owlbear baby as animal companion

[elnopintan]

One of my players has proposed me a way to use the owlbear in the land farm as an animal companion.
He has proposed to use a chain of statistics of legal animal companions:
badger->black bear -> brown bear -> polar bear -> dire bear

¿What do you think?

[Sean Mahoney]

I am confused by your proposal. So he would not age normally, instead he would have the stats listed above at the appropriate levels?

Sean Mahoney

[elnopintan]

That's it, it would be as if the druid changes from animal companion.
It would age normally untill he druid reaches the proper level to change it to the next stage.

[wampuscat43]

If you do a Search for 'owlbear' you'll find a lot of discussion on these boards about the risks of trying to domesticate this varmint.

The owlbear can be advanced using the usual rules to 15HD - why not just do that?

[elnopintan]

Because I didn't give him permission to use the owlbear statistics. This method fits better because he can say he is using an owlbear, but the statistics are legal.

[DM T.]

I allowed the Owlbear Baby into my AoWAP and it hasn't broken the balance.
I try to minimize statistics handling and maximize roleplay and fun. The way the party handled the case was great so I allowed them to keep it.
It made the story 'whole' in the eyes of the players and more importantly, it contributed alot to the fun factor of raising a young owlbear :)

[bubbagump]

If you have a copy of Savage Species, you might also want to consider using that. Turn the owlbear in to a character class and have it advance as an NPC. At lower levels it could serve as a PC's animal companion, and at higher levels it could become a cohort. Also, if the owlbear survives long enough it could become considerably more powerful than normal with a carefully crafted monster class.