A unified system for pets?

Animal companions, familiars, and special mount all share some basic capacities -- like share spell and a sort of empathic link.

I was wondering about unifying these features to merge them three categories into one -- pet. Then, unique abilities of each (like the capacity to scry on a familiar) would become class abilities, rather than pet abilities dependant on class.

I would also remove the capacity to take a better pet at the cost of a reduced level for this purpose -- people would use the Improved Pet feat instead.


Does this seem a good idea worthy of being worked upon, or not?

Done something like it. And yes, it's a good idea, although you should note that animal companions aren't intelligent, get fewer special abilities, have no XP cost for death, but have much larger physical boosts.

Our version was first made for the Paladin's Mount back in 3E when it wasn't a summoned creature. Instead of the current method, where every third or fourth level they get a big boost and where you'd be dumb not to use the DotF rules for alternate mounts (especially Celestials), our system gave a slow trickle of abilities at every level and the base creature HAD to be mundane. I posted an early version on these boards as http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?t=48419
but it's changed a bit since then.

It's one thing we refused to change over to when moving to 3.5E, and now we're trying to roll familiar/animal companions into the same. It's pretty easy, for the most part, since very few of the abilities depend on being able to ride the creature. Familiars can actually use the same rules as written. Animal companions, though, can't, since they're not intelligent, but it should only take a slight modification.

Interested lurkers, better use this link:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=48419