Listed conversions based upon Monsters & Animals

Bunny - Corsican Hare, the newest addition to the menagerie!!

Dodge 5
Listen 8
Stealth 5
Scurry 11
Jump 6

GiGi - Cave Gecko, a relaxed and caring protector, my first ally from back in my underground village

Dodge 1
Stealth 8
Climb 10
Jump 2

Luna - Chipmunk, an inquisitive and adventurous ally, the discovery of which prompted my voyage into the surface world

Dodge 5
Darkvision 4
Climb 6
Burrow 4
Stealth 4
Scurry 4
Jump 4

Thor - Congo Parrot, a smack-talking ex-pirate used to being the smartest one on the boat

Dodge 3
Sing 6
Mimic 5
Interact 3
Fly 3

Blaze - Capuchin, an inventive and driven street performer from the docks

Climb 8
Jump 4
Dance 2
Tambourines 2

Like An Animal - This makes Kumo appear more like an animal than a sapient being.  Other animals accept me as one of them.  City folk ignore me.  This is not a bluff (although Kumo is clever enough to have learned how to take advantage of it).  My high perception has me highly tuned into my immediate environment, moving in a deliberate and undistracted manner as an animal would.

One Body - DM Thoughts Requested, as I don't know your "brutality" level.  I decided Not to do the trainer-version of the beastmaster where I just assumed high lethality and frequent training of new pack members.  As a result, I will be trying to keep my pets alive.  The easiest way to make this realistic for low HP allies would be a skill that spreads lethal damage to other pack members, where the one being struck would still go unconscious but #Ranks of Vitality damage would divert to another pack member to prevent the first ones death.  As a Must ability, this might not always be ideal, but definitely feeds into the idea that we are like one entity.  The pack is of one body yo.

Dances - to be discussed in person, and likely won't make the level1 version anyway.  For now Kumo just likes to dance!!

Two Potential Flaws I have considered for DM review

Near-Sighted.  Penalty to spot checks, max 4 ranks, all XP from this spent on my other senses (scent, listen, tremorsense, pressure sense).  As a cave-dwelling and animalistic species, my senses are not focused on sight.  However not trying to be ridic with it so max 4 so i'm still +1 after my high Perc

The other one is really dependent on the type of campaign you are running.  for survival campaigns this is very appropriate, for city ones probably not

Specialized Diet  - only leaves and moss?  grass in a pinch?  maybe insects at lower levels
Rank 0 - Like most campaigns food is going to be irrelevant.  Therefore so is this Flaw; no XP, for flavor only
Rank 1 - It might be a problem in extreme conditions but wont come up very often.  safe for all campaigns
Rank 2 - My diet is enough of a PITA that its annoying to others, and requires weekly consideration.  only worth doing if everyone is tracking food, and i'm just needing to track at higher difficulty
Rank 3 - Now quantity is also a consideration.  Since I eat such nutrient-weak food, I need to eat a fucking lot of it; 3x's normal
Rank 4 - The highest level i would consider.  maybe only 1 or 2 plants on the island satisfy some weird nutritional requirement i have.  this is only a consideration if food will be a difficult problem for all party members.  otherwise it would just take far too much time to worry about and distract from the action

Specialized diet won't be good for this campaign. Food is too plentiful on the island. Variety isn't great though 🙂

Near sighted would replace your perception bonus on spot checks. So if you have 4 ranks in near sighted flaw, you would be -4 to all spot checks. 

If you could rephrase like an animal that might help me some. If you want like an almost charm animal effect (div based) that would be fine. The concept that animals would just like you because you're "animal like" won't work. Animals don't even like each other! This could be modified to a list of animals probably and there would still need to be a roll (higher DC for predators v prey).

One body will need a little reworking and possibly a second skill but basically ok.

"The concept that animals would just like you because you're "animal like" won't work. Animals don't even like each other!"

- Yeah dude this is definitely NOT what I intended to convey.  There is absolutely no charm effect implied.  Let me start totally over.

Picture an African watering hole.  You got both predator and prey animals, many of which are natural enemies, temporarily "tolerating" each other for the sake of access to water.  What would they not tolerate?  A human rolling up.  That would cause a significantly larger reaction, mostly the animals fleeing.  Even if something totally unknown rolls up, say a penguin, the reaction would be less intense than the human.  

In reality, a moogle is closer to a dwarf or a halfling than it is to a penguin or a koala bear.  Its sapience is far larger than the minor differences of no clothes and thick fur.  However, to the casual observer, I APPEAR more like a koala than a dwarf; in the way i look and even the way i move.  Both animals and humans are more likely to react to me like I'm a pet than a person.  Whatever that reaction happens to be, however, is still entirely dependent on that individual and how that individual would react to the koala.  Positive or negative.  

There are all sorts of reasons that this might not be campaign appropriate.  If its too much of a problem, this was never an essential part of the design and is easily dropped.  

This is, after all, the reason I as a player like building characters in advance.  It allows me to make sure I'm playing a character appropriate to the world, which in turn results in greater enjoyment of the character.

.

On the One Body, I went back and forth on a couple design implementations.  One of the weaker versions would require us to share dmg on Every Hit instead of just on lethal ones.  I didnt like it mostly cause it felt like just a lot more paperwork without a huge change in the final math.
Either way this was not a load-bearing wall either.  I'm not trying to be a necromancer siphoning lifeforce around.  

Most importantly, if you are doing a Low Brutality campaign, I don't even need this skill.  I was just trying to provide a lifeline to keep my peoples' alive in the case of a Medium/High Brutality campaign.  Cause I just don't really know where we are headed here in terms of some of these flavors and themes.

Like an animal is all good with that understanding. You will never get to a point (unless someone doesn't know what a moogle is) where you will be entirely seen as an animal. 

The dmg dispersal would only be on "lethal" hits and would not be subject to additional DR (it was already reduced by the initial creature getting knocked out. 

I haven't really talked with everyone yet but I believe that permanent death will be a thing. 

Intro to Dance

Although Kumo will primarily be a melee(s), I wanted to find some way to incorporate the moogle dances.  Some key notes on them as they appear in FF6 included: high variance, failure is common, but results are disproportionately higher to compensate; yet even the outcome is random (although always positive on a success in the originals). 

This randomness got me thinking about fae powers, summoning spirits, and the type of non-predictive outcomes that can be the result of fickle outside powers.  While moogles themselves are rarely expressed as having fae qualities, they are frequently linked or presented in similar context and environments as wild spirits.  

I'm envisioning the moogles with a very Abzan culture (just replace "desert" with "arctic desert").  As such, rather than trying to incorporate all 8 dances, I think Kumo will be focusing on the three dances that make the most sense for his people - both on the color pie and in terms of the natural elements of his homeland.  (Kumo himself is not Abzan, although the culture of his people has clearly influenced him in this way).

So end result: 

Kumo performs a dance summoning local fae/nature spirits to do a variety of effects.  For simplicity, those effects are randomized by tables, however the DM always have final say should the actual spirits of the location decide to make their will known in a more profound way.

Although the dance requires an action to perform (successful or failure), on success the dance is maintained as a Stance.  This is most relevant for the buffs/debuffs but for consistency could apply to the active actions as well as long as I choose to repeat the same dance maneuver.  The biggest limitations being 1) can never gain an extra action or any of the other nonsense MTG players attempt to apply to legalistic interpretations and 2) would still need to go back to the table to change the dance.

The three dances would be

Wind of Change Rhapsody (a mix of healing and destructive auras; nuker-style favoured soul)

Twilight Requiem (subterranean combat is swift and lethal; offensive magic and debuffs)

Snowman Jazz (the powers of unity and teamwork make strength of adversity; mostly buffs)

chart randomizers are the next step to be built, but I'm going to lean into both literal and interpretive translations of the originals https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Dance_(Final_Fantasy_VI)#Dances

Safeties are not allowed on magic this Wyld

question for both DM and other players:

how do we feel about avatar animals v regular animals?  is a sparrokeet or a lemurmonkey particularly adding to or subtracting from your immersion in any particular way?

i'm slightly leaning towards regular right now...  but there's a ton of potential going the other way too...   what's the fanbase think??

Im always down for a duck-goat.

realized i was kinda using "Share Senses" as both a share physical senses and share memories in my head cannon.  So spent my last xp to separate them out and just have both as different skills doing each thing.

New Skills:

Poison Resist - years of licking everything in my path has resulted in increased tolerance to irritants

Stealth - (realized i forgot this in the initial build when i went to consider sneaking up on formians with 2 agility and no skills >< )

Thinking Outloud:
a lot of the palladium beastmaster focuses on clerical stuff on the assumption you were using packs of wolves/bears/dinos/etc to go out mauling your enemies with a group of melees while you sit back and heal them.  clearly not my focus.  one part of the cleric side does sound good though.  debating some sort of animal-only resurrection skill, as i remain concerned a single well placed fireball will just nuke my entire party.  maybe i can only do it to my own familiars rather than any animal to keep it less world impacting?  of course then Kumo would think it should work on the yeti too 😛  if it was less clerical and more gaian-connectivity this would make sense "why" i could do it as they are part of my "one body"
here's what one would look like based on a translation of the palladium version. 
Beastmaster can breathe life back into any animal that has been dead less than #Ranks hours and is reasonably intact.  Can only be attempted #Ranks/Day.  DC = 10+#AnimalRank (so 1 for a sparrow, 6 for an elephant)
on the other hand, if you prefer i go closer to full cleric if i'm going to be rez-ing shit, then this would look like adding beastmaster skills for Negate Poison & Cure Disease; and have the dragon teach me that cool cure light wounds trick.
Feel free to nix the entire idea if it is either inappropriate or unnecessary.  improving my sensory capabilities is my actual priority at this particular time; this was just what stood out from the book version as of potential value

I'm ok with a very narrow rez skill. The DC would definitely change depending on how it was killed. It's a lot easier to revive a bird that got stabbed than it would be one blown up. I'm going to think on the other numbers but I like the concept that they are kind of like an extension of you and that's why you are able to bring them back. 

Kupo, kupo!

Cool i'll flavor it "Revive Body" so if part of my One Body stops responding i can hopefully wake it back up.  DC based on degree of mauling makes sense  

Monk Dodge - Kumo is so tuned into his environment that he knows precisely how little movement will successfully dodge an attack (+ Avoid capped by Perception)

questions on Bunny the brown hare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsican_hare
is this a fair analog for the species?  the most common brown hare is bigger than your estimate but this one looks pretty close to your description for a smaller female.    

Bonding it - i'll still give others in the group a chance to claim a pet first, since i think everyone should have friends, and they dont have as many as me so they need to be catching up!!  but totes i'll bond Bunny to the pack if no one else claims her.

Should she be a 1 Rank or 2 Rank pet? 
She's kinda on the borderline, so I definitely need DM feedback in this decision.  Traditional hare brains (i.e. fucking stupid) would be Rank 1, but its size does push it a little closer to Rank 2.  I'm totally fine with another Rank 1 pet, as I'm cool with a lot of those.  If we thought going Rank 2 makes more sense, then I think the best way to balance that would be to lean into either/both of exceptional running/jumping/boxing/athletics and/or intelligence closer to that of either an IRL rat or a cartoon/mythological bunny (which tends to be rather clever).  which could fit with why i think she's so cool too.  maybe huge biting teeth 😛  look at the bones!!

We are going to go with rank 2. I specifically choose this one for it's speed (45mph)

nice yeah reading one of the varieties "can outrun every predator except a cheetah" even i was impressed.  and 45mph is something i can derive a legitimate number off of (+22 woot)

added stats up above for my newest addition:

Bunny - Corsican Hare, the newest addition to the menagerie!!

Dodge 5
Listen 8
Stealth 5
Scurry 11
Jump 6

I went with "Scurry 11" instead of "Run 22" since the Sprinting Specialization is likely were we want to be living anyway.  Both work out to 45mph at 1 Str for short distances.

Perceived Weakness - Cap Perc, uses advanced senses to pinpoint target's weaknesses, providing bonus to Damage on deliberate strikes