Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
|
Your first animal companion comes fully trained for PFS play. After that you need to roll for training them in their tricks, one roll per rank in handle animal skill.
A dead companion means you will miss out on the fully trained one.
Best be sure you really want that.
I know you are required to take the companion as soon as you earn it. Beyond that, I don't know.
|
You don't need to start a scenario with a new animal companion if your animal companion died or was released by you during a previous scenario.
If a druid releases her companion from service, she may gain a new one by performing a ceremony requiring 24 uninterrupted hours of prayer in the environment where the new companion typically lives. This ceremony can also replace an animal companion that has perished.
The keyword here is may.
So yes, you can write a dead animal companion into your backgroup, just keep in mind that if you do that and decide to get a new one after all it needs to be trained up per the official rules of training an animal.|
Venture-Captain, Massachusetts—Central & West
|
As long as it died before you start it wouldn't have any mechanical effects. It might explain though why Mr tanky II is walking around in better armor you are.
Actually, it does have some mechanical effects for the Hunter class. They effectively lose the minutes/level duration of their animal focus if their animal companion is dead. This leads to some shenanigans depending on the hunter.
|
|
As long as it died before you start it wouldn't have any mechanical effects. It might explain though why Mr tanky II is walking around in better armor you are.Actually, it does have some mechanical effects for the Hunter class. They effectively lose the minutes/level duration of their animal focus if their animal companion is dead. This leads to some shenanigans depending on the hunter.
I meant the backstory part, sorry. If at the age of 16 you lost mr tanky I in a horrible cave fisher accident , screamed "NOOOOOOOOO!" to the heavens over the half consumed remains of his body, and start game play at age 17 its mechanically no different than starting with the same mr tanky you got at 16.
|
Permanent Fast Healing 1, with partial fortification is pretty good...
Worm: The creature gains fast healing 1 (Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 300) and a 25% chance to treat any critical hit or sneak attack as a normal hit (as the fortification armor special ability). This increases to fast healing 2 and 50% at 8th level, and fast healing 3 and 75% at 15th level.
|
|
Jiggy, you did catch that we're talking about a 1 level dip? There are plenty of classes that don't need an AC to be powerful, but being able to get this for those characters makes this somewhat powerful. Automatically stabalize, negate 1/4 of crits/sneaks against you, never need out of combat healing again...plus you can activate one of the other abilities for a minute when needed.
|
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
The dippability merits further consideration...
...how many wands of CLW/IH does a typical PC burn through in a career?
...how many times does a typical (we'll say frontliner) PC take a crit in a career? Sneak attacks? Relevant sneak attacks?
Hmmm...
So, a frontliner gains the most here while a caster loses the most, so I think we can safely rule out casters from actually taking this dip. That leaves the full-BABers.
At early levels, that -1 to hit is gonna hurt. At later levels, the fast healing is going to be irrelevant in combat and do nothing but save a tiny bit of cash out of combat. The 25% fortification (remember, it won't be scaling on a dip) remains in force, but... I don't think any of my characters have taken 4 confirmed crits in their careers, so negating 1-in-4 seems more like "maybe you luck out once and take normal damage". This is actually weaker than the Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier, which I don't think I've ever actually activated against a crit.
So overall I think I'd have to say it's a dip that I don't think most people would actually take.
