That's MY pet!!!!!

[Asperion]

Normal people have normal pets all over the world.  However,  supers tend not to have animal companions in any form. While Superman had Kripto, others were not as well known. Let's give every super their own pet. This pet can be any known animal granted special powers to match the super. Superman-Kripto is a great example. 

[death tribble]

Joan Collins as the Siren in Batman made Robin her pet.

[Rich McGee]

The PS238 comic/webcomic has Argo the Super Dog, an homage to Krypto who was genetically engineered with Argosian DNA (the setting's Supes cognate was an alien from the planet Argos named Atlas).  He was meant to be a pet for the young Atlas but his super-hearing was too sensitive for all the noise on Earth, and he was eventually allowed to retire to a underground bunker/doghouse on the Moon, where things are usually pretty quiet.  Atlas has long since gone home, but his former pet still likes the occasional visit from other supers.  He's a Very Good Boy, especially if you've just been stranded by sabotage to your spaceship.  He's officially the setting's only metacanine.

 

Mechanically, he's pretty much Krypto sans the heat vision and with some kind of drawback involving sonic effects.  Up to you how you model that - it's probably more of a long-term misery health issue than anything, but he might also take more damage from sonics in combat.

[Sketchpad]

Hawkeye has Pizza Dog, Power Girl has Stinky, Captain Marvel has Goose or Chewie, Falcon has Redwing, Batman has Ace and Bat-Cow (and Alfred the Cat), Mary Marvel has Hoppy, Kitty Pryde has Lockheed, the LSH had Proty, Superman also had Beppo the Super Monkey, Green Lantern had Itty, and Supergirl had Streaky and Comet (kind of). 

[wcw43921]

9 hours ago, death tribble said:

Joan Collins as the Siren in Batman made Robin her pet.

 

Beg pardon, but Bruce Wayne was The Siren's pet in that episode.  Robin wore earplugs.  Robin did become the pet of Marsha, Queen Of Diamonds, when he got dosed with her love potion.

 

I know this.  I saw the series when it was new.

[Hermit]

I've never seen a player buy a pet as a follower, but I have seen a few DNPCs that were house pets. Most of the time, it's just a beloved background aspect that is not a major game element and I'm good with that. A few times, a team even adopted a stray dog or cat.

 

IIRC, among official pet owners in the Champions Universe lore? Witchcraft has a cat

[dmjalund]

*Krypto

[Rich McGee]

9 minutes ago, dmjalund said:

*Krypto

I feel like there ought to be a super with a pet named Crypto.  Either an espionage/intelligence agent style superspy hero (for Cryptology/Cryptography) or a financial con-artist villain (for Cryptocurrency).

[Lord Liaden]

10 hours ago, Asperion said:

Normal people have normal pets all over the world.  However,  supers tend not to have animal companions in any form. While Superman had Kripto, others were not as well known. Let's give every super their own pet. This pet can be any known animal granted special powers to match the super. Superman-Kripto is a great example. 

 

I'm not sure what it is you're asking for. Do you want us to come up with pets for existing super heroes or villains? Do you want a list of existing super pets? Or just some ideas for appropriate pets for any super? Or new hero-pet teams?

 

What's the purpose of this thread?

[Asperion]

I am attempting to make the less well-known pets better known and introduce pets to those who don't have any pets. While those who follow these are aware of most of them, most people outside only know of Krypto and believe he is the only one if any exist at all. Let's introduce more pets for the supers that exist in published media and hopefully they will be brought into the actual comics. 

[DShomshak]

I would be very surprised if any comics creator follows fora for obscure roleplaying games. We may amuse ourselves, but I estimate the chance of affecting any existing title is approximately zero.

 

As for PCs having pets, in my Avant Guard campaign the hero Huntsman can summon a demon horse named Brimstone that carries him through the air. Written up as a Power, Huntsman is sure it's just a construct of magical energy... but wow, Brimstone, sure manages to look smug when women coo over him, pet him and try to feed him. Maybe Huntsman is projecting.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Rich McGee]

6 hours ago, DShomshak said:

As for PCs having pets, in my Avant Guard campaign the hero Huntsman can summon a demon horse named Brimstone that carries him through the air. Written up as a Power, Huntsman is sure it's just a construct of magical energy... but wow, Brimstone, sure manages to look smug when women coo over him, pet him and try to feed him. Maybe Huntsman is projecting.

The farm boy in me objects to calling a horse (even a demonic, probably sapient flying one) a pet, but I'll concede you can make an argument for it.  At least it isn't intended for the dinner table from word one the way my sister's lamb was.  One might reasonably wonder if Huntsman is the one headed for a dinner table, though. 

 

One of my players' character a couple of years back had a spirit hound living inside his soul that they could manifest at need.  At least sort of a pet, and capable of the stuff you might expect of a spirit hound - biting other spirits and people's embodied souls, ghosting through walls, running on air, being eerie and disturbing.  It may not have always been a dog, the thing was some kind of family inheritance from a multiple-great grandmother who'd been gifted the service of one of the Wild Hunt's dogs in perpetuity, and the Hunt usually make those out of people unlucky enough to run across them.

 

I've got another player currently who's player a magical ghost owl psychopomp.  The other PCs sometimes claim she's a pet or familiar to simplify explanations and keep people thinking she's just an animal.  There's also a pretty good Marvel Super Heroes podcast where one of the PCs is a telepathic cat named Mister Cuddlebear that also has a suit of feline Iron Man armor, which I presume is the result of Tony getting drunk in the engineering lab again.  Don't think either of those really count, though.

 

There was a PC in one of my M&M games an edition back who defined one of their condition-affliction powers as being paralytic venom from a flying snake pet they had a mental bond with.  It was just an effect mechanically but roleplayed as a pet.  I'm still kind of amazed I was the only other person at the table who even got the reference, given that she named it Pop just in case it wasn't obvious enough.  Guess no one reads Alan Dean Foster any more.  Their loss, his Humanx Commonwealth stuff was pretty fun overall, and deserved the GURPS book it got.

 

That's all I can dredge out of memory.

 

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I always thought super pets or animal companions were lame and cheesy, but I think it could be done right.  Falcon's hawk was not annoying, and Lockheed was pretty cool.

[Hermit]

 

Apparently Bat-Cow's power is to turn little assassins into Vegetarians

[Lord Liaden]

On 11/25/2023 at 10:19 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

I always thought super pets or animal companions were lame and cheesy, but I think it could be done right.  Falcon's hawk was not annoying, and Lockheed was pretty cool.

 

Then I'm sure you aren't a fan of DC Comics' Legion of Super-Pets, which greatly predates the recent animated movie, and was made up of actual super-powered animals (and one alien).

 

Hanna-Barbera animated studio was very fond of animal sidekicks in their cartoon series, starting with the dog Bandit in the classic Jonny Quest. Their raft of superhero cartoons from the mid-1960s-on often featured such pets. While later series played the animals primarily for laughs, such as Blue Falcon's cybernetic "Dog Wonder," others were relatively straight and sometimes or often helpful to the hero. That class includes Space Ghost's blue ET gadget-wearing monkey, Blip; Birdman's eagle companion, Avenger; Tog, the fire-breathing winged dino partner of the prehistoric superhero Mightor; and Samson's pet dog Goliath, which transformed into a huge lion which shot "power rays" from its eyes. H-B's Moby Dick cartoon actually swapped character roles, with two human boys being the sidekicks to the eponymous, virtually super-powered white whale.

[Rich McGee]

20 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

the dog Bandit in the classic Jonny Quest

AKA the worst part of Jonny Quest.    He was originally supposed to be a monkey and have a much more minor role, but the studio higher-ups insisted kids wouldn't connect with the show without a more relatable mascot.  Bah.  I want my monkey.  At least Dexter's Lab gave us Dial M For Monkey.  "Rasslor recognizes the spirit of the champion in you, little one."

 

22 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Birdman's eagle companion, Avenger

Go back and re-watch the series sometime.  If you go by who saves whose bacon the most times, Harvey is Avenger's pet, not the other way around.    

24 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Tog, the fire-breathing winged dino partner of the prehistoric superhero Mightor

Who was a transformer like Goliath, too - he powered up alongside Tor.  That cartoon was fond of riding pets in general - the "token girlfriend" had a mammoth calf and her "annoying kid" brother rode what was essentially an adorable miniature terror bird of all things.

 

30 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Samson's pet dog Goliath, which transformed into a huge lion which shot "power rays" from its eyes.

Also had a sonic roar IIRC.  Goliath is probably my favorite of the H-B super-pets, and if he got a little more screen time and wasn't transformation dependent I'd be tempted to say he straddles the line into proper sidekick.  As it is, he's still a pet but he's close behind Avenger for effectiveness.

 

Not sure where you put the various members of the Herculoids.  Probably none of them are pets, but some of them are arguably sidekicks or DNPCs.   

[Rich McGee]

1 hour ago, Hermit said:

Apparently Bat-Cow's power is to turn little assassins into Vegetarians

Didn't they recover that version of Bat-Cow from an illegal slaughterhouse or something?  Pretty sure the dietary conversion came from firsthand experience with an abattoir and the pet was a side effect.

 

Nowhere near as dangerous as the Tick's Man-Eating Cow, of course.  And the Chick Fil A super-cows from the promotional comics are nobody's pets.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Rich McGee

[steriaca]

Everybody forgets the most powerful pet.

 

Professor Peachbody aka the TTD (time traveling dog) and his pet cromagnum cave man boy Benji, from Gold Digger.

 

Which was originally based upon Professor Pesbody and his pet boy Sherman...

 

What can I say. It's Antarctica Press.

Edited November 28, 2023 by steriaca

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

Not sure where you put the various members of the Herculoids.  Probably none of them are pets, but some of them are arguably sidekicks or DNPCs.   

 

I consider the Herculoids including Zandor to be a super team. Yes, the "animal" members of the team generally did what the humans told them, and Zandor was clearly their tactical leader. Nonetheless, each Herculoid was obviously intelligent, resourceful, and fully capable of acting on their own initiative, independently or as a cooperative team member. Their humans' interactions with them came across much more as equals and friends, than as pet and master.

[Tech]

56 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

I consider the Herculoids including Zandor to be a super team. Yes, the "animal" members of the team generally did what the humans told them, and Zandor was clearly their tactical leader. Nonetheless, each Herculoid was obviously intelligent, resourceful, and fully capable of acting on their own initiative, independently or as a cooperative team member. Their humans' interactions with them came across much more as equals and friends, than as pet and master.

 Bravo! It's nice to see someone remembers them.

[Sketchpad]

6 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

Didn't they recover that version of Bat-Cow from an illegal slaughterhouse or something?  Pretty sure the dietary conversion came from firsthand experience with an abattoir and the pet was a side effect.

 

Nowhere near as dangerous as the Tick's Man-Eating Cow, of course.  And the Chick Fil A super-cows from the promotional comics are nobody's pets.

 

While not really a pet, I always preferred Hellcow for my bovine supers fun.

 

[Rich McGee]

The Herculoids are definitely a super-team and the adults are all members, but Dorno and maybe Gleep feel like sidekicks or mascots most of the time.  Open for debate, of course - they do get a lot of screen time.  Tara gets enough autonomy that she dodges the "damsel in distress" trope almost all the time, even if a lot of what she does is yelling for help (an entirely sensible thing to do when your allies are nearly-indestructible and you are a squishy human).

45 minutes ago, Sketchpad said:

While not really a pet, I always preferred Hellcow for my bovine supers fun.

Now how did I forget Hellcow?  I would have put him at the top of a super-bovine list myself until those Chick Fil A books came out, but those things are way better than they have any right to be.  Definitely not pets, though. 

[Lord Liaden]

10 hours ago, Tech said:

 Bravo! It's nice to see someone remembers them.

 

The Herculoids was far and away my favorite of the H-B superhero cartoon series. AFAIK it's a unique concept -- I've never seen anything else like it. I would have loved to see an official origin story for them, because their background is quite mysterious. The animals are unique creatures, while Zandor's family appear to be the only humans on planet Amzot.

 

I've been thinking about pets in the official Champions Universe. We've already had mention of Witchcraft's cat familiar, Sunshine. Robert Caliburn of Vibora Bay keeps a miniature dragon he calls Nicotine, comparable to Shadowcat's pet Lockheed. The Mexican superhero Macahuitl is accompanied by Timin, a "spirit eagle" gifted to him by the Aztec god of the dead. During the Hero Universe's pulp era, the mysterious fighter of crime mundane and supernatural, the Raven, protected Hudson City with the aid of, among others, his raven ally Cagliostro. While it's not exactly a "pet" in the traditional fauna sense, the robot Gokin is the companion and protector of the Japanese inventor hero, Gadget Boy.

[assault]

17 hours ago, steriaca said:

Everybody forgets the most powerful pet.

 

Scooby Doo?

[Rich McGee]

4 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

The Herculoids was far and away my favorite of the H-B superhero cartoon series. AFAIK it's a unique concept -- I've never seen anything else like it.

I'm inclined to agree, although I do have a soft spot for the Galaxy Trio, which seemed to be trying harder than most to actually have some plot and worldbuilding, so the gap between Herculoids and them at second place isn't as big for me.  The only thing that even sort of resembles Herculoids that I can think of would be Marvel's Brute Force, which certainly has the "strange super-animals" routine going on (cyborgs in this case) but is a little weak on the human side of things - and the animals talking ruins the effect.

 

I wonder, does Kaboobie over on Shazzan count as a super-pet?  I suppose it's not really a supers cartoon anyway - much closer to the formula of Moby Dick, really.  Or Dino Boy in the Lost Valley - which included its own pet in the form of Bronty.