I'm starting to think of my next character build, and some of the rules seemed a little fuzzy.
What I was thinking of was making a cavalier (Beast Rider archetype) that would, at lvl 12, take up a wyvern with the leadership feat, and have the wyvern gain the mount special abilities. But how would the wyvern increase in power as I level up?
A wyvern has an ECL of 10, which is also the same as the ECL of a Dragonne. While looking on this topic in the threads, I found that there was apparently rules provided for the Dragonne as a special mount (I don't have the extra bestiaries, so I can't read the full text myself). What I found said the following: "In "Dragonnes as Mounts" it says a character with the leadership feat can take the Dragonne as a mount using the animal companion rules. They have to have an effective Druid lev (EDL) of 10. The EDL countes as 4 levels lower for determining the abilities and statistics of the Dragonne. Taking the Dragonne in this way counts as the character Cohort."
Now, a cavalier's mount ability scales as fast as the druid, so once I hit level 12 I'd have all the requirements for it (>10 equivalent druid level and being level ECL+2 as per leadership). Then, the wyvern would have the stats of an animal companion of a druid level 8. Perhaps non-incidently, that would give it just as much HD as a wyvern typically has.
But how does it advance? The progression chart, I believe, is for animals. Dragons advance differently, with a better BAB and the like. Am I correct in understanding that I should replace all of the animal BAB and saves progression with those of a dragon?
And then, when I level up, what happens? When I reach level 13, I'll have an equivalent druid level of 9 for the purpose of this mount, which means a new hit dice. Will this be a hit dice of dragon? Does he gain a level in a PC class as he would as a cohort? Does he gain both? Does he only gain PC levels when he doesn't gain dragon HD?
I also know a lot of animal companions increase in size after a few levels. Would the wyvern also do this, or would it be considered as if it had already gained this (or, to the same effect, would it simply not apply to him), meaning he will stay Large forever?
So how would the wyvern cohort/mount progress? And would the Young template lower its ECL, thus allowing it to become accessible a few levels earlier to small cavaliers? Thanks.
As is right now there are no offical rules for combining the leadership feat and animal companions. So anything done would have to be houseruled. I worked out something awhile back on the homebrewed forum that I think is reasonably balanced, but I haven't tested it yet. The rules that were for the dragonne as a special mount were edited out of existence.
Typically monstrous cohorts gain in class levels set to scale off the leadership chart.
Edit: The rules I worked out were only regarding the animal companion bonus effects on stats nothing more. I did nothing regarding changing sizes and scaling stats based upon it. I figure trying to integrate both into one class feature on an in depth level, i.e. having scaling size ratios for various creatures, would be a complete overhaul to the functioning of the class and its mechanics and would be very well beyond the scope of picking up a feat.
