Nice, congrats Tony!
Hey! Thanks Mike, always appreciate your support.
Truth be told though, Costin Schelling (Cozzymandias on the forums) was my Huckleberry on this. For some reason the initial release credit didn't get placed as it should.
The Thumbnail and description was updated for DrivethruRPG, but it looks like it was missed here. I'll get with Jason and see if he can make some adjustments.
We've gotten some pretty positive feedback on this conversion, so I hope it hits the spot for people!
Oh I am interest. Is the class all about making your animal companion spicier?
Okay, so it does make them Spicier for sure, but I'll give you an idea of what we were going for:
- For starters, you basically get Beastmaster benefits as a core class feature, and start with more than one animal companion. You don't get all the goodies from that archetype for free, but I would say what the Martial Artist is to Monk, the Beastmaster is to this Class.
- Majority of the Classes interworking come down to using its action economy commanding animal companions and then engaging with the enemy in a specific way. There are 5 class paths all of which accentuate a different fighting style for working with your animal companion. They also get something called Coordinated Strike, which is essentially bonus damage your animal companion does when you meet certain criteria (usually both of you landing an attack, spell, snare, etc. in the same turn as the other).
- They get wave casting with limited schools to encourage battling tactics
- They get Bond spells, which are essentially focus spells that Hunters can command an animal companion as part of the casting
- Tactics feats, essentially a take on Teamwork feats, which work more or less like Stances that you and an Ally must meet requirements to engage in (not exclusive to animal companions, but obviously encouraged). The goal with these is that Costin and I might repurpose them for a Warlord/Tactician style class at some point down the line, as the feats work pretty well for those concepts too.
The main goal of the class was to define it distinctly from Summoner in that how you use your animal companions to fight is a coordinated effort more than it is the creature is standing in to do the work for you.
And I think we did a pretty good job accomplishing that design goal while remaining in the budget we were hoping for.
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Nice, I think I am actually going to try it out! Previously I was thinking about homebrewing a animal based class myself...
