is there any way to boost your effective druid level for an animal companion, apart from boon companion?
hopefully that doesn't rely on being a specific race or class.
thanks :)
That is the only way I know of. I would check the Ultimate Equipment Guide to see if there are any magical items that do it,but I don't know of any.
Only one I know of is a feat from UC that is only for Cavalier 4+ people and lets you flat out use your character level as if it were your class level for the Mount feature.
You may be able to trick your way out of needing Expert Trainer class feature (the reason I said Cav 4+) via Sohei Monk, who ignores pre-reqs on mounted feats, with no definition of what a mounted feat is.
But I asked if people would consider the UC feat to be a "mounted feat" (I don't believe I mentioned it was in relation to Sohei, because I've become positive this board has a strong anti-monk bias and I didn't want that tainting the polling data :p) a while back and the opinion on this board was unanimously no.
Which is a shame, because there are 2 whole fighter archetypes based on being mounted that don't actually give you a special mount of any sort. Most DMs ban leadership, so short of another PC giving you your mount, that feat was basically the only way to make those archetypes work, and 1 level in Sohei is a much smaller detour for your fighter training than 4 levels in Cavalier....
darn i was hoping to get get another 2 from somewhere along with boon companion. it is for a PFS paladin which is normally very limited in choices for bondd mount, but i was going to go the sacred servant archetype (bond has to be to holy symbol), get the animal domain, then choose giant wasp as the animal companion you get just for complete weirdness. but that would be paladin level -6 for effective druid level. maybe i will still do it just to see how many people assume it is my bonded mount and say something :) paladin level -2 still isnt horrible.