Wild Cohort feat [WotC website]

[bertman4]

So I followed the link from today's news to WotC to take a look at this new feat. I'm not going to quote the entire feat but in a nutshell...

Wild Cohort [General]

You have a special bond with a wild animal, and it is willing to travel and adventure with you.

Benefit: You gain an animal cohort. The animal cohort is generally friendly to you and is willing to follow you and adventure with you. If given proper training, the animal cohort will willingly serve as your mount, guardian, and companion. (See the description of the Handle Animal skill on page 74 of the Player's Handbook for more details on training animals.)

You can use the Handle Animal skill on your animal cohort as a move action rather than as a standard action, and you gain a +2 bonus on all Handle Animal checks made to direct or influence your animal cohort.

I'm yet again disappointed that they do not have rules for taking multiple lower level animal "friends" instead of a single animal "friend." For some druids/rangers/clerics-of-nature-gods/tree-huggers, it makes more sense to have multiple creatures: a gaggle of geese, a murder of ravens, pride of lions, parliament of owls, school of dolphins, colony of bats, cete of badgers, kettle of hawks, etc.

Bertman

 

[daTim]

This feat seems really powerful to me. It is almost exactly the same as the druids animal companion, but it just has one less HD, one less natural armor, one less Str/Dex, and one less trick per level. If a druid takes this feat they can have two animal companions of almost the same power.

 

[diaglo]

cohort means 1. the same as it does for the leadership feat.

 

[Nail]

...and presumably you could take the feat more than once. But surely that's a poor method of gaining a murder of crows for companions?

 

[Hammerhead]

You could make up combat stats for a murder of crows or whatever (or other large groups of relatively weak animals) and use that as your cohort.

A pride of lions might be a little powerful at most levels. Also, don't forget that with the spell Speak With Animals you can make friends with animals, who might follow you around if you're in their territory.

 

[drnuncheon]

cohort means 1. the same as it does for the leadership feat.

Er...one from the feat and one from the animal companion class ability. So, two.

If your point was that the feat allows only one - well yes, that was the complaint.

In any case, I'd probably fudge something up with leadership and say 'instead of human followers you get bats or wolves or whatever'. The cohort could be an exceptional bat or wolf or whatever.

J
...that starling has how many Hit Dice?

 

[Piratecat]

The obvious problem with multiple animals that aren't a swarm is the saving throws and hit points. One area effect spell, and *fwoomp-sizzle-sizzle* it's bbq time.

 

[jgsugden]

Why was this needed? Why couldn't a character use leadership to gain an animal cohort? It is down right silly for them to be wasting time on mostly redundant ideas like this when there are so many problems with 3.5 that need to be fixed. Why build more on a shaky foundation?

 

[DevoutlyApathetic]

Why was this needed? Why couldn't a character use leadership to gain an animal cohort?

Because at level 15 a cute little bunny rabbit is only useful as dinner. With this feat you can get a normal animal that has a chance of surviving and being mildly useful. All in all, the feat looks fine in both concept and execution. I'd use it if I wasn't on a severe 'less is more' kick when it comes to the number of people/creatures in a party.

It is down right silly for them to be wasting time on mostly redundant ideas like this when there are so many problems with 3.5 that need to be fixed. Why build more on a shaky foundation?

Why don't they write some feats that aren't +2 to x and y? Wotc has been scared about being creative for awhile now. I think MotW signalled the end of that, but apparently not.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I haven't subjected this to any kind of balance analysis, but I like it.

I was working on a cavalier base class, but this feat rendered the class moot.