Rangers and Druids without animal companions

[Roman]

Yes.

To wit--

1st Wild Shape 1/day, size Medium only.
2nd 2/day
3rd Size Small
5th 3/day
7th Large
8th 4/day
10th Tiny
11+ as listed

Well, what I meant is enabling partial wildshape in exchange for giving up the animal companion ability - say a druid shifting to gain monkey's or ape's arms to gain brachiation style of movement, but otherwise remaining in his original form. Of course, this would need limits in order to prevent abuse.

 

[ZuulMoG]

Add Alter Shape to the Druid spell list, animal attributes only. (Probably already there.)

 

[Roman]

Add Alter Shape to the Druid spell list, animal attributes only. (Probably already there.)

This is quite a cool idea - and allow wildshape to mimick it of course.

 

[GreatLemur]

I have to add my support to the whole idea of making animal companions optional. I've always been kind of annoyed by WotC's weird love of pets as class features--five out of the eleven core classes get some kind of annoying animal sidekick--and it actually seems kind of flavor-inappropriate for defender-of-the-wilderness types to be ordering their innocent animal buddies into the line of fire. Kind of like PETA sponsoring dog fights.

 

[Astalanya]

I'm juggling with the same question myself. I really don't want to include the animal companion with the rangers in my campaign, especially since I've identified them as more of a guerrilla warrior type relying upon their skills and ability to work within the terrain rather than 'nature warriors with a spiffy bird.'

To date, I've had all of two rangers with animal companions and only one of those because he had failed to invest ranks in Spot, so a bird in the air was a convenience.

Personally, I've considered swiping a few of the Scout's abilities to meld together. Notably, the faster speed (which makes more sense for a ranger than a barbarian, but then again, I've got issues with the barbarian class), the potential for skirmish with greater limitations and potentially the blindsense.

Has anyone tried these in campaign? How have they worked? I've not used the scout, so I'm really unfamiliar with how balanced that tends to be.

 

[Roman]

I'm juggling with the same question myself. I really don't want to include the animal companion with the rangers in my campaign, especially since I've identified them as more of a guerrilla warrior type relying upon their skills and ability to work within the terrain rather than 'nature warriors with a spiffy bird.'

To date, I've had all of two rangers with animal companions and only one of those because he had failed to invest ranks in Spot, so a bird in the air was a convenience.

Personally, I've considered swiping a few of the Scout's abilities to meld together. Notably, the faster speed (which makes more sense for a ranger than a barbarian, but then again, I've got issues with the barbarian class), the potential for skirmish with greater limitations and potentially the blindsense.

Has anyone tried these in campaign? How have they worked? I've not used the scout, so I'm really unfamiliar with how balanced that tends to be.

Nice ideas - I have not tried any of them, but I do have experience with playing a scout - in fact I am currently playing a scout in one campaign. The scout is definitely not an unbalancing class and my character is probably the most 'underpowered' in the entire group of 9, but I like the scout for the flavour.