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There is nothing I am aware of that prohibits a 2 int creature from taking classes (though there is a rule about what feats animal companions with int 2 or less are able to take). If they can only select from a narrow selection of feats, that suggests other things that require at least some level of intelligence to master should also be disallowed - and personally I would think class levels fall into that category. But there is not an explicit rule about it, so your GM is wrong about that.

Likewise animals can't have an int above 2 is also not correct. There are some contradictory rules regarding this. Of those I personally think the animal companion rules that suggest and allow for a animal to gain int 3+ on level ups is certainly the intent as there is a whole set of rules around this. But otherwise, outside of GM purview, animals found in the wild should not have int > 2.

I think the animals aren't monster argument is specious. Monsters is broad in its meaning under the rules as you've noted. Is a dragon a monster or just an awakened lizard? Is a bulette a monster or just a cross breed of animals?

However, all of that said

Lorebot wrote:

Why would this be a house rule? What rule in what book says it's not possible and therefore has to be house ruled in?

There are a billion things that the rules don't explicitly forbid. But that isn't an argument that those billion thing are allowed by the rules. You generally need a rule to allow something to happen for it to be an option.

This

Lorebot wrote:

The Monster Cohort rules in the back of the Bestiaries all have tables of monsters and what level they should be treated as for being recruited as cohorts, but they all also say 'You can use the monsters on the following table as guidelines when determining effective cohort levels for monsters not on this list' which means the lists are not exhaustive and you can use monsters that don't appear on the lists.

This points to the rules potentially allowing it. But the list...

and yeah, the Monster Cohort rules do say 'with GM approval' and I appreciate that. I'm just really confused cause I'm being told it's not a 'GM approval' issue and that it's a rule somewhere and simply isn't allowed. That's my issue...

Lorebot wrote:

Java Man wrote:

Let me rephrase: "an animal cohort would be a GM invented house rule."

Why would this be a house rule? What rule in what book says it's not possible and therefore has to be house ruled in?

If the GM doesn't want to allow it that's up to the GM, I won't argue with a ruling. But if it's not the GM deciding he doesn't like something and there's actually a rule somewhere that says it's not possible I really want to know where it is.

A riding dog is not a race or class for standard characters, as a cohort is written to be. There are assorted monster options for cohorts in a few places, but a riding dog is not one of them. So it would be a GM call to allow it and how to do so.

(Personally I dig your intention and would work something out for you at my table, but the RAW is not supporting you.)

The Monster Cohort rules in the back of the Bestiaries all have tables of monsters and what level they should be treated as for being recruited as cohorts, but they all also say 'You can use the monsters on the following table as guidelines when determining effective cohort levels for monsters not on this list' which means the lists are not exhaustive and you can use monsters that don't appear on the lists. The GM just needs to decide what the effective level of the monster is, with Worgs being 5 and Blink Dogs being 4, it's not unreasonable to consider a Riding Dog or even a Heavy Horse as a 2. But it's definitely within the RAW that any monster can be a cohort.

if you look at the feat Monstrous Companion you can see that:

1. it count as the leadership feat for prerequisites and one can not have both it and the leadership feat

and
2. at least one of the creatures listed (the sea cat) has an int of 2 which is as high as some of the animals can get.

so i'm for one am fine with getting an animal as cohort, but id have it work more like the Monstrous Companion with upgrading the hd as per the monster rules..

Thank you for pointing out the Sea Cat has only 2 Int. I guess I need to find a copy of Bestiary 4 now...

Let me rephrase: "an animal cohort would be a GM invented house rule."

Why would this be a house rule? What rule in what book says it's not possible and therefore has to be house ruled in?

If the GM doesn't want to allow it that's up to the GM, I won't argue with a ruling. But if it's not the GM deciding he doesn't like something and there's actually a rule somewhere that says it's not possible I really want to know where it is.

This is smack in the middle of "GM decision" territory.

And I'm fine with that. But I'm being told it's actually a rule somewhere and it's not 'GM decision' and that's why I'm confused.

I'm playing in a PF1 campaign and we just reached level 7. My intention from the start was to have my halfling take Leadership and recruit his riding dog as a cohort. By the Monster Cohort rules it would probably have an effective level of 1 or 2 for the purposes of recruitment. Once recruited it would start gaining exp with the party and begin gaining levels in fighter, eventually reaching the cohort level limit of 2 less than their Leader.

I'd thought I'd been clear with my plan, but now that we're actually there I'm being told that's not allowed. That in order for an animal to be a cohort or to gain levels it would need to be Awakened first and I don't see any reason for that to be necessary. Here are some of the reasons I've been given:

1. Animals can't have Int more than 2, so they can't have a class. I've never seen, nor can I find, any rule that requires a creature to have a Int of 3 or higher to accumulate exp and/or earn class levels. And the monster advancement rules in the Bestiary clearly contradict this idea since it has rules for giving monsters classes as well as other ways of advancing them.

2. Animals can't have Int more than 2, so they can't be recruited as a cohort. There's nothing in the Leadership rules that require a cohort to have an Int of 3 or higher. Yes, the Monster Cohort rules give examples, and none of the examples are animals or have an int less than 5, but it doesn't say that creatures need an Int of 3 or higher to be a cohort so it should be possible.

3. Animals aren't Monsters, so the Monster Cohort rules in the Bestiary don't apply. This is the most annoying argument imo because the Table of Contents in the Bestiary clearly classify animals as monsters.

If anyone can shed some light on where these 'rules' are so I can look them up I'd greatly appreciate it. I've already given up on trying to discuss it with my DM, he made his ruling and I don't want to argue with him about it. But I'm really trying to understand where these ideas are coming from because I can't find anything about it in the sources I have on hand.

I only see one other thread on these forums about the topic (from 2015) and it doesn't have any answers for me.

I don't want to have the dog Awakened, it's not something that's available till we reach level 9, and it's not something that the character would do to his dog. I know that I could take feats for, or cross class into something that has, an animal companion or special mount and just treat the dog as a class feature. That's also not something I want to do for various reasons, but mostly because it feels like it cheapens the life of the animal since it makes them more easily replaceable.

I had a situation recently where a player fell off her mount and ended up prone in a melee. She was adjacent to her mount when her turn came around and she asked if she was able to use Fast Mount to get up from prone and mount her horse in a single action. I wasn't sure so I let her roll for the Fast Mount because I thought it would be cool, but now I'm trying to find an official ruling on the question and I've been unable to.

The Mount/Dismount a Steed action doesn't specify that you need to be standing to do it, just that it's a move action. Mounting also doesn't provoke AoOs, so if you can do it from a prone position it would allow characters with mounts to bypass the AoOs standing up usually incurs. Further, using Fast Mount to get up from prone would be a free action bypassing the normal action economy of having to Stand Up.

Unless I'm missing something it definitely seems like RAW you can mount a steed regardless of your current position, tho now the pedant in me is pointing out that it doesn't specify that you need to be adjacent to your steed to mount it either...so you could mount your steed from across the room and teleport to your mount if it worked that way.

I'm a bit unsure about RAI on the issue tho. There are feats specifically for standing up without provoking AoOs or with less action cost, and it feels exploitive to let someone replicate those effects with a basic skill check.

This may have been brought up before, but didn't see it in my search. Looking at Renali's stat block, I'm wondering how she has moved around much in these caves which are supposed to be pitch black as I read the AP. She doesn't have darkvision or low-light vision, and neither do the Anadi in their true form as noted later in the toolbox. Not even a light spell in her innate spells. Was this an oversight or has she just stumbled around occasionally lighting a torch here or there?

I've heard a rumor that the Anadi are going to be a playable ancestry, curious how this will be addressed.

The fact that Anadi, and so Renali, don't have darkvision seems like an oversight on behalf of the writers considering they have her living in a lightless environment. They never really provide much info about the Anadi spiderform tho and I just worked under the assumption that maybe they gain websense or darkvision while in that form which would allow her to live easier in the darkness. Renali's entry does mention that she's been using spiderform for hunting to survive and avoid confronting the hunting spiders nearby.

In area A1, the treasure available is referred to as a "staff of marvelous medicines".

Is this supposed to be a set of marvelous medicines, or a staff of healing? I would lean towards the former, but it's described as having "a pair of bronze serpents coiled around it", which makes me think much more of a staff than a set of healers tools.

Has anyone come up with an answer for this? Is it a staff that acts like Marvelous Medicines somehow? Is it a Major Staff of Healing? Is it just Marvelous Medicines?

It seems appropriate to give the players an item that's so useful against poisons given the Purple Worn in the next chamber, but it'd be really nice if this item was actually statted out somewhere...

So I was helping a player out with his new PF2 Wild Druid and I noticed something that feels like an error. The base Dinosaur Form spell says it gives a +9 bonus to damage, but when heighted to lvl5 the bonus drops to +6 and that seems extremely counterintuitive. I recognize the heightened spell also increases the number of damage dice, but the lvl7 version of the spell also doubles the damage dice and the damage bonus jumps up to +15. So it starts at +9, then drops to +6, and then goes up to +15? This seems very wrong to me and definitely feels like a typo.

I looked at a few of the other Form spells and I don't see any of them doing something like this, so I'm pretty sure this is an error but I wanted to see what the community thinks or find out if there's been a comment from Paizo about this that I haven't been able to find via google and the forum search.