Druid animal companion: Beastmaster vs Animal Order?

[Nik Gervae]

If you are starting with Leaf, Storm, or Wild order, and want to branch out into having an animal companion, it seems like Beastmaster is a great alternative to Order Explorer. You miss out on one Animal Order class feat—Side by Side—but get improved equivalents of every other Animal Order class feat, good for all the companions in your menagerie. Even if you stick with a single animal companion, you have access to feats like Beastmaster's Trance and Beastmaster Bond that Druid doesn't have at all.

if you're going Animal Order out the gate of course, you get Heal Animal for free, so adding Beastmaster is a good option instead of going for Order Explorer too. You can get Side by Side plus all the enhanced and additional feats from Beastmaster.

Thoughts?

[Ventnor]

Leaf Order + Beastmaster Dedication is the fastest way to nab an Arboreal Sapling companion without needing to ask your GM for an exemption.

[Gortle]

If you go Animal order out of the gate you start with one focus point, whereas Leaf or Storm start with 2.

Given that you are a druid you have other healing options like Goodberry, Heal, Treat Wounds so while the Heal Animal spell is nice, it is far from required.

Which normally for me means that if I am going to have two orders as a druid, then choose the first one in this order Storm>Leaf>Animal>Wild reflecting the number of focus points and what I think of the order spells.

Side by Side is a good feat but given the competition with other feats and that you can often just position yourself to get flanking anyway - it is not always worth while. For me I like it when you are riding your mount into battle. You also have Beastmasters Call as a reasonable alternative.

Beastmasters Trance is close to the spell Animal Vision
BeastMasters Bond is Ok but I'm not sure its necessary.

In summary there are differences but really all you are getting with Beastmaster over Druid is an alternative animal companion and the ability to swap them. Its useful and flexible but not overpowering.

It's close enough to parity in my book.

[Nik Gervae]

Cool, thanks for the deeper analysis, Gortle. Beastmaster's Call does sound like fun. I doubt I'll be doing the mount thing, I'm lined up to play a tengu. The animal companion species is gonna be tricky—corvids don't like raptors or snakes! :-P I might just say my Bird is a vulture even though there's an actual vulture in some adventure path book somewhere....

[Nik Gervae]

Ventnor wrote:

Leaf Order + Beastmaster Dedication is the fastest way to nab an Arboreal Sapling companion without needing to ask your GM for an exemption.

Leaf Order + Order Explorer (Animal) wouldn't get it for you just as fast?

[pauljathome]

Although it's not particularly important for a druid keep in mind the slightly hidden cost of taking Beastmaster. You can't take another archetype until you've spent at least 3 feats in Beastmaster.

As you'll probably be taking other class feats to improve your other order this potentially limits your flexibility for quite awhile.

Not a huge issue but something to keep in mind

[Gortle]

Where BeasterMaster comes into its own is if you want to do it as a Fighter (because maybe you like their class chasis better than the Ranger) or Sorceror, or Rogue.

That is, any other class that doesn't get an animal companion. Anyone can have one now it just costs feats.

[Nik Gervae]

Gortle wrote:

Where BeasterMaster comes into its own is if you want to do it as a Fighter (because maybe you like their class chasis better than the Ranger) or Sorceror, or Rogue.

That is, any other class that doesn't get an animal companion. Anyone can have one now it just costs feats.

Anyone can have two, or three! Yeah, if you've got room in your progression for the feats, you basically have most of the Animal Order's & Ranger's animal companion feats at your fingertips. I was originally looking at the Ranger class when I started reading Pathfinder 2, but lost interest in the class rather quickly due to the way it's designed. I avoided Fighter because I've never been interested in them in the past, but I quite like the way it's designed in Pathfinder 2. Actual play may change my opinions again, but for now it's likely I'm playing a Druid, maybe a Bard.

Bard has too many juicy feats to leave room for Beastmaster though. :-D

[Nik Gervae]

pauljathome wrote:

Although it's not particularly important for a druid keep in mind the slightly hidden cost of taking Beastmaster. You can't take another archetype until you've spent at least 3 feats in Beastmaster.

As you'll probably be taking other class feats to improve your other order this potentially limits your flexibility for quite awhile.

Good point. I didn't see other things that grabbed my interest as a caster Druid. But, if I were going for Wild Order, Fighter & Monk definitely have some appeal..

[Castilliano]

Heal Animal is quite important IMO.
So you'd want to get the Order for that at least.

[Ventnor]

Castilliano wrote:

Heal Animal is quite important IMO.

So you'd want to get the Order for that at least.

You can get Heal Animal from the Beastmaster archetype too.

[Castilliano]

Ventnor wrote:

Castilliano wrote:

Heal Animal is quite important IMO.

So you'd want to get the Order for that at least.

You can get Heal Animal from the Beastmaster archetype too.

Oops. :)

[Nik Gervae]

pauljathome wrote:

Although it's not particularly important for a druid keep in mind the slightly hidden cost of taking Beastmaster. You can't take another archetype until you've spent at least 3 feats in Beastmaster.

As you'll probably be taking other class feats to improve your other order this potentially limits your flexibility for quite awhile.

Storm has the fewest feats of the four orders (4 total). Past the oblagtory/free level 1 feat, I'm probably only taking Wind Caller, anyhow, since Invoke Disaster is Sustain and that + an animal companion seems like a bit much. Then again, by then my companion will have 1 automatic action without my commanding it. Plenty of time to decide about that later.

Anyhow, I found out there are magic items that basically duplicate the commuication Beastmaster feats, so I could get that ability without burning up yet another feat choice. So there's really no reason to go Beastmaster unless I wanted to actually have multiple animal companions, which again burns up a feat choice I'll probably rather have for something else.