D&D 5E Druid with Animal Companion - how to build?

[bedir than]

She's definitely going to be a Druid or Ranger. They fit her passions, and as a first time player I'm getting the sense she wants something familiar.

I'm down to UA: Sidekicks or UA: Class Options

The figure came with a little stone creature.

 

[NotAYakk]

Circle of the Woods

Primal Companion

When you choose this circle at 2nd level, a Primal Spirit finds you. It takes the form of an animal companion. Choose Beast of the Air or Beast of the Sea from the UA-ClassFeatureVariants for the Ranger Beast Companion (https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/downloads/UA-ClassFeatures.pdf), but use your Druid level instead of your Ranger level, and otherwise use the Beastmaster Animal Companion and Companion's Bond from the Beastmaster Ranger.

Additionally, you can use a bonus action to expend one spell slot to heal your companion 1d8 hit points per level of the spell slot expended.

Primal Attack

Starting at 6th level, when you cast any spell as an action your companion can also expend its reaction to make an attack. In addition, your companion's attacks count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.

Elemental Smite

At 10th level, when your companion hits with a melee attack, you can expend a spell slot as a reaction. The attack deals an additional 1d8 damage, plus 1d8 damage per level of the spell slot (max 6d8). The additional damage is either fire, cold, poison, or lightning damage. Until the end of your next turn, any creature that hits your companion and is within 15' takes 1d8 damage of the same type.

Companion Form

At 14th level, as an action you can expend a use of your wild shape in order to become a Beast of the Land or Beast of the Air, as if it was your companion. While in this Beast form, you can use Elemental Smite on your own melee attacks (including the damage if you are hit), and your Primal Companion feature to heal yourself.

There, try that. (I basically mashed up the Beastmaster and the Circle of the Moon to make a new druid circle centered around a companion).

 

[Blackrat]

When my group switched from 3.5 to 5e and recreated the existing characters, I just gave the druid access to call familiar, told her the companion now used familiar rules and went with that. She had a hawk so it was a rather easy conversion.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I may have finally convinced my wife to try D&D. The mini I picked out is from the Wardling line at WizKids, because I knew that she'd want a companion (plus I guess it's just the two of us for a few more weeks). Thing is I think she's more of a Druid than a Ranger.

How would you build a 5e Druid with an Animal Companion via?

My current thoughts are;

• D&D Essentials/UA sidekick style
• Take Magic Initiate/Ritual Caster and call it a familiar
• Ranger 3/Druid X

Any other close to RAW paths?

One way to go is to give her a feat where she counts her MC spellcaster level as her Druid level for spellcasting, and build a Druid/Ranger, with the UA Beast of Earth or Beast of Air stats.

The feat effectively just lets her prepare Druid spells for those weird levels where otherwise she would have slots but no spells (which isn’t much of a feat, and the UA ranger pet works much better for an MC Ranger, because it’s easier to heal and Rez.

You could make the Spellcasting feat also let the pet use her total level for calculating HP.

A feat to make the MC math and stuff just work without confusion seems appropriate to me, and a custom feat is one of the least impactful home brews I can think of for this idea.