I want to make a Halfling hunter with the courtly hunter archetype and I have a bunch of questions about how the archetype would work. I would choose a giant raven for mostly flavor reasons but also because I would like to use it as a mount when it grows to medium size. The archetype has 2 features that I find a bit confusing, the first feature is this:
Courtly Companion
A courtly hunter’s animal companion was touched by either the fey or the nature spirits that form leshys and answer to commune with nature, granting it its own intelligence. The companion’s type changes to magical beast (augmented animal), but this doesn’t change any of its statistics and it counts as an animal, not as a magical beast, for the purposes of determining all effects, prerequisites, and so on. It does not learn tricks, but it does have an Intelligence score equal to that of a familiar belonging to a wizard of the courtly hunter’s hunter level. Levels in other classes that grant animal companions do not stack with levels of courtly hunter for the purpose of determining the abilities of her courtly companion.
This ability alters animal companion.
And the second feature is this:
Skill Bond (Ex)
At 3rd level, a courtly hunter’s animal companion gains the courtly hunter’s class skills as class skills. Her animal companion can use the courtly hunter’s skill ranks in a skill in place of its own, but only to a maximum of the courtly hunter’s hunter level (for instance, if a character had 3 levels in courtly hunter and 5 ranks in Diplomacy, her animal companion could either share 3 ranks with skill bond or use its own ranks, whichever would result in a higher total skill bonus).
This ability replaces hunter tactics and the hunter’s bonus teamwork feats.
So, my first questions are about the Courtly Companion. First, if the animal companion has an intelligence of 6 and above, does it require handle animal checks or does it basically behave as another player character who views their hunter master in a favorable way? They essentially gain the intelligence feature of awaken but retain the ability to be an animal companion, so how does that work without tricks and generally how would it play? Also, since the animal has such a high intelligence, and because I selected a raven which has the capability of producing all kinds of sound, could the raven put all its skill ranks into linguistics so it could understand AND speak a bunch of languages?
These next set of questions are about the Skill Bond feature. With this feature, the raven gains the hunters class skills as its own class skills. In addition to this, it can use the ranks from the hunter instead of its own ranks in a skill, so does this mean if the raven has 0 points in perception but the hunter has 1 point that it could use the hunter’s 1 rank in perception AND get the class bonus of +3? Or does the raven need to invest its own skill ranks to get the class skill bonus? Also, now that the raven has a ton of skills carried over from the hunter, just which skills could it technically assist with in an aid another attempt? Could it assist in perception? Stealth? Heal? Handle animal? Craft alchemy? Perform dance? Is there a point where you say, “no the raven can’t assist with that because it is incapable” or can it always assist with any skill?
Any advice or clarification would be appreciated, thanks :)
So long as it's the animal companion's own skill ranks that should work with linguistics. If I was running it I'd be OK with the shared ranks working, but from an earlier thread it's clear some aren't.
With tricks you'd still need to use handle animal to activate them I think. Otherwise they're intelligent enough to act without direction.
A rank from either source still counts as having a rank so should activate the class skill bonus.
There are no specifics about what aid another works with. I wouldn't allow AA on perception or perform (dance) and not usually on stealth, but another GM could have a different line entirely.