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Beastmaster's animal companion: can it survive for 2 rounds?
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<blockquote data-quote="Juriel" data-source="post: 6371793" data-attributes="member: 68368"><p>Yeaaaah, this. It also has a ton of implications for non-combat, because the assumption that you have to hand-hold the animal companion every second of its life means... it won't be able to do much there, either. 'It takes no actions on its turn without you shouting at it' is pretty damning.</p><p></p><p>Even if the DM is lenient, and allows a thing like 'hey boy, go scout out the yard', and your beast runs into a single tiny aggressive rat there, either it has to come back or it continues its mission and comes back torn to pieces, because it just would not take a bite on its own, or even use Dodge/Disengage. Not that you could do get much info out of it without casting Speak With Animals, because what bond?</p><p></p><p>That whole thing, that you're not mentally connected in anyway, it's all within line of sight/shout - because THIS is the part where they need realism, but every Ranger gets spells anyway? If you ever get knocked out, the beast won't even move, because that also requires a nudge from you.</p><p></p><p>Compared to a regular trained animal, you lobotomized it in order to give it extra HP and proficiency bonus to things. Which you can make work for you, combat-wise, but you have to jump through weird game-mechanical hoops to do - you can only pick from a few beast options that are powerful enough, you need to get them barding, you keep sacrificing the animal near the end of the adventuring day because you can get another with a night's rest...</p><p></p><p>Note, that last bit? The text in PHB is ambiguous, as it says 'bond with another non-hostile animal' to replace a dead one, which implies you need to find one... So if your character concept is 'the Wolfmaster', and your wolf dies in the first combat of the day, and there are no wolves around the region? You're going to pick up random Tiny Scorpions or Vultures, if you can find/reach them, maybe. So you may not be able to even get ANY use out of your CLASS FEATURE for a few weeks, if the DM is being a strict rules-reader about it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Seeing how <em>everything</em> other than the animal companion gets treated as acting individually (whether it's a hired mercenary or summons, or even the weird sideline about mounts getting their own actions!), the mastiff would act on its own. Depending on its training, it could even do stuff like 'if I drop, come defend me', which is completely outside the scope of the animal companion.</p><p></p><p>Yes, it's a much cheaper way to get a BETTER end result as the animal companion (just missing out on HP and proficiency bonus, in exchange for vast amounts of utility and action space). If you were going to have Animal Handling as a skill anyway, you can get so much <em>more</em> use out of it than the animal companion out of combat.</p><p></p><p>So... Beastmaster archetype is only good for combat, and only if you minmax it. Which seems like a weird design decision...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Juriel, post: 6371793, member: 68368"] Yeaaaah, this. It also has a ton of implications for non-combat, because the assumption that you have to hand-hold the animal companion every second of its life means... it won't be able to do much there, either. 'It takes no actions on its turn without you shouting at it' is pretty damning. Even if the DM is lenient, and allows a thing like 'hey boy, go scout out the yard', and your beast runs into a single tiny aggressive rat there, either it has to come back or it continues its mission and comes back torn to pieces, because it just would not take a bite on its own, or even use Dodge/Disengage. Not that you could do get much info out of it without casting Speak With Animals, because what bond? That whole thing, that you're not mentally connected in anyway, it's all within line of sight/shout - because THIS is the part where they need realism, but every Ranger gets spells anyway? If you ever get knocked out, the beast won't even move, because that also requires a nudge from you. Compared to a regular trained animal, you lobotomized it in order to give it extra HP and proficiency bonus to things. Which you can make work for you, combat-wise, but you have to jump through weird game-mechanical hoops to do - you can only pick from a few beast options that are powerful enough, you need to get them barding, you keep sacrificing the animal near the end of the adventuring day because you can get another with a night's rest... Note, that last bit? The text in PHB is ambiguous, as it says 'bond with another non-hostile animal' to replace a dead one, which implies you need to find one... So if your character concept is 'the Wolfmaster', and your wolf dies in the first combat of the day, and there are no wolves around the region? You're going to pick up random Tiny Scorpions or Vultures, if you can find/reach them, maybe. So you may not be able to even get ANY use out of your CLASS FEATURE for a few weeks, if the DM is being a strict rules-reader about it. Seeing how [I]everything[/I] other than the animal companion gets treated as acting individually (whether it's a hired mercenary or summons, or even the weird sideline about mounts getting their own actions!), the mastiff would act on its own. Depending on its training, it could even do stuff like 'if I drop, come defend me', which is completely outside the scope of the animal companion. Yes, it's a much cheaper way to get a BETTER end result as the animal companion (just missing out on HP and proficiency bonus, in exchange for vast amounts of utility and action space). If you were going to have Animal Handling as a skill anyway, you can get so much [I]more[/I] use out of it than the animal companion out of combat. So... Beastmaster archetype is only good for combat, and only if you minmax it. Which seems like a weird design decision... [/QUOTE]
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Beastmaster's animal companion: can it survive for 2 rounds?
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