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This Is my personal argument on why companions are lame/bad.
So! First, definition: animal, construct, undead companions.
Second, argument: companions, in my opinion, are inherently flawed and contraddict aspecta of pf2e's interior design:
1- they require a massive feat taxi which offers almost purely vertical growth, to have your companion you MUST spend at least 4 feats which all give your companion REQUIRED numerical growth, aka:
-feat tax
-feat chain
-vertical growth
And those are all things that pathfinder 2e specifically tries to avoid mixed up!
2- they're lame as hell, companions have practically no customization, with construct literally having none at all, and every item Is utterly useless; if you wanna focus on your companion there's literally nothing you can do (Napoleon meme), they're Stuck with being the same from level 1 to level 20
3- they scale horribly, this Is caused by Two things.
1- the gaps between feats are too big, companions generally start to really suffer from level 11-13 and from level 17-20 because their scaling Is tied to feats! And there aren't any to cover those specific levels!
2- their numbers are Simply too low, look, i understand that their only utility Is being a meatshield and grappling but It comes to a point where the player's map actions are Better than the companion's non map actions!
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Well Druids can start with an animal companion. And cavalier dedication gets you a mount (a specific kind of animal companion) for a single class feat.
I guess you mean that in order to keep your companion relevant you have to spend more feats. This is a legitimate gripe in my companion, the fact that you need to spend so many feats to keep them relevant feels bad, although you also need to make sure how much benefit animal companions provide is balanced against what you could gain from other feats (but there's no magic formula for the comparison). It's worth noting that even with taking the relevant feats at high levels animal companions are still kind of bad in terms of their attack value relative to enemy AC.
That said...that was kind of the goal.
Paizo didn't want to give anyone a companion that was on par or potentially even outshine a dedication martial character. So they have to be worse, and I agree with that design paradigm.
And as far as not being able to focus on your animal companion...I kind of agree except again this is "feature" and not a bug. Paizo doesn't want your companion to outshine a dedicated martial.
If you want to focus on an "animal companion" the class to actually play is the Summoner.
So I agree with you that animal companions feel unrewarding to choose, but I'm not sure there's a solution that doesn't invalidate the issues of giving a single player more actions (via 2 characters) or outshining or equally a dedicated martial character.
The only thing I could honestly see changing would be that you don't have to spend additional class feats on keeping the companions relevant, and instead they simply gain those benefits at the appropriate (existing level). Cause let's face it, at high levels animal companions do suck.
If they only cost a single class feat to get and keep up with, even if they're not great I think that might acceptable trade off.
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If they only cost a single class feat to get and keep up with, even if they're not great I think that might acceptable trade off.
I agree with this, since they're so... Bad i always either see them on casters (aka: carry me through level One and Two mahoraga) or on characters with free archetype (therefore they can Just disregard the feat taxi).
You either let them be Better or let them be cheaper, cause right now only casters can use them without feeling like a trap option (and that's only because some casters feats kinda suck and Simply adding hps up front Is usefull)
I think the best companion Is actually the construct, by mere virtue of being super cheap to heal and replace that you basically have a kamikaze that Just dies every fight and spams trips
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If we want to make companions more powerful, we need to tie them to a resource. Companions that are slightly weaker than we have now, but with their own pool of focus points that caps at two, could be one way to approach this. Even when these points are spent, they'd still be weaker than a full character, even when going all out. The upside is that these boosted actions would allow you to have more agency over when your companion does something cool.
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I don't really disagree with any of this... but companions are popular all the same, especially in FA games (where they cost less so you can keep up with the feats, though as that could have been something else it's still not "free"), and also because having an extra body is useful. Plus it's fun to have a minion.
But a lot of these issues are things Paizo did deliberately to avoid the "my animal companion is more powerful than your class" issues of the past, so I don't think a rework is going to happen.
Allowing companions to benefit from their owners weapon potency runes and fundamental armor runes would make a BIG difference and would be relatively easy to implement, if you wanted to change stuff up.
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But a lot of these issues are things Paizo did deliberately to avoid the "my animal companion is more powerful than your class" issues of the past, so I don't think a rework is going to happen.
Yup. That is my take on it too.
There are contradictory design requirements going on here. It is nearly impossible, or perhaps actually impossible, to fulfill all of the requirements at the same time with one design.
1) Companions need to consume build power from the primary character. Otherwise the companion is just a power add that every character would have to have.
2) Companions cannot consume too much of the build power from the character. Otherwise the companion becomes the primary character and the PC becomes the companion.
3) Both the PC and the companion have to still be powerful enough to be effective in combat against enemies designed to be facing single characters that have all of their build power in one single character.
It is much like the saying: 'cheap', 'fast', or 'good'. You can only pick two.
One of the three has to be sacrificed. For PF2, it is #3 that is lacking.
#1 is the feat tax that is complained about, and #2 is that the stats of the companions are lower than that of the PCs that they are companion to.
And therefore because of not meeting requirement #3, companions struggle to be effective against tough enemies.
If you think you can create a system that meets all three requirements at the same time, publish it and sell it on Pathfinder Infinite.
But my analysis and opinion: if you increase the power of companions, then they will become a must-pick and violate requirement #1 no matter how much they cost. Same if you decrease their cost - no matter how little power they have, if the cost is negligible, then having a companion is better than not having one. And if you instead further nerf the character that has a cheap and powerful companion, then it violates #2 and the companion becomes more powerful than the PC.
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If we want to make companions more powerful, we need to tie them to a resource. Companions that are slightly weaker than we have now, but with their own pool of focus points that caps at two, could be one way to approach this. Even when these points are spent, they'd still be weaker than a full character, even when going all out. The upside is that these boosted actions would allow you to have more agency over when your companion does something cool.
That's a pretty cool idea, though I do feel like it's pretty close to just being the summoner class.
Like if there were an "animal tamer" class I think it's just be an archetype of summoner where you "eidolon" was of more mundane origins.
So if you want a powerful companion class, you want to play a summoner and re-flavor the parts of the class that deal with outsiders to be mundane (assuming you have an amenable GM).
2) Companions cannot consume too much of the build power from the character. Otherwise the companion becomes the primary character and the PC becomes the companion.
I feel like this one isn't true, because that's basically the Summoner class. But it would be a retread of that design.
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I agree with point 2 about the lack of customization. But adding customization would require spending feats to customize the companion, so point 1 about a mandatory feat chain to keep the companion up to scale would change to spending feats to customize the companion. Same number of feats, probably, but more fun.
Point 3 about them not scaling at high level I have observed in practice. The champion Tikti joined my Ironfang Invasion campaign at 3rd level and she had an unusual design. She had STR +1 and DEX +4, so she could hit with a finesse weapon but it would deal little damage. Instead, she used her Divine Ally ability to gain a velociraptor animal companion Liklik. Liklik served as offense, and Tikti's champion's reaction was defense. The pair worked in combat, and if the party needed extra protection then Tikti send Liklik out of the battle and used her champion's reaction to protect the party. Liklik's Speed 50 feet was also good for chasing down enemies who tried to run away.
But Liklik raised her Strength with the 5th-level, 10th-level, and 15th-level attribute boosts, so at 15th level she had STR +4, a +2 greater striking rapier, and master proficiency with that rapier. Liklik's damage did not keep up, despite taking all the feats. Instead, Liklik had grown big enough for Tikti, a small tailed goblin, to ride, so Tikti put a saddle on her velociraptor. But the entertaining offense-and-defense team no longer functioned.
The druid's animal companion fared better, but that was because the fledgling roc Roxie was mostly homebrew. At 7th-level the party faced three enemy rangers with roc animal companions but these were fledgling rocs only the size of large owls. I decided that if fledgling rocs were going to make an appearance then they would be as large as a horse and able to pick up a person in their talons. But that was too powerful for a 7th-level encounter, so I weakened them that they had to drop the victim at the end of the turn only 25 feet up rather than flying up to killing heights. What I did not expect was that the druid Stormdancer in the party decided to adopt one of the rocs after its ranger was killed.
I said Stormdancer could keep the roc, which we called Roxie, as a pet until she leveled up and could claim a feat that gave her an animal companion. Stormdancer was a storm-order druid who had chosen weather powers rather an animal-order druid with a companion, so she needed to take Order Explorer. Stormdancer could fly via Stormwind Flight, so I declared that she could use the same ability to ride on Roxie once Roxie was her animal companion. I carefully homebrewed Roxie to solve a problem. Pathfinder 2nd Edition had restricted travel magic such as Teleport to just five people. The party had seven people, and now two animal companions, too. So their only method of fast travel was to summon Phantom Steeds. The champion had Liklik as her own steed and the monk could run very fast, so that took five 2nd-level spells to summon five Phantom Steeds. If Stormdancer could fly on Roxie for long distances, that would drop down to four Phantom Steeds for more convenient roleplaying. I said that using Stormwind Flight on Roxie would last for 10 minutes and that flying on Roxie counted as a Refocus activity, so Stormdancer could ride Roxie all day for long-distance travel.
And for the rest of the game, Stormdancer and Roxie were a delightful pair, flying around the battlefield throwing lightning from above. It was lots of fun and still balanced, since Stormdancer could fly anyway.
Later at 15th-level the rogue Binny adopted a Jubjub Bird. That is a CR 15 PF1 creature based on poems of Lewis Carroll, because Ironfang Invasion was a PF1 adventure path that I converted to PF2. The party was about to level up to 16th level, when they encountered a Jubjub Bird set as a guardian. Binny's player said, "I want to tame it!" I said, okay, you can tame it by spending Binny's 16th-level feat on an archetype that provides an animal companion. The player chose Mammoth Lord. There was no way I could homebrew a Jubjub Bird animal companion that resembled a standard young animal companion, so I left Jubby overpowered and it did not unbalance the game. Binny treated Jubby as a pet and a mount rather than a battle companion anyways.
Thus, I have twice encountered the weird problem of a PC adopting an animal companion from the wild that already has more abilities than ordinarily allowed by the 1st-level Animal Companion feat. The PC had only one class feat to spend and then would have to wait two more levels to gain a second class feat to spend. If the animal companions scaled better without feats, then I would have had to fudge less.
In my current Strength of Thousands campaign, familiars are more popular than companions, but the bard Jinx Fuun with druid free archetype got her druidic animal companion feat at 4th level and acquired Ikula, a heron bird animal companion. So far, her use of Ikula has been to deliver messages across campus, covertly follow two fleeing bandits to their hideout, and provide a flank for a martial party member. This companion would be customized as a courier more than a combatant if customization existed.
Oh, and remember that I said in Ironfang Invasion that three enemy rangers had roc companions? Two rangers died and the third escaped by being lifted by his roc, so the party cared for two orphaned rocs temporarily. They gave the second roc, Rocko, to a teenager girl Menolly training as a druid. And in my Strength of Thousands campaign, I just had Menolly and her roc Rocko show up as a new 2nd-level druid student at the Magaambya Academy in the same dormitory as the PCs. I love cameo appearances, and a few players had fun in their characters assisting with the feeding arrangements for Rocko, a Large predator. But this means that my campaign has a 2nd-level NPC with a mature flying animal companion.
I have been breaking the animal companion rules and my players have had great fun because of it without breaking the game. Sigh, I should have broken some rules for Liklik.
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If we want to make companions more powerful, we need to tie them to a resource. Companions that are slightly weaker than we have now, but with their own pool of focus points that caps at two, could be one way to approach this. Even when these points are spent, they'd still be weaker than a full character, even when going all out. The upside is that these boosted actions would allow you to have more agency over when your companion does something cool.That's a pretty cool idea, though I do feel like it's pretty close to just being the summoner class.
Like if there were an "animal tamer" class I think it's just be an archetype of summoner where you "eidolon" was of more mundane origins.
So if you want a powerful companion class, you want to play a summoner and re-flavor the parts of the class that deal with outsiders to be mundane (assuming you have an amenable GM).
The HP link and shared action pool are issues that I could see keeping people away from the Summoner. Something more companion-focused than what we have now, but less fully integrated than a Summoner, seems like a sweet spot.
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The HP link and shared action pool are issues that I could see keeping people away from the Summoner. Something more companion-focused than what we have now, but less fully integrated than a Summoner, seems like a sweet spot.If we want to make companions more powerful, we need to tie them to a resource. Companions that are slightly weaker than we have now, but with their own pool of focus points that caps at two, could be one way to approach this. Even when these points are spent, they'd still be weaker than a full character, even when going all out. The upside is that these boosted actions would allow you to have more agency over when your companion does something cool.That's a pretty cool idea, though I do feel like it's pretty close to just being the summoner class.
Like if there were an "animal tamer" class I think it's just be an archetype of summoner where you "eidolon" was of more mundane origins.
So if you want a powerful companion class, you want to play a summoner and re-flavor the parts of the class that deal with outsiders to be mundane (assuming you have an amenable GM).
That's fair.
I think you might be right that there is a design space for an "animal tamer" class that is roughly based on the chassis of the summoner without those bits, though I don't know what you'd have to loose in exchange.
Because the shared HP pool is both a blessing a curse. Sure both character can stay up longer...but both characters will also go down at the same. Straight splitting the health pool between characters honestly feels like it might be an upgrade, so maybe the HP of the companion would need to be reduced a bit.
And in terms of action economy, it might be like a standard animal companion where initially you have to spend your character actions to get it to do anything. And as it levels it gets "free" actions it can take.
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I think Animal Companions could use a few more tweaks here and there, but it's definitely not dire. As-is I like them quite a bit, and they're strong enough without feeling required.
If the math enhancing feats that are basically required had more customization opportunities tied to them, I think that would go a long way to making them feel better.
I wouldn't mind a class focused more on Animal Companions that takes care of most of these complaints though.
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I have an idea what could also work
there are some feats that scale with level and other requirements (first that come to mind are kineticist impulses, but also extra lore)
if the baseline of the companion would be slightly better and we add feats that improve over time, we could reduce the number of feats required and smooth out the progression
like that we could spend 1-2 feats to have a decent companion and a third one to carry it into the endgame, with autmatic stat bumps at certain key levels so it doesnt fall off quite as much
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Funny thing about customization, they're trying something like this with the Mechanic playtest. Drone mechanics can spend feats for customizations that are formatted a bit like familiar abilities (albeit semi-permanent) and add new features to your companion. It's kind of nice, albeit too limited right now.
... Right now the feature is kind of garbo because it's way too expensive for what it gets you (one feat for one customization, most of which aren't really class feat level). I'm hoping they decide to add customizations to the upgrade feats later on.
Regardless I think some sort of similar system of minor upgrades that you could use to make your companion more your own and less a generic pile of stats could be neat.
But my analysis and opinion: if you increase the power of companions, then they will become a must-pick and violate requirement #1 no matter how much they cost.
I don't see a point in framing things in such binary terms. There's clearly space between something being bad and struggling to function at certain level brackets and "everyone must take one"
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Perhaps a companion themed martial akin to the Hunter from PF1, focusing on teamwork with their companion, with more companion customization and options built in would be an idea to work with. Like a more martial take to what summoner is.
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We actually have options for companion extras now so you can customize better.
High level STR based companions are a disaster, but easily fixed by changing the STR focusing specializations.
Items for companioms, and Eidolons, are rather terrible. They didn't want companions to be a money sink, but instead there's hardly any options to give them baseline things to work at higher levels, like swimming speeds or fly speeds.
People already likely get more out of a companion then is intended, one feat isn't supposed to give you a free exploration activity, a free scout, free perception rolls, etc. Most of that is a casualty of just trying to fulfil the idea of having a companion at all and not just flat out saying they only operate in encounter mode and everything else is fluff.
Due to how class power is balanced, I think companions as they are now are about as good as you can get without going the summoner route. There's room for a non magical companion class that perhaps all their feats and abilities just focus on striking together and improving the companion while leaving the player as baseline feat-less martial. Would need some sort of mechanic preventing them from improving from AT feats but maybe not.
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The HP link and shared action pool are issues that I could see keeping people away from the Summoner. Something more companion-focused than what we have now, but less fully integrated than a Summoner, seems like a sweet spot.If we want to make companions more powerful, we need to tie them to a resource. Companions that are slightly weaker than we have now, but with their own pool of focus points that caps at two, could be one way to approach this. Even when these points are spent, they'd still be weaker than a full character, even when going all out. The upside is that these boosted actions would allow you to have more agency over when your companion does something cool.That's a pretty cool idea, though I do feel like it's pretty close to just being the summoner class.
Like if there were an "animal tamer" class I think it's just be an archetype of summoner where you "eidolon" was of more mundane origins.
So if you want a powerful companion class, you want to play a summoner and re-flavor the parts of the class that deal with outsiders to be mundane (assuming you have an amenable GM).
IMO, this isn't the main point that make many people to avoid summoner but:
Funny thing about customization, they're trying something like this with the Mechanic playtest. Drone mechanics can spend feats for customizations that are formatted a bit like familiar abilities (albeit semi-permanent) and add new features to your companion. It's kind of nice, albeit too limited right now.
... Right now the feature is kind of garbo because it's way too expensive for what it gets you (one feat for one customization, most of which aren't really class feat level). I'm hoping they decide to add customizations to the upgrade feats later on.
Regardless I think some sort of similar system of minor upgrades that you could use to make your companion more your own and less a generic pile of stats could be neat.
But my analysis and opinion: if you increase the power of companions, then they will become a must-pick and violate requirement #1 no matter how much they cost.I don't see a point in framing things in such binary terms. There's clearly space between something being bad and struggling to function at certain level brackets and “everyone must take one”
This also reminds me that Inventors companions have more customizations available for those who want to play with companions. May not fit much of the niche (not everyone what to play with a machine as a companion) but it still something.
Items for companioms, and Eidolons, are rather terrible. They didn't want companions to be a money sink, but instead there's hardly any options to give them baseline things to work at higher levels, like swimming speeds or fly speeds.
The problem with companions and eidolons using items is that the designers already calculated the companion/eidolons power budget already in the limit that they want they have.
If they made companions allowing to use items that give extra abilities and bonuses, they probably will end making them even weaker to compensate. Also, this would create an extra monetary pressure to the player to equip both companion/eidolon and their own character, so I think they avoided most of the items interactions due to this.
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I think Inventor (and mechanic by extension tho SF) kind of deserves its own discussion because it's in this odd spot where its companion is both a core class feature and a feat sink.
Summoners shares MAP with eidolons. This penalty makes it unfeasible to make a martial to martial summoner and eidolon relationship.
Sort of off topic but this really bummed me about the summoner. Between the summoner half having bad weapons for seemingly no reason and the rigidity of martial mechanics in general it's super unsatisfying to try to play.
There's a feat seemingly built for this, one that lets you and an eidolon attack together, but because of the aforementioned numbers issues it often ends up making you worse since you have to maximize the summoner's damage per hit to get value out of it (obviously still playable but leaves a bad taste imo to spend a feat on a damage ability only to do less damage).
The problem with companions and eidolons using items is that the designers already calculated the companion/eidolons power budget already in the limit that they want they have.
Well yes, but part of the problem with companions is those calculations are off.
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The point of Companions is that you cannot think as they have been a fully independent creature but as an improved 3rd action for your character. For example.
IMO, these are very good improvements for a 3rd action. I'm not saying that wort nor that they are cheap due to the feats tax along the progression, but it has a point.
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Animal companions do ok up to level 10 or so. After level 10 they scale very badly to where my group has stared to train out of them past that level because they become cumbersome and mostly useless. You have better expenditures of action than to use a companion.
Why do they scale badly?
1. Damage isn't just extra dice like striking weapons, but stacking of higher stats, property runes, advanced special abilities, striking runes, and special abilities. AC damage scaling falls off dramatically as you starting picking up greater striking runes stacked with property runs and special ability damage. It's like hitting something with a peashooter.
2. Lots of saves are required for enemy special abilities and companion saves are too weak to stand up to these saves. They become a liability having to clear them of negative conditions from missed saves and lost hit points form AOE effects.
3. AC scales badly for any companion but an agile AC with high dex. They are so easy to strike and injure.
4. Skill levels too low. You can't even use them to trip, shove or use maneuvers due to low skill levels. Strength based companions are substantially worse than dex based companions.
5. Can't use the Support Benefit without spending an action. The Support Benefit might be worth it if they could do it with extra action for a mature companion, but this strange design element where you have to spend an action to gain the support benefit and do nothing else but move while also denying a companion from attacking and using the support benefit makes the support benefit dynamic pretty terrible.
6. Movement. Land-based companions are useless against flying enemies. You can run into quite a few at high level. Can't flank. Too slow and action restricted to stay active against a flying enemy. It can make a non-flying companion feel very useless.
Companions aren't worth it past level 10 from an optimizer's perspective. They scale poorly past level 10 and it's very noticeable. It feels not so great to spend feats to build up a badly scaling companion.
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The point of Companions is that you cannot think as they have been a fully independent creature but as an improved 3rd action for your character. For example.
A character with Cavalier Archetype and Impressive Mount feat can use the horse to move at 40ft for “free” or 80ft using only one action to command the companion to move without risk to trigger a move reaction (who will trigger the reaction will be the horse) besides other uses. A LVL 1 Precision Ranger using a two-handed d12 weapon with a bear companion could flank and make 2 strikes vs a hunted target, one of them MAPless, doing 1d12+STR+1d8(precision) and another with MAP-5 doing 1d12+STR while makes the bear to strike using jaws doing 1d8+3(STR)+1d8(precision) and a MAP-4 Strike with claw doing 1d6+3(STR) allowing this character having 2 more strikes with a bit weaker damage in place of its 3rd action. IMO, these are very good improvements for a 3rd action. I'm not saying that wort nor that they are cheap due to the feats tax along the progression, but it has a point.
The problem with this Is that they scale so badly that they're not even an improved third action anymore, from level 10 and onwards they're strictly a WORSE third action
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Practically speaking, playtest the Mechanic and give your feedback on robot companions. There's one week left in the playtest. The ship has sailed on anything else- if something made it through the remaster, that's that.
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The problem with this Is that they scale so badly that they're not even an improved third action anymore, from level 10 and onwards they're strictly a WORSE third actionThe point of Companions is that you cannot think as they have been a fully independent creature but as an improved 3rd action for your character. For example.
A character with Cavalier Archetype and Impressive Mount feat can use the horse to move at 40ft for “free” or 80ft using only one action to command the companion to move without risk to trigger a move reaction (who will trigger the reaction will be the horse) besides other uses. A LVL 1 Precision Ranger using a two-handed d12 weapon with a bear companion could flank and make 2 strikes vs a hunted target, one of them MAPless, doing 1d12+STR+1d8(precision) and another with MAP-5 doing 1d12+STR while makes the bear to strike using jaws doing 1d8+3(STR)+1d8(precision) and a MAP-4 Strike with claw doing 1d6+3(STR) allowing this character having 2 more strikes with a bit weaker damage in place of its 3rd action. IMO, these are very good improvements for a 3rd action. I'm not saying that wort nor that they are cheap due to the feats tax along the progression, but it has a point.
Yes, that's why I said they're not necessarily worth it. It's just better to treat them as a 3rd action than as independent creatures.
I also think they have a very excessive feat tax for what they provide. Mainly because as an alternative to my 3rd action, if I'm playing as a spellcaster, I can simply summon a strong creature like a dragon 3 to 4 times a day and it will operate on the same model, but with much more versatility and without having to use any feats.
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What if we acknowledged that animal companions should require escalation of your investment to keep them 'current' but acknowledge that shouldn't have to mean you always have to use 'more' feats.
My suggestion would be to change the feats that moved your animal companion to its next stage would have a Takes the Place Of property. Instead of a normal prerequisite, you spend your higher level feat on the animal companion and it advances to the new stage in its development. However you earlier feat slot technically re-opens up. So having an animal companion requires you to spend a feat, but it doesn't normally require multiple feats to keep up, but it does require you to commit one of your higher level feats to it, to keep it fully up.
Some characters who's animal companion is more a support role, or flavor may not need move their feat spend up to higher levels. But the individuals using it as a martial companion will probably want to.
This might even open up a new type of lower level feat which has a prerequisite of a higher level feat, that could, if the players wanted to invest in which might give their animal companion a boost in some small manner, thus providing additional minor customization options for the companions.
It would open up a new form of feat economy. (feats that advance by taking higher level slots) rather than requiring increased number of feat expenditures to advance it. This presents a middle ground between the feats/class abilities that automatically advance over character advancement, and the ones that lag behind if you don't follow up with latter feat expenditures.
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I did a rough calculation and assuming Druid / Beastmaster feat access level, the difference between a martial and an animal companion in attack bonus per level was as follows, assuming the martial gets new weapon potency runes, always raises his Strength / Dexterity and gets an apex item at its level:
Level 1: -1
Level 2: -2
Level 3: -2
Level 4: -1
Level 5: -3
Level 6: -3
level 7: -3
Level 8: -1
Level 9: -1
Level 10: -3
Level 11: -3
Level 12: -3
Level 13: -5
Level 14: -2/-1
Level 15: -2/-1
Level 16: -3/-2*
Level 17: -4/-3*
Level 18: -4/-3**
Level 19: -4/-3**
Level 20: -5/-4**
Since Specialization gives +1 Dexterity by itself, Strength companions are even harder hit. Some classes can add extra specializations, marked with asterisks, that could add another +1 (and we assume that a specialization is chosen that boosts Strength or Dexterity here).
So there are 4/6 levels with only -1 behind and 4/3 with -2, which I think both is fine.
7/9 levels at -3 is rough, 3/4 levels at -4 and 2/1 at -5 outright crippling.
Similar to casters vs martials, I think it does rather hurt the game to have that sort of inconsistent scaling and the diminishing return for extra specializations makes adding more compared to high level class feats questionable. ^^ ;
I think maybe it would help to have the baseline numbers in attack bonus, armor class and saves be more hard wired to level not to make any companion just a pure liability and focus more on extra feats adding damage, special abilities, better support benefits, etc.
And I would really hope for more parity between Strength and Dexterity companions.
Dexterity and Strength are supposed to be balanced stats already. I do not see why animals companions need to have better benefits for Dexterity. The only justification would be the inability to use ranged weapons and Thievery and I do not think that is enough to justify it.
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I think improving pet itemization would help them a lot. Give them property runes and improve their chance to hit a bit regardless of what type you take.
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I had a ranger with a nimble bird, using the better (more AC) old rules. Worked fine till somewhere over 10, after which the bird died almost every encounter, even with the higher AC. So that was the end of the bird.
High AC and low damage works fine. Nimble should be default. When AC is good enough, it doesn't really matter that damage is low and you can choose to use their support action. Feat investment is high, too high I would say.
But with the current AC's I'll never take them again.
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This Is my personal argument on why companions are lame/bad.
2- they're lame as hell, companions have practically no customization, with construct literally having none at all, and every item Is utterly useless; if you wanna focus on your companion there's literally nothing you can do (Napoleon meme), they're Stuck with being the same from level 1 to level 20.
The one is a huge issue for me. The way Paizo hobbled companion flexability by limiting them to only using items that are "specifically" tagged as being usable by companions continually grinds my gears, particularly since the list is STILL so ridiculously small after so much time and opportunity for them to add items to it. It's just another area where Paizo chose to throw out the simulationist roots of why ttrpgs work in the first place by adding yet another way that one aspect of player creatures functions fundamentally differently and worse than npcs.
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Perhaps a companion themed martial akin to the Hunter from PF1, focusing on teamwork with their companion, with more companion customization and options built in would be an idea to work with. Like a more martial take to what summoner is.
This is my #2 most desired class, and has been for some time. Hunter was my favorite 1E martial because of the interplay with the teamwork feats and companion. Super cool.
My wife played a Ranger with a bird and got really sad just how meaningless her AC-feat choices felt around level 10. It just couldn't meaningfully contribute to combat most of the time.
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It's just another area where Paizo chose to throw out the simulationist roots of why ttrpgs work in the first place
What a bold claim to make. There are multiple reasons why ttRPGs can work, simulationism is not a requirement for ttRPGs to work, and non-simulationist RPGs have been around forever.
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If there is something to fix for high level its easiest to do with new companion magic gear.
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I think second bodies in TTRPGs are a fairly thorny problem, so I don't blame Paizo for coming up with a solution that doesn't feel amazing even if the end result avoids other critical problems: when your character can bring essentially another character into play, whether it's a companion, an eidolon, a familiar, or a summon, the mere act of doing so is quite powerful due to the things a character can do just by existing (i.e. Strike, flank if they can also Strike, project auras, work with other special abilities, and so on).
Additionally, previous editions have demonstrated how overwhelming it can get when you can add HP and actions to your side, and that's something you're bound to do with a companion. When that bag of actions can also contribute supplementary damage via Strikes when your third action will normally be spent doing something other than deal damage, that creates a lot of risks: balance too generously, and your extra character will boost you by so much that you'd beat any single other character in the party. In the worst of cases, that extra character may even outshine another party member entirely, which has happened in past editions.
Because companions therefore mess with quite a few of 2e's other constraints, I think there's justification for them breaking the rules on feats as well and requiring feat taxes to stay relevant. Effectively, you're transferring a portion of your own power into your companion. Perhaps there's a more elegant way to do this, and I can certainly agree with other people here that companions would feel better with more customization options (just like the Mechanic's drone companion in Starfinder 2e!), but as it stands, despite not feeling quite as strong as in other games, animal companions remain popular in Pathfinder all the same.
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I think the best solution would be to keep their power and progression about like it is now...but just to require less class feats to achieve it.
Like if it was only 2 low level feats (one to get it and one to advance it), but around level 10 the animal companion stops being relevant I feel like that might be okay. Although I do think as far as AC and to hit are concerned I "stops being relevant" means that at most AC and to hit are like 4 below a full PC. And as a I recall it, that is not true. Cause like, maybe it shouldn't contribute most of the time, but it shouldn't become a liability in combat due to low AC and it should have enough of an attack bonus that it can occasionally land a hit.
Honestly, look at familiars. The fact that AC and saves are based on the PCs is good. Animal companions could probably use the same defensive stats as their owner PC and that would help a lot. Although it would create another weird dynamic where dex isn't relevant on animal companions and suddenly strength based companions would be the relevant progression instead of dex based companion.
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Auto progression and have some feats to diversify the AC's. Maybe have the option to add skill feats, or add a skill level, learn to communicate. Not familiar level options, but some overlap shouldn't be an issue.
Use items, L-5 could be something to give, which doesn't impact power too much. Maybe even runes.
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Some property runes or special metal items would be nice.
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Some property runes or special metal items would be nice.
There should definitely be a way for a player who wants to focus on their Animal Companion to keep them relevant. Although it would have to be a significant portion of their character's power budget.
Basically like a summoner/eidolon without the lore trappings of that.
I had a ranger with a nimble bird, using the better (more AC) old rules. Worked fine till somewhere over 10, after which the bird died almost every encounter, even with the higher AC. So that was the end of the bird.
High AC and low damage works fine. Nimble should be default. When AC is good enough, it doesn't really matter that damage is low and you can choose to use their support action. Feat investment is high, too high I would say.
But with the current AC's I'll never take them again.
Why again can you not add magical items to your companion.
I mean a bracelet for their legs that adds to dexterity, or adds force armor or other protection spell. Possibly wraps that give runes to beef up the unarmed attack.
Is this use a magic denied?
Look at Companion Items once [GM Core pg. 272]: "You might want to acquire items that benefit a creature that assists you, such as an animal companion, familiar, or bonded animal. These items have the companion trait, meaning they function only for animal companions, familiars, and similar creatures. Normally, these are the only items a companion can use. Other items can qualify at the GM's discretion, but a companion can never Activate an Item."
So, unless an item had the Companion trait, a companion literally can't use it unless your DM expands the list of items they can use past the 19 that actually have the trait.
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There should definitely be a way for a player who wants to focus on their Animal Companion to keep them relevant. Although it would have to be a significant portion of their character's power budget.
The more I think about this the more I wonder if it's actually the right way to approach it at all.
Right now Companions require a huge investment and kind of suck, but I wonder how necessary that investment actually is.
Like most feats don't do this. They work and they largely keep working. If I'm a level 1 ranger and take Hunted Shot, it gets to be a core part of my attack routine for my entire career and scales automatically as I scale.
If I spend a feat for a focus spell, it automatically heightens on its own.
The best comparison point is probably familiars. Admittedly familiars are also kind of an iffy proposition, but while familiars have feat chains to make them stronger too, if I take just the basic feat and use it to give my familiar specific functionality I can expect them to be able to offer that throughout a whole campaign.
Why is it that we take for granted then the idea that Animal Companions (and a handful of other feat chains) must actively degrade in functionality over the course of a campaign?
It's one thing to say that animal companions are too strong for a single feat, but the way even just basic scaling is tethered to feat progression goes way beyond that and creates clear shortcomings where they just get actively worse in a way normal feats don't.
I think companions suck past level 10 or so. They scale not too bad up to Mature and Nimble/Savage, then fall off hard.
I think some of the fixes for companions and a few classes is not so much the need a complete rework from the ground up, but more of working on better scaling past level 10 where the game changes with more mobility and damage required to scale up well.
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Why is it that we take for granted then the idea that Animal Companions (and a handful of other feat chains) must actively degrade in functionality over the course of a campaign?
Because the alternative is that they start off so weak or domineering of your actions as to be unsatisfying. Right now, a generic level 2 STR martial with a d8 weapon is attacking at +8(1d8+4); your level 2 companion will be attacking with +7(1d8+3), Against an average same-level AC, that's 5.1 vs 4.125 expected damage, or doing 81% of the expected damage of the martial. The martial only gets better if it's using a bigger weapon, or from class features that boost damage (and not all martials get substantial boosts there) - and you can get 2 actions to cast spells while your companion still gets 2 actions to be a martial. If you could get the current level of functionality for only a level 2 feat, it'd be pretty straightforward - and probably optimal - for a party to all invest one 2nd level feat in this, and get a functional frontline without needing to have any frontline characters. I do wish companions were able to keep their low-level power throughout the whole game at the cost of the additional feats, as it's frustrating to see a feature get less useful even as you invest in it, but they cannot do so at the cost of a single 2nd level feat.
The alternative would be to either start with the companion being very weak and letting that weak power level stay true relative to your power throughout leveling up, and then provide options to improve it (which I think would feel substantially worse), or to make it really difficult to use with the low level feats (3 of your actions for 2 of theirs or something) and have the current level of power scale well as you level, with the additional feats making it simpler to use. I'd prefer that over it being very weak at the start, but I think the current compromise works better than either of these.
One potential way to go about it could be to parcel out the animal companion's benefits differently: currently, for instance, animal companions can both Strike and support from the beginning, so perhaps one way to accommodate auto-scaling on companions could be to cut out one or the other benefit and feed it back in via one of the companion line feats. Rather than have a companion that does a lot from the start but needs feats to stay relevant, this would instead make the companion a much more specialized addition that would stay relevant at whatever it does, but would require feats to expand its capabilities.
What really hurts about this one is that it's not easy to homebrew a small tweak / fix.
My own familiar can sort of safely take a single bit of damage (GM never targets it, so this is just AoE).
As in, the familiar gets so far behind the HP curve as the levels go up, that it can (usually) survive a single fail before needing to either withdraw or get healed.
This is kinda "unacceptable" in a system with death effects that skip the whole Dying safeguard.
And the "sharing PC defenses" isn't as good as it seems. As levels go up, The PC will get more and more specific defense boosts via items, all-day spells, class chassis save upgrades, etc. The companion... will not.
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IDK, maybe a "Master's Masterful Training" feat, where each time the PC gains an +1 AC or +1 to hit, by any means after the feat, it results in the (highest tier) Animal Companion gaining the same stat boost.
(or one could chart out the PC +1 progression to just set level checkpoints)
Just an outright "at least the Anml Cmpn now scales" feat.
(or it's a freebie baked into the last AC upgrade, no need to tax feats)
It would certainly help, but again, this issue is much more of a mess to fix.
There should definitely be a way for a player who wants to focus on their Animal Companion to keep them relevant. Although it would have to be a significant portion of their character's power budget.The more I think about this the more I wonder if it's actually the right way to approach it at all.
Right now Companions require a huge investment and kind of suck, but I wonder how necessary that investment actually is.
Like most feats don't do this. They work and they largely keep working. If I'm a level 1 ranger and take Hunted Shot, it gets to be a core part of my attack routine for my entire career and scales automatically as I scale.
If I spend a feat for a focus spell, it automatically heightens on its own.
The best comparison point is probably familiars. Admittedly familiars are also kind of an iffy proposition, but while familiars have feat chains to make them stronger too, if I take just the basic feat and use it to give my familiar specific functionality I can expect them to be able to offer that throughout a whole campaign.
Why is it that we take for granted then the idea that Animal Companions (and a handful of other feat chains) must actively degrade in functionality over the course of a campaign?
It's one thing to say that animal companions are too strong for a single feat, but the way even just basic scaling is tethered to feat progression goes way beyond that and creates clear shortcomings where they just get actively worse in a way normal feats don't.
Well, what I mean is that if you want Eidolon levels of effectiveness, then it needs to eat up a good portion of the classes power base.
If you continue to base it on existing classes and access to animal companions, and you compare to how much of the power budget the Eidolon is for the summoner...I think all you can do is make the animal companion cost a lot of feats to keep relevant.
Alternatively, I do think there's probably room for a companion who stays as effective as they are now, but doesn't need additional feats to advance. Edit: To clarify I think you could give the mature and advanced companion feats for free and not be a problem, because despite spending the feats the companions become relatively less effective.
I think the best way to accomplish the concept is as a riff of the summoner, the doesn't combine hit point pools or have the companion be a "summoned outsider". And some sort of justification about how the action economy works out to the same.
The summoner has to sacrifice quite a bit to get a level of effectiveness out of their Eidolon that rivals martial characters.
If you let an animal companion get that strong, you create a problem where it makes martial characters feels not strong enough in comparison to the next character with an animal companion.
The hard part is just figuring out how to strike the balance of an effective companion, but not so effective it makes martials feel encroached on or make everyone feel they need to run out and get an animal companion.
I think it's worth pointing out that eidolons actually offer less of a few things than animal companions, specifically HP and actions: when you get an animal companion, you add a new body with its own HP pool, whereas eidolons use your own. Similarly, when you Command an animal companion, you get two actions on that animal companion for the price of one, whereas eidolons use your own actions and only main-classed Summoners get the benefit of tandem actions. Eidolons work because all of the power they contribute is focused on a few specific things, whereas animal companions contribute a lot in one go. In order to auto-scale, animal companions may need their power allocated differently, at least to begin with.
I think it's worth pointing out that eidolons actually offer less of a few things than animal companions, specifically HP and actions: when you get an animal companion, you add a new body with its own HP pool, whereas eidolons use your own. Similarly, when you Command an animal companion, you get two actions on that animal companion for the price of one, whereas eidolons use your own actions and only main-classed Summoners get the benefit of tandem actions. Eidolons work because all of the power they contribute is focused on a few specific things, whereas animal companions contribute a lot in one go. In order to auto-scale, animal companions may need their power allocated differently, at least to begin with.
I think we're trying to say the same thing.
On the HP thing, I think it's probably workable to not have a shared pool by having the character have 6 HP per level, and have the eidolon-animal-companion thing have 6 or 8 hp per level. The somewhat larger overall pool would be balanced by the fact that they no longer share healing. IN any event, I agree that for this kind of character to make sense, you have to decouple the HP. And you also have to address action economy, though I'm less sure how to do that. The base Summoner ability it Act Together, which amounts to having 4 actions. Which works the same as a character commanding an animal companion. Later the summoner/eidolon can get feats that improve action economy to do certain things.