Hey everyone!
Just curious on this. I'm going to be running an adventure pretty soon, and one of my players keeps talking about playing a Pack Lord, splitting his levels among multiple animal companions, then taking the Boon Companion feat to make the lower level one count as a higher level one.
To kind of clarify what I mean, he wants to, at 4th level, have an animal that counts as 3rd level, one that counts as 1st, then take Boon Companion at 5th to make the 1st level one count as 4 levels higher (to a max of his druid level). Is he doing this properly? Or does the feat mean that it makes HIS level count as 4 levels higher to a max druid level of his HD, that is then split among the animals?
It's just oddly phrased in the feat as well because it says the animals abilities are calculated as though your level were 4 higher to a max of your druid level, which makes it sound like the animal companions' abilities can be recalculated as though it counted as the one picked with your druid level.
Anyway, just looking for some confirmation on this so I can shut him down if he's truly breaking this. Thanks!
Seems pretty clear to me, you pick one companion to apply the benefit to.
It means there is less over-all flexibility, you couldn't apply a +1 bonus to 4 different animals, for example.
I don't see how it would change anything in that specific scenario if it worked otherwise, though.
"The abilities of your animal companion or familiar are calculated... If you have more than one animal companion or familiar, choose one to receive this benefit."
That never modifies your druid level for purposes of companion ability as a whole, it's modifying one companion directly.
That's the part that gets confusing though. I wasn't sure if it doesn't work for this specific archetype, but counts for dif CLASSES that give animal companions or something.
Sort of like, a multiclass druid/ranger or something like that, so you give the level equivalent bonus to one of the animals gained by one of the classes or not.
Just because the Beastmaster or Pack Lord splits their level among animal companions if they wish. So if the Pack Lord had one level 1 one, and one level 3 one, can he use the Boon Companion feat to make the level 1 one count as a level 4 one?
Just seems broken to me because he plans on taking the feat multiple times so he'll basically be a druid with multiplied amounts of similarly leveled animal companions.
There is nothing in the Feat that would so discriminate vs. this Archetype (i.e. only apply to one Companion per Class).
I can see what you're saying, maybe the Feat would be more balanced if you can only take it once per Class, but that's not what it says.
If you don't want him to take the Feat, or don't want him to take it more than once, don't let him:
You're the GM, this sounds like a home game, not PFS.
Or if you want to house-rule that each Feat instance applies to only one Class, go ahead.
(Although he could just dip in another Companion Class and stack that with his discrete levels from Pack Lord)
FYI, Ranger/Druid multiclasses stack their Companion levels, so should normally have only one Companion equal to the stacked level.
There is a FAQ suggesting that if the Druid chooses an animal "not on the Ranger list" then that doesn't stack, and thus they would get a second Ranger Companion, although the RAW says nothing of the sort and said FAQ doesn't deal with ancillary issues to when they DO stack (such as how unique abilities are resolved, e.g. Druid Share Spells vs. Paladin Mount vs. Cavalier Mount). You can check out a thread on that topic: here, if you want to click on FAQ for that.
EDIT: BTW, you might be interested to know that PFS has a 'one (persistent) combat pet/assistant' rule. That is mostly for gameplay considerations, i.e. time resolving creature's turns and saves, not over-crowding the battlefield, etc., but could also have balance in mind. You could invoke that rule yourself for your home games, which means that any additional companions cannot be used in combat (at least not at the same time), so they will most likely be used for out of combat utility: flying/scouting, scent detection, etc. Boon Companion can still be useful for that, boosting skills and granting new Feats and enabling higher tier racial abilities.
That's very true...