I may have missed this somewhere, which is likely considering the vast amount of research I have done lately, however, this came up in one of my games and I'm curious how others would rule it.
Our resident Hunter (Packmaster) only had one companion at the time, her wolf. At this point, she was Large size and had all the benefits of being a full powered animal companion. During her adventures (bonus if you gues which one), she encountered a Huge Bear and wanted to claim it as her next Animal Companion. Her Handle Animal skill roll was sufficiently high and thus it was ruled that the bear was made to be Helpful. It was then ruled that the bear would also keep its size because it didn't make sense to me that it would all of a sudden shrink in size. I had bad visions of WoW Hunters here... I kept the ruling as it was, because it made sense story wise, but rules wise:
1. Is it actually possible to simply use Handle Animal to turn an animal into your Companion?
2. Does its previous size suddenly change? To what?
3. In the case of those with multiple Companions, a previous Companion that was Large, does it change down to Medium if you place more levels in the new Companion?
Thanks in advance.
No takers on this one? After looking at some other similar incidences, it appears that it would take a lot of retraining to make the animal into your companion, thus the costs would probably be added as per usual to do so. However, the question remains as to size...
1) you'd have to release your old companion and do the ritual to get your new companion, but it'd be the bear.
2) it's size would change to what it would be for the animal companion for that level. Small for 1-3, medium 4+
3) Yes, if you changed the levels then it could shrink
4) the Beast Rider cavalier has some guidance on allowing larger than normal companions. Also the mammoth rider prestige class.
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1) you'd have to release your old companion and do the ritual to get your new companion, but it'd be the bear.Packmaster allows for more than one AC. You do not have to release the other companion as you can have 2 or more.
Except that you need to have an unused animal companion level to take the bear. Otherwise, you have to release the wolf to take the bear.
I don't think a Packmaster can technically change the levels of his or her animal companions at will. You don't have this size changing effect where a 10th level Packmaster can have his wolf be Level 7 (Large) and his bear be Level 3 (Small) one day, then switch them around the next day so his wolf if Level 3 (Medium) and his bear is Level 7 (Medium).
If our hypothetical 10th level Packmaster with a Level 10 Wolf wants to take a new Animal Companion (the Bear), then he'll either have to release the wolf or take the Bear at Level 11. As GM, I might allow the bear to hang around (without being too useful) until the Packmaster hits Level 11 so he can take it as an animal companion, at which point it is a Level 1 Animal Companion.
ON THE OTHER HAND, Bloodmoon's player could acquire the Bear as a trained animal who is NOT an animal companion. As he noted above, there would be alot of training involved to train a wild bear, and the bear would not get any of the benefits of being an animal companion.
And there it is in the PFSRD
Once a hunter level is allocated to a particular companion, it cannot be redistributed while that companion is in the packmaster's service. She must release the companion or wait until the companion dies to allocate its levels to another companion, which she can then do the next time she refreshes her spell slots for the day.
So that part shouldn't have occurred, so there would be no switching of sizes in that instance. Lesson learned there.
Still would feel odd taking a Huge bear as a companion if the levels were available to do so and then it suddenly shrinks to Medium size. Training the bear would probably be the best option.