I have a pal who wants a Construct Animal Companion.

[UnholyD]

I'll try to keep this short and sweet.
I'm playing a D&D 3.5 campaign with a few buddies of mine at college and one of my pals is playing a Ranger. Go figure, he wants a special Animal Companion, more specifically a Construct Companion, but this is of course because his Ranger is a Warforged, a Living Construct.
Now I've done my fair share of hunting through my vast collection of D&D 3.5 books and searching forums on multiple sites and still can't find any answers. What I'm looking for, is if there is a feat or something somewhere that I am missing that would greatly reduce the amount of work I need to do to help him make this happen.

Further information that could be helpful is as follows:
Yes, our DM says that it is ok for him to have a Construct Animal Companion if we can find rules allowing this. Or, failing that, if we can come up with a simple homebrew for it.
I, as the Orc Artificer, will also be the one tasked with making it so it's not as if we can't get it done. So, seeing as how I have to construct it in the game, I also wanted some part in making it out of game so I would know what I'd be getting into.
I've also been looking for Construct Templates that I could use and cannot find any besides Effigy and it is a poor choice for a Construct Template in my opinion for this as it removes the Base Creature's Int Score which removes all it's Feats and Skills, things that are necessary for an Animal Companion.
I've also looked at the Iron Defender Homunculus out of the Eberron Campaign Setting and think it would work well enough given how Homunculi have Int Scores. The only problem I'm running into is the Binding Ritual part of creating a Homunculus. It requires 1 pint of the "creator's" blood. Is there a way that I, as the builder of said creature, do all the work but instead of using my blood use the Warforged's "magical liquid essence" and bind it to him instead.
We've been homebrewing as little as necessary so anything out of "official" D&D 3rd or 3.5 Edition Books is our first choice. 2nd is if there's anything in a Dragon Magazine Issue somewhere. We don't have ready access to 3.5 content out of Dragon Magazine so I wouldn't know where to begin looking there.
Any help is appreciated and if any further information is necessary, I'm more than happy to give out what I can.

 

[Grogg of the North]

A couple of options:

1) Drop ranger entirely and play an Urban Druid. You can get animated objects as a companion. Get an animated object that's in the shape of an animal.

2) Look at Complete Warrior and the construct familiars. A spark familiar (looks like an eagle) might be a good jumping off point for making a tiger.

3) Half-Iron Golem from MM2?

4) What about an Ice-Beast from Frostburn. It's a construct but probably not what you're looking for as a warforged.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

The Urban Druid from Dragon 317 page 30 (or Dragon Compendium page 57, with companion rules on pages 60 and 61) can gain a small animated object as a companion. That's the only way I know of to straight up gain a construct as a companion for anything like a druid or ranger. Show it to your DM and see if the ranger can take it as a companion with ranger levels counting as half a druid's like normal?

If you want to delve into familiars then there are the guardian familiars detailed in Complete Warrior starting on page 118.

None of these constructs have Int scores, but that's solved by using the Soulfused Construct template from Magic of Incarnum page 196. Since that template has a listed LA of "Base creature +1" I'd say you could probably just treat your friend's druid level as 1 lower for the purposes of boosting the companion. If you're going the Effigy route then note the CR increase is +1, so combining the templates might simply result in lowering the ranger's effective druid level by 2 for the creature, which might not be a bad trade. Your friend might want to take the Natural Bond feat to improve the companion since rangers don't exactly have great companions.


All that is assuming you don't just rule that the ritual for the Iron Defender Homunculus can use the warforged ranger's "magical liquid essence" and then bind the homunculus to the ranger instead of an animal companion. To me it is a truly trivial matter to allow that use. After all, when making magic items it's possible to have two characters work on it. One can supply the spell, and the other can do the rest such as making a scroll itself or something. Just say that the homunculus companion gains HD as if the ranger is half an artificer's level and you're good to go.

 

[Luce]

May I also suggest looking at Dragon 341 as there are some articles on both wizard construct familiars and lesser golems. That might be a starting place from which to start building.

Also as templates go
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates
Particular: the clockwork variations:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/clockwork-creature-cr-2
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/clockwork-construct-cr-0
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/clockwork-creature-template-cr-1-tohc

 

[Jackinthegreen]

Pathfinder wasn't mentioned at all in the OP, so anything from it might not be allowed.

 

[Luce]

Pathfinder wasn't mentioned at all in the OP, so anything from it might not be allowed.

Several of those are actually from 3.X era 3rd party books. In particular Advanced Bestiary by Green Ronin (2005). In the end the DM has to decide what they want to use, and having more options to choose from may be beneficial. Also IME the gaming police is not going to come get you if you choose to take a existing concept (such as template) and modify it for home game use. As I said those are just my sugestions for staring points to use for ideas on which to build something that can work in the particular game.

 

[GSHamster]

Why not just use the stats for the regular animal, but tag it as a Construct instead of Animal/Beast? Use the same immunities/weaknesses as the Warforged character.

Essentially, the fact that the companion is a construct is 90% flavor. So just reskinning the regular animal will work for the vast majority of cases.

Then just use the Construct rules as necessary when it would actually make a difference. It's sort of like how for the most part you treat a Warforged as a regular person, with the mechanical difference only appearing in special cases.

 

[Greenfield]

There are rules for more powerful Animal Companions right in the core books. They compensate for the more powerful creature by effectively lowering the Ranger or Druid's effective level, for purposes of advancement benefits of the Companion.

For example, the Druid in our group has a tiger as his animal companion. By the book, he gets the companion benefits of a Druid that's six levels lower. That means less Natural Armor advancement, fewer bonus hit dice, fewer bennies all across the board.

 

[UnholyD]

A couple of options:

1) Drop ranger entirely and play an Urban Druid. You can get animated objects as a companion. Get an animated object that's in the shape of an animal.

2) Look at Complete Warrior and the construct familiars. A spark familiar (looks like an eagle) might be a good jumping off point for making a tiger.

3) Half-Iron Golem from MM2?

4) What about an Ice-Beast from Frostburn. It's a construct but probably not what you're looking for as a warforged.

1. Dropping Ranger Levels is entirely out of the question. His character is a Warforged Ranger named Ranger. It's kind of his thing.

2. I did look into Complete Warrior but considering they're familiars, I looked for other options before working on that.

3. Half-Golems require Grafts if I remember correctly so that's more pain than it's worth.

4. That only works if we have a ton of ice to make it. We are currently in an Elven forest. We have lots of wood and steel to work with.

 

[UnholyD]

The Urban Druid from Dragon 317 page 30 (or Dragon Compendium page 57, with companion rules on pages 60 and 61) can gain a small animated object as a companion. That's the only way I know of to straight up gain a construct as a companion for anything like a druid or ranger. Show it to your DM and see if the ranger can take it as a companion with ranger levels counting as half a druid's like normal?

If you want to delve into familiars then there are the guardian familiars detailed in Complete Warrior starting on page 118.

None of these constructs have Int scores, but that's solved by using the Soulfused Construct template from Magic of Incarnum page 196. Since that template has a listed LA of "Base creature +1" I'd say you could probably just treat your friend's druid level as 1 lower for the purposes of boosting the companion. If you're going the Effigy route then note the CR increase is +1, so combining the templates might simply result in lowering the ranger's effective druid level by 2 for the creature, which might not be a bad trade. Your friend might want to take the Natural Bond feat to improve the companion since rangers don't exactly have great companions.


All that is assuming you don't just rule that the ritual for the Iron Defender Homunculus can use the warforged ranger's "magical liquid essence" and then bind the homunculus to the ranger instead of an animal companion. To me it is a truly trivial matter to allow that use. After all, when making magic items it's possible to have two characters work on it. One can supply the spell, and the other can do the rest such as making a scroll itself or something. Just say that the homunculus companion gains HD as if the ranger is half an artificer's level and you're good to go.

I didn't think of Soul Binding. That solves the bulk of the issues with the creature. But, I still need to know if a Feat is in order which sounds to me it is.