Ways or homebrews to summon your animal companion, like summon ally.

[Lastoutkast]

So I was thinking it would be cool to be able to summon and unsummon your animal companion like a summon nature ally spell.
how would you all go about this ?

[Swashbucklersdc]

Well, let's look at the most equivalent ability/item that does this, besides being a summoner and re-skinning an eidilon as an animal companion...

The

Hosteling ability:

HOSTELINGPrice +7,500 gp; Aura moderate conjuration; CL 9th; Weight —
A suit of armor or shield with this special ability hides living animals within its iconography to keep it safe. The wearer can speak a command word to magically store an animal to which he is bonded, such as an animal companion, a familiar, or mount. The stored animal appears as a symbol emblazoned upon the armor or shield, either one that mimics the appearance of the animal or that is more symbolic and abstract.
While stored, the animal is sleeping and provides the wearer no benefit (such as a familiar's skill bonus). The size of animal that can be stored depends on the type of armor or shield. A suit of light armor, medium armor, or a light shield or heavy shield can store one animal up to the wearer's size. A suit of heavy armor or a tower shield can store one animal up to one size category larger than the wearer. A second command word releases the stored animal from the hosteling armor or shield. A released animal immediately awakens, appears in a space adjacent to the wearer, and can take actions on the round it appears.
Because the stored animal is sleeping rather than in suspended animation (or even hibernating), it ages and gets hungry at the normal rate while stored. A hosteling armor or shield automatically releases a stored animal 24 hours after it was stored inside.
This armor special ability still works on bonded magical beasts that were once animals, but not outsiders, oozes, or other exotic companion creatures.
CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS

Cost 3,750 gp
Craft Magic Arms and Armor, secret chest

allows you to basically store your animal companion within your armor or shield and then speak a command word to have it be removed. Sounds like what you want.

To make the item, one must have the Secret Chest spell, which is 5th level; you must be 9th level to cast a 5th level spell.

So, in a Home Brew, you could make it a 5th level spell for a druid, 3rd level spell for a ranger or a specific class ability, via an archetype, at 9th level (maybe like 3+casting stat mod uses per day).

Just a few ideas to kick the can about...

[caliga]

For one game the way I did it was that the animal companion was more a "spirit of nature" that could change.

The player could choose to "change" that companion every morning when doing spell preparation, but had limits on the number of different forms to choose from based on level. Something along the lines of 1 at 1st level, and then an additional "version" of the companion at every 5th level. Each one had its own separate "build" as some feats don't work for all creature types.

The player seemed to enjoy it, generally with my homebrew games there is a lot of travel to different environments so the starting animal doesn't necessarily work very well in other environs and provided different tactical options going through the game.

[Lastoutkast]

Hosteling looks awesome, now I'm wishing there was a tower shield cloak to store a Roc in :)