Animal Companions and high Intelligence

[chopswil]

On page 52 of the Core Rule book, "If an animal companion increases its Intelligence to 10 or higher, it gains bonus skill ranks as normal."

What is normal?
From table 3-8, a companion of a 1st level druid gets 2 skill ranks if it have normal int, a 1 or 2.

what would the skills ranks be for a companion of Int 10 be in this case?

How would you increase the Int of an animal companion to 10 or above and still keep it a companion, e.g no awaken spell? We are talking at least a +8 increase here.

[Blueluck]

A paladin's animal companion (mount) starts with INT 6. Add +4 for ability score increases, and a headband of INT +6, and you'd have a companion with INT 16. Tomes could increase that to INT 21 at level 20, or INT 20 at level 14.

I'd like to meet a paladin's celestial horse with a 20 intelligence.

[Quandary]

essentially there is an exception going on, because normally if the INT modifier changes from -5 to -4 to -3 you would adjust the skill ranks.
but as you can see, even though INT 1 and INT 2 have different modifiers, the skill ranks are the same.
but the line indicates that you only do so when you start getting bonus ranks, above INT 10.

i honestly am not quite sure how to adjudicate it, because the exact exception isn't directly stated anywhere.
when you reach INT 10, it isn't clear if you should add 1 rank/HD (for going from -1 to 0 modifier),
or if you actually need to wait until INT 12 to have a positive +1 modifier.

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there's several blog posts covering how animals can raise their INT,
or i you can search my post history for 'animal intelligence blog' or something like that,
as i just recently summarized/quoted the relevant parts for somebody else.

[Starglim]

Racial hit dice of the animal type give 2 + INT modifier skill points per hit die. A typical animal companion has an Intelligence penalty, so it gets the minimum of 1 skill point per hit die, thus 2 skill points for its starting 2 HD. If its INT increases to 10-11, it has a modifier of +0 as for any other creature with that INT (as normal), so has 2 skill points per HD.

If its INT increases to 12 or higher, it gets bonus skill points to each hit die.

[Gauss]

Starglim is correct, in short, recalculate the skill points an AC (or any creature) gets when it's intelligence increases. The statement in the CRB is just covering that base.

Examples of an AC at each intelligence bracket up through 12:
Int 1: 1 skill per HD (2-5 = 1 min)
Int 2: 1 skill per HD (2-4 = 1 min)
Int 4: 1 skill per HD (2-3 = 1 min)
Int 6: 1 skill per HD (2-2 = 1 min)
Int 8: 1 skill per HD (2-1 = 1)
Int 10: 2 skill per HD (2-0 = 2)
Int 12: 3 skill per HD (2+1 = 3)

As you can see, the skills per Hit Die do not change until the animal reaches an Intelligence of 10+.

As an interesting sidenote, a headband of Int grants skill points regardless of the normal intelligence of the creature (assuming the creature does not have an Int score of "--").

So an AC with an Int of 2 wearing a +2 Headband of Int gets 1 skill point per level and 1 skill point in the Headband's associated skill.

As for how to increase an Int 2 AC to Int 10? +3 from Hit Dice advancement (4, 8, 12) and +5 from Inherent bonuses. The Headband of Int would also boost it but not add to the "freely spent" skill ranks as mentioned above.

- Gauss