Beast Masters and Dexterous Beasts

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh, I don't think the Sentinel one is in any way less capable in combat. As you say, very slightly more actually. Neither of them is worth actually occupying a power slot to be able to attack with though. The Sentinel design encourages actually using the companion since they don't have any vastly more effective encounter melee attack, but neither class relies on its companion for much of its combat power. They are both really utility features more than combat ones.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Many Dexterous beasts have things like faster movement speeds or something like that which might make them very unbalanced if they also got to add their Dex to damage with powers but many high-Dexterity beasts (such as the raptor) already have a lower base damage dice compared to their Strength using counterparts.

Here's the biggest thing to remember as you consider whether or not to boost Beastmaster damage: you don't need to worry about balancing any particular animal companion against the other animal companions... your only concern is balancing your beastmaster (and beast's) total damage against your other players.

If changing a raptor or cat's damage modifier in powers to DEX (rather than STR) makes them slightly more overpowered compared to the STR-using ones... that doesn't matter, because your game won't see any of the STR-using ones (and thus there's nothing to compare balance to.) What DOES matter is the balance of damage your striker beastmaster does against any other strikers in your group. If using DEX makes the beastmaster more comparable in damage, then you're fine (even if the raptor/cat now has more "goodies" than he ordinarily should have).