| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I made a new thread since it doesn't seem to garner any attention in the old one.
The option for multiple Animal Companions and Eidolons for Beastmaster Rangers, Packlord Druids and Broodmaster Summoners, is as most people know rather underwhelming. If you want multiple creatures of equal power level to follow you, you have to divide Levels or Evolution points and Hit Dice between them, which results in them at higher levels being 5 to 10 levels behind for only two creatures, which renders them virutally useless.
So I've been struggling for a while to come up with a system to scale multiple creatures to the same power level of one more powerful creature. First i tried various mathematical formulae on how to assign power levels. This had two problems, one being that all companions/eidolons would have to be equally powerful and you couldn't have for example one powerful primary follower, and one or two low level scouts, the other being that generally more followers than two would quickly become useless again.
Only lately when I was preparing for the start of a new campaign and building a few encounters it hit me. There was an established system already on how to scale a number of lower level creatures to the level of one higher level creature. The encounter design rules had a system for this all along, so this new concept of mine basically turns Effective Druid/Summoner Level into CR and works with the XP award values for the given CR to build your pack/brood the same way a GM would build a combat encounter.
So here it is,
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Multiple Animal Companions or Eidolons
Certain classes or archetypes such as Pack Lord Druids, Beast Master Rangers and Brood Master Summoners all are allowed to take more than one Animal Companion or Eidolon, each of these so called "minions" are weaker than the single companion of a regular character of the same class in return, the following rules allow dividing the power between your minions in a way that does not leave one or more of them so far behind in power level, that the individual creatures become obsolete at higher levels. The rules could also be applied to possible archetypes or prestige classes with multiple Familiars.
When using multiple Eidolons/Animal Companions ("Minions") look up the XP reward for an encounter of a CR equal to your Effective Druid/Summoner level ("Master Level" or "ML"). Use this value as a "Minion Pool" to choose Minions from in a similar fashion as an encounter is created from. Each minion costs a number of points from the Minion Pool equal to the XP reward for a CR encounter equal to the minion's desired ML. A minions ML can never be lower than 1.
For example a Level 9 Pack Lord Druid (CR 9=6.400 XP) could have two Effective Druid Level 7 Animal companions (CR 7=3.200) or one EDL 8 (4.800) and one EDL 5 (1.600) Companion. Alternatively, she could have One EDL 7 Companion and two EDL 5 Companions. Or even four EDL 5 Companions. More combinations are possible of course.
Brood Masters do not divide any of their Eidolons' base statistics between the eidolons, but rather each eidolon advances the same way as a single eidolon equal to its ML. However a brood master's eidolons are still one size category smaller than regular eidolons and the brood master must have the minimum number of eidolons stated by the Eidolon Brood class feature. In order to gain additional Eidolons he must still buy the large and/or huge evolutions but the evolution point cost and prerequisites work as follows.
The Aspect and Greater aspect class features, as well as the Large and Huge evolutions for the Summoner's eidolons are purchased from the Evolution Points of all Eidolons. When buying these evolutions, you divide the cost as equally as possible between your eidolons subtract the evolution points cost from all individual eidolons' evolution pools. When gaining additional Evolution points through special abilities or feats like Extra evolution, these points must be divided between eidolons. With all evolution points added or subtracted this way the evolution pools of each eidolon may never differ more than one point from any other eidolon in the brood.
For example a level 13 Brood Master has four small Eidolons, he buys the Huge evolution for 6 EP to make all eidolons medium sized. This means he has to subtract 2 points from two eidolons and one point from the other two. At level 15 he gains the Extra Evolution feat, which grants him 2 extra Evolution point. He must add one point to each of the two Eidolons that currently have one less EP each than the others.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
It's a bit long, but most of it is basically just how you would build an encounter and then some stuff on how the Addition of Eidolons works for the brood master works, and if the Encounter creation rules aren't completely broken, this shouldn't be either.
+1
If I was DMing, I'd use this house rule. A little non-new player friendly, but neither is the base Summoner.
Certainly not quite as intuitive as the standard models, but I would wager a lot more balanced.
More opinions are welcome. I would really like to know what people think about this.
**casts Revive Dead on thread**
I love it... I just had a girl last night that wants to build a Pack Lord, and I was thinking the same thing... that she was about to nerf her character (or at least her Companion)... so I truly appreciate finding this thread.
That being said, I'm thinking of making it a Feat instead of an Archetype for her. Level 3 Druid Feat with Animal Companion as requisites.
Your Animal Companion has friends.
Prerequisites: Level 3 Druid, Animal Companion.
Benefit: You may have multiple companions instead of just a single companion. Using the Challenge Rating XP table on page 398 of the Core Rulebook, the total Challenge Rating XP of your Companions may not exceed the Challenge Rating XP of your Druid Level. The only limitations on the number of companions you may have is that this XP comparison. Minimum level for your Companions is Level 1.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Glad you liked it. I made a more polished version of it recently and uploaded it on a layout preview page for my Homebrew Collections project.
It basically explains a few things better, and includes how to handle feats like boon companion and i put in a table for the minion pool that eliminates the necessity of looking it up in the gamemastery section first and also uses lower numbers for easier calculation (i just brought them down to the lowest common denominator)
That is indeed much cleaner. Nice job. I assume you won't mind if I steal that chart and place it into my house-only feat...? :P
I think you did a FANTASTIC job. I love it so much. One problem, you can take boon companion multiple times. If we follow the same rules, a lv7 druid taking it twice ends up with 256 minion points, that is just too overpowered.
If you go by the rules in the layout picture i posted you can only get it once per pack of minions. So only once for your druid pack and it still only counts up to your maximum character level.
I might not have clarified that enough, that it can only be taken once per pack, rather than per companion.
Threeshades, any chance you can revive that layout page? The link is dead.