I recently came across a few rules that interact in an interesting way together, all adding into each other. the first time I put a build for this together, it was with a T-rex. The problem with the Rex is that after a bit, it has considerable size limitations due to the fact that you can't get it into the short-list for the Mammoth Rider PrC.
Then, I found the Gorthek. From the Monster Codex page 172, it's one of the very few animal companion choices in the game with the Powerful Charge ability, and the single most powerful one available to an animal companion at that - with a 2d6 damage base attack and 4d6+double strength powerful charge, this animal starts laying on the hurt once it sizes up, especially since to my knowledge no other powerful charge in the game adds strength into the bonus damage. It also has Darkvision and low-light vision and badass natural armor, on top of an excellent statline that appears to have dumped charisma in favor of strength, like any good brute. It's also thematically quite awesome, since I think the only conglomerate animal (it's a bison-lion-rhino-goat)that's available for being a companion and according to the fluff orcs like to raise them from birth to be living battering rams. That's not the reason we're looking at it, though.
No, we're looking at the accompanying text.
"An orc who takes the Beast Rider feat (Path finder RPG Advanced Race Guide 56) can choose a gorthek as an animal companion or mount."
The RAI is clear; you shouldn't be able to take it as a companion unless you have Beast Rider, but never does anything prevent you from just taking it as a companion normally, orcish blood or no. However, this leads into an interesting interaction with Mammoth Rider. Mammoth Rider pares down the animals you're allowed to choose as companions pretty brutally, cutting out most of the small animals and dinosaurs (save the triceratops) in favor of furry megafauna and, inexplicably, wolves and cats. The gorthek text, however, clearly states that you can take a gorthek as your animal companion if you have Beast Rider, damn what your companion list says. To take the feat and get the gorthek with Mammoth Rider you need to be a half-orc or orc, but that's hardly a real problem.
The build I'm currently looking at is as follows:
Stats With 20 Point Buy:
Str: 12
Dex: 14+2
Con: 12
Int: 13
Wis: 14
Cha: 13
Feats:
Level 1: Evolved Companion (Improved Damage (Gore))
Level 2: Outflank (Hunter Bonus)
Level 3: Combat Expertise, Pack Flanking (Hunter Bonus)
Level 5: Mounted Combat
Level 6: Feint Partner (Hunter Bonus)
Level 7: Beast Rider
Level 9: Combat Reflexes, Improved Feint Partner
Level 11: Intercept Charge
Level 13:
Level 15:
Level 17:
Level 19:
Thing is, this isn't complete. By and large, a lot of our focus is on the animal companion in question; while he gets his own feats and the proliferated teamwork feats from the hunter (that's a hilarious ability, by the way), the pet also gains a variety of tricks from both the normal list of Handle Animal tricks and, particularly notable, from the Skirmisher Ranger archetype. By the end of its career, it should have 16 different tricks (assuming you upgraded its intelligence to 3) and while they're mostly a matter of choice, there's a few I'd like to point out as extremely important and/or hilarious.
- Taking Attack twice will allow you to get your companion to attack 'unnatural' creatures without pushing, and that's important. They make up like 70% of the monsters in the game, so you're next to guaranteed to run into some sooner or later.
- Heel is extremely useful, and completely obviates Come.
- Exclusive is the sort of trick that you'll be very happy you take when your GM decides to mess with you. Charm animal can cause lots of problems if you're not prepared for it.
- Hunt will cover the logistics of feeding this thing.
- Guard is useful when you don't want your companion following you for whatever reason
- Down is great for when you've caused a problem and need your pet to not get you killed.
- Cunning Pantomime is a hilariously useful ability from the Skirmisher Ranger that basically lets you turn your animal companion into the party translater. Seriously.
- Second Chance Strike is another Skirmisher Ranger ability, and one of the very few ways to grant your companion the use of immediate actions. Extremely useful, particularly if it botched an attack roll somehow.
As for feats, Narrow Frame and Lithe Attacker are going to end up decently important, but Improved Natural Attack will let you pump up the damage of the gore attack better and power attack is just all-around good as I'm certain you know. At level 10, your companions new feat is Vital Strike, hands down. You'll see why in a little bit.
The Charger companion Archetype is pretty nice because it lets you armor the gorthek without too much in the way of problems, and due to the ability to move at full speed with a medium or heavy load you can turn it into a workhorse - not that it lacked for the ability to drag stuff before, but when you have a mount it's preferable for it not to get bogged down by your attempts to keep it alive. losing evasion isn't a huge problem as the animal aspects you get from the Hunter can grant Improved Evasion to the companion, on top of the ability to potentially ignore will and fortitude targeting effects Charger gives it.
At level 20, your warbeast should have a statline that looks like this without items, animal aspects, or other buffs applied:
Str: 43
Dex: 7
Con: 23
Int: 3
Wis: 10
Cha: 5
Then, because of the Hunter's ability to cherry pick from both druid and Ranger spells, we have access to both Strong Jaw and Animal Growth. this will crank the gorthek's strength up by another +8 due to the size increase and take the constitution up to 27, but will bring dexterity down to an abysmal 5. More importantly, it makes the pet Gargantuan, which means things start getting weird. Particularly when you add in Strong Jaw.
See, the interaction between Improved Natural Attack and Size Increase is a bit difficult to parse. It says it increases the size of the dice dealt by a natural weapon by one, and then it proceeds to provide a size up list that doesn't follow the same pattern as Strong Jaw and Animal Growth provide. As such, we'll be applying that feat last but before buffs, in an effort to retain some semblance of legitimacy.
At large size, the gore attack of the Gorthek deals 2d6 damage. One size increase (from Evolved Companion (Improved Damage(gore))) takes it up to 2d8. Getting to huge size changes it to 4d6. According to Improved Natural Attack, that 4d6 gets upgraded to 6d6. Animal growth taking it up to Gargantuan means that (at least according to Strong Jaw) we just double it now, taking the damage up to 12d6. Strong Jaw then doubles the damage dice twice, going to 24d6 and then 4d8d6. This part is actually doable by level 10, so that's snazzy. Now, we add in other damage bits; our beastie is sitting on an unmodified 51 strength. Ignoring items for the moment, your Animal Aspect of the Bull takes that up to 55 for a final modifier of +22. As a primary natural attack, the gore adds the full +22 modifier to damage, and the Powerful Charge for some reason adds twice the strength bonus again, resulting in a +66 damage charge. end result is that, on a charge, this companion has an average damage per attack of 236 when charging.
Remember when we took Vital Strike? That actually becomes important here. Vital Strike doubles the damage dice you use for an attack, and 48d6 alone has an average damage of 168, so we just straight up double that to 336 before even adding in strength bonus and similar bonuses (such as the greater Magic Fang you'll be certain to have applied at this point). The cool part is that unless I'm reading things wrong, you can do this kind of Vital Strike as part of an Attack of Opportunity this means a typical turn will look like: Charge -> Proc Improved Feint Partner -> Gorthek uses Improved Vital Strike to slam its face into the enemy again. This should result (assuming it all hits, which it should if you took Second Chance Strike) in a DPR of 582 damage, give-or-take depending on what damage modifiers are present.
I'm not precisely an amazing optimizer, so I'm certain there's things I've overlooked or don't know about that'd add to this. Anybody want to help me see how far we can take this madness?
No, we're looking at the accompanying text.
"An orc who takes the Beast Rider feat (Path finder RPG Advanced Race Guide 56) can choose a gorthek as an animal companion or mount."The RAI is clear; you shouldn't be able to take it as a companion unless you have Beast Rider, but never does anything prevent you from just taking it as a companion normally, orcish blood or no.
Yes, there is something to prevent it. Paizo writers would call it common sense; lawyers call it exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis. When the rules say "If X, then you can Y", they also say "if not-X, then you can't Y".
Alright, but that's not really helpful. Doesn't change the fact that the gorthek is available by the time you hit Mammoth Rider so the point of what happens before level 7 when Beast Rider is taken is a bit moot, because even RAI it adds the Gorthek to your animal companions available list.