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Earlier in 2016 we were preparing to begin a new campaign and I decided to change things up from my typical types of PC. I rarely play ranged-combat characters, and have never had an animal companion for more than a session or two. Since I wanted a character class I had never played before, I decided on the hunter. I usually don't use guides, but I went on a search this time around and didn't find very much. So I decided I would work on my very first class guide based on my opinions and experiences playing one.
You can find my hunter guide HERE. I use DropBox.
I am playing a vanaran hunter with a longbow. My animal companion is an elephant, but later on I will switch to a tyrannosaurus due to the GM letting certain setting info slip out. He approves of this choice. For those familiar with obscure comic book references, it was inspired by Moon Boy and Devil Dinosaur. The campaign is the GM's homebrew hybridization of the Serpent's Skull and Savage Tide adventure paths so I think we will be island hopping and treasure hunting. he is concurrently running two groups through it. We are several sessions in as of 11/16. I will continue to update the guide based on community input and my own findings as the campaign continues. Please take a look and let me know what you think. Thank you for your time.
Note: The section on animal companions was looking to be pretty time consuming and I didn't have personal experience with them, so I used the animal companion guide at RPG Bot as a reference/starting point. My own version shares many (but not all) of this guide's opinions, but is much shorter because so many companions are simply bad choices.
Nice guide!
Some notes that are personal preference:
Animal Focus:
Tiger (dex) is less imporant imo than Bull. Mostly because Dex is used a lot more than STR. So if you ever get a Belt of something it would be a Belt of Dex+Con. STR is just something you need on the fly to hit more often and deal more damage, while Dex is something you always want to have active because of the benefits it gives.
The other ones are just situational. I'm not sure Falcon deserves a Blue. Unless you're 100% sure you're gonna need a boost in Perception, it could be tricky wasting 1 min of Animal focus at early levels.
Regarding mounts, just 2 things:
-Flying mounts are tricky. They need to be 1 size larger and they cannot fly if they have more than light load with a rider.
-Geckos. Those guys are awesome. Check them out.
I will change Falcon/Perception from blue to green. I actually agree with you, just made it blue because of what I believe the general forum consensus to be.
I'll take your Tiger/Dex input into account. I am currently playing an archer hunter, so my opinion is certainly biased. My thinking was that Dex helps all character, while Str wouldn't help my archer at all.
As for flying mounts, are you saying that I should reassess what color I assign them based or their abilty to bear a rider? Each of those I have included eventually become large. Very few animals are large at 1st level.
I will add the gecko for its unique ability, but I would probably rate it orange due to the single attack and mediocre ability scores.
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One of the flying companions small bird (eagle/hawk) is very useful as a ranged Hunter. The teamwork feats Coordinated Shot, and Enfilading Fire will give you +4 when your bird flanks, which is easy for a flying companion to do and still leave the ground spaces open for the rest of the party.
Give your bird Mobility and Reach Defense, use the Alternate Advancement for a higher DEX and the Tiger Focus (Tiger and Snake at 8th level), and it's AC will probably outclass yours, especially for AoO. You'll also want to give it the Low Profile feat depending on how much a stickler your GM is.
If you do raise your bird's Intelligence to 3, give it Combat Advice for another +2 to hit, then can use Aid Another to give an ally a bonus to hit or AC.
Let's say your bird is flanking, and giving you Combat Advice, you're now +6 to hit (on top of any buffs you've given yourself) you don't you can use your focus for STR and do more damage.
EDIT:
I didn't see Small Cat in your list either. Again, max out it's DEX use Alternate Advancement, take Agile Maneuvers and you have a tripping monster... Not in a drug induced sort of way.
I will change Falcon/Perception from blue to green. I actually agree with you, just made it blue because of what I believe the general forum consensus to be.
I'll take your Tiger/Dex input into account. I am currently playing an archer hunter, so my opinion is certainly biased. My thinking was that Dex helps all character, while Str wouldn't help my archer at all.
As for flying mounts, are you saying that I should reassess what color I assign them based or their abilty to bear a rider? Each of those I have included eventually become large. Very few animals are large at 1st level.
I will add the gecko for its unique ability, but I would probably rate it orange due to the single attack and mediocre ability scores.
Yeah, DEX can be useful if you're an archer, I do agree. But if you are an archer is more likely to invest all of your money into DEX enhancements I think. STR is not necessary and CON maybe.
Only case I could see not spending gold on DEX is if you dump all your pt buy into DEX and are low on other stats, like WIS for spellcasting and CON for HP.STR could be useful with an adaptive bow and we're talking about an extra +2 to damage, but is not a necessity in my head, so having a floating free bonus here would much better than having it into DEX.
I pointed out the Flying Mount because of the STR. I'm not sure all of them have enough STR to fly at a light load.
Bat, Dire STR 17
Mantis, Giant STR 18
Roc STR 20
Vulture, Giant STR 20
Wasp, Giant STR 18
STR 20 113 lbs or less
STR 17 86 lbs or less
All of this should be either multiplied by:
-A larger bipedal creature can carry more weight depending on its size category, as follows: Large ×2
-Quadrupeds can carry heavier loads than bipeds can. Multiply the values corresponding to the creature's Strength score from Table: Carrying Capacity by the appropriate modifier, as follows: Large ×3
If you consider this I'm guessing they should have enough STR, but I'm not sure which one corresponds to flying creatures.
On the Gecko. If you make a Charger it's a GREAT mount. It's medium, so you can get into dungeons with no issues, you can charge through anything, because you can just climb into the ceiling and charge from there.
For niche builds like a charger is a great mount. Yes, it won't have super high damage, but the same could be said about flying mounts, they're there to move you, not to deal damage, same with Gecko.
Don't forget you can bump its 1 attack quite a lot as well with magic items/animal focus. Eventually you get multiattack too.
Wow, I never knew the bird could do so much. That sounds like a pretty sweet feat combo too. I don't want to put builds into each animal entry, but I will keep this in mind if I get around to a feat section. Headings for bird and gecko have both been added and I will fill them out soon.
The small cat is definitely in there already and has been since the beginning. I ranked it green, and the big cat blue. Thoughts?
Malkin, when you wrote "eagle", did you mean the falcon animal focus?
I placed in a heading in the animal companion section for what to consider if you choose a vermin companion. I will fill it in soon.
Also, if several books are allowed, don't forget the Caretaker alternative racial trait.
It's a floating +2 to any stat. Put it into INT and suddenly your Vermin is as smart as an average AC.
Also you can replace your AC at any time (unless flavor reasons), so you can get whatever you need at certain levels.
Feat selection varies A LOT depending on builds. I'm guessing Flying Mount might be the safer one, as long as you're not targeted.
I'm being cautious with how many books I include, but haven't made up my mind on an official list yet. Caretaker is a nice trait if you're willing to give up +1 on all saves.
The megaloceros has been moved. I thought the giant swimming moose was a real thing.
As I was reviewing the list of all companions again, it occured to me that it can be pretty hard judging potency. In turn, I'm second guessing myself on which to include or not include. I try to consider offense and defense, so any creature with 14 Str, Dex, Con, +4 nat AC, and two attacks probably gets a good rating. Few of them have that exact array but many have some variant on it. As I said before, I don't have a lot of experience with them. I have a sense of which ones can take some hits and live, and which can land a few attacks, but not how certain features might be capitalized on with the right feats, etc. Anyone with insight on this is welcome to shout out.
I agree. Depends on what your AC will be used for.
Is it a flanking buddy only? Then you could care about high HP and AC so it can stand some hits and keep giving +4 to flank.
Is he a Bodyguard AC?
A mount that will deal damage through Pounce?
If you consider Caretaker+Animal Focus, you can get a +4 to 1 single stat, making an average AC pretty decent.
This is kinda nitpicky and doesn't really contribute anything to the guide, but Hunter is a hybrid class, not a base class as you stated in the title. I also realize that this doesn't really matter at all, and it's too late to do anything about it anyway.
In other news, the guide looks nice. In the Animal Focus section, you state that the Bull, Bear and Tiger animal focuses duplicate the effects of their respective belts, but for clarity I think it'd be worth stating outright that the belts and the animal focuses don't stack (they both grant enhancement bonuses, so only the highest bonus is applied).
Good job!
Letric
Thats the thing. Do I make a guide that accommodates builds, or one that is generalized? Most of the modern guides I have seen focus on builds, sometimes optimization. I personally am not a great optimizer. I get reminded of that fact every time I game with a good optimizer. My personal builds attempt to balance offense, defense, and utility with the results depending on what the class is capable of. Plus I'm terrible at choosing feats. :)
Malkin
Your list is more or less the same as mine. Similar at least. I guess my point was if I am looking for a companion that does a certain job, then I will focus on that and ignore other things. This could cause me to overlook some other good companions that will work out for different purposes. I was hoping that if anyone spots something I missed or am just plain wrong about, it will be pointed out.
NewXToa
You're right that its a hybrid class. My bad. I understand how stacking works, and I thought the wording I used reflected that, but I will amend the language used for clarity.
Your wording does imply it, and I figured you knew, but I believe it's worth stating outright to eliminate any confusion that may be caused by the reader not reading well enough. It's an important class ability, after all.
In light of them not stacking with each other, I do agree with Letric regarding tiger's rating. An archer hunter will probably already have a Belt of Dex anyway, so the ability to get a +2/+4 that doesn't stack with that isn't really all that significant. On the other hand, you're less likely to have a Belt of Str, so the ability to get a +2/+4 that doesn't have to stack with anything on the fly could be useful.
Granted, this does change based on whether the hunter in question is being built as an archer or a melee combatant.
Regarding what to focus on in your guide, one solution would be to look at options from a melee perspective and a ranged perspective. Not necessarily specific builds, but just based on whether you plan on standing next to an opponent or 30 feet away. Does that makes sense?
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I think the Falcon animal focus could maybe warrant being blue, but not for the PC, Animal Focus for your AC has no duration and can be changed with the same swift action to change your own. I keep Falcon up on my AC and change it at the same time I set my own when combat begins. That extra boosted Perception roll can mean a lot.
Letric
Thats the thing. Do I make a guide that accommodates builds, or one that is generalized?
I usually read guides with an idea in mind before making my toon. To get an idea how the class works and if what I want is actually possible.
It would be nice noting that you can make a Ranged, Melee, Mounted and Melee+AC flank buddy hunter, suggesting some feats.
For example, I'm planning on playing a Halfling Hunter and tried to find that will help him fight with her AC as a mount, but focusing on melee and not charges.
There are several feats you could use for this. I recommend you make a list of generics feats people could use, and then decide for themselves.
Also, you need a list of Teamwork Feats. There are several that are either extremely OP (depending on how read by DM) and really useful.
For example:
Lookout > if you can change the initial racial feat on AC, Improved Initiative could mean saving a feat yourself.
Pack Flanking
Improved Spell Sharing
Escape Route (potentially no AoO while mounted, or at least while moving around your AC)
Harrying Partners + Bodyguard makes an excellent combo for protection.
Also, I'd recommend you mention Wild Child (Brawler's Archetype). You'd ask why. Well, it's the only class I've found that it will let me bypass the 13 IN prerequisite for Combat Expertise, which is necessary for Pack Flanking.
Wild Child also has AC and those levels stack with Hunters for Animal Companion HD purposes.
Some of these options don't matter for an Archer, but for melee they're game changing.
Let me say first that I have posted what i consider a great deal of good work on the homebrew forum over the past few years (half of which has gone without response) and that while I have put a lot of heart and soul into that the amount of input I have received in the last two days on this work has given me renewed vigor to continue on. So, I would like to thank each and every one of you who have so far contributed. This document has been waiting on the shelf for awhile and it's nice to see positive input.
I will have some time this week send to make changes.
NewXToa
I have never like when a guide lists a feature name and its listed in two different colors, so I am going to shun that, but I have also concluded that a good class can go more than one direction and I can add notes that pertain to one build or another. Yes, it makes sense. :)
crashcanuck
Thats is a smart approach - certainly one I have never thought of and certainly an approach warranting more than a blue rating. Thats going in the feature description!
Letric
I can do general feats. Thats fine, and there are lots of resources available to draw off of. And I can start on teamwork feats. Some are just obviously good or bad, and some extremely situational.
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Letric
Thats the thing. Do I make a guide that accommodates builds, or one that is generalized? Most of the modern guides I have seen focus on builds, sometimes optimization.
That's a very good question. And to answer it, think of who your AUDIENCE is.
There is a small group of people that enjoys maximizing and seeing the highest DPR and defenses and such, generally for forum discussion rather than actual gameplay.
And then there is a big group of people that wants to play a particular class, but doesn't know how. And these people are generally not going to play your particular build; rather, they have questions like "I want to increase my defenses, which feat / spell / trait should I use?"
Take a look at this guide and how it categorizes things specifically to answer this kind of question. I've received a lot of positive feedback on this, and I find it serves a (much) larger audience than showing a particular optimized build. HTH!
Thats a great class guide.
I've been going over feats for hours this morning, and have made some decent progress. There is still a lot of work to do though. I don't research feats this much for my own characters! Maybe I'll be better prepared in my campaign now.
Under the Vermin section, your last sentence says "This can change when it has four hit dice if your GM allows you to put an ability score point into its Intelligence." Going by RAW, this has no special GM permissions necessary - the Vermin entry in Ultimate Magic explicitly states that the owner of the Vermin Companion can put the bonus points into Intelligence.
Mindless: Vermin companions have no Intelligence score and possess the mindless trait. In spite of this, vermin companions may learn one trick, plus additional bonus tricks. If a vermin animal companion gains an ability score increase (at 4 Hit Dice, 8 Hit Dice, and so on), the druid can apply this increase to the companion's Intelligence, changing it from — to 1, at which point the companion loses the mindless quality and is able to know up to 3 tricks per point of Intelligence, plus the additional bonus tricks. Vermin companions have no skill points or feats as long as they have the mindless quality.
You're off to a good start with the Feats section! I've only looked at the Animal Companion Feats section so far, but I hope to look at the rest of it sometime within the next few days.
I disagree with your rankings for Narrow Frame and Lithe Attacker - they can actually be pretty good. Many of the better ACs end up becoming Large, one way or another, but this can be problematic because it becomes difficult to use your AC in enclosed areas. Narrow Frame and Lithe Attacker make it possible to use your AC effectively indoors or in smaller caves. In addition, the Hunter gets access to cool spells like Animal Growth, potentially allowing you to turn your Large AC into a Huge AC. The two previously mentioned feats allow you to bring your newly Huge AC indoors!Basically, I think Narrow Frame warrants a green and Lithe Attacker a yellow. Narrow Frame will be frequently useful in many campaigns "particularly in the right adventure", but Lithe Attacker is a choice of "situational value", to use phrases from your color rating system at the beginning of the guide. They definitely should not be automatically selected regardless of the campaign, but they are worth giving a good look at for many games.
Also, I think Power Attack is a better than a mere green. Math only shows that PA decreases damage in the long run when your attack bonuses are fairly low (for example, PA has mixed results on Monks) but with an Animal Companion it's pretty easy to make sure your AC's attack bonuses are high enough that Power Attack is more effective than not.
Anyway, those are my thoughts and opinions on the matter.
Thank you. I will amend the document to reflect all of this input.
Thank you. I will amend the document to reflect all of this input.
Reduce Animal last 1 hour/level. At around level 4 you can extend it and make use of Large animals inside dungeons without extra feats.
It's a choice you have, from Large to Medium.
Reduce Animal can be a good solution, but they do take the size adjustment to ability scores and damage dice.
Narrow Frame and Reduce Animal are both valid solutions, and mostly it comes down to what would fit your needs better. As I mentioned before, Narrow Frame is definitely not a feat that should be automatically taken. I do think it's worth looking at, as is Reduce Animal.
{. . .} My animal companion is an elephant, but later on I will switch to a tyrannosaurus due to the GM letting certain setting info slip out. He approves of this choice. {. . .}
Now I have this vision that YOU actually get stuck in Golarion(*), but if you manage to survive long enough, you get James Jacobs as your companion . . . .
I'm not looking forward to a writing a spell section, and may not do it at all. We'll see.
UAE,
I have some leather armor and a longsword. I can fence decently, but my archery is nothing to brag about. I can start a fire, sing, and successfully picked a lock once, but my directional sense it not so good and I'm allergic to lots of things outdoors. I'd say survival is kind of 50/50.
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I've been going over feats for hours this morning, and have made some decent progress. There is still a lot of work to do though. I don't research feats this much for my own characters! Maybe I'll be better prepared in my campaign now.
I'm not looking forward to a writing a spell section, and may not do it at all. We'll see.
You can save yourself a lot of work by not trying to write about all (or even most) feats and spells, but only a few of them.
Think of your audience again. If they use your guide to build their character, they'll primarily be looking for the BLUE feats/spells, and maybe take some GREEN ones if there's insufficent blue choices. They won't generally care about anything labeled orange or red, and will basically skip that. You might need the red label a few times to point out some option is much worse than it seems (a trap!) but generally you can skip listing these.
Think of a purpose for spells (e.g. "offense", "debuff", "healing") then pick three or four spells of each level that suit that purpose well, then skip the rest and go for the next purpose. The result will be both less work for you AND more useful to the reader than an alphabetical list of dozens of spells.
It's all about Signal-To-Noise ratio. Focus on listing the things players want on their character, not the things they don't want.
If it helps Theconiel ran through all the spells here.
Seeing as you are building a hunter you seem to underrate the shared teamwork feats. They always struck me as a central feature of the class. I admit though that I may be a bit overfond of teamwork feats...
differentiating between a melee and ranged hunter may be worth the effort.
Pack Flanking is amazing for a melee hunter, especially one mounted on their AC. It is well worth the cost of combat expertise or better yet a dip into wild child brawler.
Actually a dip into 1 level of wild child brawler is well worth mentioning because of the advantages it gives you with very little downside (the worst is -1 will save every 3 levels).
Also you might need two guides on animal focus, 1 for you and 1 for your companion - while I agree with Letric on falcon for your hunter, on your AC it is pure gold. I don't know if that will be a thing.
Mostly opinion, so take it or leave it. Loving your guide.
MageHunter
Thank you for pointing out this list.
dragonhunterq
You're right that I am critical of teamwork feats. Someone of them require big investment for a small benefit. Perhaps you noticed that while my overall opinion of them is low, I ranked several individual ones well. The difference for the hunter and companion is that they are free and can be swapped out. Maybe I will alter the wording I used to be less critical. I added a new companion sections for animal focus.
Quick correction, in the section on animal focus for companions, you state that companions do not get a second animal focus. Animal companions do get the second focus at 8th level.
I just looked that up this morning and added it in. I looked in the wrong place. Thank you.
Thank you for the effort to put this together, this class in particular has a ton of details to work on.
I'm not looking forward to a writing a spell section, and may not do it at all. We'll see.
Probably best to do the other stuff first.
UAE,
I have some leather armor and a longsword. I can fence decently, but my archery is nothing to brag about. I can start a fire, sing, and successfully picked a lock once, but my directional sense it not so good and I'm allergic to lots of things outdoors. I'd say survival is kind of 50/50.
You're probably better off than me -- depending upon the resource used for computation, my point buy is somewhere in the range -3 to +6 . . . .
I was looking for ranged hunter feats recently and came up with this:
Trait - Deadeye bowman: avoid soft cover penalty from one ally
Friendly fire: shoot through ally's square for untyped +2 to attack and ally gets attack of opportunity. If you miss, roll to hit the ally instead...
Reckless aim: +2 competence to attack for -1 AC. If you roll a 1, hit random adjacent target.
I also upped the animal companion's intelligence to take improved unarmed strike and deflect arrows (it has learned to shrug off the occasional reckless attack). Snake focus gives +2 to the attack of opportunity from friendly fire.
At higher levels, friendly fire won't come into play because an archer would rather take full attack, but the reckless aim +2 will continue. For a mid-level game, it looks fun...
I would uprate the Dog companion for a reason that has nothing to do with mechanics: If you need to be in social situations a lot (even if you're not a Face character), the Dog is the most likely Animal Companion to be accepted (and thus not separated from you).
Will do. Thank you. So many viewpoints to take when making these choices. That is one that would work at my group's table, but it's hard to know about others.
Perhaps an extra section, like you did for dinosaurs, of nonscarey animals? Dog, horse, camel etc..?
Domesticated animals?
Edit: I looked over the list so I could move animals of this kind into one group, but I only found three possible entries. Dog and horse for sure, and camel too in certain settings. Other domesticated or household animals don't really have a presense in the master list of companions. Some are familiars and others are non-combat livestock. Thats too bad.
This thread is now dotted, I'll give it a look over. Hunter is my single favorite class and I'll be interested to see what you've managed to put together.
Ok lets see here:
1: Did not cover basic ability scores: Most guides I've seen have a quick rating on your ability scores and playstyles. Like a stat line for an archer, a stat line for a side by side, and a stat line for a rider.
2: No mention of the ability to teach your animal rangers tricks, and no discussion/rating/best of list for your spells.
3: You did not cover that animal companions can learn ANY feat at level 5+ assuming you have 3 Int for your AC by putting your level 4 stat improvement into intelligence.
4: Pack Flanking should be the brightest blue available, for mounted Hunters picking this up at level 3 is a permanent +4 to hit. That nearly makes you a full BAB class for the low low price of selecting combat expertise as a feat.
5: Another good teamwork feat category is Attacks of Opportunity, Paired Opportunist combined with a Hunter that can easily force opponents into triggering AoOs is very solid.
6: Boon Companion and the fact that Hunter Levels 17, 18, 19, and 20 suck means that the Hunter is a beautiful class to multi-class as long as you keep your other classes to a combined minimum of 4 levels. Among various classes the best are anything with full BAB and especially Barbarians because with 4 levels of barbarian you can pick up the ability for your companion/mount to rage as well.
1: yes I did.
2: I don't know what ranger tricks are.
3: yes I did.
4: I'll take another look at pack flanking.
5: same.
6: I will not nvlude boon companion for multiclassing purposes.
The urban hunter archetype has a list of animal companions which can pass in civilisation, and an ability to help them do so.
Hunters can teach their companions tricks from the ranger skirmisher archetype, it's noted in their 'Animal Companion' class ability, last part of the first paragraph.
Shrouded in Light,
Sorry if that previous post came off terse. I was typing on my phone! Also, autocorrect got me. #6 was meant to say that I -will- include it.
avr,
Thank you for those two items. The skirmishes tricks are really snuck in there aren't they? From a design standpoint, I feel like they shouldn't have been, but that doesn't matter. If someone was building a higher level companion, you could really start off with enough of those to be exploitable. Alright, well, more stuff to put in the guide.
I understand the animal focus ability can become permanent for the hunter if the pet dies. Simliar concept with the evolutions for that archetype that gives eidelon abilities to the animal. Do you think a dead companion hunter is viable? Would that be worthy of mention in your guide?
At 4th level, the ram gains +1d8 damage on a change and gains Improved Bull Rush as a bonus feat. It there a feat or something that allows a creature to bull rush -and- attack on a charge?
Zolanoteph,
It is already in there, listed un "Dead Companions".
If you can get your ram to be proficient with armor spikes, there's the "spiked destroyer" feat from Inner Sea Gods that lets the user make an attack with their armor spikes whenever they're successful on a bull rush. That might work?