Nature Oracle animal companion

[Melissa Litwin]

I have no problems with nature oracles getting an animal companion, but I see no reason for it to have a minimum of a 6 Int. That seems excessive and allows the animal to have more tricks and skills than a druid companion or a cavalier companion. For game consistency, I think the companion should be on par with every other animal companion in the game.

[Alexander Kilcoyne]

It will have exactly the same amount of skill points per level as an Animal only gets 2+Int modifier anyway. 2-2 is the same as 2-3 or 4.

Tricks rarely become game breaking devices, but if it bothers you just rule that it gets the standard 3 or 6 from its original 1 or 2 int. Most players wont notice anyway, and i'm fairly certain the higher int doesn't allow it extra tricks in this case regardless.

[Folly]

The issue she is having is that animals with an int greater than 3 can choose any skill or feat, rather than the limited animal list. This allows for animals for example to do things like learn languages with linguistic.

[Hunterofthedusk]

Actually, having an Int of 6 means that you don't need to teach it tricks. Have it put one of it's very few skill points into linguistics so that it learns common and you can just tell it what to do.

Also, they took the Int of 6 straight from the Paladin's Bonded Mount. Actually, they just took the class feature wholesale, took out the celestial templates, and slapped it on the nature oracle.

[Shadowborn]

Folly wrote:

The issue she is having is that animals with an int greater than 3 can choose any skill or feat, rather than the limited animal list. This allows for animals for example to do things like learn languages with linguistic.

Understand the language, sure, however without magically growing some vocal chords the animal won't be able to speak the language unless it is a type that can already mimic human speech (i.e. crows, parrots, et al.)