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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jefe Bergenstein" data-source="post: 6531976" data-attributes="member: 31506">Those animals arent intelligent (6 Int), cant communicate telepathically up to 1 mile, cant speak, and more importantly, arent smart enough to give you a free "help" action every turn. It's better than a normal horse, unless you get stuck somewhere with no food lol, as the body disappears. What makes the beastmaster's pet so frustrating is while a bought mastiff can attack on its own (or at least, isnt specifically forbidden), the beastmaster's pet can't. Skeletons and zombies made through animate dead also get independent actions, and those also arent the bulk of a subclass feature! I think there's probably a middle ground for the beast to do something without going back to 3rd edition's druid summoner madness. Maybe act as a bonus action at 11th level, so you can shoot twice and have the wolf help/bite/whatever.  The steed can also have whatever gets rolled. You can dismiss it and fish for another. Once you get a keeper with high hit points, you can continue to summon it. It will eventually have less HP than the ranger's wolf at upper levels however. It mainly gets it to attack, AC and damage. What that does is keep the beast attack on par with just attacking yourself (2d4+2 vs your d8+dex rapier or bow). Assuming you take 2 weapon fighting as your style you can have the wold attack once, or you attack twice. So a damage loss. At level 20 the wolf is hitting for 2d4+7, on par with you and your 20 stat and a +2 weapon. Except the wolf doesn't have a magic attack, so will be dealing half damage vs a lot of things. Also, though relatively rare,  there are some things you simply don't want to bite (fire elementals or oozes).  And that's ignoring feats like sharpshooter, which will make it an even worse idea to give up an attack have the beast attack.    The rule states it adds it to trained skills and saves. Wolves have no trained saves (which I agree is pretty dumb).  So they are at base ability score on saves. So +2 vs those fireballs. And the paladin has telepathic communication. Not quite as good, but nothing to sneeze at. Again, the point is its CLOSE enough. For a good chunk of the campaign, it functions in the same ballpark as the beast companion. When you consider the opportunity cost, the steed is miles better. The ranger really needs colossus slayer or hordebreaker from the hunter subclass features to keep their damage respectable at upper levels, otherwise they have to burn hunters mark every fight to not quite keep up with the paladin's extra d8 radiant.</blockquote>

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