the Jester
Legend
Yeah, no way would I allow this. It just seems horribly broken. A beast companion is far better than a feat. Far, far better. IMHO, at least.
Gaining a Beast Companion?
- Thread starter FreeXenon
- Start date
FreeXenon
American Male (he/him); INTP ADHD Introverted Geek
My PC is a sniper type, and just took the Superior X-bow feat. =)
I had considered the hybrid, but in that, if I remember correctly, I lose either the x-bow weapon talent or the cunning sneak feature both of which are important to my build and desired skill set. =( I have been quite tempted to give it a try though...
Perhaps reaching for beast companion is a bit of a reach. Perhaps there is a way to strengthen the bond, but not quite as drastically?
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AbdulAlhazred
Legend
A Beast Master's beast companion is really mechanically a class feature of the character, albeit one that shows up as a creature. Its balanced by the loss of other class features and in general the beast plus the character is equal to other characters.
By "animal companion" I would assume you mean a DMG2 style Companion Character. These are independent NPCs with a simplified set of character features. They have their own action pool and while maybe not AS powerful as a PC are certainly close and if designed with good party synergy will effectively add a full PC worth of capability to the party. For this reason they count AS a PC in encounter budgeting.
It would be perfectly feasible for a rogue to have a mount that was a CC. It will allow the DM more XP budget for encounters though. OTOH it could be interesting. CCs really are designed to either fill in holes in a party, add to the story, etc. The DM needs to consider how that effects the party dynamics if a CC is going to be 'owned' by one of the players, as its a lot like running 2 PCs.
You can also of course have an ordinary mount or working animal. These are going to be weaker and generally aren't going to be reliable combatants. They are more like equipment.
