Treant Sapling Help Please

[Scooter Scott]

So I have a player in a game wanting to run a treesinger with a treant sapling... Considering she has built her character from the Advanced race guide with fey subtype, etc. etc. sounds cool... Until I started looking at the companion.

I realize they get huge bonuses at 4th level, but compared to a full fledged treant doesn't the Natural Armor seem a bit low? Or maybe it should have a small portion of the DR treants normally get? 11 AC is low for anything, but DR could get a bit unbalancing (though the character already has it, so I guess not too bad), and the treant does not have a huge number of HP either...

Also, they are listed with 2 INT in the treesinger, but 12 INT in the Plant Shaman... Bestiary also says 12 INT... Is there a reason that as a plant companion the poor thing suddenly loses 10 INT? Or is this just a typo?

Perhaps these are all dumb questions that don't really amount to a whole lot of difference, but it's driving me nuts trying to figure out where the numbers came from. I even reverse engineered it using several of the advancement methods and couldn't come up with the same numbers... Sorry, I am just one of those who wants to know the "why" and "how" these types of things change to where they are.

Personal thoughts on handling this are: reverse engineer the treant down from huge to medium; leave it at 12 INT; change starting NA to +2 or +4 (AC would be 13 or 15 respectively) since they specifically cannot get any feats to allow the use of armor or weapons; and leave everything else alone... Feedback?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

[El Baron de los Banditos]

Compare the Roc to a Roc Animal Companion. Companions version have to be scaled to a lower level than a base creature, since it'll scale with the PC.

[cartmanbeck]

The treant sapling is written up to be fairly even compared to other animal companions at the given level, so I wouldn't mess with it. Also don't forget that it gains natural armor according to the animal companions table, so it starts the game with an AC of 11 but that increases pretty quickly (+2 at 3rd level). The reason its AC is so low is the lack of Dexterity bonus, which can be helped with a belt later on.

[hogarth]

I agree that "treant" is probably a poorly chosen name for that companion (mostly because of the intelligence issue). They should have called it "walking tree" or something like that.

[Jay the Madman]

Saplings are pretty young. It would make sense that they wouldn't be as intelligent as a full grown adult.

Personally, I prefer the carnivorous flower to the sapling. He doesn't do nearly as much damage, but his DEX and natural armor are higher so the flower's AC is much higher than the sapling's. My flower's main role in the party is a backup tank, and a flanking party for the rogue and plant shaped Druid.