I havent seen much talk about this in the forums, so i thought i'd bring it up. How do you think how animal companions should be handled in PF2?
Ps: for the love of gods finally give us large bears.
A large bear is a very strong ally for a 1st level character. You need to balance it somehow. You could
a) Have bears start as medium, then mysteriously grow when you reach a later level.
b) Have bears start as medium, but then you can say goodbye and bring in a new large bear at a later level.
c) Start with a large bear, but impose some sort of action economy cost to make him only as good as a medium bear. This is my humble proposal.
So you're a 1st level druid. You're able to commune with nature, but you're not the best at it. You make friends with a local bear, and it knows if it follows you it'll be fed and taken care of. But it doesn't trust you wholly, and it knows it's bigger than you, so it's somewhat recalcitrant.
At low level, it will stay with you but never enters battle of its own volition. It gets its own three actions per turn, but its default behavior is to stay still and menace -- making intimidate checks, or maybe readying an action to attack any creature that attacks it. If you want it to use a non-attack trick (like 'heel' or 'go over there'), that costs one action. Ordering it to attack costs two actions. After all, it's attacks are probably twice as good as yours.
Around 3rd level you can direct it to move without needing to spend an action. At maybe 5th level you only need to spend one action to get it to attack (though if it has multiple attack options, you have to spend multiple actions to keep goading it to maul your foe).
Then around 7th or 10th or so, your bond with the big critter is good enough that you can give it a basic command once per round as a free action and it acts as a loyal ally.
This might be a bit of a bother, but if you want a balanced big bear for breakfast, buddy, this is your best option.
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I'd be fine with medium bears that grow into large bears (and prefer, aesthetically, small wolves that grow into medium wolves, since I'm not a fan of druids having large wolf companions or medium bear companions...). Stat-wise, a large bear is still going to be mechanically inferior to a large cat (since it can't pounce), so I don't really think there's a balance issue.
I'd also like some sort of mechanism that allows creatures with one attack (like a wolf) to be at least somewhat competitive to creatures that have three or more attacks (like a cat or deinonychus). And not just for wild beasties and / or animal companions, but for eidolons and shifters and any other sort of PC or NPC or 'monster' that would, thematically, be best represented with only a single big attack (like a crocodile or bison or hippopotamus or shark), and still be as dangerous and fearsome as a critter with three to five attacks (like a tiger).
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I like the general structure of how animal companions work in PF1, though large bears are definitely a must and I agree with Set that better balance between the options is necessary.
I hope that either animal companion archetypes make it into PF2, or that they get animal companion "class feats" as their main source of features (ie replacing the set Devotion/Mulitattack type features). I really like the ability to customize animal companions beyond basic skill and feat selections.
A Familiar Disguise
Mark Seifter
Familiars, the traditional fuzzy friends of wizards and witches, are extremely popular in Pathfinder, especially among those who are fans of animals or cute things. While many classes gained access to familiars in later books, including the archetypes I wrote for Familiar Folio (my first-ever author credit for Paizo), plenty of characters have access to familiars from the outset of Pathfinder Second Edition's playtest. Not only can wizards take a feat to gain a familiar even if they also have an arcane bond, but alchemists can also gain an alchemically created familiar, and druids can gain a leshy familiar. But the most surprising and awesome feature might send our fans who love both gnomes and familiars (hmm, who could that be?) into a spiral of gnomes: there is a gnome ancestry feat to gain a familiar regardless of your class.
So enough about who can get familiars—how do they work? As someone who loves building familiars and getting exactly the type of animal that fits my concept, I was sometimes stymied when my ability to choose a familiar was locked behind how many low-power creatures that would be useful mostly only as familiars could be fit into the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary schedule. In the playtest, you won't have to wait for Bestiary 5 to have a flying fox. Familiars have always been magical creatures forever altered by your magic, so why not capitalize on that to allow for more variety and flexibility than ever before?
In the playtest's familiar system, you get to pick from a variety of powers that either allow the familiar to gain special abilities, like flight or speech (yes, you can have a talking cat, or a talking winged cat) or that grant special benefits to you, including extra spells and delivering your touch spells at a distance. You can normally swap those powers each day as part of your daily preparations, which allows you some awesome flexibility for your familiar, though a familiar that would naturally have any of these special abilities (like an owl's flight) always has that ability locked in. So if you need your rabbit to be able to swim for the next day's adventure, you can do that, or you can grant your leshy wings of flower blossoms. For the playtest, we started with around 10 different powers, but I imagine the list will expand over time and we might create feats for familiar-friendly characters to gain more powers than usual or to unlock particularly strong powers.
So we know about powers, but what about a familiar's base statistics? Your familiar uses your full saving throw modifiers and AC, with a set 4 HP per level, so it has better defenses than familiars had before. Familiars are adept at Perception, Acrobatics, and Stealth, counting as trained characters of your level and adding your spellcasting key ability modifier (this isCharisma if you have only innate spells, like the aforementioned gnome non-spellcaster). For other skills, they have the modifier of an untrained character of your level, meaning that after a few levels, their skills are far beyond what a simple animal could achieve.
Personally I would like to see them get a small upgrade. Having played a few over the years I wanted to see if they were really as broken as some of the players in our hobby said they were. I found it to be the opposite imo. Sure if one cast spells, armor and magic items they are powerful. Too often most players throw into a combat with a simply "charge" and throw them at the enemy. Which unless the DM is new to the hobby they usually die and very quickly at later levels. It was frustrating to be at the table with someone who kept complaining his animal companion kept dying yet he refused to waste resources to protect and upgrade the creature.
I'd be fine with medium bears that grow into large bears (and prefer, aesthetically, small wolves that grow into medium wolves, since I'm not a fan of druids having large wolf companions or medium bear companions...). Stat-wise, a large bear is still going to be mechanically inferior to a large cat (since it can't pounce), so I don't really think there's a balance issue.
I'd also like some sort of mechanism that allows creatures with one attack (like a wolf) to be at least somewhat competitive to creatures that have three or more attacks (like a cat or deinonychus). And not just for wild beasties and / or animal companions, but for eidolons and shifters and any other sort of PC or NPC or 'monster' that would, thematically, be best represented with only a single big attack (like a crocodile or bison or hippopotamus or shark), and still be as dangerous and fearsome as a critter with three to five attacks (like a tiger).
We have confirmation that natural attacks will work similarly to weapon attacks. It also sounds like animal companions will be working with two actions, although we don't know if they'll keep any of their action efficiency abilities, like striding and striking with one action.
Personally I hope animal companions get interesting options like it sounds like the familiars will be getting. Maybe animal companions can become magical beast so you can have talking winged tiger or a fire breathing wolf or at least an owl bear and/or griffon.