Toady, I know you're pretty busy with the update, which is looking really good by the way, I'm very excited about it. But I was thinking about animal taming in the future and wondered would it ever be possible if:
Some animals that can't be tamed could have tameable offspring if they're raised in captivity? Maybe even having successive generations raise this way being easier to tame, though that would need a failure rate for animal training which I don't think it has, but it would make more use of the skill levels.
Perhaps then exotic creatures could be tameable by highly skilled animal trainers rather than just the Dungeon Master, but this would make the Dungeon Master less special and I'm not sure how you'd feel about that (I always assumed the DM was meant as a bit of a D&D joke but if it becomes a position then it might make more sense to make him just another dwarf/noble instead).
And if the other weapons types are now usable by soldiers then maybe whips could be used by animal trainers, possibly only used when training dangerous animals and with a chance of hurting the animal, but also the possibility of having the animal attack it's trainer. It might make training a bit more exciting.
Also, someone who's played more than me might know this: can you find wild versions of domesticated animals? I've seen wild dromedaries and I think musk oxen, which are used by traders, but what about wild horses, cows, dogs, cats and so on? And slightly related, is there any way to view a war dog's kills?
Sorry that went on, it was only supposed to be the first question, but then that led to the next thought and the next and … argh! This game just has too much potential for awesome.