I have a question regarding the Feral Hunter archetype.
As they don't have an animal companion, they have an ability that lets them apply their animal focus to themselves (as normal Hunters can do when their companion dies).
I'm curious, is this ability in addition to the Animal Focus that Hunters can apply to themselves? Or do Feral Hunters only get the one, with the benefit that it's always active?
The Feral Hunter's Feral Focus replaces the normal Animal Focus so it can only do what is listed in that so they have one aspect at level one which they can change as many times as they want and have it on as long as they want and at level eight they'd gain the ability to have two on at one time.
Feral Focus overrwites parts of the animal focus. Feral Focus takes the whole animal focus skill--and only specifically changes the target of hte ability ALWAYS be the hunter. So I've always been pretty sure they get 2, and then 4. Since it only changes part of the ability and usually when abilities modify things like this (such as weapon profiencies for example) you only add or replace the text mentioned. Whic hferal focus semi-focuses (it's awkwardly written) on the animal companion portions.
The reasonings being because it doesn't make sense otherwise. A normal hunter can kill his animal and have 2 and later 4 on himself already-with left over companion wasted feats/abilities/tricks. and he can readily change these when he wants and easily. So it makes no sense that feral hunter would lose out on so much-It makes much more sense they trade the listed stuff for having Permi 2/4 focus. It's a pretty striaght up trade they list for various things
So.. it's awkwardly written but I"m pretty sure it' that.
RAW Evidence section:
Quote from Feral Focus :
"This functions as the animal focus class feature, except that the hunter always applies the animal aspect to herself, and there is no limit to this ability's duration"
See as it specifies it functions as Animal Focus--the whole featur. the only change is that it-as a whole applies to the hunter only. it does not remove the altered text-the same as any other similar situation in any other archetype
quote from animal Focus:
A
t 1st level, a hunter can take on the aspect of an animal as a swift action. She must select one type of animal to emulate, gaining a bonus or special ability based on the type of animal emulated and her hunter level. The hunter can use this ability for a number of minutes per day equal to her level. This duration does not need to be consecutive, but must be spent in 1-minute increments. The hunter can emulate only one animal at a time.
The hunter can also apply one of these aspects to her animal companion. Unlike with the hunter herself, there is no duration on the animal aspect applied to her animal companion. An aspect applied in this way does not count against the hunter's minutes of duration per day—it remains in effect until the hunter changes it.
So The specific in Feral Focus cites it functions exactly as animal focus. Except it always applies the animal aspect to herself and no limit to that ability. It only alter the target. So Animal focus --and Feral focus still give 2 focus. 1 to the hunter at 1min per level (this is entirely unchanged in both as it already targeted the hunter so it's unchanged text). And one permi. Animal focus specifies Animal companion, while feral focus' specific speciefies that it applies to the hunter and does not count agianst time limits (as changed by the specific in Feral Focus)
Then at lv 8 you gain second animal focus
second animal focus:
At 8th level, whenever a hunter uses her animal focus ability, she selects two different animal aspects for herself instead of one, and can assign two aspects to her companion instead of one. As with the companion's previous aspect, the second one does not count against the minutes per day a hunter can take on an aspect.
If the hunter's animal companion is dead and the hunter has applied the companion's animal aspect to herself, that aspect does not count toward her maximum of two aspects at once. The hunter can still apply only one of her dead companion's aspects to herself, not both.
This is not removed from Feral Hunter, and it specifies Animal Focus--which its target was changed via the Feral Focus class feature. So at lv 8 you still gain the 2 temporary by lv per min, and 2 originally leant towards your animal.
This is neither broken nore weird (and in fact as higher you go the less useful it is).
If something here doesn't make logical sense please point it out though
That's my issue; it's rather vague in wording. Here's hoping that one of the 'powers that be' see and respond to this thread, for clarification purposes.
Normal Hunter has the ability to have an animal companion and when he doesn't he gets extra animal focus. Feral Hunter doesn't have this ability because
*when he doesn't have an animal companion his animal companion can't be dead.*
He instead gets the ability to Wild Shape, which is a pretty big feature since its stacks with animal focus (one is an enhancement bonus, the other is a size bonus, and animal focus is not a polymorph effect).
