It doesn't seem to say so explicitly in the book, but are the rules for AC for animal companion the same as for familiars (i.e. equal to its owner's)?
They start at trained in unarmored and can get boosts to expert and I think maybe master depending on the upgrades you get for them and calculate AC as normal. 10+ prof+ stat bonus.
They are also trained in barding so you can equipment them with the barding on page 295. Barding can give +1 or +3 ac.
EDIT - Although it should be noted that barding is rather expensive for starting characters.
Can Animal Companions use Bracers of Armor, or other worn magic items? As long as the magic item doesn't provide an item bonus other than AC and speed, it should be fine, right?
Can Animal Companions use Bracers of Armor, or other worn magic items? As long as the magic item doesn't provide an item bonus other than AC and speed, it should be fine, right?
Nope, that might allow for shenanigans or something. It needs to have the 'companion' trait. :-(
You might want to acquire items that benefit an animal or beast that assists you. These items have the companion trait, meaning they function only for animal companions, familiars, and similar creatures. If it’s unclear whether a creature can benefit from such an item, the GM decides.
Investing Companion Items
Any worn companion item needs to be invested. However, your companion needs to invest it rather than you doing so. This requires you to use the Invest an Item activity alongside your companion. A companion has an investiture limit of two items (instead of the 10-item limit a player character has).
You haven't actually quoted anything that prohibits an animal companion from using non-companion magic items. All the quoted part says is that only animal companions can use companion items -- it says nothing about other magic items.
The animal companion rules on pages 214-217 do restrict what sort of item bonuses they can receive, and of course they cannot wear anything that needs to go on body parts they don't have, but in theory the two items that an animal companion can invest (per rules preceding the quote) could include non-companion items.
This is the same fallacy that misled many people to conclude from the existence of the Rejuvenate Eidolon spell that an eidolon could not benefit from a cleric's Cure Light Wounds spell.
You haven't actually quoted anything that prohibits an animal companion from using non-companion magic items. All the quoted part says is that only animal companions can use companion items -- it says nothing about other magic items.
Reread the first part.
You might want to acquire items that benefit an animal or beast that assists you. These items have the companion trait, meaning they function only for...."
"These items" = "items that benefit an animal or beast that assists you"
Therefore items that benefit an animal or beast that assists you have the companion trait (and therefore benefit only companions etc).
It follows immediately that items that do not have the companion trait do not benefit animals or beasts that assist you.
I'm not sure it does follow. The rule say "Here are items for companions" and then clarifies that companion trait items only work with companions, familiars and similar creatures.
It doesn't say that companions can't use non-companion items.
That might be the intent, but if it is it should be spelled out more explicitly, not something you can kind of extrapolate from the rules if you squint at them from the right angle.
Are you questioning "Therefore items that benefit an animal or beast that assists you have the companion trait" or "It follows immediately that items that do not have the companion trait do not benefit animals or beasts that assist you"?
Because the first is a simple grammatical substitution, and the latter is a direct application of contraposition, no squinting required. "All birds have feathers" logically implies "all things without feathers are not birds."
Which would be great if that's what the rules clearly said.
"These items" could just as easily be parsed to mean "The items in this section" rather than "all items that benefit an animal companion." In fact that's how most of the people I've spoken to interpreted that line.
Your 'simple substitution' isn't, because it fundamentally adds new meaning to the sentence. You're then drawing a conclusion based on the alterations you've made rather than the text as written.
Again, that conclusion may very much be intended, but that's not what I'm arguing either. Just that if it is it needs to be more clear and not something that relies on an assumption like that.
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"These items" could just as easily be parsed to mean "The items in this section" rather than "all items that benefit an animal companion." In fact that's how most of the people I've spoken to interpreted that line.
I find that reading implausible, but okay.
I will agree with you that the rule ought to be more clear one way or the other. People are going to want to give their companions an aeon stone or two even if the GM doesn't think they have the body parts to wear anything else.
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I don't really see how "you might want to acquire these items, because they benefit animal companions" becomes "animal companions can only use these items". Regular barding doesn't even have the companion trait.
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They are also trained in barding so you can equipment them with the barding on page 295. Barding can give +1 or +3 ac.
EDIT - Although it should be noted that barding is rather expensive for starting characters.
Light barding for a small or medium companion is 10 gp... for +1 to the AC! that's 5x what it costs to get leather (2 gp) for your ranger/druid.
And it requires a +3 strength, which not all companions have.Heavy Barding requires a +5 Str... that's two advances on the companion's Str minimum. Level 8 for a druid and 10 for a ranger.
Right now, since we have so few companion items, I'm probably going to rule that they can wear whatever, with GM approval. Like, going into the elemental plane of fire without equipping your dog with a ring of fire resistance would just be inhumane.
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(for context, "these" refers to the items that followed the description, which is the magic items made for companions in the CRB)
That, as Squiggit pointed out, is the crux of our disagreement. I read "these items" to mean "the items just mentioned in the previous sentence," from which the rest follows.
Barding is armor and should be able to get armor runes.
And yet it can't. I'm not sure why that would be relevant here.
Companions can explicitly wear barding, thus companions can't be restricted to only items with the companion trait.
They're clearly talking about magic items, not all items.