Did the author include this limitation for balancing reasons? Did they ever playtest it and find out, how basically useless and overpriced (animal bonding karma cost) it is? mundane animals are just so fragile compared to geared up metahumans.
Attuning a Gabriel Hound or a Barghest could eventually be playable, but a normal dog is a liability.



On a side note, I want to play this Mystic-Adept in a pirate based campaign:
Attunement (Kraken), Animal Empathy, Mentor Spirit: Sea, The Totem's Way, Power Swimming, Surge (Gills, Underwater Vision, Webbed Hand and Toes)


Edit: Street Magic says, befriending an animal is a Cha+Int (12, week) Test. Running Wild says, Animal Handling is used for befriending animals. Would you agree, that an Animal Handling (12, week) test is reasonable option?

i suppose that's a matter of perspective.

sure, you can't attune to a gabriel hound.

but you can attune to a heavily cybered, warform or chimeric critter.

as an added bonus, you also pay less to bond to a cybered-up critter.

that said... the main problem, imo at least, is that it doesn't really do an awful lot. sense link is nice and all, but... really? that's it? it doesn't even add to tests to train the animal or anything like that. totally not worth a metamagic choice, and being able to select paranimals wouldn't change that.

actually it does help a lot in training. Interval is halved, no retraining, and threshold divided by IG
The problem with heavily cybered animals is, that they go insane and can't be trained anymore, they only work for biodrones.

The option wasn't created for combat, but color. I can think of many uses for trained mundane animals who's eyes I can see through. Covert surveillance is just the tip of the iceberg.

1. Proof for that claim?
2. Why?

Think about it from the designer's perspective. The whole animal affinity thing is kind of cool, so people want to be able to have it. But gearing it to combat would be hard to balance because paranimals have wildly variable combat capabilities, while mundane animals wouldn't tend to last long. (At least in game. In real life, animals are more scary than in game because there's something about an animal carving you up with its teeth that instinctively gives people the heebie jeebies.)

So by restricting it to mundane animals, you avoid the possibly overpowered critter powers brought by paranimals, but retain the 'coolness factor' of the beastmaster. Mundane animals have their uses. For one thing, if chosen carefully, they are practically invisible. So they are good for discreet surveilance, package delivery, sentry work. And they will not trigger any suspicions based on EM signatures like a biodrone would.