Animal Companion Magical Beasts


Rules Questions


So, recently, Paizo put out Heroes of Golarion and in it, gave classes with animal companions the ability to get certain Magical Beasts as Animal Companions. I am not clear on the specifics in this regard, but, can your spells that target your animal companion work with your Magical Beast animal companion despite them not being "Animal"? If not, why? Doesn't that rule out a majority of your spells?


Can you give examples in the forum of a link?


doomman47 wrote:
Can you give examples in the forum of a link?

Uh...like what? I cast Magic Fang. Can I target my Bulette companion? easy to answer. Does my spells that target my animal companion, target my magical beast animal companion.


I mean a link to what abilities that allow you to get a magical beast as an animal companion.


doomman47 wrote:
I mean a link to what abilities that allow you to get a magical beast as an animal companion.

Don't believe so no. It is in the book Heroes of Golarion. Idk if it is on the archive yet or not. I know it isn't on the d20pfsrd.

Edit: it is not so i have to copy paste.

Beast Speaker
You have trained in the ways that the beast speakers of the
Tekritani once used to ally themselves with magical beasts.
Prerequisites: Handle Animal 7 ranks, animal companion
with effective druid level 7.

Benefit: You can select a creature from the list of magical
beasts to serve as your animal companion. You acquire and
advance this beast companion in the same way as an animal
companion detailed in the class feature that grants you
access to your animal companion. You can also dismiss the
creature, as dictated by your class feature.
You must meet additional prerequisites to select a
companion with an Intelligence score of 3 or higher, as
described in each creature’s entry.

Your choices are: Behir, Bulette, Death Worm, Sun Falcon, and Basilisk


From what is copied I would say no since the other abilities which turn you companion to a different type explicitly state you can treat it as an animal for the purposes of feats and spells and the like.

celestial servant explicitly calls out you still being able to treat them as animals.


Magic Fang is a bad example since it doesn't specify that the target must be an animal (and in fact it's often cast on monks). Animal Growth will fail on your magical beast for not being an animal, though. Doomman47 is correct that they'd need to include text like that in Celestial Servant for it to count as an animal for you.

I doubt the author of Beast Speaker thought about it and decided not to put in such text, especially since the feat requires Handle Animal; more likely it didn't occur to them that it was needed. These things happen. If you're in a home game, I would talk to the GM about inserting the relevant text from Celestial Servant into Beast Speaker.


To be fair, as long as you don't lose or trade Share Spells away, it's mostly fine regardless.
It's part of what it does : allow you to cast spells on your AC even if it normally wouldn't affect creatures of its type. Be it Enlarge Person or Animal Growth.

The very similar Monstrous Mount is written somewhat the same way, for that matter, as are pretty much all the feats and abilities allowing non-animal "Animal" Companions. The ones including more forgiving wording are rare.
Not that many friendly spells target animals specifically, and you usually (if not always) can get around that thanks to Share Spells.

It can definitely be a problem for things other than spells though, for sure.
But magic is usually what matters most to us.
It is something to keep in mind when looking at companion archetypes.


thank you guys, this helped quite a bit.


handle animal wrote:
You can use this skill on a creature with an Intelligence score of 1 or 2 that is not an animal, but the DC of any such check increases by 5. Such creatures have the same limit on tricks known as animals do.

So, handle animal can work on non-animals as long as they don't have a high intelligence.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Rules Questions / Animal Companion Magical Beasts All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Rules Questions