Shattered Kingdoms

Orac made a good point. He stated the following in a thread.

"You want to make SK more interesting, try balancing pets. There are pets out there that can kill a vetran level mercenary charcter, yes store bought pets. And there are pets out there that are useless and die right away. There are so many pets I want to use, like the pack of rabid dogs and some of the pets from craeftilin but they are to weak to be practical for any character that will engage in pk and alot of them don't bash.

If pets were more balanced this game would be alot more fun."

This is completely right. My GM bard got the hell beat out of him by a storebought lion. Now I know bards aren't front row material, but a pet that can beat up a GM light armored class that anyone can buy is a bit ridiculous.

Look at people who PK with terror birds and such. 5 attacks per round, berserk, etc. This is a huge issue because there are pets out there that dish out more damage than the person fighting with them. Not only that it's so annoying seeing everyone run around with the same pet because its whats in nowadays. Some restrictions need to be made regarding pets. They shouldn't be over a certain level and none should be able to berserk or so. That's probably a bit over the top..

But yeah. Something needs to be done about pets. Yes or no? Discuss.

I agree, especially about some of the cooler pets being insanely under power, like the energy mote in the Ch'zzrym bazaar.

Perhaps with an imm go-ahead (or without really), the 'idea' command could be used at the pet stores to flag pets for potential upgrades / downgrades.

I'd be very happy if pets were across the board balanced. There's so many awsome pets in this game that just aren't worth having because they just aren't any good for fighting.

There recently was a massive re-haul of pet stores all over the realms. To my understanding pets got categorized to
flying
mountable
able to bash
etc

I think that each pet can no longer have more than two of these attributes. Now as far as level adjustment is concerned I too think that there are some pets that are very low in level but there is a reason for their existence as well. There are some pets with special hides (energy, dragonscale, steel etc) that are designed to be low level due to these or similar advantages.
There used to be pets that could cast low level spells but that got (badly in my opinion) removed from the game.

There could be a level modifier so that low levels don't get to buy very strong ones (or have them steal their XPs while leveling) but it needs to be well thought of before it gets fleshed out, some people like having powerful pets at low levels.

The problem is, any pet can be powerful at a low level. Pets don't need to be absurdly weak, this is bad for low levels as well as casters because it gives a caster no time to react. At the same time, they don't need to be absurdly powerful either, like say the terror bird that people used so much. A pet that can shell out that much damage is broken.

There needs to be a balance. No pet should be weaker or stronger than the other, really. If they want to make pets with a poison bite or so, make it so they can't be mounted or can't bash etc. All pets though should cap at a certain level.

The birds are expert or vet (I forget they may be stronger) barbarians. They have the same damage output as an equal level barbarian griffon. Having equal level pets across the board would be pointless. There is probably north of a hundred different pets in the game and having them all equal would be the equivalent of having all the sandwiches in the world consist of White bread and peanut-butter. If you wimp store bought pets what then? What about things you can charm, dominate, tame, create or control. Would those get wimped? The terror birds, much like anything else when decked out with gs, haste, armor and or sanctuary are amazingly powerful. Are you saying that players who use their skills or spells to give their pets benefits should be punished? You can wimp pets but people will always find a way to make them more powerful then they already are.

I do not know how you were fighting the lion (did you accidentally attack your own lion? Did you get bashed at any point? Did you get jumped and were fighting two things, etc) however the solution is really simple. Go buy yourself a pet.

*Also camels, lions etc, dish out more damage then a lot of classes (without using spells).

Here is a stupid idea: All pets become Barbarian class, are given the same level as the owner when purchased, and can level up with it's master when he/she levels up. Of course there should be some sort of a level cap perhaps, not entirely sure where abouts though. I just feel when you purchase a pet it should be the same level as the one buying it.

Correct.