D&D 5E (2014) Bear Riders, Griffon Cavalry, etc.

[77IM]

a thing of true beauty

I love this. Some initial feedback:
1. Class level to HP seems too small to matter.
2. Using your ability score for attack seems weird. Were there some creatures with attack bonuses that would have been too high or too low otherwise? Bounded Accuracy seems like it would make this generally less relevant.
3. A PrC that grants zero hit points is weird. Does it grant hit dice? I might recommend it give 3 + Con per level HP, 1d4+Con HD. Of course that will throw off the companion balance considerably.

 

[Dausuul]

1. Class level to HP seems too small to matter.

Character level, not class level (so a fighter 4/beast lord 1 would add +5). It still isn't a lot, but it helps survivability for the low-end companions especially.

2. Using your ability score for attack seems weird. Were there some creatures with attack bonuses that would have been too high or too low otherwise? Bounded Accuracy seems like it would make this generally less relevant.

Two goals here:

a) Provide another means of scaling the companion to keep it relevant at higher levels.

b) Less to keep track of. Since your best stat bonus is almost certainly your attack stat, you'll be using the same bonus for your own attacks and your companion's (unless you have a magic weapon or Archery or something).

3. A PrC that grants zero hit points is weird. Does it grant hit dice? I might recommend it give 3 + Con per level HP, 1d4+Con HD. Of course that will throw off the companion balance considerably.

Yeah, balance is why I'm reluctant to do this. For every benefit we give the PC, the companion must get a corresponding nerf; which means you have to invest more levels in the PrC to get the companion you want.

I prefer to keep the PC benefits to a minimum and make the companion as strong as possible. Then, as soon as you get the beastie you want, you can go back to leveling up your main class.

 

[ccs]

These are all fascinating Ideas, but I'm not sure they're addressing the big thing in the middle which is this:

If you travel alongside a dire wolf, and it fights alongside you, you're dealing +10 damage/round. With a brown bear (for BEAR CAVALRY!), it's +19 DPR. Even one of Hannibal's elephants clocks in at +22 DPR.

Like, raging barbarian at level 3 is doing about 10 DPR over the course of an 18-round adventuring day (ignoring, for the moment, stuff like Great Weapon Master). Just some Bob The Bear-Buddy With A Greataxe is doing 25 DPR, what with that bear next to him (who is also a handy soak for HP and attacks). That's fireball damage (this seems born out by Conjure Animals, a 3rd-level spell that lets you summon two brown bears for an hour if you maintain concentration, but notably doesn't let you summon an elephant, and you can't do it every round).

It's like one third-level spell each round for the entire day. That's not exactly something that can fit in a feat, and it's not well-balanced by gold costs or high requirements.

How do we bring Bob the Bear Buddy (or Ellie the Elephant Queen) in line with the damage that a raging barbarian can put out?

This seems to point to Ranger-style "giving up your actions to let your ally attack," but woof to that.

....maybe we gotta make custom "for PC's" monster stats? (Also kind of woof)

....maybe there is no real answer and these creatures will always have to be NPC's who eat up XP and can never become an option the PC's can take?

Your making the assumptions that the animal will always be involved and always hit.
And won't die....

You wanted rules.
I gave you simple. Others gave you complex. You've pretty much rejected them all.

Personally if I were giving out such companions? I'd do it how I've been doing it since 1e days.
Congrats, you've earned ______.
No extra rules involved. I'm the DM, it's my job to make sure future encounters will still be challenging. So if you've now got a griffin....

 

[Dausuul]

Another idea I just thought of for the Beast Lord: You can pick a higher-level companion, at the cost of limited availability. So if you want to start with a griffon or whatever, you can, but it isn't by your side at all times; you can call it X times per day for 1 minute. As you gain levels in Beast Lord, your companion shows up more and more often, until you reach the level where you can have it 24/7.

I like this because it avoids having to swap out companions as you level up.

It's like one third-level spell each round for the entire day. That's not exactly something that can fit in a feat, and it's not well-balanced by gold costs or high requirements.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. It is nothing like a 3rd-level spell each round. Assuming you hit 4 targets, fireball is 112 damage. And Dex save is usually a weaker defense than AC. And even on a successful save, you still take half.

Back-of-the-envelope calculation, a fireball deals 8 times as much damage as a brown bear. There's no comparison.

Don't get carried away here. A bear companion is powerful, but not nearly as powerful as you make it out to be.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Another idea I just thought of for the Beast Lord: You can pick a higher-level companion, at the cost of limited availability. So if you want to start with a griffon or whatever, you can, but it isn't by your side at all times; you can call it X times per day for 1 minute. As you gain levels in Beast Lord, your companion shows up more and more often, until you reach the level where you can have it 24/7.

I like this because it avoids having to swap out companions as you level up.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. It is nothing like a 3rd-level spell each round. Assuming you hit 4 targets, fireball is 112 damage. And Dex save is usually a weaker defense than AC. And even on a successful save, you still take half.

Back-of-the-envelope calculation, a fireball deals 8 times as much damage as a brown bear. There's no comparison.

Don't get carried away here. A bear companion is powerful, but not nearly as powerful as you make it out to be.

Even if you round it down to a second-level spell at-will, it's still something I'd hesitate to give someone at 5th level.

 

[77IM]

A classic 2nd-level damaging spell is scorching ray, which clocks in at 21 average damage before any special abilities. A slightly better spell is shatter, which only deals 16.5 damage on average, but can hit multiple foes, and still deals half damage on a successful save.

Meanwhile, your typical warrior-class, with a 16 Strength and Extra Attack and a greatsword is dishing out an average of 20 damage. At will. Every round. This is before special abilities like Greatweapon Fighting Style, and with only a 16 in Str when it could reasonably be 18 by level 5. A Dex 16 rogue with two shortswords is dealing 20.1 damage per round.

None of these things are bonus actions. But attacking with flaming sphere is, and that's only 7 damage per round (save for half). Spiritual weapon might be a more apt comparison since it doesn't require concentration; it's 7.5 damage per round, for somebody with a 16 Wisdom.

So it looks like breaking the action economy to deal damage is, at 5th level, around 1/3 your normal damage.

 

[phantomK9]

Personally if I were giving out such companions? I'd do it how I've been doing it since 1e days. Congrats, you've earned ______.
No extra rules involved. I'm the DM, it's my job to make sure future encounters will still be challenging. So if you've now got a griffin....

This is exactly how I would and am handling things. PURE ROLEPLAYING.

Let's see..
1) You have to find an animal.
2) You have to convince the animal to hang around you. (Maybe judicious use of Animal Friend).
3) You have to train the animal in the tasks you want it to perform. If won't know, come, attack, heal, stay, as soon as you get it.
4) During all this training you will need to pay for the care and feeding of your new friend.

I'm currently running a game of HotD for my son and two neighbor boys (ages 11 through 13) and they convinced an Ambush Drake to be their friend. So far all it does is follow them around for protection and food, but they keep working on training it...

 

[Dausuul]

Even if you round it down to a second-level spell at-will, it's still something I'd hesitate to give someone at 5th level.

When you're off by a factor of eight, that's not a "round it down" situation. That's a "stop and reconsider this line of argument" situation. You're basically just pulling numbers out of nether regions.

When I laid out the prestige class above, I put together a crude spreadsheet to compare a baseline fighter to a fighter-with-companion, accounting for the levels spent on the prestige class. What I found was that the fighter-with-companion has much higher DPR at the start of the fight (as you would expect). But that high DPR only lasts as long as the companion does! The companion's AC is terrible, making it a very attractive target; as soon as it drops, you're just a fighter who's down by however many levels. Then you have to make do with fewer attacks and fewer hit points than your baseline counterpart.

Now, I emphasize that this is a very rough-and-ready set of calculations. It fails to account for a lot of things, like the fighter's subclass abilities (which would tilt the balance toward the baseline fighter and away from the Beast Lord). And all the white-room calculations in the world may fall apart in actual play. But it does suggest that the prestige class approach is workable, at least.

 

[Sunseeker]

Can we agree that if everyone in the party has a pet monster of roughly equivalent power that they are all roughly balanced?

Sure, but that assumption is setting up a situation wherein, for whatever reason, one player can't get a mount, won't or simply, isn't interested in the additional management (raises hand). I like the Ranger as a class, thematically, in most editions as well as the Druid, but I've had no interest in animal companions since I basically started playing D&D. Even familiars sort of put me off. As @I'm A Banana points out, these animals can, on their own, do almost double the damage of players on their own. Unless completely rebuilt "mount" versions of these creatures are going to get made up that bring them in line with the player, but that still leaves you with a player basically gaining a DPR clone of themselves. Do we tell the guy who isn't interested in investing in Ride or Handle Animal, "So sorry, tough luck?" What do we do for the guy who just doesn't want to deal with it? "Tough that's how this game works?"

The problem then becomes, Bob, riding his trusty steed Seabiscut, will be shelling out double his usual DPR, which means we need to up the ante of your average enounter but +/-DOUBLE, especially if becomes 2/4, 3/4 or 4/5 party members. Three Kobolds becomes 6. 6 Kobolds becomes 12. What happens when the Boss Kobold makes a call that the lunatic on the bear is too tough for them and that they ought go poke Bill over there, who has nothing but his pointy sword to protect him? Suddenly Bill is in a really dangerous situation simply because Bill didn't want to hassle with the work required to earn, maintain and manage an animal companion.

I mean I agree getting to ride a Battle Bear into combat is fricken awesome. But perhaps it would be better for these to be special situational mounts, for attacking other enemies of the mount's organization, who themselves ride Battle Apes? Players would then not be required to manage a companion 100% of the time, players who don't feel like grinding rep would not be missing out on something for a majority​ of the game, and it would only require the DM to design specific fights to include these Battle Mounts, instead of upping the ante on ALL of them.

EDIT: there should also be some kind of downside to riding such a beast. A social one where you cannot befriend certain organizations anymore, or maybe they just can't fit inside your average dungeon crawl.

 

[77IM]

Well, as an example, my PotA group (I'm the DM) knocked over Feathergale Spire and managed to capture 1 trained hippogryph per PC. They've mostly used them for overland travel, although there was one cool encounter where a young blue dragon ambushed them in a cloud formation (it started dropping mounts using its breath weapon, leading to a very tense battle in free-fall at several thousand feet). A few of the party members have customized their mounts (the sneaky assassin taught his the Stealth skill; the tempest cleric bought his some very nice barding; etc.) but nobody feels left out or imbalanced. If one of them wanted to trade their hippogryph for a bear I'd probably be OK with that.