No problem, Ciaran. I should have given your guide more than a quick once or twice over before posting. Sorry about that. I guess I've read one too many N.Jolly guides and just got too used to his formatting.
Anyway, those skirmisher tricks are really hidden in there, with just a one sentence mention. There is also some table variation as to what tricks actually are usable by your animal companion. For instance whether your companion can use any trick (substituting the companion for the ranger in terms of text) or only the one-two tricks that directly reference an animal companion can be taught.
I am glad you are going to include multiclass as I feel that the last few levels for hunter are very weak, and with Boon Companion existing there is little reason to take a hunter from 1-20. My personal favorite Multiclass hunter is a mounted Half-Orc with four levels in Barbarian so that your mount can rage too. Then you take the Amplified rage teamwork feat and it is like you and your mount are 20th level Barbarians for a few rounds a day.
Other good builds include going Swashbuckler for easier access to Dex-to-damage, a few levels of Monk for Monastic Legacy, Fighter for tons of feats, Inquisitor for Solo Tactics and some nice wisdom based buffs.
If you do not mind blowing two feats, never gaining access to level 6 Hunter spells, and being human you can take Boon Companion and Huntmaster in order to get 5 levels in other classes. This allows you to get dex-to-damage as a Gunslinger, Weapons Training as a fighter, and for Inspired Blade Swashbucklers you get 15-20 crit range with Rapiers. I am sure there are other awesome level 5 abilities but that was all I could remember.
Thank you Tusk. This started because I thought the hunter needed a new guide and I wanted a new challenge since all of my other projects have been homebrew. Later on, it also became of a way for me to more adequately research the hunter I am playing. Now, its nice to hear that others may get some use out of it.
SIL,
I wrote in a page about trick and hunter's tricks using the info you have volunteered. I decided against rating the tricks though. There are some that just seem neccessary, and the rest will depend on what you want the companion to do or what you can get away with a certain GM. Multiclass inclusion will be minimum at this time for two reasons: as the guide grows in size I feel that my focus is being spread thin, and optimization is not my strong suit. I think I will get around to a page giving nods to some combos, but I'd like to keep it fairly simple.
Does anyone have input on ranking the archetypes? Each one seems to give and lose reasonable things. I'm not sure that any is that much better than the others so much as they might cater to a player's interests.
Entirely IMO - the Divine Hunter is an upgrade, I'm not in love with teamwork feats and replacing them with extra spells known, domain granted powers and the celestial template for the AnC looks good to me.
Packmaster looks like a trap, but with boon companion a survivable one through most campaigns.
It'd be easy to screw up Feral Hunter by thinking that you are a master summoner rather than a melee druid. Fine for most likely campaign levels if the latter's what you want though.
Patient Ambusher is a one-level dip for trapfinding and should not be taken further.
Otherwise yeah, trades to match the character to what you want rather than upgrades or downgrades.
OMG I was trying to ask about animal companion archetypes, but thank you anyways! I realize that wasn't clear. :)
The companion archetypes seemed like a much simpler thing to tackle. Actual archetypes are still a little ways down the road. I will come back to your notes at that time.
Curious to know what you have in mind for Melee Feats when you get to it. My recommendation in advance: Power Attack isn't so great for a 3/4 BAB class, unless you somehow manage to get your hands on Blade Tutor's Spirit (it isn't normally on the Hunter list; most Hunters won't be great at UMD, and I can't think of any non-spell-completion magic items that give you this spell). On the other hand, if you are a Halfling with really good Armor Class, Risky Striker deducts from your Armor Class instead of your attack rolls, and might actually be a pretty good choice.
OMG I was trying to ask about animal companion archetypes, but thank you anyways! I realize that wasn't clear. :)
Ah, right.
Except for the totem guide all the animal companion archetypes lose share spells. This is a painful cost IMO. The bonuses could be nice for a specialised concept though. Not so much the feat list expansion as that's superceded by raising their int to 3, the other parts. I'd rate totem guide as green and the other three as orange.
Except for the totem guide all the animal companion archetypes lose share spells.
Well. TW feats op.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/improved-spell-sharing-teamwork
You don't need to have anything else besides a familiar. It's either a screw up, or it works even if you don't have the Spell Share ability.
That's ... interesting. It didn't occur to me that Improved Spell Sharing didn't require Share Spells. If most hunters can bypass that tradeoff (& improve it!) with one teamwork feat then that makes those animal companion archetypes relatively better. The bodyguard certainly moves up a notch to green, though the charger and racer still fail to impress me.
That's ... interesting. It didn't occur to me that Improved Spell Sharing didn't require Share Spells. If most hunters can bypass that tradeoff (& improve it!) with one teamwork feat then that makes those animal companion archetypes relatively better. The bodyguard certainly moves up a notch to green, though the charger and racer still fail to impress me.
3.5 used to share spells if you kept your AC at 5ft max range. In PF it was changed to cast spells on AC even if type not allowed.
Now Share Spells and the TW feat are 2 different things!
a- you can share spells that target creatures
b- cannot share spells with target of you or anything that wouldn't target an animal.
I have a question about the horse companion's 4th level advancement. It gains the special quality "combat training". What exactly does this mean? I see under the Handle Animal skill that "combat trained" is a general purpose you can train an animal for that has a bundle of six tricks. Are these free tricks, or is it an opportunity to retrain some tricks? The companion most likely already has those tricks. Its implied in a couple places that this reduces reduced the hoof attack penalty from -5 to -2, but I don't know where it is implicitly stated. Isn't that like getting the Multiattack feat early?
I have a question about the horse companion's 4th level advancement. It gains the special quality "combat training". What exactly does this mean? I see under the Handle Animal skill that "combat trained" is a general purpose you can train an animal for that has a bundle of six tricks. Are these free tricks, or is it an opportunity to retrain some tricks? The companion most likely already has those tricks. Its implied in a couple places that this reduces reduced the hoof attack penalty from -5 to -2, but I don't know where it is implicitly stated. Isn't that like getting the Multiattack feat early?
You would get Light Armor Proficiency imo. Combat Training an animal just grants it the tricks, but since this is from a level 4th advancement, I'd argue that you would get the Feat that it comes with. But I'm not sure there's a ruling on it.
From FAQ
Handle Animal: Does training an animal using Handle Animal to be Combat Trained (pg 98 in the Core Rulebook) grant it Light Armor Proficiency?
No, using Handle Animal to train an animal, or mount, in this way does not grant it a free bonus feat. It is not unreasonable, however to assume that an animal specifically designed to be ridden (such as a horse or dog) could be purchased with Light Armor Proficiency as one of its feats (swapping out Endurance or Skill Focus respectively) for the same cost.
Horses have the note in the bestiary about their hoof attacks being secondary natural attacks unless they're trained for combat. Which implies that if they are, then their hooves are primary natural attacks.
So at 4th level, a horse animal companion gains this. But does a horse with six tricks that are part of the combat trained general purpose also get it?
So the multiattack feat does nothing for a horse...
I finally made the plunge into melee feats, and at the same time added more general feats. Or rather, I'm compliling the list of feats and will begin to write about each one. For the record, I'm drawing material from CRB, APG, ARG, ACG, UC, and UM.
Guide link no longer works.
No idea if this guide is still being maintained or not, but I was referencing it and noticed a couple typos.
Page 3
Under Tiger, you say "...duplicates the bonus granted by the spell bull's strength or of a belt of dexterity..." It looks like you copied and pasted the similar sentence from the Bull entry, but forgot to change bull's strength to cat's grace.
Page 4
Oread ability bonuses are listed as "+2 Str, +2 Str, -2 Cha." One of those Str's should be a Wis.