Animal ally feat stacking

[gh0+1]

Just wondering how it works...

It says it gives you a companion at character level -3 but that it stacks with whatever other class gives it to you if you take it later.

However, if we have ally = CL - 3 and then add levels of a class giving a companion, there are really two interpretations.

1) ally = (class levels not giving AC -3) + (class level of class giving a companion)

2) ally = (total character level - 3) + (levels of class giving you AC)
______

Both are reasonable interpretations, but the second lets you stack more.

Sample character:

Fighter 2 / Paladin 4 with Nature Soul and Animal Ally feats. Not a problem, the companion is level 3. However, at the next level, the player chooses a mount. The character level is 7, and would have a horse, camel, etc at level 5, but you stack it with the other one you already had and it's now level 8 OR level 9 depending on which interpretation is used. This gets worse as you keep leveling in Paladin, leading to a pet that either stays one level above player level, or two, then three, then four, then five etc levels above player level.

I'm leaning toward the first interpretation, but I think I'd be OK with the second as well...

[Nefreet]

This was just asked recently, so I just copied my response from that thread here:

Nefreet wrote:

Say your first five levels were taken as a vanilla Fighter, and you somehow had Animal Ally and Boon Companion by 5th level. You'd have a "level 5" horse.

Imagine your next five levels were Druid. Those 5 Fighter levels will now stack with your 5 levels of Druid, as per the text you bolded from Animal Ally, making your horse effectively "level 10", the same as you.

You don't get to also count your Druid levels for Animal Ally. That would make your horse "level 15", which is definitely not the intent.