From a direct comparison you are correct that the dinosaurs have the advantage in Str, AC and attacks but as you pointed out Plants and Vermin do have some advantages.
First to the Plant Master. Plant focus suffers from no early Str bonus but you do get an ok defensive buff- Brambles, stab your attackers with thorns. As to the companions, as plants they get a bunch of immunitys- all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, morale effects, patterns, and phantasms), paralysis, poison, polymorph, sleep effects, and stunning. That alone is worth a second look.
They also have some unusual (for an animal companion) attacks. There are several with ranged attacks making teamwork feats like target of opportunity and Volley fire an interesting option. They also have things like acid damage, swallow whole, defensive needles, rage, double damage against objects and others I am forgetting. So definitely some fun stuff to chose from.
On the Verminous Hunter your Vermin Focus is actually better than the usual version. the real jem for me is Worm- fast healing 1+ and 25%+ chance to avoid crits and sneak attacks. On the vermin companions you are right that mindless inset ideal. I would likely up the int as soon as I could.
Again you have some unusual options with the animal companions. Firstly most of them have a fly speed, several are very good at it. There are also a lot of climb speeds. There lots of poisons and even a poison stream (likely as gross as it sounds). You've got Trample, Defensive bristles, sonic resistance, tremorsense, blood drain, susceptible to salt (not a good thing but still), iterative attacks, acid damage, ranged attacks and more I am sure.
So all and all other than the magic item slots I think both the Plant and Vermin companions hold up well.
Sadly, fast healing was removed from Worm.
Sadly, fast healing was removed from Worm.
No way, when did this happen?
d20pfsrd still has it but that I guess that doesn't mean anything officially.
Sadly, fast healing was removed from Worm.No way, when did this happen?
d20pfsrd still has it but that I guess that doesn't mean anything officially.
Almost immediately upon release.
Necroing the s%+% out of this post and wondering if anyone has advice on getting the best out of a plant master hunter. I could do a broken wing gambit build with the hunting cactus. Or something with a snapping flytrap. It all sounds very good but in general the plant companions feel really bad. all the poisons they have that I thought would bridge the gap to normnal companions have REALLY low save DC's.
Does it still need to be PFS compatible?
I don't play PFS and so I try to avoid giving advice when that's a requirement since I don't want to recommend something that is either disallowed or works differently.
What are you looking for your plant companion to do?
Combat?
scouting?
something else?
In general terms. The two notable plant companions are the Gulper plant and the Slithering Sundew.
the gulper plant is one of the few animal companions that gets swallow whole and of those it's the best. Your only other options are a frog, a toad and a fish, none of which naturally get any bigger than medium size where as the gulper becomes large (though the fish can swallow creatures up to its own size). Swallow whole can be augmented with the feats Hefty Brute, Consume Essence, and Horrific Gorging. If that's the sort of build you're looking for.
The Slithering Sundew is one of the better animal companion choices for a grab type build since it gets 2 slam attacks and a 2d6 constrict. The only downside is that part of the damage it does is acid making it less effective against acid resist/immune creatures.
As far as vermin go. The dragonfly is one of the better animal companions you can pick period. It has a fly speed of 80, coupled with perfect maneuverability. It has a 2d6 bite attack (same as a t-rex) and because it only sizes up to medium it makes for an amazing mount for a small sized character. To top it all off, it also gets fly-by-attack for free.
However, since the introduction of the feat Curious Companion if all you want is a plant or vermin companion you no longer need to take one of those archetypes to get one. Meaning these archetypes are only worth it if you want the alternative animal focuses.
Swallow whole does indeed sound really fun to do. Would I still be going the paired opportunist/pack flanking build with a Gulper plant? How does fly-by-attack interact with those teamwork feats as well?
The plan is to run around mounted and using the companion in combat.
I'm not sure how well a flanking build will work with the gulper plant since once it swallows an enemy you can't really continue to attack that enemy.
As for flyby attack, in order to take full advantage of it you'll want the feat Mounted Skirmisher, which you can pick up with a one level dip in sohei monk (it allows you to take it as a bonus feat, ignoring the feat's pre-reqs). Otherwise you would only be able to make a single melee attack. Pack flanking would allow both you and your animal companion to be considered flanking at the time of your attacks, giving you the full benefit of your teamwork feats. While also engaging in hit and run tactics where it moves 40 feet up to the enemy, you and it attack and then it moves 40 feet away. The Teamwork feat escape routes would ensure that none of that movement provokes any AoO as well.
edit: I just realized, sohei also synergizes well with the Lookout feat since a sohei monk always gets to act during the surprise round. Which naturally works well with the Ambusher and Bodyguard archetypes
Can you mount a Slithering sundew?
You should be able to. Though you'll probably need an exotic saddle for it.
There's a belt that can give you constrict (anaconda's coils), but I'd think twice about trying to ride a creature that was trying to grapple something.
Speaking about Vermins here's an idea. Dueragar get a racial trait that allows them to treat vermin critters with an Int of one. It's not much but it's something. Their race uses vermin for everything so worth a look there,
I can't find this on d20 or nethys. Can you give a link?
I think there should also be a feat that can make your companion start with 1 int or 2. I forget what it's called.
Lordkallas how would you build a gulper plant build? Would you take the grappling teamwork feats? Tandem grapple maybe?
there is an archetype vermin familiars can take Unexpected Intellectual Unfortunately, because it replaces share spells it is largely incompatable with most other animal companion archetypes. But, if none of the other archetypes interest you it's probably the best way to go.
hmm... a Hunter that rides around on a gulper.
This is still kind of a rough draft, but I would probably do this
Devouring Hunter
Race: Halfling
Racial Traits: Caretaker and Fey-Quickened
Class: Hunter(6)
Feats Option A: Curious Companion(1st), Exotic Heritage [K. Nature](3rd), Eldritch Heritage[Sylvan]*(5th), Combat Expertise(7th)
Feats Option B: Curious Companion(1st), Combat Expertise(3rd), Paired Opportunists(5th)
Teamwork Feats: Wall of Flesh(3rd), Pack Flanking(6th/7th)
Suggested Gear: Rod of Extension
*I would recommend running this by your DM to see if they will allow you to use this feat in this way. It gives your animal companion extra levels equal to your character level-5. For full details on what this means see my animal companion guide, its discussed on page 6. Otherwise, at 6th level your animal companion won't get the size increase that it gets at level 7.
Caretaker would let you add 2 points to it's intelligence meaning that the gulper plant would have an intelligence of 3 at 1st level. This allows it to take any feat it is physically capable of using.
I would recommend using a rod of extension to cast longstrider (and at 7+ longstrider greater) on the gulper. This will allow it to last 12 hours and bump it's movement up to a speed of 30 making it useable as a mount.
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For the animal companion I would probably do something like
Swallower
Animals: Gulper Plant
Archetypes: Charger
Feats w/o Shavtoosh: Hefty Brute(1st), Improved Unarmed Strike/dirty fighting(2nd), Improved Grapple(5th), Improved natural attack[Vine](8th), Greater Grapple(10th), Rapid Grappler(14th)
Feats w/ Shavtoosh: Hefty Brute(1st), Improved Grapple(2nd), Bushwhack(5th), Improved natural attack[Vine](8th), Greater Grapple(10th), Rapid Grappler(14th)
Suggested Gear: Armor Stiches*, Perfectionist Shavtoosh**, Animal Tattoo[Bat], Animal Tattoo[Wolf], Animal Tattoo[Serpent], Advancing(armor enchant), Thorny Ioun Stone(Violet), Brawling(Armor Enchantment), Adhesive(Armor Enchant), Cracked Pale Green Prism
* If you don't want to use armor stiches, the animal companion can take the feat Extra Item Slot[Armor] which will allow it to wear armor without the use of armor stiches.
** Because of the gulper's low dex, it will not meet the pre-reqs of improved grapple w/o a boost either via animal focus or a stat boosting item. As such, it may be easier to just take dirty fighting and skip the pre-reqs entirely.
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The biggest challenges I see with the build are the fact that a gulper only has a speed of 20 and that there aren't many feats you can take to help the gulper swallow things (the only one I found was wall of flesh, which would let it count as a size category larger).
I realize that I mis-read wall of flesh, it doesn't actually help offensively. So, I would recommend swapping it in the above build for either paired opportunists or escape route.
Also, for some reason my notes were calling the things Armor Stiches, when the proper name is Barding Stitches.
That's about it for templates. By super strong do you mean the strength stat, or do you mean powerful?
Failing will saves has been the greatest weakness I've seen on almost all animal companions. The verminous and plant types elimnate that weakness. They will never be as great on raw damage output. But that is a major defensive increase all by itself.
For Strange Aeons, I did a halfling hunter flying a giant wasp. Worshiper of Callistra can get you a wasp familiar. Valet familiar achetype. Now you, your familiar, and animal companion all have the same teamwork feats. I was mostly flying around out of reach using the sling staff for attacks. Casting some buff spells or debuff spells. Many of the typical monsters don't have great ranged options.
If the head bad guy in an encounter was a caster, then I could fly over the mooks and close with the caster for sting and bash attacks. Maybe even some poison if I got lucky.
I'm sure you could do similar with a flyby attack build.
If you don't want to do the Callistra/familiar thing, then dragonfly would probably be better.
I think "improved spell sharing" is one of the most important feats for any animal companion focused build. Hunter/druid has some excellent medium and long term buffs that you can both benefit from. Barkskin, divine power, shield of faith, divine focus, longstrider, bull's strength, bear's endurance, cat's grace, camouflage, silence, etc...
Until you can afford something better for a neck slot, the "dire collar" is a great investment.