Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Lovite 07-07-05, 04:13 AM	You arent getting any more spells (if going in as druid) and at the 10th level what do you get? a 1st level animal with abilities as if you were 1st level... woo hoo.... is something wrong here?? (check it out in complete adventurer) Any suggestions or fixes?
thinkhard 07-07-05, 07:30 AM	why would you ever take this class as a DRUID? The vague requirements imply that this is a class to give a character nature abilities and connections late in the game if the character has a change of heart or focus. Everything you gain in this class is something you'd get in a few levels of druid....minus aditional animal companions, but that's just for flavor sake. I wouldn't fix this class, i'd just use it the way it's intended, which isn't for a druid.
ninjarabbit 07-07-05, 08:57 AM	A neat little trick involves the beastmaster (or anything that gives you an animal companion but the BM does not have the alignment restriction of a druid or level sink of the ranger), paladin, and halfling outrider. The devoted tracker feat from Complete Adventurer let's you use your paladin mount as your animal companion and gives it both abilities from the mount and animal companion in levels you have. According to RAW the halfling outrider advances both paladin mount and druid/ranger animal companion HD and abilities. So a paladin5/beastmaster5/halflingoutrider10 would give you an animal companion with the combined HD and abilites of a 15th level paladin mount and a 18th level druid animal companion.
thinkhard 07-07-05, 09:04 AM	i'm sure theres a flaw in the logic somewhere that i'm too lazy to find...but if there isn't.... WoTC has some serious 'splainin to do!
RadicalTaoist 07-07-05, 10:49 AM	The logic is flawless. I saw and helped with Caelic's thread on the character optimization boards. The Supermount build can have one crazy strong mount by the RAW. Ironically though, since that's the build's big thing, he has to focus on mounted combat and is thus tactically limited. In other words, it's a one trick pony.[/bad pun]
ninjarabbit 07-07-05, 11:05 AM	The logic is flawless. I saw and helped with Caelic's thread on the character optimization boards. The Supermount build can have one crazy strong mount by the RAW. Ironically though, since that's the build's big thing, he has to focus on mounted combat and is thus tactically limited. In other words, it's a one trick pony.[/bad pun] True but since a normal halfling mount is medium sized you can take the supermount into areas larger mounts wouldn't be effective. The supermount ends up with something like +20 d8 hit dice (meaning it gets a feat every 3 levels and a stat bump every 4 levels in addition to the other bonuses), +22 natural armor, +10 str, +6 dex, an int of 9, improved evasion, multiattack, and a bunch of other stuff. It starts to get silly once we involve the Draconomicon and have dragon mounts.
thinkhard 07-07-05, 11:06 AM	yeah i went and read it for myself. They should have definately thought that one through. Of course, that comes from the same book that the warshaper is from (which is easily broken, as i'm pointing out in the prestige class sub-category). But the way to break warshaper has to do with something i dont imagine those guys could have really forseen...
Surreal 07-07-05, 12:19 PM	So a paladin5/beastmaster5/halflingoutrider10 would give you an animal companion with the combined HD and abilites of a 15th level paladin mount and a 18th level druid animal companion. With that particular build, if you grab the natural bond feat you can also have a maxed out secondary companion in addition to your supermount.
ninjarabbit 07-07-05, 01:13 PM	With that particular build, if you grab the natural bond feat you can also have a maxed out secondary companion in addition to your supermount. An idea that was kicked around was to take more levels of BM, get 3 total animal companions, have one of them be an ape or dire ape, teach him how to use a lance, and have him ride around on the third animal companion.
Lovite 07-07-05, 03:02 PM	Thank you all for responding. I guess i just want a retinue of powerful animals that I command... Don't need to be powerful myself, though that would be nice. Wanna be the Bad A$$ version of Dr Doolittle, hehe... Any suggestions?
Surreal 07-07-05, 03:39 PM	An idea that was kicked around was to take more levels of BM, get 3 total animal companions, have one of them be an ape or dire ape, teach him how to use a lance, and have him ride around on the third animal companion. Hmm, Paladin5/Beastmaster7/HO8, with the natural bond feat, that nets you a mount 13, animal 21, animal 18, and animal 15. Then if you could somehow designate your third animal companion as your mount, then you'll have a slightly-less-uber mount, and two maxed companions.
Lovite 07-07-05, 03:56 PM	But the extra companions do not stack with other levels, so at Beastmaster 10 you have a critter as if you were 1st lvl druid, one as if you were 4th, and one as if you were 7th... and you are maybe 15th level by then.. kinda blows to me...
Lovite 07-07-05, 04:46 PM	Hmm, may have just answered my own question. The Natural Bond feat, affects the EFFECTIVE druid level.. which means that the Extra Companion one gets at 10th level, which has the power as if i were a 1st level druid (Effective druid level = Beastmaster -9) it would actually be 4th level (Effective druid level = Beastmaster -6). Do you agree or am i missing something? Darn it, i want my wolf pack... :evillaugh
Surreal 07-07-05, 06:22 PM	But the extra companions do not stack with other levels, so at Beastmaster 10 you have a critter as if you were 1st lvl druid, one as if you were 4th, and one as if you were 7th... and you are maybe 15th level by then.. kinda blows to me... The text for Beastmaster says that for your extra animal companions your Beastmaster level does not stack with other levels that offer animal companions. Halfling Outrider however, does not actually offer an animal companion as a class feature (it does offer a mount though). So on a technicality, it's levels stack.