Animal Companions are a little bit front-loaded, as they start with 2 hit dice instead of 1, effectively "2nd level" when their master is 1st. This peters off as you level up, as companions do not gain power as fast as their masters. It's not much to worry about. Eventually they will pale in comparison to the players themselves.
A paladin with over 20ac at level 1 is possible, but usually not without appropriate gear, and most people cannot afford better than studded leather and a heavy shield with initial funds. That would account for 5ac, the baseline 10 makes that 15, and a feat could get you another 1 for 16. Beside that they'd need 18 dex to make it up to 20. A feat such as dodge or shield focus can give 1 more.
Unless your paladin player has 18 dex (highly unlikely unless they are archery focused and even then you'd need a very high point buy or some dang lucky rolls to pull it off effectively) or you let them start with extra cash to afford better armor, something is foul in the build good sir.
20 AC isn't that hard to achieve at first level. Depending on which traits were taken and how much gold you allow your PCs to have. If you allowed max gold at first level that would give the paladin 300gp to work with. He can pick up a suit of chainmail (+6 armor) and a Heavy Shield (+2 Shield)... say he has a Dex of 14 (+2 AC).... 20 AC too easy.
As far as the animal companion goes... to be honest, the only thing that I would consider high on it is the HP. That's a lot, but also consider the companion's AC won't be very high. And the druid has use his/her Handle Animal skill to direct the companion in combat.
Be happy the Druid doesn't have his Wolf wearing armor. At (druid) level 1 the Wolf could have Light Armor Proficiency and be wearing Leather or Studded Leather
Don't even need light armor proficiency. Just get leather or masterwork studded leather, mithral chain shirt or mithral kikko armor. 0 armor check penalty = no effects, unless the wolf tries to cast arcane spells.
Good point but Masterwork will be too expensive for a starting druid (which is why I didn't list Chain Shirt).
Four Mirror armour and heavy shield has base AC 18 and only needs to spend about 60gold. The oriental armours are ridiculously cheap.
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I think PFS deals with Animal Companions in a decent way. AC's get 4.5hp per HD, so a 2HD AC gets 9hp + con mod, in this case 11hp. I would consider it fine for characters to stat everything out but if you're rolling Stats or HP then I'd have them do it at the table. Feats, Skills, etc are all set in stone and just need allocated. It's better off to just not even allow the opportunity for someone to cheat and 1 person unjustly be more overpowering than the rest of the team due to fake stat/hp rolls.
Randomly rolled starting stats seemed like a decent idea in the late 1970ies, but is widely recognized as stupid b%#*$#%~ today.
The same could be said for the normalization of stats today, what is the point besides hand holding and or babying of the players? Many would argue that to be more BS I'd imagine.
Point being, play styles vary. Your opinion isn't any more valid than others, saying rolled stats is BS very poor form. Normalization makes sense in an organized play scenario to keep the board even, it can help new or inexperienced players warm up to the game as well so all the characters are balanced. But "even" and balanced are very very subjective in a pen and paper role playing game. More than a few games I've heard of don't even rely on stats heavily due to the amount of role playing involved.
Wow. Definitely food for thought. Now this wolf is curious:
How much does armor cost for a wolf?
How does the wolf even get proficiencies?
Wow. Definitely food for thought. Now this wolf is curious:
How much does armor cost for a wolf?
How does the wolf even get proficiencies?
Animal companions get to take feats listed in the druid animal companion section, and the pricing for non humanoid shaped armor is in the equipment section.
20 HP from my players Level 1 wolf companion:
==========
WOLF lvl 1
HP 20 (15 rolled + 2 conmod+toughness)
(...)
CON: 15(...)
FORT: 3
REFLEX: 3
WILL: 0
The wolf has 2 less HP than he should : He has 2 HD and 15 CON, so the constitution should give 4 hp (2 HD x 2 mod = 4), instead of 2.
Moreover, your saves are off : the wolf should have :
FORT : +5 (+3 base, +2 CON)
REF : +5 (+3 base, +2 DEX)
WILL : +1 (+0 base, +1 WIS)