Improving animal companion for multi-class lunar oracle

[Gliz]

In a home game, I have a half-elf lunar oracle 5/barbarian 2 who used 4 levels of favored class bonuses to raise his animal companion to be level-appropriate (i.e. 4 uses of the +1/2 to a revelation FCB that elves had access to).

I just noticed that the bonus was changed to +1/6 in an errata to the Advanced Race Guide.

I don't want to dedicate 8 more FCB to this, but I really want the animal companion to stay on track. I realize I could get Boon Companion, but feats are scarce. Are there any other ways to make this work? I could probably be grandfathered-in and just leave it as is, but I prefer to make the character legal by RAW.

Thanks!

[ranmyaku262]

There was a ruling in which if you take 2 classes that both have the "as per the druid's animal companion" line and both classes give the same animal companion they can stack together for determining the level.

I know there exists a barbarian archetype that may give you an animal companion though I believe your DM would have to rule if its allowed as I believe most of them are just mounts (so horses for medium creatures).

Boon companion is your only other option here to stay within legal.

Honestly though a 1-2 level gap from your companion isn't horrible either so if you don't want to dedicate more FCB or be grandfathered in it won't break your character that horribly.

Personally I'd just go with being grandfathered in because you didn't even fully abuse the FCB in the way that caused that errata (you could've had an animal companion a decent bit higher level than yourself due to the way that bonus works).

[Saldiven]

With the ruling cited by Ranmyaku above, the Mad Dog Barbarian archetype provides an Animal Companion at equivalent Druid level (not limited to mounts).

You'd have a fully leveled Animal Companion, but you'd lose Rage, the 2nd level Rage Power, and Uncanny Dodge to do it. (Mad Dog Barbarian doesn't get Rage until 4th level.)

[Gliz]

Thanks for the help, folks!

Mad Dog would have been nice, but rage is central to my character build/concept/backstory. I have to have it. I know I could go 4 levels of barbarian to still get rage, but I want the build to ultimately gain level 9 spells.

@ranmyaku262:
I do feel a bit annoyed at the way the errata impacted my build, since as you say, I was consciously avoiding the chance to abuse the FCB. It seems there might have been a better errata option. But in truth, I enjoy the exercise of building characters and this rebuild is enjoyable for me despite the minor annoyance of the errata. I'm just wanting to make sure I am not missing a currently-legal option for my rebuild.

Thanks again!