Druid and animal companion

[acommonjoe]

hello All!!! I am looking for any and all info i can find. i just started playing a 3.0 D&D game as a 5th level druid. I am using a bear in combat. as mt protecter and as my damage dealer. I have 2 questions. THe frist is can companions use barding. I mean if a standard horse can use barding then i dont see why a compaion cant. I used the same restrictions that the druid had and mad it leather. Was curious what people thought or any rulings.

Second thing is my goal is to basically make me companion as bad @$$ as possible. pretty i am playing support to it and the members of my team with buffs/debuffs. Was looking or any feats that might make this a more effective class. (think of a hunter for those that play wow). Also are thre any magical items to buff a animal companion?

thank you in advance for any and all help!!

[StreamOfTheSky]

Yes, you can use barding. Armor in 3E only really has two forms -- for humanoid shaped creatures and other. Your companion would not be a humanoid, just as a horse, so the cost would be 2x, iirc, check the table in the armor section to be sure. If it's a larger size than medium, the armor will also cost more.

Not sure about items specific to animal companions other than a collar in Magic Item Compendium. I recall a wizards web article on what body slots of items different kinds of animals could wear, you should try to find that.

If you're REALLY set on buffing it, one of the things to do would be get the Exalted Companion feat from Book of Exalted Deeds. Getting the feat requires being paladin-level good, though, (and as a druid, you'd have to be NG alignment to qualify), so it is likely not worth it for you. That gives the celestial template at the cost of -1 effective druid level (similar to how getting a stronger animal works).

Generally speaking, you'll want to upgrade your companion for a stronger animal each time you can, because the xtra companion benefits for a black bear, for example, do not make up for the differences you'd get with a brown bear.

For class, check out the Totem Druid variant class. It was in a dragon magazine, I know it from crystalkeep's classes database, page 35. Here's a link to the pdf file: http://www.crystalkeep.com/d20/rules...asses-Base.pdf
IMHO, giving up all the versatility of wildshape for a single type of animal creature (bears, in your case, I guess) isn't a good trade, but the class speeds up when you cna get better animals of that totem, as well as other goodies like free natural spell feat and eventual ability to speak while "totem shaped." I had a "cat lady" druid with Tiger Totem, and enjoyed it.

[Runestar]

It is debatable if an animal companion can take the vow of poverty feat...

[StreamOfTheSky]

Originally Posted by Runestar

It is debatable if an animal companion can take the vow of poverty feat...

Don't I know it! Aforementioned cat lady had it, and I wanted it for her tiger, too. DM refused to budge, even though he could not make a reasoned argument rules-wise why. In my case, I had exalted companion feat, so my tiger was an int 3 magical beast. DM claimed there was a hidden int requirement to know right from wrong and thus be exalted. I shot back any old half orc could have int 3, and yet he'd have allowed such a person to be exalted. He thought it was broken for all the stuff it gave my companion. I thought it was fair to spend two (of an animal's only like 6 feats, tops, over the course of its existence) for VoP to make up for the fact his master couldn't drape him in magic items like a normal druid could. He said that has a cost to the druid, to which I went and used NPC gold values (as if the companion was a cohort) to show him that after level 10 or so (he was 11 at the time), outfitting a companion as a cohort would still only be ~1/5 of a druid's gold... blah. He didn't allow it. And I'm still upset about it.

/rant

On the topic of things that aren't explicitly off-limits but most DMs will not allow for a companion: Tome of Battle maneuvers! My DM actually did allow that, so my tiger took a bunch of Martial Study and Stance feats for Divine Spirit, and was going to get the tactical feat, too. That was one inspiring tiger.

[acommonjoe]

i will deffinately be upgrading animals. but i want to try and focus on one animal and i increase and go up the different types of bears pretty much say its the sam bear for story sake. i was allowed to use the improved animal companion feat so i have a brown bear. and want to increase it. I also saw i will get the awaken spell. gonna look into that too. see how i can apply that to the bear. i really want to just go up the druid line. I gave my character point blank shot and precision shot too. the dm allowed me to use a bow as a class weapon. so working on getting as powerful a bow as i can. i also maxed out ride as cross class skill. i am human but playing a smaller human. i hope to end game have this massive bear that he sends in to battle while he is on top of it. firing down arrows and casting spells. once i get up there. i will have m ride check reasonable enough where can do the mount dismount as a free action. that wat i can side down heal and climb back up. this is just a general idea about the class

[blargney the second]

A few ideas:
1) Find out if your DM will allow you to take Natural Bond for a straight druid using a higher-level companion. It's a feat from Complete Adventurer that increases your druid level by 3 for purposes of determining your companion's benefits.

2) Don't lose any druid levels - the higher level buff spells are simply awesome, so getting as many as possible as soon as possible is quite good.

3) You might think about having it pick up Improved Unarmed Attack. It would get all its BAB-derived iterative attacks followed by its natural attacks. Animal Companions get Multiattack for free eventually, so it's an even sweeter deal. If you find yourself using its improved grab very often, Improved Grapple is then a good one to increase its effectiveness.

I hope this helps!
-blarg