Paladin/Druid companion question

[Omegaxicor]

I know that there are builds where a Xth level Druid and Yth level Paladin can have a mount and companion be one creature and gain benefits

My question entails two players one is a Paladin and the other a Druid now their backstory is basically best friends since...yada yada but I was curious about making the Druid's Animal Companion and Paladin's Mount the same creature

Since the Paladin won't get much use of it and the Druid will be a Bear (example) most of the time so riding it won't be much use, plus the rules don't say that a strong mount can't carry two PCs although I will look into that

Thoughts?

 

[Jackinthegreen]

I believe you're thinking of the Devoted Tracker feat which allows stacking Paladin and Ranger levels for the purposes of the mount/animal companion, since a character can't be a druid and a paladin without lifting or tweaking alignment restrictions.

Under the normal rules it is impossible for two characters to share the same animal for class feature purposes. One of them claiming the animal as his companion or mount means the other cannot designate that same animal for pretty much any class feature purpose. In short, this is not something the game was ever meant to allow. The companion mount would be more powerful than many characters, especially since a druid's companion already can be.

Personally, I would never allow it in a game I DM'd, nor would I ever -think- of doing that as a player.

There are several ACFs that let a paladin trade away the mount for something that will be useful more often like Charging Smite. The druid and ranger also have a few ACFs that can trade away the companion if the player thinks it's not their cup of tea. http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?PHPSESSID=b3cofcunvjgqqts7s570inec31&topic=7908.0 is a pretty comprehensive list of ACFs, and I'm pretty sure you'll find one that will work.

 

[Omegaxicor]

ah...I will look at that feat, I thought it was a standard thing, if you have 5 levels as a paladin and a level of druid you could designate your mount and animal companion as the same

EDIT: Yea, I did mean Ranger rather than Druid because the Ranger's Animal Companion is a Druid's Animal Companion but -3 level

EDIT 2: I have just read up on the ability and I never knew that it said "the ranger’s effective druid level is one-half his ranger level"

EDIT 3: Nowhere does it say that the paladin's mount has to be Lawful good, I thought it could be neutral good

 

[TKDB]

Well, it is worth noting that if you're stacking the benefits of the paladin's mount and the druid's animal companion onto the same creature, it's going to be pretty strong -- even stronger than if you were using the Devoted Tracker feat to get a companion mount. Remember that a companion mount typically entails splitting your class progression, so while the creature is getting benefits from both the animal companion and the paladin mount features, you're not getting the full benefits from either one of these features singly that you could as a single-classed character. The net result can of course still be better, but this is a fair trade for the other features you're losing out on for splitting your class progression.
Now, personally I don't imagine this will actually be that much of a problem, since while the creature would be stronger than either a druid companion or a paladin mount alone, assuming the paladin actually uses the creature as a mount this sort of setup would essentially (as far as character resources go) amount to depriving the druid of his animal companion to give the paladin a better mount. That sounds like a good move to me, since druids are OP even without their companions and the paladin could use a leg up (especially where their mounts are concerned). But it's worth bearing in mind.

As far as rules and mechanical logistics go, you run into a bit of a problem in that the paladin's mount is actually a summoned creature that only sticks around for a limited amount of time each day, and furthermore is treated as a magical beast for anything depending on its type (though it still has the HD, BAB, etc. of a creature of the animal type). Thus, by strict reading of RAW, a paladin's mount can't be a druid's animal companion (unless, of course, you get some kind of feat or class feature --or DM ruling -- that says otherwise).

As for two people riding the same creature, I'd say going by the way the rules regarding riding are structured it'd be more a matter of size than strength. A mount needs to be one size category larger than the creature wanting to ride it, and effects that care about sizes of creatures or objects tend to treat creatures as being equivalent to two creatures of the next size smaller. So I'd say that, although I'm not sure if this is true by RAW, it should be perfectly reasonable to let a Huge-sized creature serve as a mount for two Medium creatures at once.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

As I mentioned, you can't be both a paladin and a druid because of alignment issues. A paladin has to be lawful good, and a druid has to have at least one part of his alignment as neutral. There are the paladin variants in UA, but those likewise can't be druids too because they're alignment extremes.

Unless you're ignoring alignment restrictions, the only way for a character to be both a druid and a paladin is one of the paladin variants in Dragon 310 or 312.

 

[TKDB]

You may not be able to be both a druid and a paladin, but you can still have a comparable setup with an animal companion using a Paladin going into the beastmaster PrC. The prereqs for Devoted Tracker don't require you to be a ranger, just that you have Track (a feat with no prerequisites), smite evil (which you'd obviously have as a paladin) and wild empathy (which beastmaster grants). And the companion mount bit of it doesn't specify what class your animal companion must come from, just that you have an animal companion.

 

[Omegaxicor]

@TLDB yea I was aware of the points that it would be stronger which isn't that bad (I doubt it will be much stronger) and that the paladins mount goes away which I was just going to fluff over...

This is still in the "I'm just considering it" stage but I was wondering if the power boost would be too powerful early on or if there was another problem associated with combining them (you mentioned the Magical Beast/typical Animal issue which I hadn't considered)