them to make some kind of equipment for your monster. Armor is probably a safe bet, because that’s a big part of their appearance.
But maybe you want a special saddle. Or a bed for them. The more personalized gear you have for your monster, again, the more of their personality you’re kind of establishing at the table.
Maybe find a Disguise?
The less cute looking the monster you’ve adopted, the better, for this one. Yeah this is a piece of equipment, technically, but figuring out a disguise so you can bring your Bulette into town and convince everyone that it’s a kind of weird horse or something, is not only hilarious, but you’d be surprised at how many DMs are just waiting for the excuse to put a hat on an animal in a weird but fun way.
Communication
It’s worth it to pick up a spell or magic item or something that lets you communicate with your monster. Telepathic communication is great. But so are spells that let you convey something to your creature. Maybe you never know what it’s saying exactly, but something that helps your party communicate with the wild Yrthak they’ve just adopted is a great way to establish a rapport.
Know how to save it in Combat
Finally, even if you adopted the monster with the express purpose of not having it in a fight, that just means that at some point, the bad guys of your campaign will try to kill it. So have a plan to not only keep it safe from all harm, but also how you’re going to save it even if it gets surrounded or captured. If it dies, that’s weirdly, easier to deal with, because once you get past 5th level, death isn’t as big a hurdle as it is, but if someone starts capturing or brainwashing your favorite monster? You gotta shut that down before it can even happen.
