Hello all. I was wondering if you could help me with a question I had about all companions (i.e. animal companions, familiars, mounts), but more specifically, a Paladin's Mount.
Question: On the table for a Paladin's Mount in both PHB 3.5 and Pathfinders, it lists a column called Bonus HD. As your Paladin levels progress, the Bonus HD increase in increments of one. I'm wondering if those HD stack with each other, thus an 11th level Paladin's mount would receive +2 Bonus HD at paladin level 5, +4 Bonus HD at paladin level 8, and +6 Bonus HD at paladin level 11 for a total of +12 Bonus HD for the mount? Or does the mount only get whats on the row for the corresponding paladin level, i.e. an 11th level paladins mount would only get +6 Bonus HD? If the latter were true, then this implies your mount looses the "Special" qualities it had from Paladin level 5-7 when you reach 8th level because it does not mention anywhere the special properties being continuous while the +HD are not. My argument for the former is in the Monsters Manual 1 v3.5, page 291 lists a similar table for Changes to Statistics by Size. On this table, the bonuses/penalties stack for each size difference, thus if your mount was "Advanced" from a Medium creature to a Huge creature, he would get +8 STR from Medium to Large, and another +8 STR from Large to Huge for a total of +18 STR. Now I searched and searched all over the net, but couldn't find any definitive answer to this question. I'm forced to conclude that if the number has a "+" next to it, then the bonuses stack, but if it does not, i.e. INT 7, then it's static meaning it is what it is. This doesn't really explain the "specials" because there is no "+" next to each entry, but it's all I can figure out.
Anyways, thanks for any help you guys can give me.
Much confused.
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In regards to bonus Hit Dice, they don't stack by adding them all together. You use the better of what appears on the chart. The natural armor, strength, an int all work the same way as the HD, the table is showing you what your current bonus is. So you go from having +2 to +4 to +6 to +8 etc. The '+' signs are there to remind you that you'd adding them onto the base Mount's stats.
All of the special items you keep for each level bridge, so at 18th level you have all of the special abilities listed from Empathic Link to Spell Resistance.