| 9 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
Should the Celestial Servant feat alter the HD & BAB of an Aasimar's mount to d10 and equal to it's HD?
Okay. So what's the point of changing it's type to Magical Beast then?
It also says that they're still treated as animals for spells. Although that might be just for spells cast by the Oracle.
The darkvision from the type isn't that big a deal since the template is also giving darkvision.
Oh. Just reread the feat. Missed that part. Hmm.
Pretty sure you don't adjust its BaB or HD or anything. The feat would say so if it did. It probably only means that spells and effects that target only animals would no longer work on your mount.
It makes sense to me that it shouldn't, as just getting the template's already a decent bonus for the feat. But other abilities that change types (The Nature Oracle's Final Revelation is the one that comes to mind off hand) specify that they don't change hit dice, hit points, saves, etc. which makes me wonder what the actual intent is for this feat. And if the intent is that it doesn't change the hit dice and BAB progression of the companion, it should be erratta'd to include such text. (Actually, it should probably be erratta'd to include specific text either way)
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It seems pretty clear to me that the companion changes its stats. Otherwise being a magical beast is 100% downside, and seems like a pointless include. I tried to get this fixed in Hero Lab (which doesn't change the creature to a magical beast) and someone on Lone Wolf's board quoted James Jacobs as saying that it only counted as a magical beast for bane, favored enemy, etc., but that isn't what the feat says, and makes no sense as an off-hand component of a feat.
I think I saw your thread Benn. That's part of why I'm hoping to get an official comment on this thread. It's a potentially interesting (and powerful) character build, but I'd like to know just what this feat is intended to add. And since HL isn't advancing Bonded Mount properly right now, it's currently in my "interesting build that doesn't work properly in Hero Lab" pile anyhow so I can afford to wait on a response.
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HeroLab is not a Paizo product, and is broken in so many ways that I would suggest not relying on it for anything other than printing up neat looking character sheets. I see so many rules justifications here on the forums because HeroLab interprets things in this way or that, but people forget that the developers of HeroLab are no more Paizo employees than you or I.
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HERE is where James Jacobs and a couple other posters discuss the Celestial Servant feat, which should be a helpful guideline.
Seems that, besides gaining the Celestial template, the only other thing you would change on your animal companion's sheet would be to erase the word "animal" and write "magical beast" in its place.
Why it would have to change at all is beside me, though. Normally when you apply a template to an animal it just gains the "augmented" subtype, not a whole new creature type.
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Yeah, that thread doesn't seem like a reliable source of rulings to me. It's JJ rapid fire answering questions without giving them much thought. It doesn't seem to be the intent of the feat that it give you the downsides of being a magical beast without any of the benefits, and it certainly isn't what the feat says. I agree it's strange that the feat changes the type at all, but without further errata, as per the rules of the game, it does change the animal companion's stats.
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And I realize Hero Lab isn't official and has plenty of bugs (not to mention odd calls on how things work when the rules are vague). I'm not using Hero Lab as justification for how things work, rather I'm frequently complaining that Hero Lab doesn't accurately reflect how things work and should be improved to do so.
That thread contains useful hints, but in no way official rulings.
There have been cases where JJ said something in his thread that got ruled exactly the other way in the official FAQ.
And I'm also pretty sure he said at some point, that his answers are no ruling.
On the feat: In difference to the level 11 Paladin ability, the feat does actually say it changes the type, not that is counts as a magical beast for spells and effects.
RAW this does pretty clearly would lead to a recalculation of BAB, HD etc IF the special rules for animal companions were not in place.
An animal companion does NOT follow the normal HD/BAB progression of an animal as that is overwritten by the Animal Companion Progression. And Celestial Servant doesn't change that.
But it should still get the Darkvision, as that is a Trait. And the animal companion progression doesn't override traits.
So: Darkvision yes
HD/BAB no
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| 2 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
Where are those rules? Just like to know for future reference.
Pg.306 of the Bestiary explains types and what attributes they affect.
RAW this does pretty clearly would lead to a recalculation of BAB, HD etc IF the special rules for animal companions were not in place.
An animal companion does NOT follow the normal HD/BAB progression of an animal as that is overwritten by the Animal Companion Progression. And Celestial Servant doesn't change that.
This is an opinion, and I believe it's a fairly poor reading of the rules. An animal companion DOES follow the normal rules for animal HD/BAB progression. It just has a table that spells out that progression for you so you don't need to figure it out manually.
All the rules say about the animal companion table are (emphasis mine) "An animal companion's abilities are determined by the druid's level and its animal racial traits. Table 3-8 determines many of the base statistics of the animal companion. They remain creatures of the animal type for purposes of determining which spells can affect them." Nowhere does that say "this table supercedes the existing rules of the game and is the only source you should use for determining your animal companion's stats regardless of what changes have been made to the companion itself."
The table is the only source for determining the information presented in the HD, Natural Armour Bonus, Str/Dex Bonus, Bonus Tricks, and Special (ability score increases notwithstanding) columns, so necessarily it becomes the source of rules for those aspects of an animal companion. But there's absolutely nothing saying that the BAB, Fort, Ref, Will, Skills, and Feats columns (plus the ability score increases) are anything other than an application of the existing rules for animals to act as a useful reference for druid players.
I realize this isn't explicit, but it's highly intuitive and it's supported by the example provided in the Skills explanation, where it says "If an animal companion increases its Intelligence to 10 or higher, it gains bonus skill ranks as normal." Your claim is that the animal companion rules specifically override the normal rules of the game, but not only do they not say anywhere that this is true, the Skills write-up is an example where they explicitly note that it's not true. They're written in a way that takes for granted that your animal companion is an animal because normally it is, but I don't believe there's any evidence that an animal companion that isn't an animal wouldn't otherwise follow the normal rules of the game.