Custom animal companions

[Everwinter]

So in a campaign I'm running I have a druid who wants to start out with a modified Bulette animal companion. http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/bulette.html

I haven't found any stats for people making one before, so I was wondering if it might be better to just alter an existing starter companions, maybe an ankylosaurus, or to start from scratch?

[Darksol the Painbringer]

This interesting part at the bottom gives a suggestion as to how a Bulette was originally created.

That being said, it would probably be a "from scratch" sort of thing, but I imagine it can't be terribly difficult.

Figure it's Medium size starting out. It gets its standard movement (40 ft. 20 burrow), and +2 Natural Armor. You can take the Starting Stats, using the Bulette's base statistics, and alter it based on size, as well as apply the penalties of the Young rebuild template. It should look something like this:

Strength 15
Dexterity 11
Constitution 16
Intelligence 2
Wisdom 13
Charisma 6

Probably give it the standard attacks its predecessor would have, but reduce size category as appropriate. According to the Damage Dice FAQ regarding natural weapons here, we're looking at a 1D6 Bite and 2 1D4 Claws. These are all primaries, according to the Beastiary entry, so let's keep them that way. Throw on Low-Light Vision and Scent, and there's the base creature.

Give it a 7th level increase, since these things are pretty late bloomers. It becomes Large, meaning it gets 10 ft. reach. Its damage dice increases to 1D8 Bite and 2 1D6 Claws, remaining Primary. Provide it a standard +4 Strength, -2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution bonus, as well as an extra +2 Natural Armor. Tack on Darkvision 60 ft. and the Savage Bite extraordinary ability (meaning a Bite attack receives 1.5x Strength, and criticals on a 19-20), and you have yourself a complete Animal Companion entry.

Hope that helps!

[Bob Bob Bob]

Unless you really know what you're doing, I wouldn't start from scratch. There's far too many moving parts to take into account. That's if you want it to be competitive, if you just want it to exist you just need to make sure it's not better than the Allosaurus or Large Cat. Large Cat is generally the standard you want to be below. Much easier to modify an existing creature than worry about balance though. Now, what path you take with that is up to you.

Do they want a "land shark"? Give them a shark with the speeds (land and burrow) of a bulette. Probably replace blindsense with tremorsense.

Do they want an armored death machine? Give them an Allosaurus with a burrow speed (and probably a slower land speed?).

Ankylosaurus makes no sense, it can only attack with its tail. If you want the super armored part you can use Turtle, but Bulettes aren't really that armored.

[GM Rednal]

For what it's worth, I'm COMPLETELY fine with reflavoring the type of animal so long as none of the stats or anything are changed. XD Like, that character could take the Ankylosaurus' stats, and just call it a Bulette.