How do you deal with Animal Companions in 3e?

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 8:43 am

I've looked at these rules, and they seem... Wrong.

A Wizard or Sorcerer's familiar seems to follow them, but a Ranger or Druid's Animal Companion just seems... Stupid. I've never actually allowed these classes into my games because they didn't seem to match up to the other classes, but sheesh.

Why does a Druid have a 5HD critter following it around at 3rd level? That's bigger than some of the PCs. By 20, sure, it's actually a few levels behind the Fighter, but WTF.

But a Ranger, who doesn't get a companion until a Paladin gets a Mount ends up with...

...The horse the fighter rode in on at level 1? WTF!

Seriously, how do you handle companion beasts?

-Crissa

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:09 am

Since there was no HP connection in 3rd and losing a familiar wasn't anything to worry about except for loss of touch spells form the familiar, so I was told....

I would wait until the owner wasn't paying attention, and save money on my rations. They finally caught me, and I had to agree to forage outside of the campsite from then on.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:20 am

Shadzar, shut up when you don't know the rules.

@Crissa: I've actually never had any real problems. The druid's animal companion is a pocket tank (yes, they're better than PHB fighters, but PHB fighters suck anyways and are another problem entirely), sorcerers and wizards only ever use their companions for extra spot/listen checks and the Imbue Familiar with Spell Ability Spell, and rangers just cry in the corner because their pet is basically just fluff that's useless in combat.

Switch the ranger and druid animal companion progressions is the only thing I might do.

Red Archon · Post by **Red Archon** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:40 am

The druid animal companion is fine, so are the familiars (I often even allow Hummingbird...!) The ranger sucks nuts and his little pal isn't anywhere near his largest problems. If someone were to play a full-fledged ranger and would be interested in improving the pet? I'd just let them take the druid progression.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:51 am

Druid doesn't need the pet anyway its BA on its own. I opt to hand the ranger the druid's pet build and allow the Druid to take a feat out if he/she wants one.

Arijkos · Post by **Arijkos** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 10:07 am

Crissa wrote:I've looked at these rules, and they seem... Wrong.

A Wizard or Sorcerer's familiar seems to follow them, but a Ranger or Druid's Animal Companion just seems... Stupid. I've never actually allowed these classes into my games because they didn't seem to match up to the other classes, but sheesh.

Why does a Druid have a 5HD critter following it around at 3rd level? That's bigger than some of the PCs. By 20, sure, it's actually a few levels behind the Fighter, but WTF.

AFAIK, many players had problems with the druid's companion since the beginning of 3rd edition. Many approaches can be found out there to fix this, but an easy way I think is simply to limit available creatures. If its not a better fighter as the fighter, I imagine few would ever care about the HD. Dire animals are a problem though, some would just slaughter party-members if released in a rage.

Crissa wrote:But a Ranger, who doesn't get a companion until a Paladin gets a Mount ends up with...

...The horse the fighter rode in on at level 1? WTF!

Seriously, how do you handle companion beasts?

-Crissa

Well, usefulness depends on the type of campaign you run I guess, but you can command your companion to do tasks that are extremely difficult or impossible with normal animals (like a fighter's horse).
Rangers and Paladins getting their companions not at 1st level may only be a problem because the druid has his one at from beginning and therefore a huge advantage if everyone else is running around with 1HD and real low skill values.

shadzar wrote:Since there was no HP connection in 3rd and losing a familiar wasn't anything to worry about except for loss of touch spells form the familiar, so I was told....

You know, there is an easy, quick solution for you: http://www.d20srd.org/
Its all there, for free and easy to access.

@ubernoob: Nearly exactly my approach after my very first session of D&D, where our fighter felt somewhat useless because of our druid's companion.

Red Archon wrote:The druid animal companion is fine, so are the familiars (I often even allow Hummingbird...!) The ranger sucks nuts and his little pal isn't anywhere near his largest problems. If someone were to play a full-fledged ranger and would be interested in improving the pet? I'd just let them take the druid progression.

I played a ranger a while ago and used an owl as companion, wasn't bad at all. We had a lot overland/wilderness adventuring and only some dungeon crawls and I was the only one with a companion/familiar, so maybe there are drawbacks I missed, but it was good. Of course, I didn't care about meele capabilities, so maybe thats the entire piont

I think I will yoink! your idea of hummingbirds as companions, a really cool idea!

Red Archon · Post by **Red Archon** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 10:15 am

It is a cool idea, but it's mechanically very threatening. It's from Dragon Magazine 323 and grants the wizard +4 to initiative.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 10:20 am

Red Archon wrote:It is a cool idea, but it's mechanically very threatening. It's from Dragon Magazine 323 and grants the wizard +4 to initiative.

+8 if you cheese it out and assume that the elven generalist subs double the bonus (Yes, I've used this combination in more than one game; no it wasn't even a big deal).

Red Archon · Post by **Red Archon** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:00 am

Indeed, but compared to most bonuses granted by even obscure source familiars, this one has an actual mechanical benefit that can be considered "powerful." Of course, a wizard, even a low-level one, will win the initiative against level-appropriate encounters anyway. It's not a big deal in that sense. Hence, I find nothing wrong with allowing it.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 12:58 pm

Direct anyone wanting to be a Ranger to Ranger like classes that do not involve 4 or more levels of the Ranger class. If that doesn't work, direct them to that thing where stuff you attack counts as flanked instead of getting a pet that will die in one hit to do it.

Druid animal companions are not that big a deal. Though the being stupid is kind of a problem, it's not as if they're better than the real classes, so who cares?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:17 pm

Arijkos wrote:
shadzar wrote:Since there was no HP connection in 3rd and losing a familiar wasn't anything to worry about except for loss of touch spells form the familiar, so I was told....
You know, there is an easy, quick solution for you: http://www.d20srd.org/
Its all there, for free and easy to access.

You're wasting your time: Shad simply doesn't want to know about the rules but wants to voice his opinion on them at the same time.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 5:58 pm

Rangers can be level appropriate in an adventure like 'Assault on the Giants' or 'Crypt of the Undying King'. Just make sure that all of the enemies you ever encounter are favored.

shau · Post by **shau** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 8:23 pm

The wizard and sorcerer familiars are actually pretty nice to have. The rat is a great scout at first level, and the consequences for losing it are comparatively low (compared to losing a character anyway. Unfortunately, wizards have so much awesome that they tend to forget about them.

The druid's companion is crazy broken good in the beginning and crazy broken worthless in the end. If you really pour everything into you can have a warbeast riding dog with additional druid bonuses which is a cr 2 creature plus extra bonuses. That should be enough to have the best beatstick in the game at that level and it is not even your character, its your extra character. At level 4 you switch up to a fleshraker for absolute madness, or even a simple core leopard is giving you five extra attacks a round.

After the first few level though, the animal companion becomes more and more worthless. Not only does melee combat stop being worthwhile, but your companion grows at a slow rate. A level 20 druid usually has a dire tiger, which is only CR 8, which is pretty much entirely worthless at that point. Overpowered buffs for them can delay the inevitable to some extent, but there's really no reason to turn your 20th level caster into a buffer for a CR 8 monster.

Rangers suck at pretty much every level. You pick up a riding dog at level 4, which is pretty irrelevant and also buyable for just 150 gp. At level 20, a pure ranger can finally upgrade to a CR 5 dire lion, and that's just cruelty to animals. Your best option is to ask the DM if you can have a familiar instead, which are at least supposed to suck in combat.

Tequila Sunrise · Post by **Tequila Sunrise** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 8:46 pm

When I DMed 3e, I did my best to discourage pets. The PHBII druid variant was mandatory, and I offered players of other classes a few bonus feats in exchange for dropping their pets.

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 8:53 pm

Where are people getting the idea that if you lose a familiar it has "minimal cost?"

d20 SRD wrote:If the familiar dies or is dismissed by the sorcerer, the sorcerer must attempt a DC 15 Fortitude saving throw. Failure means he loses 200 experience points per sorcerer level; success reduces the loss to one-half that amount. However, a sorcerer’s experience point total can never go below 0 as the result of a familiar’s demise or dismissal.

A slain or dismissed familiar cannot be replaced for a year and day. A slain familiar can be raised from the dead just as a character can be, and it does not lose a level or a Constitution point when this happy event occurs.

I mean, sure, 200 XP per class level is not nearly as bad as losing a level yourself, but you can't just get the familiar back the next day if it dies. And depending on the time-frame of your campaign, you've essentially lost the class feature.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 10:21 pm

Frank was nominally annoyed by my combat-ready familiar in one of our 3e games...

I was thinking of making the animal companion for the Paladin and Ranger merely follow them in progression, like a cohort but simpler. I was a bit at a loss for how to compensate AC, though. If it's a flat bonus it does more good for some critters than others, irrespective of whether that critter needs the AC to do its schtick.

-Crissa

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Wed Nov 11, 2009 10:37 pm

Koumei wrote: You're wasting your time: Shad simply doesn't want to know about the rules but wants to voice his opinion on them at the same time.

Yeah, it'd be one thing if he hated the rules because they were too complex for him to understand, but he actually cites specific rules incorrectly and then complains about them.