Hey all! I made a pretty simple archetype for ranger that loses its spells and a couple early things like first favored enemy in favor of gaining an animal companion from level 1.
The real difference though is that the animal companion can be any creature "tamed" in the wild. I originally restricted this effect to creatures of CR equal or less to the class level, but quickly found that to be too strong. I am trying CR = level - 1 but I think that might be too much still.
What is a balanced place to put the CR restriction? CR = Level - 2? CR = level/2?
TLDR; what is a balanced CR per level for a spell-less ranger animal companion?
Animal companions don't really mesh well with Bestiary stat blocks. I wish you luck.
Animal companions don't really mesh well with Bestiary stat blocks. I wish you luck.
Neither do PC class levels either, from what I can tell. That's what makes this a more challenging problem than I expected :3
Why do you want to reinvent the animal companion system? I think that losing favored enemy is reasonable to lose, but losing spells too might be too much unless you also give some other abilities at higher levels.
@Ciaran Barnes: Because I think that their are a lot of really cool, unique monsters in the game that I want to use as a PC. Hundreds of them are already made, ready to play. The vanilla animal companions are a little stale for me, and don't get cool monster abilities. The summoner handles this a bit but I want a more "natural" approach and flavor, without spellcasting. The focus of the class is the pets, and possibly fighting alongside them.
I don't think taking the spells away was too much, as the character is overpower currently. Sure, they lose the flexibility and power of spells later on, but they gain another martial character with sometimes very cool special abilities and its own set of skills.
@SilvercatMoonpaw: Thank you for the link, I will check it out!
CR is balanced around monsters being in one fight for a few rounds and then dying. Consider the humble hound archon. It's stats are comparable to a level 6 druid's big cat; but it has teleport at will.
In the hands of a player character, this ability will be used every day, all day. It will warp adventure design and combats.
You will need to evaluate each monster on a case-by-case basis and decide what "druid level" they are worth. You could also design an animal companion progression for them :)
The rule of thumb is that if a given creature is better then the big cat at any level, you've gone too far.
CR is balanced around monsters being in one fight for a few rounds and then dying. Consider the humble hound archon. It's stats are comparable to a level 6 druid's big cat; but it has teleport at will.
In the hands of a player character, this ability will be used every day, all day. It will warp adventure design and combats.
You will need to evaluate each monster on a case-by-case basis and decide what "druid level" they are worth. You could also design an animal companion progression for them :)
The rule of thumb is that if a given creature is better then the big cat at any level, you've gone too far.
You make a great point that I hadn't really considered. I was worried about raw power based on CR but didn't think about the potential long term utility of power like at will teleportation.
I considered doing an animal companion progression with shells of the given creature. But I wouldn't want all the creatures to have the same stats because that takes away from the cool and unique design of some creatures. It seems like it might end up being more difficult than powering down certain abilities of already made creature stat blocks. Any suggestions?
Do you want to keep the same creature 1-20 or do you want to have a different monster at each level?
If you want to use the same monster you need to make an animal companion progression for it. Otherwise it will be easier to tweak the bestiary stat-block.