Have the Animal Companion rules changed significantly from 3.5? I seem to recall our party's Druid in 3.5 sending his Animal Companion into battle a lot and said Animal Companion died in every encounter. We had a running joke that no animal wanted to be this guy's companion because it would mean certain death for it. Basically, I got the impression that in 3.5 an animal companion was mostly for role-play and had no business being in combat past level 4 or so. Am I understanding things correctly that Druid and Ranger Animal Companions now scale with the level of the PC?
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Yeah animal companions are an improved class feature and scale differently than in 3.5. They no longer need to be barn sized to be helpful, but rather, scale like a limited character.
They remain useful far longer than 4th level. They are probably more resistant to damage (maybe not in terms of Hp, but certainly for AC).
That said, they can still die relatively easily. However, they are replaceable.
You can buff the defense of an AC though. They are all receptive to Mage Armor (or Barding if they are an appropriate animal) for example. Cat's grace can help as well.
Have your animal take the toughness and dodge feats if you want to up the defense a bit more.
Interesting. Thanks for the responses, guys.
How useful are they in the level 15+ game?
Have the Animal Companion rules changed significantly from 3.5?
Yes and no.
Yes: The rules are significantly different on how you choose and stat your animal companion out. Rather than having to know the rules on how to add levels of animal to a creature you pick an animal for the base stats and look at a chart on how to adjust it and it pretty much tells you everything.
Yes: Animal companions level a little more steadily rather than jumping up 2 levels at a time.
No: You still have a lot of math to do to figure out the companions final stats.
No: The companion uses pretty much the same hp and bab as it did in 3.5.
I seem to recall our party's Druid in 3.5 sending his Animal Companion into battle a lot and said Animal Companion died in every encounter. We had a running joke that no animal wanted to be this guy's companion because it would mean certain death for it. Basically, I got the impression that in 3.5 an animal companion was mostly for role-play and had no business being in combat past level 4 or so.
I'd have to know the exact situation that was causing the companion to die so commonly to be able to know what was wrong. Most animal companions were durable enough to take a few hits in a fight. There was a huge variance by animal though. If you picked a low con animal like a chicken at first level and never did nothing but stack the levels on it then it probably wouldn't be too hard to kill. On the other hand if you took something with a bit more con and base armor like a riding dog, gave it magic barding, and took feats like improved toughness then it could probably go a few rounds with anything the DM threw at you.
Am I understanding things correctly that Druid and Ranger Animal Companions now scale with the level of the PC?
They did before and still do. The end result is similar, but they did get bumped up a tad.
3.5: Animal Companions got +12HD at 20th level, putting them approximately in the 13-15 hit die range. They also got +12 Natural armor, +6 Strenth and Dex, as well as a variety of free abilities like improved evasion and multi-attack.
Pathfinder: Animal Companions have exactly 16 hit dice at 20th level. They also get the same natural armor, strength, dex, and other free abilities.
There are a few differences. You gain feats faster in Pathfinder so your companion will have more feats. In 3.5 you had a pretty big selection of crazy animals, which could get totally out of control. In Pathfinder you have a specific selection of animals which all start at small to medium size and nevet end up bigger than large.
In 3.5 there were some options to get non-animal companions, that would use the that different creature type to determine how big each hit die is, as well as BAB per hit dice, saves and even skill points (dire animals got all three saves as primary and magical beasts had larger hit dice and full BAB). In Pathfinder no matter what type of creature is your companion it gets the same hit dice, BAB, and saves from the chart.