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<blockquote data-quote="MechaTarrasque" data-source="post: 7477756" data-attributes="member: 6801226">Also the traditional image of the beast master is a guy with his wolf or tiger (with a couple of ferrets and an eagle--serious how did find familiar not get on the ranger's spell list?), and wolves and tigers are pretty.&nbsp; Don't discount the power of cute!&nbsp; If the image was of a ranger with a nasty feral hog or crocodile AC, we wouldn't be having this conversation.In the first world, most people tend to encounter animals as pets or pests, and utility animals are fairly rare.&nbsp; That means that a lot of people don't have the experience of valuing an animal for what it can do as much as an existential regard.&nbsp; From that mindset, a ranger that allows his/her AC to die is in fact Michael Vick evil.&nbsp; This has grown over the years, so the &quot;animal companion as minesweeper&quot; so common in the 1980's and '90's is abhorrent to a lot of people now.&nbsp; I think WotC underestimated how much the survivability (as opposed to replaceability) of the AC meant to a lot of people.&nbsp; If they had put on the fig leaf of &quot;the beast master summons a fey spirit and makes it into an animal companion&quot;, things might be different (or not).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MechaTarrasque, post: 7477756, member: 6801226"] Also the traditional image of the beast master is a guy with his wolf or tiger (with a couple of ferrets and an eagle--serious how did find familiar not get on the ranger's spell list?), and wolves and tigers are pretty. Don't discount the power of cute! If the image was of a ranger with a nasty feral hog or crocodile AC, we wouldn't be having this conversation. In the first world, most people tend to encounter animals as pets or pests, and utility animals are fairly rare. That means that a lot of people don't have the experience of valuing an animal for what it can do as much as an existential regard. From that mindset, a ranger that allows his/her AC to die is in fact Michael Vick evil. This has grown over the years, so the "animal companion as minesweeper" so common in the 1980's and '90's is abhorrent to a lot of people now. I think WotC underestimated how much the survivability (as opposed to replaceability) of the AC meant to a lot of people. If they had put on the fig leaf of "the beast master summons a fey spirit and makes it into an animal companion", things might be different (or not). [/QUOTE]

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