Animal Companions

[squireminime]

Couple questions.
Does it seem that the animal compaions are just there? like they are almost uselss in combat. They serve a purpose, but are highly inefectial. Mine seem to die rather quickly and all the time. I do use Acid Maw. I wish there was a way to beef them up, not just through leveling. There should be spells that allow you to make your animal compaions worth having. It's almost as if they were an after thought. also I think you should be able to armour them up.
If you Multiclass Drud/Ranger do you get 2 companions? If yes...Awesome. If no...sad.
What about adding Wizard? You would get your Familiar still and an animal Compaion ?

[Myrryr]

Oh wow, um, no. Animal companions are enormously good, downright bordering on overpowered. Also, no, levels that give animal companions stack, they don't give a second. And... normally, in PnP, you can't have a both a familiar and a companion.

As for why it's dying often, you need to heal it. It's HP doesn't magically restore after every fight, so if you send it in after it got downed last fight, it's going in with like, 1 hp and of course it's going to drop again.

[Pillowhugger]

they die fast early on so try to have your tank take hits and then send your follower to combat after that
later on they get more HP and can 1v1 most normal mobs so use them to shut down ranged fighters in battles

they do nice extra damage and there are tons of spells that buff them if you play as druid and iam pretty sure ranger has them too (specially acid maw, that ♥♥♥♥♥ GREAT at chapter 2 stuff)
magic fang adds nice damage, same with enlarge person which you can use on your companion if the game works like it should (i havent done it myself, i dislike the spell for some reason)

you only get 1 companion but the levels stack so if you have 5 druid levels and 5 ranger levels you have level 7 companion, 10 if you have the boon feat. pretty sure its same with familiar

[Batailleuse]

Like said before

You never get additional pets all class with pet stack the pet level.

Strongest pets are smilodon and leopard they have high damage and high ac.

Pet with full buff

All 3 domain AC, statsz animal growth and some arcane stuff are near non hitable while Dishing over 100dmg a round.

[Twitch.tv/KAEN_SG]

Pets Weak? LOLWHUT!? sorry no....

Watch this...
https://clips.twitch.tv/SarcasticZanyFungusFunRun

My pet often solos entire encounters... and sometimes bosses... by himself.. while I smell the roses... and grass.... occasionally :)

[Iry]

Not even slightly. Animal Companions are beastly, if you will excuse the pun.
I wouldn't be surprised if they got slightly nerfed in a future patch.

[Twitch.tv/KAEN_SG]

Also here are the stats for all the pets in the game from level 1 to 20.
The best overall pet is the Leopard due to high AC.
Smilodon is great too, highest DPS... if you are careful with him. But he usually gets hit and killed way too easily in my runs... so I prefer the Leopard

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zazQ_0CFppxUJlnmSGi5nr9R54o4AVt0/view

[HavokVonFaust]

Originally posted by Iry:

Not even slightly. Animal Companions are beastly, if you will excuse the pun.
I wouldn't be surprised if they got slightly nerfed in a future patch.

I hate the smilodon. Yeah, I get it, it gets pounce at higher levels, but at earlier levels, out of 5 attacks, more often than not, it misses (at least) 4.

[Iry]

Originally posted by HavokVonFaust:

I hate the smilodon. Yeah, I get it, it gets pounce at higher levels, but at earlier levels, out of 5 attacks, more often than not, it misses (at least) 4.

4.5 years later! But yes, I personally favor the ones with trip attacks for that delicious CC.

[Radiac]

Originally posted by HavokVonFaust:

Originally posted by Iry:

Not even slightly. Animal Companions are beastly, if you will excuse the pun.
I wouldn't be surprised if they got slightly nerfed in a future patch.

I hate the smilodon. Yeah, I get it, it gets pounce at higher levels, but at earlier levels, out of 5 attacks, more often than not, it misses (at least) 4.

Are you actually trying to argue that getting 5 attacks is bad because it leads to the possibility of getting more misses than getting 3 attacks? I mean, a guy that gets 5 attacks MIGHT miss 5 times, but that's still better than only getting 3 attacks that miss 3 times. And all pets need to be buffed (Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, Shield of Faith, Mage Armor, Barkskin, Heroism, Greater Magic Fang, Acid Maw, etc) to be maximally effective, otherwise they would be better than most characters. They're not SUPPOSED to be better than a character all by themselves, and as it is now they sometimes come pretty close after buffs are applied. And honestly, just getting more than one attack at the end of a charge is borderline OP, even if it were just 3 attacks, but it's FIVE.

[valium]

Pets are insanely OP, they revive after combat with no downsides, smilodon does insane damage, wolf/dog gets free trips with their bites.

They are essentially an additional purely physical attacking party member.

[Radiac]

Having an animal companion gives several benefits I can name:

1. When properly buffed with spells like Mage Armor, and properly healed (you have to actively keep an eye on their HP bar, because it doesn't show up in the team lineup palette) they are every bit as good in combat as a decent cleric. Not OP, but effective and useful.


2. There's almost nothing else to cast certain buff spells on in the first place. Shield of Faith doesn't stack with Ring of Protection, Barkskin doesn't stack with Amulet of Natural Armor, Mage Armor doesn't stack with worn actual armor, nor with Bracers of Armor, Bull's Strength doesn't stack with a Belt of Strength, etc. So characters that can wear items generally are not worth casting those buffs spells on, but animal companions don't get to wear gear and as such are about the only targets for those spells. Having at least one animal companion on the team gives you a target for those spells, which are otherwise not terribly useful, but when cast on a pet, they're like the best spells those casters get at the lower spell levels, I'd argue. I mean, the druid and ranger get pet buff spells, specifically, because they will usually, one assumes, have a pet to cast the spells on.


3. Having an animal companion gives you one additional set of eyes on the team, and by that I mean you get to roll one more die for every Perception Check your team makes. They don't have awesome Perception, but they get a roll, and every little bit helps. It turns out that a team of 7 people making Perception checks, even of they only have a 50% chance of passing the check individually, will end up with a 99.2% chance of finding the hidden object, as a team. By comparison, a single person with high enough perception that they'd only fail by rolling a 1 would still have only a 95% chance of success. So the more Perception Checkers the better.


4. Having an animal companion with a reasonably high Strength gives the team a lot of additional weight carrying capacity. With the exception of the Old Sycamore, which has a lot of cheap-armor-wearing kobolds and mites, there isn't a map you can't just loot in one pass if you have two animal companions on the team. It's like having a true bag of holding, you can carry like 3000lbs after you get the pet growth bump at level 7.

[jayel83]

I'm only at half of the second chapter but pets are decent.

I don't think they are op but the power they give can be op.

Also pets can be very different.

I have a wolf that's a level behind me and he needs constant buffs or he dies or gets very little hits.

Then I gave amiri a mastodon by multiclassing her to the beast master inquisitor or whatever.

Since she got it through boom companion theyre on the same level that her.

And they are strong and can also tank very well!!! Much better than my wolf.

They are both weaker than most characters.

But they provide extra dice rolls and they are immortal.

They can be just cheese imo.

[Iry]

Originally posted by Jay-El:

Then I gave amiri a mastodon by multiclassing her to the beast master inquisitor or whatever.

Lore Acceptable! <3

[dwarfpcfan]

not all pets are equal. But the leopard and similodon are extremely strong

Pounce+high speed means you can 1 shot most bosses before they can act with the leopard in the first chapter

Leopards also get trip which just adds to their ridiculousness.

[mbradtke]

if u play unfair, it is ok.... pets are still very good but unfair is tough, i prefer to avoid pets tough, i just dont like pets because they are so strong and stand in my way the whole time lol, prefer a normal 6 man party