Allow Pet Skills while Crowd-Controlled?

[Tobias]

So, this has been brought up recently, so I figured I ask everyone:

Should you keep control over your pets' actions while your character is crowd-controlled (frozen, asleep, petrified, terrified)?

The upside of keeping control (as you have right now) is that, for example, some pets know poison dispel, so you can order them to dispel you, while you are afflicted by Nightfall or such. It also makes pets more valuable.

The downside is more a canon one - since you are asleep / frozen, you can't well tell your pet much. Though, technically you keeping control could be explained by you having taught your pet what to do some time in the past.


Removing control would be slightly more canon, but it would also make your pets less useful. In this case, asking your pet to use spells, or changing the option of auto-casting would give the "You are not in control of your actions." error message.

Keep in mind that even without having control, a pet might still auto-cast to remove Nightfall (if you let it do that), except that there is a chance it might have used the dispel to remove a different poison effect in the past.

[Orly]

If your pet is on assist and defend, it may remove the spell anyway, right?

[Tobias]

Yup - it may. But it might remove any other spells that it can dispel, too.

So for example, imagine you are poisoned, which greatly reduces nightfall duration - it might dispel that, and then the nightfall will stick on you for the full duration. Same for any magic dispels and embers / flash freeze.

By having control, you can disable the AI and tell it exactly what to do.

[Tobias]

Okay - the results are in, with no one being strongly opposed either way, and a slight majority voting for you being able to give your pet orders. So, this is how it'll stay. ;P

The canon explanation is that your character spent time teaching their pet what to do, so that when push comes to shove, their pet could help them.