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I have an urban ranger, and despite playing D&D and PFRPG for years, I don't have a ton of experience using animal companions. It's just not a class feature I've had many characters with in the past.
Anyway, I have an elven urban ranger with a hawk companion. I'm playing in the Crimson Throne Adventure Path.
He's got plenty of tricks, but I find I hardly ever use him. I imagined him being very useful as a flying scout, but the opportunities for that seem to be limited. Either that, or I'm just not being creative enough in my application. I keep thinking he should have a telepathic bond so I can "see what he sees" in real time, ala the Crow or something, but of course he doesn't work that way.
I don't really want to use him in combat, as his ability to do damage is minimal, and he doesn't have a lot of hit points anyway. That was never his intended role, which again was mostly mobile airborne scouting.
I kept thinking as I leveled up I'd find more uses for him, but now I'm at lvl9 and still not seeing it. It's not like I forget he's there, I am always TRYING to come up with ways to use him, but I'm apparently not getting it.
The rest of the character is going beautifully. I love his back story, plenty of opportunity for great roleplay, and Urban Ranger was MADE for Crimson Throne so far. Favored enemy - human has been HUGE since that's the vast majority of my opponents. He uses an elven curve blade and does tons of damage with it.
Anyway, any advice on things I can do to get more use out of the hawk? I just feel like it's a part of my character that isn't developed as well as it should be, both tactically and from a storyline perspective. Thanks in advance!
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I personally have never gotten past level 4 with a ranger. Any animal companion I've had was usually the combat type. However, some things that I've seen as useful...
Scouting, yes. You've got that covered and unfortunately it doesn't come up very often.
Delivering things, including attacks. If you've got space above an enemy, a tactic listed as a specific trick in the animal archive is essentially bombing them--give them a flask of alchemist's fire, tanglefoot bag, whatever you like, and have them fly above an enemy and drop it on them.
Clever spell uses: I've seen more than one module where a flying companion/familiar was made invisible with a Silence spell centered on them, sending it back to foil enemy casters. There are certainly other useful spells you could do this with, even if they're not invisible--go for any kind of aura spells. You'll probably have to coordinate with your party's mage for something like this.
They go good with barbecue sauce.
While not as smart as a familiar, your hawk can drop things like Tanglefoot Bags, Caltrops and Alchemist Fire on the battlefield if he's trained well. He may even be able to carry two such items with his Strength 6. Scout and Errand runner are other duties, he's a very good scout in the daytime and good for shadowing people especially in a rural environment.
Apart from that, if you're not keen on putting him into combat then maybe it's time to start looking for a new pet...
Unless you and the bird share a language, it's not likely going to be a very good scout. Speak with animals can help with that.
You certainly want to teach it the Bombard trick from the Animal Archive.
Unless this is for PFS, talk to your GM about retconning in the Falconer archetype as it stacks perfectly with the Urban Ranger. The Distract trick can sometimes be useful if you're not going up against something that will plaster your bird in a single hit.
GM: "It looks like a pillow fight gone wrong."
Player: *cry*
If you think you may be captured, give the bird a set of masterwork thieves tools to carry (only 2 lbs.), order him to Flee, and pray that your prison cell has a window.
Unless you and the bird share a language, it's not likely going to be a very good scout. Speak with animals can help with that.
....I'm scheming, oh so scheming. I think you could possible come up with some complex trick. Basically, just line up some colored stone (any easily recognizable marker really, this is just an example). Green for clear, yellow for people, and red for large beasty. That would probably be enough to get gist of what is coming up.
Unless you can get it to understand a language, this trick would need a lot of homebrew though. I think that I have heard that animals can understand a single language if you raise their INT to 3, but my memory has always been shaky, and I do not know where this has been said. Anyone else heard of something like this?
EDIT: Ok, an explanation of this maneuver with more foundation in the rules. Basically, an animal companion with an INT of 3 can take any feat it is physically able to perform, and it can do the same with skills. So give the bird an INT of 3 and let it take linguistics so it can understand Common. While it cannot speak, it should be able to at least use the method I suggested to get rough idea of what it means.
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Oh yeah. The Animal Archive also has some outstanding tricks to teach your companion, like flanking. My partner just got her companion for her PFS Ranger and when she learned that it wasn't just a late druid companion she was really sad. So I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get the most out of one. We've come to the conclusion that a wolf with Trip and the Boon Companion feat is going to be pretty amazing. And at level 7 it will grow to large and she's already working on training it to be ride-able. Best of luck, and hopefully no pillow fights go wrong.