I am doing the Carrion Crown adventure path. I have a druid that has become attached to his wolf animal companion as he even put it in his backstory that he has had this wolf since it was a puppy.
In the Haunting of Harrowstone path, I want to have a shocking scene of his animal companion getting killed or disappears only to find it dead.
I had an idea that maybe the spirit of his wolf comes to him and joins him through the remaining of the campaign as a spirit wolf.
Can this be done? Anything I need to change once this happens to keep things balanced?
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I don't think the player is going to like that. You shouldn't do it.
If you killed my puppy, I would bite, claw and claw you. Then rend.
If the wolf dies in a fight, fine, because in combat, s*it happens. And if the player didn't have Mr Wolfy out there fighting, it wouldn't have happened.
What you're proposing now takes away player agency. He didn't have a choice of saving his wolfy friend.
Having a sprit wolf would probably need to incorporate occult phantom rules, and phantoms are weaker then animal companions combatively, so you're screwing the player even further. And that is all not his own choice.
Now if the player asked you to kill his wolf and have it come back because he thinks its cool, its an entirely different story, and I'd be willing to help on that.
I'm not disagreeing with Just a Mort at all about how the player would feel. But if the awful happens, you could look at Shaman spirit animals for an idea or basis...
I have to back Mort, if the wolf dies in combat, thats one thing, plot death? Don't do it. Don't fudge the rolls to kill it either.
Agreed. Plot developments like this are neat and can be very memorable, but almost always only if they happen organically. Maybe your group is the kind that don't mind stuff like that - only you would know - but otherwise, you're gambling with your group's trust in you as the GM; "I had a pretty cool backstory for my upcoming character, but...I don't wanna make a character that I'm gonna get attached to, just to have Larry irreparably change it. I think I'll just make a generic character this time..."
Better to not risk it.