Animal Companions and racial skills

[EvilMinion]

If one is creating the smaller Deinonychus (Velociraptor) dinosaur animal companion for their druid, does that animal companion get the racial skill bonuses that the typical raptor would get?

Additionally, when creating critters in general, is there some rule about whether they can use dex instead of str to modify attack rolls if they're a certain size or their stats are significantly different? Or is that going to always require they get the weapon finesse feat? (which, alas for the animal companion raptor, then becomes wasted at lv 7)

[Seraphimpunk]

they get racial skill bonuses, afaik. i don't see why they'd be denied them.

and they have to take weapon finesse. small critters with a high dex usually have it as their only skill, and then get some bonus feat. animal companions need to allocate the feat to it.

if they grow out of it, and you don't like it, return the animal to the wilds and retrain a different animal of the same type and change the feat allocations or speak to your gm about some house ruled retraining if you're very attached to the animal.

[Jeraa]

You only get what the specific animal companion entry says you get. Ignore everything in the Bestiary about that creature - the actual monster and the animal companion versions are not the same.

[blahpers]

Jeraa wrote:

You only get what the specific animal companion entry says you get. Ignore everything in the Bestiary about that creature - the actual monster and the animal companion versions are not the same.

This. It seems strange, but animal companions don't get racial bonuses to skills (unless their entry says so), even if the "normal" animal does.

[Seraphimpunk]

yar. that seems very strange. they're racial. All tigers r good at stalking their prey... but the druid's tiger doesn't get his racial skill bonus?

looking through the rules, nothing ever mentions Racial Modifiers in the Druid section. They cover everything from skills to feats to special qualities. But none mention Racial Modifiers.

The lack of mention would kind of leave it up in the air. A number of base animal types listed get racial modifiers. They're not mentioned in familiars either, but when building a familiar you include them. I think since they don't scale in level with the animal companion they weren't mentioned.

i did dig in old forums, since its the kind of thing that might have come up before:

link

JamesJacobs wrote:

Actually... animals don't get their bonuses to skills like this as written. An animal companion's stats are built off of different rules than those intended to be used as monsters.

That said, I don't think it'd hurt much to go ahead an apply the bonuses to skills as presented in the Bestiary if you want.

so RAW + RAI by the developers: nope pooch is screwed out of them, except in home games.

[Jeraa]

A druid doesn't get a tiger. He gets a generic "Big Cat" that represents all big cats, like tigers and lions. It may resemble a tiger, but its not a tiger.

The Big Cat companion gets a 1d8 damage bit, and 1d6 damage claws. Tigers have a 2d6 damage bite, and 1d8 damage claws. So the druids companion doesn't accurately represent a tiger. Nor does it accurately represent a lion (the other example animal), as they have a 1d8 damage bite, but only 1d4 damage claws. Tigers also have +3 natural armor, but the Big Cat companion only has +2. (Lions also have +3 natural armor, so the Big Cat companion doesn't match either one of the example animals.)

And look at the Small Cat companion. It gets the sprint special ability. But leopards (one of the example Small Cats) don't have that ability. But leopards do have the grab, pounce, and rake abilities. However, the Small Cat companion has none of those.

Animal companions are not normal versions of their respective animals. They don't follow the same rules.