So in the new Extinction Curse book there is an Animal Trainer Archetype that looks like the much more direct way for characters to gain access to an animal companion, starting at 2nd level, and then only running a little a Druid in advancement. The catch is that your animal companion is focused towards performance instead of more traditional animal companion skills. For this AP, that makes perfect sense and is a great addition.
Is there going to be a similar, but less circus focused Archetype releases in the APG for non-druid or ranger characters that want to focus on an animal companion? Or will the existence of this Animal Trainer archetype in an AP toolbox preclude making archetypes that are almost exactly the same, but a little bit different?
For home games, i see no problem because the chassis here is incredibly easy to twist to a different thematic focus than performance, but it would be weird if the performance centered animal trainer is the only path that PFS players can choose.
I guess I am just curious if the plan is to have 10 different animal training archetypes eventually, for things like "Raven Master" or "Mastodon Rider," spread out over x number of books? Or if the APG will have core vanilla archetypes that can be used to achieve most of these different character concepts, but APs will have incredibly specialized ones that give good utility and bonuses, but only really to characters involved in very specific types of campaigns?
It will have a Beastmaster archetype in the APG, I expect that this one will be exactly like the Ranger/Druid animal companions.