Any way to get larger ranger animal companions?

[RangerWickett]

I'd rather like to have a mounted archer, but as far as I can see, my only option now would be to play a halfling or gnome riding one of the medium ranger animal companions. Has there been anything in Dragon or elsewhere for larger animal companions?

 

[frankthedm]

I'd rather like to have a mounted archer, but as far as I can see, my only option now would be to play a halfling or gnome riding one of the medium ranger animal companions. Has there been anything in Dragon or elsewhere for larger animal companions?

Odd, i though the mount rules required even small PCs to ride large mounts. Did wotc fix that in PHB2 or Martial Power?

 

[Caliban]

I'd rather like to have a mounted archer, but as far as I can see, my only option now would be to play a halfling or gnome riding one of the medium ranger animal companions. Has there been anything in Dragon or elsewhere for larger animal companions?

Not sure why it needs to be an animal companion. Nothing stops you from buying an appropriate mount and taking the mounted combat feat. (and halflings and gnomes still require large mounts in 4e - no riding your animal companion.)

I'm sure at some point there will be options for getting a larger animal companion (either via feat or paragon path), but none currently exist that I'm aware of.

 

[RangerWickett]

Well, normal mounts die very easily, and you have to replace them as you level up. I had a cool character once who had a trusted steed (Lone Ranger and Silver-esque), and I was wondering if such a thing was an option still.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It isn't an option by RAW. Animal companions were designed with balance vs the rest of the party in mind. There are a couple of issues WRT that which would come up if there were companion style mounts.

First of all there would likely be some level of advantage to the character while riding the mount. That might be able to be balanced out OK with a feat requirement or something like that, but so far WotC hasn't provided such a feat and I doubt it is likely to be forthcoming anytime soon since MP was the splat book covering rangers. Possibly they'll do something, but I don't see a scheduled product that looks likely to provide more ranger powers or feats. So I think you'd have to homebrew that one.

The second problem is a tougher challenge. Suppose you get a horse for an animal companion. What happens when you are in situations where you can't ride? That covers a LOT of the situations PCs are likely to be in. Horses or other large creatures don't do well in dungeons. They may not be very useful in towns either. If the character is on a ship, or flying, etc then again the mount most likely has to be left behind. A beast master ranger with no companion is sort of half a character. It kind of presents the DM with a thorny problem. Does he only design adventures involving mounted action? Or does he nerf one of the PCs constantly?

Note too that the opposite problem happens when the action is all mounted. The rest of the party may not really fit in with that sort of action very well unless ALL the characters are designed with it in mind.

This same sort of problem existed with the old fashioned 1e/2e paladin class. They had this fancy class feature that gave them a charger and it was supposed to be a central part of the character, but they pretty much never got to use it in most games.

All that being said, in a campaign with the right theme where the action is set up to cater to this kind of thing it sounds like it would be a cool option to have. If I was setting up something like that, I'd probably start out by making you take a feat of some sort to get a large ridable companion.

 

[Piratecat]

If someone in my game wanted to play a mounted archer, I certainly wouldn't mind them using the raise animal companion ritual to bring their favorite mount back from the dead. Not an ideal situation, but possible.

 

[Klaus]

RAW? Nope.

Not RAW? Create a feat called "Mount Companion". Your companion is now Large, and you can ride it. Since being Large provides no inherent benefit (as it did in 3e), aside from taking up 4 squares, that's all there is to it.

As for leveling up: anyone thought of including a mount in the party XP division and leveling it up? So your Warhorse (Brute 3) would remain 3rd level until you reach 3rd, and then get a share of XP to level up alongside the party. Optionally, at 10th level you could even take another feat (say, "Celestial Mount") and turn your warhorse into a Celestial Charger.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

RAW? Nope.

Not RAW? Create a feat called "Mount Companion". Your companion is now Large, and you can ride it. Since being Large provides no inherent benefit (as it did in 3e), aside from taking up 4 squares, that's all there is to it.

As for leveling up: anyone thought of including a mount in the party XP division and leveling it up? So your Warhorse (Brute 3) would remain 3rd level until you reach 3rd, and then get a share of XP to level up alongside the party. Optionally, at 10th level you could even take another feat (say, "Celestial Mount") and turn your warhorse into a Celestial Charger.

Yeah, if you check out the mounts section in the DMG it basically suggests that a mount which can operate independently and contributes to combat should be considered a 'party member' for XP purposes, and likewise opponent's mounts should be treated that way as well. Animal Companions per-se should probably not be simply because they don't have independent actions etc and are calculated into the power of the character. Animal companions actually do 'level up' though, so that is kind of taken care of.

Actually large is a fair disadvantage in 4e generally. Large creatures are likely to have problems in places like dungeons. They can squeeze enough to fit anyplace a medium character can for the most part, but aside from a rare case of maybe blocking enemies a bit better once in a while they aren't going to be as good underground or indoors as a smaller animal.

I was also thinking about what you could do for a mount to say make it able to fly, etc. There could be a few possibilities. A higher level ritual could work. That would be good for say making it fly, swim, etc. Magic horse shoes would do as well if you wanted it to fly or go across water. There could also be an unlimited possibility of 'companion feats' that give companions those kinds of abilities. I don't see why they would be unbalanced in general.

 

[Nytmare]

I had always assumed that they avoided mountable animal companions to prevent you from being able to squeeze extra movement out of the attack powers.

As an example, your mount moves with you on it's back, you use Enclose the Prey, and the end result is that you got a free movement action, possibly in addition to a couple of extra squares movement. It's not earth-shattering by any means, but it's definitely an advantage over someone who can't ride their companion.

 

[Mort_Q]

houserule?

I haven't read up on mounts at all, but if you just didn't allow the use of any powers that had the BEAST keyword while mounted... would that work?