Help with a build involving many animals

[Googalabosh]

I'm crazy in the way that I love to play with lots of familiars and companions. So, a friend of mine suggested I make a character that takes every class that grants him either a companion or a familiar. I'm trying to build a level 5 character for this. Of course Druid and Wizard get me a companion and familiar but what do I do with the other three levels?

Note: yes, I'm aware my class abilities will be quite low but because of this I'm aiming for more familiars if possible. And this is more for fun than anything else. Any ideas?

[SorrySleeping]

Familiars and animal companions do not level with if you don't take the class and can become very useless later on.

Familiar
Improved Familiar Bond gives you a full familiar at the cost of three feats. You can stop at just Familiar Bond if you don't want to spend the feats to get a pet.

Eldritch Heritage along with Bloodline Familiar rules (its near the bottom) means you can swap out a bloodline power for a familiar. You can go deeper into the Eldritch Heritage feat line for some cool bonuses to just stop it there. This is 2 feats and Cha 13 for a full familiar instead of 3 feats.
You can use the bloodline familiar on just a normal sorcerer too. Witch also gets a familiar by default.
Magus, Arcanist, Cleric, and Oracle (I think) can get familiars through different class abilities.
Notable archetypes with familiars are Eldritch Guardian Fighter (grants familiar all feats you know), Duettist Bard (can use some of your class abilities), and Chosen One Paladin (can you some of your class abilities).

Animal Companion
Animal Ally along with Boon Companion can give you a full animal companion for 3 feats.
Paladin, Ranger, Hunter, and Cavalier can all give you an animal companion.
Lunar Mystery Oracle or Animal Domain Cleric can give you animal companions as well.
The archetypes Mad Dog Barbarian, Sacred Huntersmaster Inquisitor, Wild Child Brawler, Bloodrider Bloodrager all give animal companions.

Variant Multiclass
This is a weird form of multiclassing, but you give up half your feats (3, 7, 11, 15, 19) and in return gain features of another class. Not always worth it, but an option. Wizard VMC gives you a familiar at 3rd, Druid gives you an animal companion at 7th.

[avr]

I guess you could take levels in spiritualist and summoner to get a couple more pets (phantom and eidolon) and if your druid animal companion is one not allowed as a mount, taking a level in cavalier or something would give you a fifth pet. Getting an extra familiar might be possible via feats and you could still have one feat left to get boon companion or phantom ally so that one of your pets is competent in a fight.

[Meirril]

So...why not make your own? How about an Undead (and not so dead) Army?

Start with a Cleric, choose the Undead Lord archetype. This gives you a free zombie with a max hd of half your level. You can cast Lesser Animate Dead to raise a single Zombie/Skeleton with max HD equal to twice your level. Then use Animate Dead to fill out the rest of your potential, which is x4 your level in HD.

To keep costs down make sure you rank up Use Magic Device and grab a Wand of Blood Money to keep the cost of raising dead to a reasonable level.

But, lets face it. You want some living type pets right? So lets get creative. As in creating more pets. At level 1 pick up Craft Poppet, which sets you up to get Craft Construct at level 5. Then you can start producing Homoculus to assist you.

Now since your evil, lets be evil. Pick up Iron Will, Familiar Bond, and Improved Familiar. Get a Caocodemon to assist you in your evil ways. Every day you adventure you should instruct it to consume a soul and give you the gem. Using the Soul Trade you can use any soul gem as 100gp worth of materials. Perfect for constructing more of your little pals.

The wizard version of this pushes the Undead Army back to 7th level, but gets the Improved Familiar with just 1 feat. Unfortunately the Wizard has no way to heal is undead friends, and needs to cast spells to get more friends (clerics use a channel and the Command Undead feat to do it, Undead Lord gets that for free!).

Oh, and don't forget about the Leadership feat. Its probably a good idea to have a decent charisma with this build. Eventually you start creating Intelligent Undead and its a lot better for you to win them over with your personality than it is to keep them magically enslaved.

Or you could drop the entire undead thing and just go with Poppets and Homuculii. That is 2 feats for unlimited pets.

[Captain Zoom]

If you want to avoid the problem of taking one level in each class and being an ineffective character, consider being the Beastmaster Ranger Archetype. They can split their animal companion levels among different animal companions, or put another way, you can get a level 1 animal companion for each level. The advantage is that you can still be a full Ranger and an effective character (even if your animals companions are useless). Another small advantage is that if you change your mind later and decide you want an effective animal companion, you could dismiss all the level 1 companions and re-assign the levels to a single animal companion.

You'll need the Boon Companion feat to get 5 levels of companions though since Beastmaster gets Level-3 for animal companions.

Another option is the Huntmaster Cavalier archetype. Again, you can be an effective single-class character, but can get 1 animal companion per level. On the plus side, the Huntmaster does not need Boon Companion as it gets it's full level in companion levels. On the minus side, the animal compaions available to the Huntmaster as limited to Bird and Dog.

If you want to go crazy, you could also spend two feats on Iron Will and Familiar Bond to get a familiar too (so one more creature). Although it costs 2 feats, it does have the advantage that his creature will use your total HD to determine its abilities (though it doesn't get all familiar abilities).