I am not experienced in Homebrew or anything like that. So I am making a character and I want advice on what might be a reasonable trade out. I want to make a gypsy halfling who worships Desna and rides a pet yak. Because I want the yak at first level and I want it to stay applicable through the whole game I dont have a lot of class options.
My plan would be to go for druid, since I want to be a full divine caster. The only thing is that I don't see my character using Wildshape for flaver purposes, so I was looking for options to replace it. One of the ones that came up was the shaman spirit, specifically Heavens. Some of the abilities are fun and flavorful but I am not sure if it is a balanced trade off. Do you think it is?
The other option I thought of was playing a shaman and seeing if my GM would let me have a yak spirit animal (familiar). But I wonder if that might be a lot to ask. Let me know what you guys think.
Are you asking if something you'll never use is a fair trade-off for basically all shaman class features?
Normally, if people want to remove a class feature they look to archetypes. Here are 14 archetypes that trades away Wild Shape.
Death Druid, Drovier, Elemental Ally, Feral Child, Fungal Pilgrim, Halcyon Druid, Life Channeler, Nature Fang, Planar Extremist, Road Keeper, Season Sage, Sunrider, Supernaturalist, Survivor.
If there's really none of them that interests you, then either homebrew or just simply don't use Wild Shape.
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Oracle is your best option in my opinion, as it synergyzes well with Halfling's racial bonus to Charisma. Go Nature or Lunar to get the animal companion, the only house rule would be to allow yak as animal companion choice in addition to those allowed by the respective revelations. If the GM agrees, congrats; if not, pick the closest quadruped among those allowed and pretend it's a yak.
You should be able to do what you want and play whatever class you want to. Below are a quick run down of the different methods available to you.
Cleric(any deity) + Separatist Archetype + Animal Domain
Druid + animal companion
Hunter + animal companion
Ranger + animal companion
Any Class + Animal Ally Feat
Any Class + Exotic Heritage[Sylvan]
It needs to be mentioned that the last option while allowed by the RAW was not intended to be used this way by paizo. Also, while it costs the same number of feats as the animal ally chain, the resulting animal companion is weaker since it's CL-5 vs CL-3.
If you can get dm approval to allow you to use a Yak as a bonded mount there are even more options.
In any case, if you are using a feat/class option that doesn't get an animal companion at first level you could always simply purchase one for 24gp to have at 1st level. Since all of the options I listed kick in before 5th level then it will keep up with you statwise since a yak has 5 HD to start with. Combined with the feat Boon Companion your yak will advance as an animal companion equal to your character level.
Are you asking if something you'll never use is a fair trade-off for basically all shaman class features?
Normally, if people want to remove a class feature they look to archetypes. Here are 14 archetypes that trades away Wild Shape.
Death Druid, Drovier, Elemental Ally, Feral Child, Fungal Pilgrim, Halcyon Druid, Life Channeler, Nature Fang, Planar Extremist, Road Keeper, Season Sage, Sunrider, Supernaturalist, Survivor.
If there's really none of them that interests you, then either homebrew or just simply don't use Wild Shape.
Haha, I wouldn't call it "all shaman class features", that's laughable. It wouldn't give me access to hexes or wandering spirit, I would just get the 4 abilities (spirit, spirit greater, spirit true, manifestation).
Most of those archetypes (and yes I did go through them before the OP) give up the Nature Bond class feature. You would think that if you wanted to be helpful you would filter those out before posting, since I basically said having an animal companion was required.
I just want you to know that your reply was not helpful at all.
Oracle is your best option in my opinion, as it synergyzes well with Halfling's racial bonus to Charisma. Go Nature or Lunar to get the animal companion, the only house rule would be to allow yak as animal companion choice in addition to those allowed by the respective revelations. If the GM agrees, congrats; if not, pick the closest quadruped among those allowed and pretend it's a yak.
This is a viable option I hadn't thought of. Thanks!
You should be able to do what you want and play whatever class you want to. Below are a quick run down of the different methods available to you.
Cleric(any deity) + Separatist Archetype + Animal Domain
Druid + animal companion
Hunter + animal companion
Ranger + animal companion
Any Class + Animal Ally Feat
Any Class + Exotic Heritage[Sylvan]It needs to be mentioned that the last option while allowed by the RAW was not intended to be used this way by paizo. Also, while it costs the same number of feats as the animal ally chain, the resulting animal companion is weaker since it's CL-5 vs CL-3.
If you can get dm approval to allow you to use a Yak as a bonded mount there are even more options.
In any case, if you are using a feat/class option that doesn't get an animal companion at first level you could always simply purchase one for 24gp to have at 1st level. Since all of the options I listed kick in before 5th level then it will keep up with you statwise since a yak has 5 HD to start with. Combined with the feat Boon Companion your yak will advance as an animal companion equal to your character level.
Thank you for giving a variety of options!
Buying the yak at level one is a great idea I never thought of!The Animal Ally feat with Boon Companion changes things a lot. I want a full divine caster and I was just going druid because of the full animal companion. This makes the cleric, shaman, and oracle attractive options.Many thanks!