LE Ranger's Animal Companion

[Shadow368]

Imagine an immersive way to tame and recruit critters from Markarth to the Pale. A way to recruit animal allies so you're not limited to Meeko, that other dog, or Dawnguard's Armored Trolls, as awesome as they can be. A method that fits the concept of a Ranger, one who goes and gathers advantages from the wilds, and uses them to their own ends.

 

Using the Illusion spell Calm, the effect from the shrines at the Throat of the World, or the Bosmer's racial ability, the player becomes non-hostile to a beast they wish to befriend.

 

They then interact with the calmed beast, and a type of food relative to the creature (wolves get raw meat, bears meat or berries, etc) gets removed, and a random number is generated inclusively between 1 and the beast's difficulty rating (wolves no more than say 5, bears maybe 10, trolls 20, etc).

 

The attempt is successful if the generated number is less than or equal to the player's level (So a level 1 player has a 20% chance to tame a wolf, level 2 40%, level 3 60%, etc).

 

The creature then permanently becomes an ally to the player, and takes up the animal companion slot. The creature's factions and such would need to shuffle in such a way that they don't immediately turn hostile to, or draw hostility from, normally non-hostile NPCs, such as those in towns.

 

As for dialogue, you could re-purpose the animal companion dialogue to make sense in general for animal companions.

[ErianDragonborn]

This is a very interesting concept. I might look into the dawnguard animal companions and see how they work... Or just figure out without dawnguard :) It should be doable.

[FoxyFullmoon]

Did you know about the mod Tame the Beasts of Skyrim? It does exactly this, in a slightly different way and you get ten slots for pets, without them taking your animal companion slot. There's even a questline to tame rare and unique animals, a quest to tame dragons, and a spell to control your pet like a playable character.