Animal companion skill points

[Kimera757]

I have a druid who just reached 6th-level. He has a bear animal companion.

As the bear has an Int of 2, it doesn't get many skill points. In fact, I think it only gets 6. It has a Wisdom bonus of +1.

If I put every rank into Perception, does it get Perception +7, or +10?

[cartmanbeck]

Kimera757 wrote:

I have a druid who just reached 6th-level. He has a bear animal companion.

As the bear has an Int of 2, it doesn't get many skill points. In fact, I think it only gets 6. It has a Wisdom bonus of +1.

If I put every rank into Perception, does it get Perception +7, or +10?

You can't put every rank into Perception, you can only have a number of ranks in any one skill equal to the creature's hit dice. In this case, that should be 3.

Along with that, the companion follows the animal companion table listing how many skill points it gets, so it doesn't matter what its intelligence is. Therefore, it only gets 3 total skill points at the druid's 2nd character level.

If you put 3 points (the max you can do so) into Perception, the bonus will be a total of +7 (3 ranks + 1 Wis + 3 class skill bonus).

[Kimera757]

The bear is actually 6 HD (for a 6th-level druid), but you've answered the question anyway. He would have Perception +10 (+6 ranks + 1 Wis + 3 class skill bonus).

[cartmanbeck]

Kimera757 wrote:

The bear is actually 6 HD (for a 6th-level druid), but you've answered the question anyway. He would have Perception +10 (+6 ranks + 1 Wis + 3 class skill bonus).

Whoops, somehow I read 2nd-level. My bad!