Leibniz Clockwork

Suppose, hypothetically, you were in a DnD game, and the druid summoned wild animals. All arcane links were broken, and she had no connections to these wild animals. They were just random wild animals.

Continue the hypothetical and that someone, perhaps an antagonist, cast ‘Root in Fear’ which is homebrew but does what it says on the tin. The only special thing is a screwy magic save based on Charisma, so all the animals either don’t roll or basically can’t pass. They were rooted in fear.

Now the barbarian obviously declared he picked up a badger and threw it at the antagonist on his next action. Obviously.

And took 1d8+1 badger damage.

The barbarian player argued that the badger should have to make a roll to hit. The hypothetical GM (DM, I guess. I think in GURPS) refused, the barbarian whined, and things continued as normal. The 1d8+1 was an hp tax for grabbing a live, terrified badger. (Side note: It’s ‘an hp’ in American English because we pronounce it ‘aich pee’, whereas I would say ‘a hit point’)

For someone who just picked up a live, terrified badger, the hypothetical barbarian whined an awful lot about how things weren’t going well. Dude.

But the GM insisted, much kvetching was done, and the barbarian took some damage and threw the badger at the antagonist.

The antagonist had Protection from Good up, which clearly did nothing to stop this angry, ornery, badgery-badger, which he (the antagonist) took to the dome. 1d8+1 badger damage to him!

The GM declared that since the antagonist didn’t remove the badger, the badger is still on the antagonist’s head, biting and scratching. The antagonist would take another 1d8+1 badger damage on the barbarian’s next action (this keeps up the feeling of player agency).

BTW, the antagonist had bonuses to concentration and high pain threshold powers, so he basically couldn’t lose concentration. But getting rid of the badger would take an action that required a free hand, which meant no spell casting, and 1d8+1 damage was a lot less than that barbarian was going to do if he closed.

The druid attempted another summon, I forget what (hypothetically), and got a pile of grass and flies.

Anyway, the barbarian realized he had just inflicted a DoT effect that was immune to Protection from Good. Obviously, he throws another badger. (I’m like, yeah, sure. There’s another around) 1d8+1 damage to him, but this stacks so the antagonist was taking 2d8+2 PER BARBARIAN TURN. The antagonist realized this was an issue.

The rest of the party was fighting a lich dragon. They’re around but otherwise occupied.

The druid said ‘Gosh Darn It’ and summoned more angry badgers on the Barbarian. She was helping.

The barbarian cackled like an idiot.

The antagonist decided to flee, but his concentration/focus bonuses are so high, he couldn’t.

Barbarian continued throwing angry badgers. Druid would have summoned angry badgers directly on the antagonist, but then she’d need to roll to strike. She can target the barbarian as a free hit, which everyone agrees is somewhat plausible. The barbarian’s a big guy, and he wasn’t dodging. He was actively grabbing badgers.

The antagonist realized this fight was really going poorly at 4d8+4 DoT stacks, popped smoke, and fled. (It took him a big spell slot which caused a bunch of plot stuff)

And naturally the party decided to keep badgers as pets. Naturally.

Now the GM wanted to refuse, due to the bookkeeping involved in multiple badger pets, but didn’t want to be unreasonable. The GM ruled that they can keep as many badgers as they want, but the xp for the battle will be shared equally among all participants, including badger pets. So the group will get xp/4 each with no badgers, xp/5 each with 1 badger, etc., up to a maximum of xp/8 each will all four badgers, which is where the battle ended.

Is that unreasonable?

Like, I don’t want to keep track of all these badgers. And we all know I’m going to be the one keeping track of the badgers!

Anyway, they (hypothetically) named the badger Floyd.