Hello everyone, completely new player here that is in the middle of character creation and I'm currently trying to help my girlfriend create a Druid. She has selected the Cat (Big) as her animal companion and I had a few questions.
For the BAB the wording confuses me at this part in the book "An animal companions' base attack bonus is the same as that of a druid of a level equal to the animals HD." It shows the chart for the companions and shows +1 BAB for level 1, but shows the HD at 2. So....I'm not quite sure I really know the the BAB is. The whole "the same as that of a druid of a level" wording confuses me.
The other question is the lvling up HP for the companion. For level 1 we rolled 2d8 and got a total of 7. That's cool and all, but at level 2, do I now roll a total of 3d8 as the book shows 3 HD at level 2? I assume so, just seems like they gain a lot of potential health very quickly if that's the case.
Also, I remembered another question that got brought up. For the attack "bite" and "2 claws", I can't find descriptions of these attacks so I assume we treat them as normal melee attacks? For the cats (Chose tiger) special attack "rake", it said to look this up in the beastiary so I did look this up in the beastiary but the explanation only confused me :/
The explanation:
"Rake (Ex) A creature with this special attack gains extra natural attacks under certain conditions, typically when it grapples its foe. In addition to the options available to all grapplers, a monster with the rake ability gains two free claw attacks that it can use only against a grappled foe. The bonus and damage caused by these attacks is included in the creature's description. A monster with the rake ability must begin its turn already grappling to use its rake—it can't begin a grapple and rake in the same turn.
Format: rake (2 claws +8, 1d4+2); Location: Special Attacks."
It says it must begin it's turn already grappling, but....how do I grapple if I don't have an attack that grapples?
I greatly appreciate any assistance and clarifications provided on these questions. This is my first table top game ever so I am VERY new to this! I've played tons of RPG boardgames and such, but not to this extent, and my girlfriend has never played anything like this PERIOD so it's very overwhelming for her, but the exciting thing is she is enjoying it A LOT (and we haven't even played a real session yet, just walked her through an "example" session) as she gets to create her own character background/personality/etc and she's very creative :).
