I just bought the Beastiary and there is no Dire Weasel.
My Druid has a dire weasel animal companion.
Is this one of those beasts that i need to convert myself?
Ok, no reply.
May i please get some help with this conversion?
I haven't played very much since 2nd edition.
You might also want to wait more than 31 minutes before deciding there's no reply.
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Well since the Pathfinder RPG doesn't have any rules for a weasel animal companion to start with, it also doesn't have any stats for a bigger (dire) one.
My suggestion is to speak with your DM and see if one of the other animals isn't close enough for what the two of you want to have for your companion that you can just use that with a little modification.
(I'm still waiting for my bestiary if there is something about dire animal companions in there.)
Ok, thank you. Yeah, the beastiary has nothing about Dire weasels in there, so i think i'll just see if i can either get another companion, or just use the 3.5 version.
Thank you.
I'd recommend using the statistics for a Wolverine animal companion from the Core Rulebook and just calling it a Dire Weasel.
The Wolverine and the Dire Weasel (and Dire Badger) have always been rather similar monsters.
I wish I had this book yete.
Creative Director
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I just bought the Beastiary and there is no Dire Weasel.
My Druid has a dire weasel animal companion.
Is this one of those beasts that i need to convert myself?
We do more than answer questions on messagboards. We also sometimes build Game Books. Patience is thus a good thing when waiting for answers here.
THAT SAID...
The Dire Weasel is one of the few creatures that got left out of the game, partially because we tried hard to recast "dire animals" as prehistoric animals, and not merely as larger animals with bony plates and horny ridges.
That the dire weasel got left out is, I believe, one of the results of this change. Chances are pretty good that you'll see the dire weasel reappear as an animal companion in the Advanced Player's Guide or some other book, but until that point you can probably get by just fine by using the badger/wolverine animal companion—the only problem there is that the dire weasel has an attach and blood drain ability. Frankly, this is a bit powerful for an animal companion, and when/if we DO up the dire weasel as an animal companion, I suspect we'd rebuild its blood drain attack as a bleed attack instead.
Owner - D20 Hobbies
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I just bought the Beastiary and there is no Dire Weasel.
My Druid has a dire weasel animal companion.
Is this one of those beasts that i need to convert myself?
Bestiary p133 has Weasel and Viper familiars.
3.p rules p54 has Snake, Viper Animal Companion.
With your DM's permission, you can audit the difference between the Viper familiar (B p133) and the Snake, Viper (P p54) then apply that as a change to the Weasel familiar (taking note to sub the poison for the Attach ability.) Once that is done, just apply the A.C. bonuses provided for the Snake, Viper by the Druid class.
Edit: or just do as Jacobs suggest (it is a better solution)
I just bought the Beastiary and there is no Dire Weasel.
My Druid has a dire weasel animal companion.
Is this one of those beasts that i need to convert myself?
We do more than answer questions on messagboards. We also sometimes build Game Books. Patience is thus a good thing when waiting for answers here.
THAT SAID...
The Dire Weasel is one of the few creatures that got left out of the game, partially because we tried hard to recast "dire animals" as prehistoric animals, and not merely as larger animals with bony plates and horny ridges.
That the dire weasel got left out is, I believe, one of the results of this change. Chances are pretty good that you'll see the dire weasel reappear as an animal companion in the Advanced Player's Guide or some other book, but until that point you can probably get by just fine by using the badger/wolverine animal companion—the only problem there is that the dire weasel has an attach and blood drain ability. Frankly, this is a bit powerful for an animal companion, and when/if we DO up the dire weasel as an animal companion, I suspect we'd rebuild its blood drain attack as a bleed attack instead.
My apologies for my impatience and thank you for the update.
Heh, i really like my gnome on his Dire Weasel. It makes for a fun and funny character to play.Truth be told, i haven't played D&D since second edition and i must state that i have almost always viewed the Dire version of an animal as just a larger version of the smaller one.
Some of this may be because we had miniature dragons in our game that could become familiars.
The smaller versions had the same sorts of temperments as their larger cousins, but with a twist.
An example is that the Miniature Black dragon had a nasty and viscious temperment that only the nastiness of a cruel drow could lament.
The Minaiture Red dragon was fiercly loyal even though it enjoyed combat and acts of destruction.
Again, thank you for addressing this.
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Creative Director
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Wait, how did you have an animal companion in 2nd edition?
Did you just want like a friendly dire weasel? Like the kind you'd get from an animal friendship spell?
In 2nd and 1st edition... and in 3.0, actually, if memory serves correctly, there was a spell called animal friendship that a druid could cast on an animal to make a permanent bond with that animal. The 3.5 design team made a pretty wise decision when they just decided to make that into a class ability, since it was already effectively one since you only had to cast the spell once each time you wanted a new companion.
The Dire Weasel was INTENDED to be in the beastiary.
Unfortunately it did not want to be represented in a negative light, so it hired an rather oily barrister to represent it and managed to "weasel" out of its contract.
HAHAHAHA
Being one of those oily barristers I find this rather amusing...
On a side note, dire weasels were just nasty...especially when you advanced them to large, and gave them a few druids to back them up with animal growth...just scary how powerful and how many you could have at a low CR...
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On a side note, dire weasels were just nasty...especially when you advanced them to large, and gave them a few druids to back them up with animal growth...just scary how powerful and how many you could have at a low CR...
Indeed! There was an adventure published in the latter days of Dungeon Magazine that featured a tribe of dragon worshiping kobolds and their pack of vicious, advanced, large Dire Weasels. Having a large sized creature that can squeeze through tunnels built for small characters is truly frightening. Not to mention what happens to your medium sized tin can fighter when he gets flanked by two said beasts in one such tunnel. It ain't pretty...
After being nearly routed by a pack of kobolds with weasels at 12th level had my players less than amused. :D
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At a GenCon, long ago, one of the players had a half-orc character that kept a weasel on his shoulder throughout most of the game. He talked to it constantly, explaining combat tactics to it, and how, 'when you're bigger, you'll be able to bowl someone over and pin them like this.'
Apparently, he thought it was a baby Dire Weasel, and he had decided to start training it young, and was waiting patiently for it to grow up...
At a GenCon, long ago, one of the players had a half-orc character that kept a weasel on his shoulder throughout most of the game. He talked to it constantly, explaining combat tactics to it, and how, 'when you're bigger, you'll be able to bowl someone over and pin them like this.'
Apparently, he thought it was a baby Dire Weasel, and he had decided to start training it young, and was waiting patiently for it to grow up...
That is Awesome and a great segway into what i was going to ask.
Ok, my gnome is using the Weasel as a mount and has it combat trained, but i was wondering what feats or tricks are needed to allow Anklebiter(the weasel) to tackle an opponent down and either pin him till further instructed, or drag the opponent down, then pin him/her while it is biting the back of their neck, effectively killing it in a similar way weasels kill rabbits in the wild.
Also, i had what i think is a cool idea,but don't know how to enact it within the system.
I thought it'd be cool if the little gnome had fully wooden spears or javelins that he could throw, or stick into an opponent with a charge attack.
What i wanted to do was use a spell of some sort that could grow spikes once it is in the opponent, that way it would do extra damage as the spikes burrow their way in, as well as making it do even more damage when it is pulled out.
How do i make this work within the game?
At a GenCon, long ago, one of the players had a half-orc character that kept a weasel on his shoulder throughout most of the game. He talked to it constantly, explaining combat tactics to it, and how, 'when you're bigger, you'll be able to bowl someone over and pin them like this.'
Apparently, he thought it was a baby Dire Weasel, and he had decided to start training it young, and was waiting patiently for it to grow up...
Sounds like a case of Minsc and Boo syndrome, to me (Boo was a "miniature giant space hamster").