this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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Depends entirely on the situation, really. Like a large castle is going to be relatively incapable of keeping out various wildlife on a massive scale, so a bird or rat running around isn't really an issue off hand. Maybe keep an eye on it to note any sus behavior, but otherwise animals exist. But if they're in sensitive areas, then it becomes considerably more alarming. Sure, it could just be a rat, but it also could be a fuckin' druid in which case killing the bird/rat/bat/whatever on sight might be a reasonable response. This also has the added benefit of allowing for a guard who might be a fan of animals and not want to hurt them, which gives the player an alternate path/chance to take things with.
I miss DMing
I feel like, related to this meme, cats in particular would be a lot more common, and trained to hunt pests. Sure, most people can't identify one rat from another, but they can identify cats. The cars kill infiltrators (druid or just pests), and they cut their numbers down so new ones are more obvious. They themselves are known to the guards so they know if some new cat appears.
The same is true for dogs, and they could sniff out intruders. They could also be trained to hunt, which could be useful for a different set of pests. I'd imagine, in this world, probably hawks or something would be really common for guard stations too, and people would be used to identifying them. They would have developed tactics to deal with this that aren't necessarily common or available in our world.
Druids keep their hit points, so it would be a very hard to kill small creature, and it has to be a pretty high level druid able to wildshape into a hummingbird. I don't think such small animals are available in the current version, a 12th level druid in version 3.5 can wildshape into a tiny animal, but I think a hummingbird would be a size category smaller than a rat, which isn't available until epic levels (beyond level 20)
Also a 12th level wildshaped druid is more than a match to anything in a castle. They have access to their magic after level 6. Igor would be in trouble