First time with with a class that have an animal companion and I have doubts about what feats can an animal companion take. I am building a crocodile companion and I want to make him focused on grappling. Improved grapple needs improved unarmed strike, can the animal companion take it?
Well you couldn't take it until your Croc has an int of 3 or higher as it's not on the list of Animal Companion Feats.
Animal companions can select from the following feats:
Acrobatic, Agile Maneuvers, Armor Proficiency (light, medium, and heavy), Athletic, Blind-Fight, Combat Reflexes, Diehard, Dodge, Endurance, Great Fortitude, Improved Bull Rush, Improved Initiative, Improved Natural Armor, Improved Natural Attack, Improved Overrun, Intimidating Prowess, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Mobility, Power Attack, Run, Skill Focus, Spring Attack, Stealthy, Toughness, Weapon Finesse, and Weapon Focus.
For a PFS you'd not be able to take it, HOWEVER, for my homegames, I'd allow it without improved unarmed strike, because Improved Grapple is allowing you to avoid the AoO for grappling (which animals would avoid due to always having a weapon on hand).
Depending on level and wealth available you may want to consider the Extra Item Slot feat. This can let you equip a +4 strength belt which gives you exactly the same benefit to CMB/CMD but also adds to-hit and damage for all other attacks. You don't need to worry about attacks of opportunity as the grab is automatically rolled on a successful (normal) melee attack. Animal Companions which have Grab/Trip/whatever listed as part of their natural attacks do not provoke AoOs from using them as part of a normal attack, IIRC.
DJEternalDarkness is completely correct though that you can only select from the normal Animal Companion list until you have Int 3+ though. Until this point feats like Narrow Frame and Power attack can be useful stopgaps.
Well, that is bad.
The bad thing about grab is that the crocodile never get the large size so he can only grab medium(and smaler) creatures.
The otehr bad thing about crocodile ist hat the start with int 7 :(
Well, Thanks for the imput.
EDIT: By the way, how I knw what slots are avaliable for a given animal?
Most quadruped animals start with a barding (armor) and neck slot by default, but as Shfish says, a more exhaustive list is available from PFS or the Animal Archive.
A useful thing to note is that Armor Proficiency (light) isn't really needed unless you plan on upgrading to medium or heavy armor proficiency. A Studded Leather barding or later Mithral Chain Shirt barding have no armor check penalty, totally negating the non-proficiency penalty.