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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 5829655" data-attributes="member: 259">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 <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />.  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?</blockquote>