One of the APs I am in (RotRL) has our group at level 8 with a first time pen and paper player with a ranger and his leopard pet. He is playing a vanilla ranger as a full blown archer build. He wants to swap his ranger for a level 8 hunter because he wants his animal friend to be of more use than it currently has been for the last couple of levels.
I have never played a hunter so I'm at a loss to help the guy. Looking at a level 8 vanilla hunter in herolab the amount of feats seem much smaller. He wants to keep his leopard pet even though he would qualify for mechanically better pets. He also does not want to change his race (half elf) just a straight class swap with our DM will allow him to do.
Any ideas on how a build for this should play out to say level 17? He wants to stay an archer but have his pet actually do more in combat. Appreciate any advice.
basically he's going to have to give up feats. The ranger bonus feats he had werent valid, and he IS going to get teamwork feats he can share with his pet instead, but he's going to have to drop a couple feats somewhere in order to get there. Other than that, normal archery stuff applies
If you just want to upgrade the existing leopard (small cat) to what a Hunter would get in terms of feats and hit points, Boon Companion on a Ranger should do the trick.
If you want to go Hunter for a good animal companion, you should really get a Lion or Tiger to get Pounce.
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I would suggest the Mammoth Rider prestige class. If he takes boon companion, and than Mammoth rider at level 10 (or level 11) he will keep full BAB, have a higher HD, and his pet will start scaling more powerfully into later levels. He will lose out on spellcasting and instant enemy, but if he switches after level 10, he will already have gotten a third favored enemy, access to 3rd level spells, and his level 10 ranger bonus feat.
Also by switching to Mammoth Rider, his cat will instantly upgrade to big cat than huge cat. It will have pounce, massive attacks, reach etc. Have it take the bodyguard archetype and it will never go down (until it dies).
I would suggest the Mammoth Rider prestige class. If he takes boon companion, and than Mammoth rider at level 10 (or level 11) he will keep full BAB, have a higher HD, and his pet will start scaling more powerfully into later levels. He will lose out on spellcasting and instant enemy, but if he switches after level 10, he will already have gotten a third favored enemy, access to 3rd level spells, and his level 10 ranger bonus feat.
Also by switching to Mammoth Rider, his cat will instantly upgrade to big cat than huge cat. It will have pounce, massive attacks, reach etc. Have it take the bodyguard archetype and it will never go down (until it dies).
That is a great idea. Let's him keep what he's got and in three levels he can jump into this PrC at lvl 11 and ride that until the end of the AP with his cat being much better in combat. Thanks.
I would suggest the Mammoth Rider prestige class. If he takes boon companion, and than Mammoth rider at level 10 (or level 11) he will keep full BAB, have a higher HD, and his pet will start scaling more powerfully into later levels. He will lose out on spellcasting and instant enemy, but if he switches after level 10, he will already have gotten a third favored enemy, access to 3rd level spells, and his level 10 ranger bonus feat.
Also by switching to Mammoth Rider, his cat will instantly upgrade to big cat than huge cat. It will have pounce, massive attacks, reach etc. Have it take the bodyguard archetype and it will never go down (until it dies).
That is really a lovely PRC.
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If they decide they would still prefer to go with hunter, here's a fairly solid discussion on hunter building, both melee and ranged. For an example of a ranged build, search the page for "Celeste the Unerring". While some of the builds are front-loaded for optimization, they at least provide a good baseline to look at for functionality.
While yes, hunter loses a little bit of ground for feats that could be used on straight-up archery feats, they make up a lot with utility with the teamwork selections and improved spell progression, and the animal companion is considerably more effective.
I've been really excited to try out Mammoth Rider, but it's really tricky to incorporate into just any campaign. While it doesn't work so well in a campaign like PFS (it can be done, yes, but it's not ideal), it should be fantastic for RotRL.
And the Giant Slayer AP as well!
