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Beastmaster's animal companion: can it survive for 2 rounds?
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<blockquote data-quote="Gargoyle" data-source="post: 6372221" data-attributes="member: 529"><p>The whole "buy a mastiff and train it to fight" thing is an interesting argument. Forget that the beast master is in the game at all for a minute. Would you let a player buy a mastiff and train it to fight? Maybe; I could see it if it fit their character concept and they wanted to spend the gold and downtime, but you'd be in your rights to say no. IMO the mastiff is there as a mount option for small characters. I'd treat a non-mount animal used for combat like a henchmen, which typically get a half share of XP. It's still annoying that such a creature might be more useful than the beast master's animal companion. So I'm not saying there is no issue here, I just that I think it's a bit less of a problem than people are making it into. I've never once heard of this problem of people training pets in earlier editions and ruining the action economy, and I don't see anything in the new RAW that makes it easier, so I guess I'm confused as to why this is a thing now, other than people don't like for their beast masters to have to spend actions (which I get, given the changes to the ranger, and as mentioned, lack of synergy). </p><p> </p><p>Now the deal with the spells like conjure elemental, that bothers me more, even if it requires concentration and a spell slot...economy of action is destroyed by those and I'm not sure how that got through even internal playtesting since speed of play was a primary design goal. Getting an army of elementals or undead to fight is not overpowered IMO, but it's annoying to wait on that player to take his turn.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Gargoyle, post: 6372221, member: 529"] The whole "buy a mastiff and train it to fight" thing is an interesting argument. Forget that the beast master is in the game at all for a minute. Would you let a player buy a mastiff and train it to fight? Maybe; I could see it if it fit their character concept and they wanted to spend the gold and downtime, but you'd be in your rights to say no. IMO the mastiff is there as a mount option for small characters. I'd treat a non-mount animal used for combat like a henchmen, which typically get a half share of XP. It's still annoying that such a creature might be more useful than the beast master's animal companion. So I'm not saying there is no issue here, I just that I think it's a bit less of a problem than people are making it into. I've never once heard of this problem of people training pets in earlier editions and ruining the action economy, and I don't see anything in the new RAW that makes it easier, so I guess I'm confused as to why this is a thing now, other than people don't like for their beast masters to have to spend actions (which I get, given the changes to the ranger, and as mentioned, lack of synergy). Now the deal with the spells like conjure elemental, that bothers me more, even if it requires concentration and a spell slot...economy of action is destroyed by those and I'm not sure how that got through even internal playtesting since speed of play was a primary design goal. Getting an army of elementals or undead to fight is not overpowered IMO, but it's annoying to wait on that player to take his turn. [/QUOTE]
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Beastmaster's animal companion: can it survive for 2 rounds?
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