Post/Author/DateTime	Post
JellyPooga 07-01-07, 12:48 PM	How do the two PrC's interact? Beastmaster allows you to gain multiple Animal Companions. Arcane Heirophant gives your Animal Companion some of the abilities of a Familiar. If you have both PrC's (not an optimal build, I know, but I'm just curious), do you end up with multiple Familiar Companions? I've read the exact wording of both the 'Familiar Comapnion' and the 'Extra Companion' abilities and I'm still uncertain. I get the impression that the intent of Familiar Companion is that you only have one, but that is also based on the assumption that you only have one Animal Companion anyway. The intent of Extra Companion seems to be that the 'extras' don't benefit from feats and abilities that affect your main Animal Companion, but that seems to be based on the assumption that you only really have access to 'increase your effective Druid level for the purposes of bonus HD' type abilities (like the Feat in Complete Adventurer that increases your effective Druid level by 3 or 4)...I need some opinions to make up my mind.
goawayugh 07-02-07, 12:40 PM	...Other class levels in classes that offer an animal companion don't stack for the purpose of determining the power of a beastmaster's additional animal companions... What's not clear?
JellyPooga 07-02-07, 04:18 PM	What's not clear? What's not clear is that it's not the 'animal companion' bit of arcane heirophant that's a problem, but the 'familiar' part of it. Arcane Heirophant allows your Animal Companion to gain Familiar abilities, whilst still advancing it's HD and such as an AC. So, whilst a Beastmasters Extra Companions gain no extra HD/Str/Dex, etc. from Arcane Heirophant (as an Animal Companion does), they may still gain Familiar abilities (which is essentially saying that they advance as Familiars, not Animal Companions). I know it's a nit-picky argument and the intention of the rules is probably such that Extra Companions get no extra abilities at all (regardless of source) beyond those granted by the Beastmaster class itself...but, the 'gap' is something I want to explore, i.e. would it fair fair to allow certain abilities to accrue, whilst others do not? The reason for my inquiry is that a Beastmaster has a bunch of Extra Companions that gain no extra abilities as he progresses beyond the PrC, making them increasingly less useful. Not only that, but the Extra Companions he gains at later levels are of significantly lower 'power' than his earlier ones (the last EC he gets is the equivalent of a 1st level Druids Animal Companion...at level 15, this is not going to be terribly useful).To 'put the boot in', there is no way to increase the 'power' of these ECs short of taking Epic levels of Beastmaster...Feats like Natural Bond have no effect, levels that stack for AC have no effect, etc. So basically, I'm looking for some way to make Extra Companions more useful...Arcane Heirophant came to mind and, as I say, the wording does not precisely say that Extra Companions don't become Familiar Companions, so I thought I'd explore the possibility.
goawayugh 07-02-07, 04:27 PM	...You may retain any one animal companion you already possess. I would say that going into Arcane Hierophant after Beastmaster is a waste of Beastmaster because it clearly states that you can only keep one animal companion.
JellyPooga 07-02-07, 04:28 PM	What about going into Beastmaster after Heirophant?
goawayugh 07-02-07, 05:03 PM	Ok, that would work. But your extra Animal Companions would only be normal animal companions, not familiar companions.