Boon Companion got an update when it was reprinted in the Animal Archive.
Old: you got +4 Effective Druid Level
New: The abilities of your animal companion or
familiar are calculated as though your class were 4 levels
higher, to a maximum effective druid level equal to
your character level.
So you're telling me that as a level 5 Huntmaster Cavalier, I could have 3 5th level dogs (and a 2nd level dog). Even worse, make the Cavalier Human and throw in Huntmaster feat (giving him 3 level 6 dogs, at level 5).
Is this how the new boon companion is really meant to work??
You have to take boon companion once for each animal companion you have,huntmaster affects all of them as I see it.
But you can't get higher than your lvl with boon companion because:
"to a maximum effective druid level equal to
your character level."
But it's still pretty crazy.At 5th level taking boon companion 3 times(and huntmaster of course) you could have 3 5th lvl dogs and 2 2nd lvl dogs.
BTW
At lvl 7 and with another pick of boon companion you could have 4 6th level dogs and 1 4th level dog.
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When you get outside of the < 10 levels, the effectiveness of the ability trails off quickly. And the Huntmaster doesn't get to reassign Animal Companion levels until his companions die, so you might bumpinto some issues there. If you take 4 shots of Boon Companion though, you're going to hit 16th level and suddenly discover that your 4 8th level dogs aren't all that impressive.
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Boon Companion got an update when it was reprinted in the Animal Archive.
Old: you got +4 Effective Druid Level
New: The abilities of your animal companion or
familiar are calculated as though your class were 4 levels
higher, to a maximum effective druid level equal to
your character level.So you're telling me that as a level 5 Huntmaster Cavalier, I could have 3 5th level dogs (and a 2nd level dog). Even worse, make the Cavalier Human and throw in Huntmaster feat (giving him 3 level 6 dogs, at level 5).
Is this how the new boon companion is really meant to work??
If you're willing to invest all three of your feats in Boon Companion, then yes, you can have up to three "level 5" doggies at 5th level. After that, at each level you'll have to choose which dog to increase its level, so eventually two of them (or all of them if you spread out your levels) will lag behind. At low levels, Boon Companion can be super powerful, but as you get higher in level it really evens out and becomes a non-issue.
In other words, +4 effective levels for an animal companion is approximately worth one feat at higher levels, yes.