ShadowViper's page

Since it seems that special qualities/abilities are randomly excluded or included, I would like to suggest something much simplier.

Each animal companion has the special qualities/abilities that it's entry in the Bestiary/s gives it. So Wolf once again has Low Light Vision without issue(because, honestly, who wants a wolf that can't see in the dark, just plain silly).

If it's an advanced ability it would be gained as normal when the animal companion advances. For example, Tigers and pounce.

So no more lumping different animals together and forcing them to share special qualities/abilities that they wouldn't have! :-)

Complete Example.

Lepord, starting out it has scent and low-light vision as normal, but when it advances, it does not gain sprint, instead it gains pounce & rake as per it's entry in the Bestiary.

Much easier way of doing animal companions.

Edit: And with the ammount of people freaking out and attemtping to troll and derail the thread.... It seems this was posted in the wrong section, my mistake seeking some clairification and offering an idea that could make animal companions a bit easier/better.

Up is up with this? It seems to be rather random as well. It would be helpful if animal companion conversion mechanics were released.

Some exmaples.

-Wolf being the only animal companion(AFAIK) that doesn't have low light vision.
-Lepord not having pounce and rake.

Can we please get some clairification? Should animal companions have everything that the animals naturally have(once the advance of course)?

This is mainly just a thread asking for opinions.

Now suppose someone wanted to play a Ranger and decided to choose a Lepord over a Cheetah. Now the sprint doesn't really work with a lepord, so my question is, would it be "balanced" to allow the person to exchange sprint for pounce?

My first thought is "no," seeing as how pounce(at least in my opinion) is a more powerful ability than sprint and more useful.

My question/confirmation request is this. A Colossal Dragon casts Anti-Magic Field. Now it's centered on the caster. The caster, being a colossal dragon, takes up 25 feet of space. Now the Anti-Magic Fields radius is 10-feet. So that means(provided I'm understanding this correctly, and the spell's radius doesn't extend based on caster's size) that the dragon's space is larger than the spell's radius?

So then one wonders, why would a larger dragon even bother casting anti-magic field? Since it seems to do the dragon no good. Not big enough radius to extend to enemy targets, and not a big enough radius to fully cover the dragon.

Now looking at the stat block for the Ancient Red Dragon. His/her skill modifier on fly is only +11 when it should be +13. So I'm assuming I've missed a penalty, what -2 have I missed? Or has someone given the dragon a colossal penalty to fly instead of a gargantuan penalty?

+ 25 ranks for 25 HD, +3 Trained Class Skill= 28

-1 for 8 Dex, -6 for Gargantuan size, -8 for clumsy manuverability= -15

28 - 15= 13

Specfically: A creature cannot change shape to a form more than one size category smaller or larger than its original form.

It seems that, gone are the days of great wyrm bronze, silver or gold dragons taking humaniod forms. In fact with this change, once a dragon reaches huge in size, the change shape ability pretty much becomes useless for what it was originally intended for: disguising a dragon.

How about the yuan-ti wanting to change herself into a tiny viper, nope sorry, out of luck. Once again another creature where change-shape becomes useless.

I'm hoping there is an errata that fixes this over-sight.

Is listed as only having Scent(Rather than Low-Light Vision and Scent) in it's Special Qualities entry. I'm assuming this is an error(printing error, etc).

I've yet to find an animal in the Beastiary that doesn't have low light vision.

If it's not an error, what is the reason for Wolf animal companions only having scent?