having trouble with a fey creature, need help


Advice


I'm running a Strix Hunter,Packmaster archtype and i'm having trouble creating/finding appropriate rules for a fey creature. Being a Strix it was a necessity that my animal companions have flight.
I chose to go with a Feathered Serpent,Viper. I used the online character creator for the whole setup, but there are things in it that don't jive with what
I'm after, which is to create something similar to Flinx from the ?flux? novel. Basically a small feathered viper, that is extremely poisonous, Empathic, and has the ability to go invisible at will. what I got was a flying viper, that has really weak venom, the ability to cast spells, and is size medium, which is way off the mark.
My search through the internet, several times now, has yielded pretty much the same thing over and over, a faery creature that is basically a member of the seelie court, or a fricking Couatl. Please, for the love of all, someone help me here as I'm getting frustrated with this.


My recommendation, is to work with your gm, you obviously have a solid concept of what this needs to be, but can't find a good way to build it, this is how new rules/options are made :D

Now, you do have a decent shopping list
Flight
Invisibility
Good poison
Empathetic

The rest (being a viper) isn't super important when building a new creture, you can reskin anything, see this wolf, we call it a viper, it's a viper now, it has a bite, and it's wicked fast at 50ft a turn (you get the idea)

Couple of suggestions though, being a Hunter, you get teamwork feats, take

bonded mind

This will allow you to communicate non verbally, which you could basically call the empathetic link

Now, u don't know of any feats to give you poison, but you could talk to your Gm, and maybe trade something away, look at templates, see if you can find one that gives a poison if some sort, and then take a negative template (like young) the young template would even make the creature smaller, which is part of what you want, that is totally up to the gm though

If your gm doesn't want to, You could also buy poison caps, you would have to replace them, each bite, so not ideal but you can buy a poison, load it into the caps, and your animal companion now gets that poison on their next bite attack.

Invisibility, if you can't get that through the animal (it's unlikely)
You could use a ring of invisibility, normally snakes can't wear rings, but you could ask your gm, if you can use a different item slot that snakes DO have, or, pay double to make it a "spotless item"

This will allow your snake to go invisible at will as a standard action, perfect for delivering that Lethal bite

Flight can also be obtained through multiple items, but I seriously recommend taking a bird animal companion and calling it a winged viper, still get a bite, still flies, and is likely the right size

Hope this helps, let me know if you need clarification, or if your gm is willing to work with you, if he is, I may be able to offer useful advice/suggestions to make it a balanced creature, that fits your theme :)


For the Poison, by weak, are you looking at save or effect of the poison? I know improving Con will increase the save DC of a poison, possibly feats available in the bestiary may help as well.


You're going to have trouble finding any kind of fey animal that is a legal choice for an animal companion. The fey animal template changes the creature type to fey, and most other animals with magical abilities are actually magical beasts; neither type are appropriate for animal companions*. In addition, animal companions follow different rules than normal animals, so you can't just take a Bestiary stat block and use that as-is.

* I am aware of one PFS scenario that grants a boon allowing for an owlbear companion, but it just uses the CRB bear companion with a few tweaks. You'd have to take a similar approach with any nonstandard companion choice, if your GM allows.

A dimorphodon pterosaur might be a good place to start for a :flying snake," as they have both flight and poison. But like a viper, their Con is low, so the poison save DC will suffer for it. You could improve that by investing attribute increases in Con. If you raise Int to 3, it can take Ability Focus (poison), which animal companions don't normally have access to.

(I also recall one PFS scenario that allowed for a slightly augmented snake companion. The viper option gave a small increase to the poison damage, and allowed you to spend tricks on boosting the poison save DC, adding +1 effective HD per trick for the purposes of calculating the save DC.)


Flinx was the Human, Pip is the feathered flying snake.

If I was trying to make Pip, my first thought would be a familiar, not an animal companion. Several of the improved familiars have a chasis that is quite similar to the abilities you list.

I think it being 'extremely poisonous' is going to be tough. While some companion creatures have poison, it is pretty much always a fairly weak poison, and the options to increase it are limited and really not a very good trade for other things.

Most likely you won't be able to get a perfect match on what you want, so I'd stop and think about which aspects are most important to you.


Dave your absolutely correct, now that you mention it, it triggers the memory of reading the book, and pip is what i'm after.
my gm and i have been working on this but so far have basically been running the fey template on top of the animal, viper. we both agree it's not perfect by a long shot, but until we can come up with something better it works in game.
i've been thinking about familiars as well, and also considering the possibility of Psuedo dragon, and faerie dragon, with stuff removed and or toned down.
Geru, thanks for the suggestion of "bonded Mind", that will definitely be used.
and before i forget, i want to thank you all for your input, thoughts, and advice on this, it is appreciated, and these ideas of your will be presented to the gm.

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