Question about warlord's Commanding Presence ability

[Pielorinho]

Adamant Entertainment has released a Warlord class for Pathfinder. Its Commanding Presence ability reads:

The mere appearance of a warlord upon the field of battle has a positive impact among his allies. All allies that can see the warlord gain a +1 bonus to attack and weapons damage rolls. This bonus increases to +2 at 8th level, and +3 at 18th level.

If I'm reading this correctly, the warlord doesn't benefit from this ability himself. Is this correct?

Also, the warlord gains a bonus feat at 2nd, 4th, etc. levels. "The warlord must meet any prerequisites when taking a feat," it says--and then lists "weapon specialization" as an option. Strictly speaking, this means that a warlord could only take this as a bonus warlord feat if the warlord has 4 cross-class levels in fighter. This is technically possible, but seems really weird--it's essentially giving a fighter-only power as a warlord feat. Is this correct, or should the "fighter 4" prerequisite be ignored when treating this as a warlord feat?

Finally, the NPC cohort I'm statting up is a warlord 3/samurai 3. The character rides a giant lizard with stats based off a horse. Samurai gain an animal companion for a mount as though they were a druid of equivalent level. When writing this up, if I start with a default horse (the light riding horse), I end up with a mount significantly weaker than if I start with a heavy horse and don't apply animal companion bonuses to it. Is it legit, therefore, to start with the heavy horse stats and advance it from there with animal companion bonuses?

 

[Fooly_Cooly]

Hey. Now I'm not an expert but I've made quite a few of the tese guys. I started playing this class as soon as it ht the d20pfsrd. But yeah he doesnt get the benefits of commanding presence. It is in fact one of the ONLY abilities he does not benefit from. All his other abilities are" The warlord and his allies" This one is just "All allies who can hear and see." But as for the feat . Yeah. Any of those on his list that have fighter lvls as a pre req you ignore. I believe for the ones on his list you count his lvl as fighter lvls. If not then they just straight up ignored it wich I doubt .

 

[dragonis111]

I completely agree with what Fooly_Cooly said, your warlord levels are your fighter levels for purposes of feat pre reqs. Commanding presence does however affect only allies, but my one question is what if you are looking in a mirror during the fight? Does that buff yourself by a loophole in the RAW?

 

[Mad Hamish]

There's nothing saying that the warlord levels count for Weapon Specialisation or that he can ignore it so RAW he can only take it if he's got levels of fighter.
RAI is another question

 

[SteelDraco]

Characters are their own ally, so I believe he should get the bonus unless specifically excluded.

http://www.pathfindersrd.com/basics-ability-scores/glossary#TOC-Ally

 

[SteelDraco]

Regarding the mount question - there just plain isn't much of a connection between a normal animal's stats and its stats as an animal companion. No, this doesn't make any sense. Presumably it was done for balance reasons, though I question how successful they were. You don't base an animal companion's stats off anything other than the numbers given in the druid ability description. Note that the horse animal companion doesn't match either the light or heavy horse's stat line. That's just the way it's done. If you want a better base, pick a different animal to use from the druid list or write up a new "base animal" template. Some are just better than others. Most aren't big enough to be a mount until 4th or 7th level - only the horse and camel start as Large creatures.

 

[Pielorinho]

Ah--thanks, guys. I'm thinking I need to rewrite the character yet again, not having noticed the indiosyncratic stats for animal companions. Fun fact: only the horse starts at size large. Even tyrannosaurus rexes and rocs start at medium .

So, trying to figure out how to do this. On the one hand, the character is supposed to be primarily support/buff; we've got 2 melee monsters and an advanced roc animal companion in the party already, but very little buffing going on. On the other hand, I want the NPC to have a mount tough enough that it doesn't die in a single blow, and the extra HD for an animal companion really, really help with that. Also, the samurai ability to ignore armor check penalties to ride checks while in heavy armor is super-appealing.

Huh. It looks as though I'd be better off taking a single level of samurai just for the elimination of AC penalties on riding checks, and completely ignoring the animal companion in favor of a heavy warhorse: as near as I can tell, the heavy warhorse is in pretty much every way superior to a level 1 animal companion. Is this correct?