As described here, the 4th level advancement of the horse option for the animal companion gains the combat-trained quality. I had a couple questions about this.
1. Do the horse's hoof attacks become primary? In that entry, there isn't anything that says there is. However, in the Bestiary entry for a horse they have the docile property, which says their hoof attacks become primary once they are combat trained.
2. Do the 6 tricks that combat training entails count against the limit of tricks the animal can know?
1. Yes
2. Yes
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This has come up in one of my PFS games. I was unaware that the 'horse animal companion' didn't have the docile penalty, (i.e. that's it's not a 'horse in the bestiary sense') and thus, does not get to have its hooves graduate to primary with combat training 4th level advancement. Which begs the question, what 'does' the 4th level advancement actually do? My thoughts: they forgot to give the 'docile' penalty to the horse animal companion... and we're still paying for it with confusion 10 years down the road...
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I have no idea what 'combat training' does in terms of advancement, as I read somewhere that retraining an AC's general purpose erases previous training... etc.
Multiattack even things out a 'bit', but since hooves are secondary, you're forever more stuck with half STR bonus on those attacks. Is there a 'double slice' equivalency for secondary natural attacks?
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But you'll note that the bestiary horse does not get a bite attack. So that part works out as the Companion horse gets more attacks and eventually gets Multi-Attack.
If you scroll down in the bestiary horse there's a bit about the 'heavy horse' which gains a 1d4 bite attack and hooves at 1d6, and it mentions combat training as well. This seems like this is the exact framework upon which the horse animal companion was built. I'm just hoping that someone at Paizo will confirm this at some point. (digging on some of the horse threads, I found this, which seems pretty official to me; as it is straight from the horse's mouth... pun intended... :P)
FAQ wrote:
Q: I was trying to stat up a horse animal companion when I realized under druid animal companions, the advanced horse section says special ability: war trained (see Pathfinder Bestiary). I looked, but did not see anything. What exactly is this referring to in the bestiary?
A: (James Jacobs 11/25/09) War trained is actually detailed under the description of the Handle Animal skill. Of course, there it's called "Combat Training. " It's one of the "general purpose" trainings you can give an animal. Horses in particular gain a special benefit once they're combat trained-their hooves are from that point treated as primary weapons, not secondary ones.