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I have seen many threads talking about them as part of a topic but nothing specially dedicated. I saw a 1.5 update coming and comment about Animal Companions with lacking data, reason why i create this topic.
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Animal Companions can be of different kind and uses. They can be a mount for anyone (usually a horse) with improvements for paladins and cavalier archetype. They can be different animals for gnomes and druids with more uses like scouting, mounts or helping in battles.
I think these Companions should be of limited effectiveness for easy acces and more effectiveness for more investment in more difficult access and balance is quite difficult. I think that these animal companions should not be as effective as a regular character but should be viable enough to bother investing in them as a good strategy.
Major complaints comes from combat uses of animal companions as mounts or as dps/tank uses. These complaints i've seen so far are linked to 3 things:
- Low HP
- Low AC
- Action economy
Many ways exist to limit these drawbacks as healing, barding or feats (druids / ride) but these ways need quite a strong investment impossible at low level and are not progressive enough to feel the animal evolve smoothly with the PC.
The best path is the Druid from Animal Order, the specific class of PC i am playing because you get animal companion with better statistics, a way of healing with spell points and many feats increasing animal companion efficiency at lowest levels in the game.
But even with the best possible build, you come to limits that makes animal companions not viable at low level and I will quote myself from another topic:
I confirm that Animal Companions are easy to die. Reason comes from a low AC at low level with not very much HP. They can get critically hit quite often and sometimes one shot as a result.
Therefore Animal Companions are way better staying behind waiting for opening and coming to deal damage and flank isolated monsters. They are not suited for "tanking" which usualy comes to mind when playing a caster PC.
Slightly more AC feels enough for me to make them viable at both. At the moment, they start at 12 to 14 AC at level 1 (10-25% critical hit chance and 60-75% hit chance against them) and should begin at 14 to 16 AC IMO because level 1 monsters have roughly +5/+7 to attacks. (5-15% critical hit chance and 40-65% chance to hit against them)
By the way, nothing is said in rules about their way to die. Do they die if HP goes to 0 or do they go through dying conditions like PC ? To allow more impersonalisation/roleplay, and because Animal Companion was dying often, we finaly houserulled them to be dying like PC but unable to rise back with PC's hero points.
I would add here that the best advantages from druidic path for animal companions comes from healing possibility and free action from animal companion during a round since level 4. But even there, Animal Companion can be killed with a critical hit quite often, hampering the PC a lot with its efficiency as there is an investment in the Animal Companion making the PC less effective than other PC whithout its Animal Comapnion and it feel like a punishment not really deserved when a critical hit happens, killing the animal.
I am still low level with my PC so I do not know the feeling for higher levels and especially with the only barding option without runes to improve AC.
Please tell us more here about your feelings with Animal Companions, PC you've seen with Animal Companions and their overall effectiveness using them or why you choose not to go for Animal Companion in your PC build. What do you think about everything said here also ? Am I wrong somewhere ?
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I'm starting a druid tomorrow with an animal companion bear, and after being a fan of AC from PF1, I'm scared at what will happen now. My Druid's AC is at 15 with cheap light armor and the bear is sitting at 12.
The animal companions seem like they would scale better in this edition because they get "full progression" instead of 3/4ths (while also being 3/4ths your HD, making them closer to 1/2), but the +1s matter so much more now.
The GM has already house ruled that animal companions take an action to start doing work, but if you just say "go attack" it will keep attacking (enemies) with its two actions per turn. This seems like it will be a giant help with action economy, but ultimately the work together feature seems really horrible for normal play since you only get 2 attacks at most after that.
My experience is with an animal order druid and a fully grown bear companion at level 4. The bear has decent enough stats compared to her master's: -1 lower AC, +1 higher attack, a few less HP, -2 lower Will, +1 higher Refl, same Fort. There's one exception: Damage. With 2 damage dice, the bear outclasses any character in the group, since no one is supposed to have a magic weapon yet. This wouldn't happen at level 3 or 5, though.
This is why, in play, the bear turned out to be the group's main damage dealer. This is somewhat limited by having only 2 actions. Still, my companion was very valuable in combat (OK, this was helped by rolling a nat 20 several times).
The companion's AC is not as good as a that of a melee PC, and as a result, the bear came close to dying a couple of times. I had to be ready with heal animal, for sure.
The companion's action economy is limiting, but not unreasonably so. I routinely cast a spell then commanded the bear to attack. The total is effectively 4 usable actions per round, 2 for the druid and 2 for the bear. That's pretty good, for me. On top of that, as a level 4 animal order druid, I could have the bear attack or move even without spending an action to command her: Great! In a clever turn of the design, this doesn't impact the action economy, because that ability only grants the bear 1 action, so the total remains 4.
Overall I found my companion pretty cool. This is one area where the +level principle shines: The companion scales naturally with the rest of the group. Now, there is a bit of a concern about what happens at higher levels, when opponents acquire magic equipment and armor, something the companion is not allowed to have.
One thing I missed is the possibility to use the companion for things other than combat. The rules don't really cover that.
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The GM has already house ruled that animal companions take an action to start doing work, but if you just say "go attack" it will keep attacking (enemies) with its two actions per turn. This seems like it will be a giant help with action economy.
This is what I've been doing in my homebrew playtest campaign as well. It takes an action to give an order...but once the order is given the AC continues doing it until a new order is given/it can't contiune.
as a level 4 animal order druid, I could have the bear attack or move even without spending an action to command her: Great! In a clever turn of the design, this doesn't impact the action economy, because that ability only grants the bear 1 action, so the total remains 4.
What we need, especially for mounts, is to be able to use 2 actions to give the AC 3 actions. The total remains 4, but the AC takes 3 of them, which enables it to run at full speed like it would be able to do if it were not an AC. And ideally this would automatically be granted (in the case of riding) by the Ride feat.
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I found my Wolf companion on my Ranger to be all but useless. Now admittedly this was early in the playtest and the Ranger has had some improvements since then, but with the companion I found my ranger had too many commitments on his actions to be effective as an archer compared to the Elf Cleric in the group who was really nothing more than a Cleric with a bow. The two action the Wolf got for my 1 were generally a waste of effort and his ability to Hamper enemies was never useful. On top of that the Wolf ate up more of the party's healing than any other character because it kept getting knocked down.
I found the minion mechanic in general very frustrating and the companion itself felt like more of a liability than anything else.
I have an animal order druid (w/ bear companion) as my primary character for the playtest, and honestly I've quite liked the action economy for pets.
My concerns with companions right now, having played at 1 and 9, are the low AC & saves, the lack of scaling, and the mount tag.
The AC issue I think could be easily solved by allowing magic barding to exist.
The scaling... it hasn't been an issue yet, but I'm concerned that at higher levels the animal companion will lag further and further behind, since the stat boosts beyond Savage/Nimble are fairly small (and unless you're an animal order druid, you can only have 1 specialization). I feel like damage, in particular, is going to feel increasingly weak starting about level 12, when players are starting to get +3, +4, +5 weapons and animal companions continue to be stuck with 3 dice (unless you shell out 2 actions for Magic Fang at the start of every combat).
And the mount trait... I hate the mount trait with a burning passion. It's arbitrary, it restricts a lot of fun fantasy ideas (and especially smarts given that small characters could take a wolf mount in PF1, an option now restricted to a goblin ancestry feat). Of course, if you're a druid or a ranger, you can ride your pet without the tag - but paladins and cavaliers flat out can't select non-mount pet options, and regardless, it causes problems with exploration mode. Just go back to the "one size category larger" situation and call it a day.
Also, as Freagarthach mentioned, it's currently unclear whether animal companions simply die at 0 or follow PC dying rules; we've been running it as the latter, but it's a really significant question to leave up to GM fiat.
I played a hunter a long time in PF1.
I was frequently disappointed by—
1) no way to use wild empathy to defuse hostile animal encounters (see other thread, this looks like it may change)
2) relentless rules focus on animal companion as fighter, not scout, hunter, etc.
3) no way outside of spells to keep my companion from being hurt (I was seriously jealous of the mounted combat feat’s negate hit ability and would have given up a lot for something similar for my lynx)
A proposal for revising the minion trait:
1) You can command a minion to do X in 1 action.
(this is as current rules)
2) Commands can run for more than 1 round, and minions interpret them as the DM decides. For example, attack target X will last until the minion falls, X falls, or another command is given.
(change - commands can persist until completed - this allows you to do things like have your animal companion guard a campsite without you being there every round, or pull a "Lassie, fetch help, I have fallen down the well!").
3) Listening to a command takes an action from the minion.
(this is different from current rules)
4) Minions are like normal creatures - they have 3 actions and a reaction per round. This is much more realistic, for example, animal companion horses are no longer 40% slower than normal horses. They can also use reactions like Buck, if someone who is not their master hops aboard...
(This is a change, but gives much more realism to minions. By combining 3 and 4 it gives the minion the same action economy as current, in the first round of a command.)
It looks to me like the game is balanced so having a minion gives you exactly 1 extra action per round total, no more. Anything that departs from this would likely be too powerful.
That said, I agree that animal companions should be able to gian reactions, maybe at higher levels. Also, the lack of non-combat uses for companions is a bummer, hopefully something that will be added in the final rules. I can understand there might not have been room for it in the playtest, but certainly a ranger should be able to command a companion to perform a longer activity than one round, such as tracking, foraging, fetching, etc.
I see the problem as being one of balance. How do you create an awesome, useful, and combat-effective animal companion that doesn't cause the PC + animal to be way more powerful than any other character concept that doesn't include an animal companion?
With the current rules the combination of player character and animal companion already have one more action than any other character. They probably have more combined HP than any other character either.
On the other hand, if the defences of the animal companion are dropped too low then the animal companion becomes a quick target for removal from the combat by the enemy group. And if the combat options of the animal companion are dropped too low, then the animal companion becomes a minor annoyance to be ignored rather than an actual threat.
Really, really hard to balance this.
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I played a lot of hunters in PF1(and thus far still have less than 10 in PFS) so I had plenty of opportunities to see the problems they have in the current edition:
- Scaling: They start out good/great and get better until about level 7 and then... get worse. Even with giving them armor, buffs and ioun stones at around level 10 it becomes rather hard for them to hit enemies, and their saving throws are more than a bit problematic.
You can fight this with a lot of buffs, even though proper scaling would be great. And ideally not requiring that much mage armor.
- Actions: In the levels where they do work (and often have an AC comparable to a tank) they are very effective, and depending on the animal, have a lot of attacks (pouncekitty), and they take forever to resolve.
Add to that the actions of your actual player character, and it often feels like you take up more time than 2-3 other characters at the table, which is less than ideal.
- Tricks: Honestly that was a bit of a double-edged sword since players would usually try to play their animal companion as a second character - despite the fact that as written the GM should control it.
Since new tricks were eventually published, that made it kind of difficult for players to keep up.
- Special abilities and focussing: Honestly not too different from player characters, but with things like grapple, unarmed combat styles and other shenanigans (I have to admit of once getting parry and riposte on a large cat ... ) that also changes the baseline quite a bit. Of course, teamwork feats are also making things more complicated, and let's not talk about the bodyguard feat.
Honestly, things have gotten rather far away from the baseline.
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I feel like the playtest rules address some of these issues, though it currently looks like animal companion AC is a bit low in some areas.
One of my players in Doomsday dawn could not even buy the cheap barding and his bear died in the very first round of combat... honestly barding really should be more affordable at level 1.
Action economy is a rather big deal, and while druids get a handy way to heal their companion, as spellcasters it is also rather tough for them to cast spells and deal with their companion.
Where in the surveys have we been able to say how often an animal went down or died?
Cause we playested a ranger and a druid with one for the lv4 game and they were down a total of 6 times and that's with the animal druid basically casting heal animal a lot in fights.
The lv 12 playtest one person commented that they wanted to play a druid with a pet since it was a lot higher level now, but when he saw that the AC was like 7 less than everyone else's or something and HP wasn't like 100 over everyone to compensate he changed his mind. Players get critted enough when we all have max AC, 7 less and he felt the animal was just asking to get crit all the time from their 3rd attack. Also that their saves were a little lower, not as super bad though.
But I've not seen places in the survey to share such stuff or how many times animals went down. So that's probably why they don't have much data saying they are.
I never thought Animal companiosn were too ridiculous in PF1, however I never let my players pick the crazy multi-attack ones. Have most experience with a Wolf companion at many levels and that thing was just fine. Their power level was never too high (except at level they gain size+) but they could always contribute in and out of combat.
Think just needed to balance the obviously overpowered choices which I bet everyone spams at PFS and they would be fine even with the old mechanics. Specially in PF where being 1-2 points behind the main PCs makes a huge difference in their ability to contribute. You also have to make sure all the trick rules are followed and player doesn't get to control the animal at any point. Having to spend 1-2 actions to give orders whenever you need it to do something different is also perfectly fair, just not every round @_@.
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I don't see why a character with a companion has to be 100% mathematically balanced against a character without a companion. Pathfinder is a cooperative game. The party contributes their various strengths to a group effort. It is not a PVP deathmatch computer game.
Moreover, there is already a built in drawback that helps balance a character with a companion being somewhat stronger - wealth. A normal character applies all their money and item slots to themself. A character with a companion has to allocate a fair amount of their personal resources toward keeping their companion up to par in gear. This means they are going to be behind in their own weapons and armor compared to a normal character.
So durability is one big problem, but another issue I've found with minions is mobility. Since both the minion and master are limited to 2 actions per turn, this means they have trouble actually closing distance in long-range engagements. If you've got 25 ft move speed, then two move actions only close 50 ft of distance. This is actually very problematic if combat begins at greater distance (50+ ft) as it takes about 50% more actions for a character with an animal companion to move into melee.
While the minion rules work well enough once you're actually in the thick of melee (and thus summons are working decently), the moment things become ranged they completely fall apart and the minion is costing more actions than it's gaining you.
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I don't see why a character with a companion has to be 100% mathematically balanced against a character without a companion. Pathfinder is a cooperative game. The party contributes their various strengths to a group effort. It is not a PVP deathmatch computer game.
I think it's mostly a PFS issue, since you can't do anything to adjust the difficulty based on companions. I've known a few GMs to have gone on tirades about how animal companions and summoning were ruining PFS and pathfinder in general, and specifically asked players not to bring any characters that use them to their table.
Personally I've never really seen the power level as an issue. It's easy to adjust for in a home game, and there's lots of strong options people can bring to a game that aren't an additional creature. I'm more concerned with table time, and how much longer it can take to adjudicate turns, but summoning, and less commonly necromancy, were a much bigger issue than animal companions, especially when the companions were designed to work in tandem with the PC.
I'm not really convinced that the two action minion system is the right solution. With the MAP system it basically makes additional actions relatively worthless for damage, since eventually you're going to be rolling for 20s for any attack action, which for the companion with the lower offensive numbers may be on their second action anyway. I do however like the change to one creature summoned with the Summon X spells, since flooding the board with an extra 5+ creatures was rather annoying, even if I don't like the concentration/2 actions they receive.
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So durability is one big problem, but another issue I've found with minions is mobility. Since both the minion and master are limited to 2 actions per turn, this means they have trouble actually closing distance in long-range engagements. If you've got 25 ft move speed, then two move actions only close 50 ft of distance. This is actually very problematic if combat begins at greater distance (50+ ft) as it takes about 50% more actions for a character with an animal companion to move into melee.
While the minion rules work well enough once you're actually in the thick of melee (and thus summons are working decently), the moment things become ranged they completely fall apart and the minion is costing more actions than it's gaining you.
I think if you really want to make use of an animal companion, be a ranged character or ride on it. The problems you listed are pretty serious and if I would add one, is that animal companions really perform badly against enemies of higher level (just like summons).
I do however like the change to one creature summoned with the Summon X spells, since flooding the board with an extra 5+ creatures was rather annoying.
While I agree, I do feel we've kinda swung in the opposite direction, and summoning feels really clunky to use with its heavy action economy overhead.
The thing was, summoning was never so much powerful as it was annoying to run. In the one time I ran a PBP game, summoning was a complete non-issue since we had the time to just resolve each creature and weren't holding anybody up. Power-wise, it didn't even merit a blip on the radar.
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My main character is a Druid of the Animal Order so I've had an animal companion in most of the playtesting so far.
The companions AC is too low and they get criticalled a lot. At higher levels its basically compulsory to take nimble companion over savage companion as it gives you 2 extra points of AC at the cost of +1 hit and damage.
The Animal Order druid has a one action range touch heal spell for animals which is as strong as a regular heightened heal. So they can normally stay close to their pet and keep them up. I wouldn't recommend building a primary combat companion any other way.
The dromaesaur has a Darting Attack allows a 10 foot stride in an action. That really helps the action economy. Probably the best choice for pure combat once its get its advanced maneuver.
The bear is OK but its work together is ability hard to use. It seems like it would work well with a two weapon Ranger, but in practice it is almost impossible to set it up.
Riding your animal companion is largely pointless. Only the horse has the mount trait. Do it if you want but you gain all the benefit with the young companion, so I'd recommend that you don't put any further feats into it after that. The problem is your multi attack penalty applies, so its really only combat useful if you are not making attack rolls - I suppose Electric Arc works fine.
The bird companion can be nice. It does less damage but it has a nice effect and is a reliable flanker. Just don't expect it to last long if you let it get surrounded.
The Riding feat is not required to ride your companion.
It sucks that there is basically nothing you can do to buff your animal companion equipmentwise after barding.
A lot of spells that you think might help, don't - magic fang doesn't work as it provides an item bonus.
My GM was also not prepared to allow Animal Companions access to the PC dying rules. It would be nice if that was unambiguous in the rules.
I like the flavour of the companions but they have been frustrating to use.
I see the problem as being one of balance. How do you create an awesome, useful, and combat-effective animal companion that doesn't cause the PC + animal to be way more powerful than any other character concept that doesn't include an animal companion?
With the current rules the combination of player character and animal companion already have one more action than any other character. They probably have more combined HP than any other character either.
On the other hand, if the defences of the animal companion are dropped too low then the animal companion becomes a quick target for removal from the combat by the enemy group. And if the combat options of the animal companion are dropped too low, then the animal companion becomes a minor annoyance to be ignored rather than an actual threat.
Really, really hard to balance this.
I think that the action economy does a good job of covering this. It really costs to spend one of your 3 actions commanding the animal every turn.
Please don't push for them being completely balanced or you'll end up with the mess of the 5th ed D&D Ranger beastmaster which no one plays. They are always going to have some strengths and some weakness.