The Gaming Den

I'm working on druid stuff for my latest game, perhaps because our newbie wants to play one and the first adventure antagonist is one. I'm looking at stuff like Vermin Companion, Spider Companion, Totem Companion, and so on, and I'm just wondering, should you really have to spend a feat to have the option of a giant spider as your companion?

Assuming that the special companions are placed at levels comparable to standard companions, is it worth a feat to say "my animal companion can be something other than an animal" or is it all fair to rewrite Animal Companion as Nature Companion and include vermin and magical beasts and other "animals?"

It depends. You can get a fair amount of extra utility out of a companion with higher-than-animal intelligence, although most of those options seem to provide a less intelligent buddy. Magical Beasts open up a lot more utility and deserve careful consideration (maybe restricted to those with Int 2 or less?).

Just swapping out your companion for a comparable spider is definitely not worth a feat. Probably not even a bullshit-devalued PF feat.

I don't think limiting the list thematically and requiring people pay to use something that looks different is a good idea, even if you were handing out feats every level. Whether vermin, plants, or even magical beasts there are going to be options that are better and options that are worse than the animal list. Which means sometimes it will be a reasonable choice while other times it is pure flavor tax. At most gating everything behind feats means you can't dumpster dive every list for the perfect companion at a given point, but that seems like a very mild gain given the flavor tax issue it creates.

If this is for 3e I wouldn't see anything wrong with putting everything from giant spiders to displacer beasts on the regular list at appropriate levels. If it is for PF I'd put really good base forms behind an "Improved Animal Companion" feat comparable to "Improved Familiar," though not like the one Pathfinder already have where you pay a feat for access then another so your Hippogriff can actually fly with a rider.

A feat is worth 3 levels worth of HD, BAB, and Save progression. It better be worth it.

RelentlessImp wrote:A feat is worth 3 levels worth of HD, BAB, and Save progression. It better be worth it.

That's not true, because you don't trade those next 3 levels for an extra feat. You can't buy a feat with 3 levels. Conversely, getting a feat should not be a +3 to level, that's retarded.

Feats are worth an extra class feature that does something useful and preferably doesn't go obsolete, because you get a rather small amount of them. Since they're also the main method of character customisation, one would also hope that they have an impact on your playstyle.

Feats as they are in D&D3.5 don't scale with level so the worth of a feat should be set to what level it is aquired at. TOME tackles that problem with scaling feats but it can be tricky to keep track of multiple scaling feats at higher levels.

The benchmark for power in D&D3.5 is "what can a full divine/arcane do at this level". So for your spider summoning feat, look at available summoning for full caster classes.

Some GMs really like to murder pets. If I can get a thing on my sheet that says if he slakes his bloodlust on Fido, Fido II will come along after the next short rest, and my build revolves around pets, I'll probably take it.

EDIT: I guess that's not a argument for the power level of a pet option, but a pet-using martial likely is going to retire before we get to Fido vs Demon anyway. Also, Rule Negative One will affect feat weights at many, many tables.

should you really have to spend a feat to have the option of a giant spider as your companion?

NO.

I mean, it's a cool concept for a fantasy heartbreaker to burn character options on flavour stuff that has some weird corner-case utility where it's even powerful, but you're allowed to buy all-day power upgrades with your feat slots, so that's what you do.

In the particular case of animal companions, if it's slightly too powerful, it can be put another 3 levels higher on the list. It can also be lowered automagically as a racial feature, so Drow can have cheap spider companions or whatever, with a bullshit substitution level if you want to formalise that in the usual bloaty way.


But no. That's not featworthy, and things powergamers won't touch should still be valid options for people in some other way if there's some other suitable hook for them.

After looking through the MM at spiders, they are about the same power as a wolf, and wolf is usually the first pick of any druid. Speaking from 3.5 here, I haven't looked at PF. So, I would just allow it right off the bat.

Just thought of another option.

You could make a feat that allows you to have a spider, and give you spidery attributes as well.

Spider Dude: You can have a spider pet. And you get a climb speed of 30 ft, and blind sense 15 ft. requires animal companion ability.

Just get rid of Vermin type. It's stupid anyway. I don't think anyone would mind arthropods not being immune to illusions and enchantments, and darkvision doesn't make much sense either.

Spiders as animals! Vermin is a stupid type.

As for the more esoteric question of "what feat do?" just make sure they're on the same standard. If your standard for a feat is Leadership then go Tome Feats. If your standard is skill focus then just make em fluff that have minor crunch... but mostly play up the fluff.

this reminds me of Frank and Oberoni talking about feats vis a vis spells. Oberoni thought Gain a Combat Feat could easily be an 8th or 9th level spell and nobody would have a problem with it. after all, if the standards for 8th and 9th level spells are Gate, Greater Planar Ally, Wish, Miracle, True Resurrection, Greater Restoration and Time Stop and the standards for buffs at the level and slightly before it are things like Heroe's Feast, Holy/Unholy Aura, Divine Power, Polymorph and Shapechange, who in the world would care about the spell Gain Combat Feat?

Frank says that the Troll the Fighter spell was eventually printed as Heroics and not only was it not 8th or 9th level, it was at 2nd!

So gaining it permanently would be something on the order of one second or third level spell known or spell slot, maybe even lower than that.

A variant animal companion should be something like no feat at all, or some minor thing like a Tome Background or Pathfinder Trait. I would say to the extent it is worth anything at all mechanically, I would peg it as worth approximately 1/2 of a feat.

Yeah, I decided to not require a feat for non-standard Animal Companions.

Another question came to mind though- what about item creation? I mean, obviously not requiring feat expenditures would be some amount of power up to casters, but is it a big enough power up to really care about?

Just make magic items craftable by everyone by default. Restricted to thematic items of course.

So bruiser types can make weapons and armor. Wizards make wands and staves, and druids make naturey stuff and so forth.

The reason things like that became feats is because as 3.5 developed, the designers began to realize that they couldn't just endlessly expand options and began to make characters pay for more options. They were still horribly inconsistent in applying this, but they tried.

A good example of this is new summon monster options. In earlier books, they were just added to the list. Later, they began to require that you swap out another option. This is clearly better than either making them cost the player a feat for a small increase in flexibility or just giving that increase for free.

However, animal companions are different from summons in that they can't be hot-swapped. Therefore, as long as a new option is not clearly superior, adding more variety has little effect on balance.

Prak wrote:Yeah, I decided to not require a feat for non-standard Animal Companions.

Another question came to mind though- what about item creation? I mean, obviously not requiring feat expenditures would be some amount of power up to casters, but is it a big enough power up to really care about?

You're planning on having casters vs. non-casters and continuing to limit item creation to casters only?

Why? Go with Wiseman's notion. Everyone can craft shite. And don't require spellcasting to create items.

Having everyone create their own custom weapon is a nice touch and gets rid of the stupid problem of bonus taxes.