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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 7544883" data-attributes="member: 12731">The beast needs to survive fireballs, yes, but it needs more than that. It needs to bring enough offensive to justify the party bringing it along, without stealing the ranger's own action. You can't just take a wolf and give it 200 more hit points at level 20. At that level, having a single +4 bite for 7 damage would be a joke. What is needed is to first ensure the animal companion isn't significantly more frail than any other character - and I don't mean the wizard that avoids combat, I mean any other melee combatant since the animal companion is a melee combatant.Then all the offense upgrades that normally would have gone into the ranger chassis needs to be applied to the companion in a way that actually makes a difference. (You can't just increase the wolf's bite damage and keep the attack bonus at +4)In the end, you will find that you must choose between two things:* keeping it balanced by offering a weirdly underpowred ranger, beast or both* keeping it fun by offering a weak:ish (but still viable) ranger coupled with a melee monster of a beast (that's utterly incapable of everything else)To me the latter choice will mean more spotlight simply because the pet is there. Not only is it there, it's doing great stuff. And since the ranger can't come off as handicapped, the spotlight sum will have to be >1.For me, it's only when people finally accept this state of affairs as fundamental facts, and stop looking for solutions that aren't there, the development of a PHB Beastmaster replacement becomes truly interesting.</blockquote>

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