Aasimar Superhorse Oracle - Good idea or just silly?


Advice


So I was poking around the ARG and came across something potentially interesting in the Aasimar racial feats.

Celestial Servant
Rather than being a normal animal or beast, your
companion or familiar hails from the heavenly realms.
Prerequisites: Aasimar, animal companion, familiar,
or mount class feature.
Benefit: Your animal companion, familiar, or mount
gains the celestial template and becomes a magical beast,
though you may still treat it as an animal when using
Handle Animal, wild empathy, or any other spells or
class abilities that specifically affect animals

How, exactly, does that improve your companion? Well, according to the Bestiary, the Magical Beast type grants:
d10 hit dice
Full BAB progression
Darkvision
Low-Light vision
Good Fort and Reflex saves.

On top of that, the Celestial template adds:
Smite Evil 1/day
Resist Cold, Acid, Electricity 5 (scaling up at 5, 11 HD)
Spell resistance
DR/evil starting at 5 hit dice.

That's a pretty hefty bonus over a standard animal companion with just one feat.

Now, humans have another interesting racial feat.

Huntmaster

You are an expert trainer of horses, hounds, falcons, or hunting cats.

Prerequisites: Handle Animal 1 rank; either the animal companion, divine bond (mount), or mount class feature; human.

Benefit: If you have the animal companion class feature, pick one of the following types of animal companions that this feat affects: bird, dog, small cat, or horse. If you have the divine bond (mount) or mount class feature, this feat always affects horses. You gain a +2 bonus on Handle Animal and Knowledge (nature) checks with creatures of that type of animal. Furthermore, you are treated as one level higher when determining the abilities of your animal companion or mount, as long as it is of the chosen type.

Aasimar can take the Scion of Humanity racial trait and qualify for this feat.

Now who can take advantage of this?

Given the whole divine theme of the Aasimar race, my thought jumped to Oracle. The Agathion-blooded Aasimar seems the perfect fit, with +2 Con, +2 Charisma, Handle Animal and Survival racial skill bonuses, and Summon Nature's Ally II as an SLA. They're a great fit for a Nature oracle. Aasimar also have the favored class option to increase their effective level for a specific revelation by 1/2.

So, at level 4, an Aasimar nature oracle with the Bonded Mount revelation, the Huntmaster and Celestial Servant feats, and the racial favored class option applied to Bonded Mount will have an effective druid level of 7 for their magical horse, with its d10 hit dice and full BAB progression. It's like a rideable fighter at that point.

Is this worth playing, or just a silly build?


Take a look at this thread


Amusingly, I didn't notice the thread when I posted this, then saw it immediately below mine and felt like a dolt. And here I was thinking I saw something original :P


Somewhat related to this, I've been trying to decide whether I should eventually get this or Improved Familiar -- not sure I have room for both.


IMHO, it's not really worth it for Familiars, they already get SR and use your Saves and HPs and BAB. With Improved Familiar you have many more unique abilities opened up, and you can even add the Celestial Template to a base animal familiar with Improved Familiar if you really want to. I guess if the special Familiar bonus to skill/save/etc is your prime purpose for the familiar, then this lets you keep that (unlike Improved Familiars) while adding the Celestial benefits.


Hmm, good point on the SR. I was mostly looking at the DR, which would be pretty nice for a familiar to have. Cheaper ways about it though, now that I think about it. Too bad most of that stuff is useless -- it would be nice if the familiar could use its saves at your hit dice if they were better.

Not too worried about the bonus.

Grand Lodge

Oh, it is a good idea.

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