Animal Companions (et al) and Multiattack confusion.

[EvilMinion]

This is in regards to the Multiattack feat that druids gain at level 9 for their animal companions.

"An animal companion gains Multiattack as a bonus feat if it has three or more natural attacks and does not already have that feat. If it does not have the requisite three or more natural attacks, the animal companion instead gains a second attack with one of its natural weapons, albeit at a –5 penalty."

Which, makes it sound like if you have an animal companion with 3 or more attacks, who has no secondary attacks (which is most of them) that gaining this ability does absolutely nothing.

So, is this a thing? Officially?

Based on the developer post linked, in response to that official blog post, animal companions with 3 (or more) natural attacks, are supposed to get an iterative attack once they get Multiattack at (druid)level 9 if they have no secondary attacks.

This seems contradictory to the wording of course... but if you look at any and all of the animal companions listed in the NPC Codex Appendix from Druid level 9 and up, that have 3 or more attacks (small/large cats, badgers, dinosaurs, etc). All of them gained an iterative on their main attack.

So it seems like this is actually an official thing... and there's some language missing from the ability description.

I'm asking from a PFS perspective of course...

[Lost In Limbo]

Designer comments are officially unofficial now.

Too many people contradicting each other, or having their off-hand comments and suggestions taken as gospel and having flame wars crop up made Paizo decide that no comments by any member of staff are binding unless they come in the form of an FAQ.

So no, that comment by SKR is not binding unless it's backed up by an FAQ or Errata.

Edit: After having a quick search though the FAQs, PRD, and PFSRD I can find nothing that supports or even mentions SKR's ruling here. If character sheets from the NPC Codex due use that variant then they are in error as far as I can tell, which isn't terribly uncommon with the more complicated statblocks.

[EvilMinion]

The NPC Codex supports the ruling.

[Lost In Limbo]

EvilMinion wrote:

The NPC Codex supports the ruling.

Yes, after getting home and having a look through the book I see it does.

The problem is that the NPC Codex is not a rules source, it's not meant to present anything new, simply present a collection of characters created using the existing rules.

After reading through the text of the Animal Companion's Multiattack ability a couple more times I simply can't find anything in the language that would allow a creature that already had three or more attacks to get an extra attack. It's a perfectly legitimate house rule, but for the sake of an official Paizo published product or for PFS I would have to call it out as an error.

Edit: I found another thread that touches on this topic here. While in that thread Mathwei makes the argument that this issue was clarified in a blog post and is a binding change (which it would be), the clarification isn't actually in the official blog post itself but rather is just a forum post by SKR in the discussion about the post, which isn't binding.

[EvilMinion]

Ya, I've seen all that. Thus my confusion =)

I'll hit the FAQ button and hope it gets to a point where someone 'officially' says something!

Given that if its not wrong, the entire animal companion section of a whole book is wrong... perhaps that will lend some weight to getting an answer. Errors in that scope seem like something that should get answered.