Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Symeon_Quykk 04-07-07, 09:59 PM	Hello, I just had a fairly simple question about my animal companion. First, I am a lvl 11 character (8th lvl Ranger, 1st lvl Rogue, 2nd lvl Order of the Bow Initiate) and I took the Natural Bond feat. When I took the Natural Bond feat, I thought it added +3 to my druid level for selecting a "better" animal companion. After my DM and I read it more closely, it's only supposed to improve the existing animal companion. Long story short, I had a regular wolf to start w/ and I wanted to get a Dire Wolf once I got to a high enough level. My DM kinda house-ruled it so he considered the Natural Bond feat as adding 3 levels of druid for selecting an animal companion (8th lvl Ranger is 4 lvl Druid equivelent + 3 lvls from Natural Bond = I could take an animal off the 7th lvl chart from the PHB (my Dire Wolf)). My main question is should I just be happy w/ my new Dire Wolf as is or since I'm at a fairly high level, should I try and get the bonus stuff (HD, bonus tricks, +'s to STR and DEX, etc) from that chart under druid from the PHB???
Captain_Kobold 04-07-07, 11:49 PM	OK, so your Druid level is 7 when it comes to your animal companion. You have a Dire Wolf, so your effective level for determining its abilities is 7- 6 (from the alternative animal companion chart) =1. Your Dire wolf will have the bonuses and abilities of the animal companion of a 1st level druid. All that info is explained in the PHB in the animal companion section, so I assume that you know it. Its not too tricky to simply compare a Dire wolf with lvl 1 companion bonuses to a normal wolf with 7th level companion abilities. What are you actually asking? Opinion as to which is better?