Animal Gear
I always wondered what was happening with the rest of the Heroes while Wizard was hanging out with Street Samurai. I guess Fighter and Lumberjack Explosion went a little native.
Of course, movie references aren’t our focus today. The real star of the show is Lumberjack Explosion’s hot new magic item. While I honestly don’t know what kind of AC boost you get from Bard-ing, I will say that it’s smart to at least consider it. Easier said than done though.
As players, it’s only natural to look out for our own skins first. We put so much time and effort into our PCs, and the specter of death looms so large, we wind up making extra-double-super sure that we’ve got every possible advantage hanging at our sword belts and strapped onto our shield arms. But when you’re running a companion class, or when you’ve decided to adopt a l’il buddy, you’re suddenly equipping for two. All too often, one of those two goes neglected.
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: “Sure my animal companion started off strong. But when you get into the late game they become less and less relevant.” Well gee, why do you think that is? While you’ve been stacking adamantine pantaloons for half the campaign, that poor riding schnauzer underneath your ironclad hobbit butt is rocking the same +1 saddle-blanket he’s had since level 2.
I’m not saying that you need to make a 50/50 split on gear. There’s a difference between PC and NPC after all, even if the care and feeding said NPC is your responsibility. By the same token though, I think that animal gear deserves more than the afterthought so many of us seem to give it. After all, more than your own life and death hangs in the balance. Having made the dire trip to the local pet sematary myself, trust me when I say it’s not a place you want to be.
So what about the rest of you guys? Do you prioritize your own gear, or do you make sure to outfit your battle buddies? Is there any especially good animal gear that the rest of us ought to know about? Sound off in the comments and let use hear about your favorite enchanted horseshoes and mithral spiked collars and such!
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Unfortunately I never ended up playing a companion class in pathfinder before my group switched to primarily 5e. I have played with the revised ranger however and that was a lot of fun, as ape companions are amazing for being among the best in just regular stats, and then having the only ranged attack among companions, high int, and opposable thumbs to push them over the top. Sadly, they might have been a bit too pushed, as despite asking for opportunities to deck out my companion, my dm told me no, as I was already the strongest guy at the table between me and my companion.
I remain unsure what version of the 5e ranger is considered 1) the current default and 2) the most balanced.
Any dang way, my natural inclination as a player when I hear…
…is to say, “Boo, DM! Booooo!” But I can understand trying to balance a table. Especially when it comes to 5e style attunement, I could buy an argument that an animal can’t commune with items hard enough to gain their power.
From what I understand, the Phb ranger is the default and is widely considered the weakest phb class. The revised ranger bumped up the power a bit too much, but still has several of the same underlying issues. The beastmaster revised ranger in particular is OP, especially when multiclassing, which is highly favored since the beast companion scales with class level, not character level, and the BM ranger balances having a beast companions by not getting extra attack, which again is really useful to pick up with multiclassing. I know UA stuff is playtest and advised not to multiclass, but it’s precisely by multiclassing the unexpected combos are discovered for tweaking the product.
So Phb is official but weak, Revised is unofficial but a bit too strong, and BM really needs more work. I personally deal use a houserule ranger at my table that tweaks the features and tries to strike the balance.
Thank, Inigo! 🙂
https://i.imgur.com/ifVJiTS.jpg
I never played a 3.5e druid far enough for that to be a big deal, but I know that one of the plans was always to buff up my magical murder-buddy with magical items, since between the spell sharing and just how strong the animal companion could be, amplifying that with magic made what was already arguably the most powerful druid feature even stronger.
This plan got less feasible when I discovered the Beastmaster prestige class and suddenly outfitting multiple animal companions became an issue.
And then the switch to 5e happened, and mostly I’ve been DMing, so the plan shall never come to fruition from the looks of it.
Oof. I hadn’t even thought about Beastmaster! That makes it awfully tough to keep the whole team equipped. I guess you could pull it off with a few crafting feats though, stretching the dollars a bit.
Way back in the days of 3.5, I played a hexblade with a worg familiar. She had Alter Self as one of her spells, and since Alter Self let you turn into a creature of the same type within one size category of your own, and the Share Spells ability allowed her to share Alter Self with her familiar, she would turn into an elf (for reduced weight) and turn her worg into a pegasus, so they could fly! Naturally, I bought him an appropriately shaped Ring of Feather Falling, to avoid the obvious failure mode, and possibly one or two other items. It was a bit convoluted and maybe I spent too much on him, but it was fun!
Well that’s hilarious. How did your devil dog feel about turning into a sparkle pony?
I mean, it meant we got to fly around and curse people, which he found hilarious.
I briefly played a Slayer who rode around on a Giant Eagle companion and bought magic items for it. Of course, the first one was Muleback Cords so it could carry me effectively, but had the campaign continued, I planned to pick up a bunch more. Some mithril armour, maybe some metal claw sheaths, and definitely something to block scrying magic.
How did you figure the carrying capacity issue? Last time I looked at that rules headache I think I had to refer back to some 3.5 malarkey to figure out carrying capacity for flight. If memory serves we decided on “light load” and “light armor,” but I can’t recall off the top of my head.
Even if you don’t have a flying mount, it’s good to have in mind for those times when rocs try to fly away with your wizard, you know?
Hmm. Pretty sure we also just went with light load. I wasn’t the first person in the game to get a flying mount, so I think the GM already had a stance on it.
Irlana and Mick at level one – Leather armor, cold iron scimitar, kunai, shortbow, cold iron arrows, blunt arrows, and buckler for Irlana. Leather barding for Mick. Irlana is now broke. Can’t even afford a Masterwork backpack so she can carry a little bit more which is important since Mick can’t be ridden until level 4.
Irlana at level 17 in current game – +5 Darkwood Buckler. +5 Dragonhide Chain Coat with Elec. Resistance. +5 Cold Iron Scimitar with Frost, Keen, Thundering, and Holy. +2 Composite Longbow. Alchemical Silver Kunai. Incandescent Blue Sphere. +2 Muleback Cords of Resistance. +6 Headband of Vast Intelligence. +1 Vambraces of Defense. +5 Amulet of Natural Armor. +2 Belt of Physical Might. Ring of Sustenance. Lens of Detection. Trapspringer’s Gloves. Voidfrost Robe. Bane Baldric. Pink Rhomboid (Normal) Ioun Stone. Dusty Rose Prism (Normal) Ioun Stone. Helm of Comprehend Languages and Read Magic. Bag of Holding.
Mick at level 17 in current game: +3 Tusk Blades with Shock and Flaming. Will soon be adding Keen. GM will hate me. Circlet of Speaking. Lens of Detection. +4 Belt of Physical Might. Horseshoes of Speed. Dragonhide Chain Coat. Legband of Sustenance. Ione Stone for +2 Dex, can’t remember what it’s called. +2 Wings of Flying Resistance. Will see if GM will allow another ring to be shaped into a legband.
I’ve also just finished making a cavalier character. Also at level one, she has a lance, cold iron kunai, shortbow, arrows, hide armor (the medium one), and a heavy wooden shield. The horse has the saddle and leather barding.
I also have a Eldritch Scion Magus that gets a familiar at character level 4 with the arcana. I have no idea how I’m going to outfit it as I don’t know what item slots it will have. It’s not a quadruped like a boar and horse.
lol @ “Legband of Sustenance.” I’m guessing you guys handwaved “Table: Magic Item Slots for Animals,” as is tradition.
GM: “Isn’t that a ring?”
Mick: “Don’t be absurd! It’s a legband.”
Only for that slot. Mick would be the only one without a Ring of Sustenance and we’d have to stop and let him rest and eat more often than everyone else. I might be able to get him one more legband, but definitely not 4 of them.
lol. Do I detect a whiff of PC greed in that seeming denial? :3
Maaaaybeeee…..
I do want to get a Legband of Protection for him. Other than that, I can’t really think of any others to get him anyway. There’s the Ring of Force Shield, but Protection gives a better AC bonus.
Isn’t a horse’s hoof basically just a big thick finger anyway?
Well then. That was a fun Google: https://www.reddit.com/r/MBMBAM/comments/7qui97/horses_legs_are_fingers/
The conversation on that page understates it a bit. There’s plenty of animals that walk of fingerS/toeS, plural, but the horse just has the one single huge digit on each limb
Early on in an Iron Gods campaign I ran the party wizard considered how much he could strength buff his fox familiar, I believe by the end of the calculations we were looking at a tiny ball of fur, muscle, metal, and teeth with 45 strength and still only a bite attack. The idea, while hilarious, was thankfully set aside.
As for animal companions, the spell carry companion is amazing for getting your large sized critter to places where they normally couldn’t get, or as our party wizard pointed out, saving him on spell castings for transportation. You can get a similar effect out of hosteling armor, and get bonus points for shooting a badger out of your breastplate.
Hosteling armor is always a part of my battle plan. Yes it’s convenient, but more important are those sweet sweet “bonus points for shooting a badger out of your breastplate.”
Finally, a setting where nobody bats an eye at how you named your mount. So if this grizzled look is his ‘social’ persona, what is Lumberjack’s combat persona? Mr. E? Mad/Bad Horse?
They call him “Psycho.” I’ll have to see if I can’t get Laurel to sketch an equine hockey mask:
https://assets.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2019/03/borderlands-lad.jpg/RPSS/resize/760x-1/format/jpg/quality/90
I remember playing a one-shot in which the party were all level 17 characters tasked with going forth and slaying two dragons. We were able to start out with quite a bit of magic swag, so I decided to exploit that for a bit of fun. I played Hagrid Durr, a halfling revised ranger (beastmaster) 8/barbarian (bear totem) 9 with a boar companion. My halfling took the Mounted Combatant, Great Weapon Fighting, and Resilient (Dexterity) feats and was outfitted with a belt of cloud giant strength, gauntlets of ogre power, and hammer of thunderbolts, while my boar was wearing horseshoes of speed, a ring of jumping on one tusk, and a ring of feather fall on the other tusk. My halfling would ride into battle atop his noble steed and whack people with his absurs strength and giant hammer. Basically, I was playing the Hog Rider from Clash of Clans, and the rings and horseshoes, while not terribly strong, made it possible.
Admittedly, there were quite a few exploits I used. I took advantage of revised ranger (beastmaster) being 1) OP, 2) multiclassing when that was not intended, and 3) the animal companion scaling with character level, not class level. Also, since the hammer set my strength to 30, I could dump my natural strength and put the points into other stats. It ended up with the Hagrid Durr atop his noble jumping hog litterally leaping up at the dragons and whacking them for crazy damage. The boar couldn’t be directly targeted because of Mounted Combatant, which also gave evasion against AoE spells. Fun, goofy character for a one shot, but wouldn’t have been possible without outfitting the hog with some of my swag.
You should compare notes with Shozurei further up the thread. Battle pig shenanigans seem to be popular.
5e seems to have much less focus on companion classes.
I have to say, I don’t miss them. Mounts are okay-ish, but I never liked animal companions. Gear or no gear, they really ARE less than stellar at higher levels. And since they tended to be a big part of the class they were in, it means the rest of the class was that much weaker for it.
Not to mention the fact that they made fights needlessly drag on by adding another body to the turn order. And that if you play them RAW, you need to make animal handling checks to make them obey, slowing things down even more (and the same goes for mounts). And don’t even get me started on the ranger’s watered down animal companion with 4 less levels.
And if you, as a DM, try to buff them a bit to make them useable, you find yourself walking an extremely fine line, seeing how they can quickly become way too powerful, on account of how they break the action economy for the character that controls them.
No, really, I don’t like pets in my RPGs (at least not when they’re supposed to be participating in combat). Maybe there’s a system out there where they’re well done and I’ll like it, but so far, I haven’t found it.
That’s a fair cop. I’m a bit glib in the, “Well gee, why do you think that is,” section in the OP. Like all things that require rolling attacks, animal companions are strong at the low levels and fall off at the high levels in 3.X. It’s the same way barbarians with greatswords dominate the first few levels of play.
That said, I’ve only been into high level play a handful of times. Like the meme says, most of the game is played a levels 1-10. Animals tend to remain relevant then.
once the full BAB classes get to three attacks the animal companions loose their edge. Even with Greater Magic Fang the natural attacks lag behind a two handed weapon with magic extras.
I assume Bard-ing would use cover rules. Since LJE is Large, and Bard is Medium he wouldn’t be enough to provide half-cover on his own. His main benefit would be the ability to use Verbal-only spells while hitched on.
I dunno. I bet Bard is obscuring half of Lumberjack Explosion’s body if he’s charging straight at the enemy.
In 5E, our party’s druid is currently outfitting her platemail-barded sabretoothed tiger with masterwork silvered fang-and-claw sheaths. Those werewolves will be quite surprised when she gets her fangs into them
You have no idea how much I love the image of a sabretoothed tiger grill:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1957/5415/products/Custom-Solid-925-Sterling-Silver-Grillz_grande.jpg?v=1544839940
This becomes even more of a concern when my 5e character gets a ring of spell storing and everybody in the party, including the hirelings, gets to cast find familiar and find steed…
The party casts “wall of horse!”
Should companions get some gear?
Should you give them the spare parts of the loot to keep them relevant?
Should you beware that they betray you in your sleep?
Find this and more in Today Halfling Slavery. Only on Fox News 🙂
Don’t forget my 5e Warlock’s imp:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/power-corrupts
That bit you mentioned about betrayal is all too real, though it depends on your DM. Speaking for myself, I can’t deny I’ve felt like my familiar has been hijacked a time or two. As it turns out, “Fireball the bastards!” is open to interpretation, and I am considerably less fireproof than my imp.
In our table this are the rules:
Any and all characteristic of a class that doesn’t call for the intervention of the DM is under control of the player who choose that class to play, unless he renounce this control on favor of the DM.
Familiars, animal companions and that are thereof under control of the corresponding player.
Rules say nothing about feeding familiars 🙂
I had a character in Pathfinder that spent more money on his pet cat than himself. He was Skald/Holy Tactician/Divine Hunter/Mammoth Rider, so it was really more like playing a celestial tiger with a singing pet half-orc. Amulet of Mighty Fists, stat boosting saddle, cloak of fangs, heck, even the few things he did buy for himself were mostly for buffing the cat more, like a poet’s cloak and a banner of ancient kings. Great fun to have a pouncing, raging, evil-smiting warcat the size of a mammoth.
Sir. Kat Bufflotz, at your service!
Most of my companion builds have never gotten off the ground. Either I never found a game to play them in, or I never had a party that would accept them. Someone in the group shouts “Paladin” and I have to secretly shelve the Summoner who made a deal with a demon to get out of slavery for another day.
The one time I did do one, it was Karia and Sasha. Karia was a 3.5 Druid, Sasha was a wolf. Who after consulting the Monster Manual, became large when she advanced to 6? HD. So suddenly our front line was a wolf the size of a clydesdale who tripped everything she bit and tended to receive “Snake’s Swiftness” Spells from the druid. (Snake’s Swiftness gives another character a Standard Action to make an attack when you cast it. ) Add Combat Reflexes and it was glorious.
GM: These guys charge through the door.
Me: AOs.
GM: How many?
Me: 4.
GM: Oh…uh…that’s all of them. roll the dice.
Later…
GM: So everyone is on the ground confused, the wolf is surrounded by enemies. Karia, it’s your turn.
Me: Enrage animal.
Sad times! Are your pala-bros unwilling to compromise? We did a whole comic on that one back here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/mean-girls-part-1-3
Stone cold badass.
In order to use the Demon type for my eidolon, I have to be at least Chaotic Neutral. And the demon specifically is trying to get her to be more evil and calls her the elven word for slut when she doesn’t let it be evil. (cause it knows she was trained to answer to it. Slavery sucks. ) And my Eidolon is still evil, I believe. So it gets hard on their code of Conduct, actually. No Travelling with Evil companions and the like.
And what was real fun with Sasha was the second round.
GM: They go to stand up.
Me: AOs!
GM: …your wolf trips on a normal attack, doesn’t she?
Me: Evil giggle
What if you were to retain the services of a paladin specifically keep your from falling to evil?
“This thing is bound to me. I can escape it only through my death. Please, help me to safeguard my soul!”
Remember, AoOs happen just before the event that triggered them. They’re still prone when they provoke, so you can’t “trip lock” your enemies. Happily, that also means they continue to suffer the -4 penalty to AC against those AoOs.
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/65429/can-you-be-tripped-by-an-aoo-while-standing-up
Am I the only one who has noted the Headband of Intellect’s potential for converting steeds and livestock into minions
Huh. Let’s hope the riding gecko in my group doesn’t get this far in the comments. There’ll be no living with her.
I extremely rarely bother with regular mounts. Which really means “non-flying” mounts (although I guess something that has spider climb or a burrow speed might work too).
Because you could stack all the magic items in the book on them and by level 5 they’d still die as a casual accident to combat going on around them since they don’t gain more hp as you level up.
Also logically whenever I think about taking a horse or such into places adventurers go I realize that the main points of having them (carrying more stuff and moving faster) are entirely defeated by the fact that they are incapable or incredibly infeasible to get past certain very mundane obstacles and that you may not return back the same way to collect them…assuming you “return” to where you came from at all. A simple cliff or chasm and suddenly you’ve lost your mount forever anyway.
It doesn’t help that they’re only level appropriate at extremely low levels….which are the only levels where you can’t afford things as expensive as mounts.
It doesn’t help that most games I’ve seen you the player have almost no control over magic items being handed out and even if you did you’re getting too few to hand over to your mount instead of using yourself.
I’m beginning to think that mules should just come paired with “hosteling” armor to alleviate the headache of keeping them alive.
For serious though, I’m more concerned with companion classes than baggage animals. The only place I’ve ever the latter work is Jade Regent, and that’s only after you agree to handwave the actual minigame rules!
With regard to mounts not leveling up, it occurs to me that they could gain class levels if you could boost their intelligence to three or higher (say with a Headband Of Intellect, possibly followed by a Tome Of Clear Thought to lock it in)
got any smart ideas how to pimp a Shadow?
While Shadowdancer has a +29 on stealth with Hide in Plain Sight and at least a slowly increasing amount of AC. Shadow Companion is still on AC15 and Stealth of maximum +12. And even though magic weapons still only do 50% damage we are getting to the levels where one attack takes half the HP off and killing opponents by Strength Damage takes 10 rounds on average rolls.
I wouldn’t fret too much about this thing’s survival. I mean, if your shadow is half-slain after one attack, it just five foot steps into the floor to wait out the remainder of the combat, right?
In my view, this is one of those odd “sort of companions.” It’s not meant to be a mainstay of combat, but more of a constant minor debuff in the form of Str damage. An average of -2 to hit and damage is relevant for a long time!
If you’re looking to increase the thing’s survival rate, prioritize increasing your Con. Take the Toughness feat. Anything to increase your own hit point total.
If your GM allows it to wear items (perhaps you could pay a premium for some kind of “ethereal” homebrew quality) then the world is your oyster. Charisma bonuses increase its deflection bonus, and all the usual stat increases become relevant.
yeah, the 5ft step underground is the choice of survival, of cause it comes with a 50% miss chance for attacks after that.
I‘m also thinking about getting Detect Magic permanencied on Shadordancer, so he can call out the safe targets, not all mooks have magic weapons.
Permanency isn’t a bad way to go for your shadow minion either. Reduce person and resistance are solid buffs, though I’m less sure if magic fang interacts with incorporeal touch attacks.
As above though, if you can convince you GM to allow other spells, the world is your oyster.
Also, a belated thought: ioun stones could probably work, though I don’t imagine they’d travel through solid objects so well.
Creature types of the spells don’t fit to permanence anything on the shadow (undead).
Ioun stones have to be picked up by the user…
Well shit. My ideas suck and I’m terrible.
no worries, I had to look it up too.
Wands of Mage Armor, Shield and Cat’s Grace are probably your best bet. Any items will run into the Incorporeal issues. Take the Pressure Point Ninja Talent on your Rogue so you can help it out with the Strength Damage. Suppliment with strength damaging poison when suitable. Cat’s Grace raises both its AC and its Attack roll, since it has no Strength score.
And if nothing else, an attack that half kills your Shadow Companion would have critically injured you, since it has half your hp and takes half damage from anything but a Ghost Touch weapon.
that’s a good tip. at our level mostly useless to the characters anyways as the bonuses don’t stack with our gear.
Tome of Understanding et all are permanent once used and you could have somebody else turn the pages.
Also, the -2 cursed sword follows you around like a stalker and draws itself so you don’t have to worry about picking up or about losing it if it clanks out of your hand passing thru a wall
My 3.5e Fleshraker companion had more gear than I did. Since I was a druid, possibly the most OP class in the game, I didn’t need it. Frostfell is a hell of a spell.
Frostfell is a hell of a spell
Make that poor DM wanna curse and yell
Dispel the whole band of overzealous
Munchkin men, bust that Fleshraker down
to a level 1 kitten…
…
I’ve been binge listening to Epic Rap Battles of History. Please excuse.
Paulie Dingle and McSquizzy the giant squirrel eidolon of face nomming had basically a full set of gear between them, with the ac items and physical boosters going to McSquizzy and Paulie getting the mental boosters and potions and such.
Reed Skinner (5e revised ranger, single classed) and his companion/mount Crow the deinonychus (DM allowed it by halving the starting HD and hp) are quite the opposite manner. Due to the way natural armor works in 5e, I would’ve had to spend upwards of 1000gp for magical barding just to boost Crow’s ac by 1. Thankfully the revised ranger rules let you increase the companion’s stats whenever you get an ability score boost and also add your proficiency bonus to the companion’s ac. Sadly amulets of mighty fists were never available and magic fang doesn’t exist in 5e, so never got to bling out her claws and bite.
That sounds like an invitation to homebrew to me. 🙂
I somehow shudder at the idea of equipping my tiger companion with a saddle, boots or armor.
So he got
3 permanent magic fangs (claws and bite)
bracers of armor +3 and shadowed
circlet of speaking (thanks @Shozurei)
brooch of shielding (already at the southern end of neutral to put a collar on a cat)
You’re welcome. 🙂
My 3.5e Druid with his wolf companion that had become a large wolf with enough HD, then was killed by the BBEG, reincarnated into a Dire Wolf (with 1 fewer HD), that then proceeded to wear its old skin as hide barding. (The ranger has respectfully requested to take the pelt of our beloved companion to honor him and let him continue his service as armor. Upon reincarnation, the wolf thought it was entitled to its own hide for its own purposes.)
This led to a dire wolf (with associated spikey bones) wearing a wolf on top of it with just lots of extra spikey bits and teeth and such. The DM graciously added a +4 to intimidate checks for my character when working with the wolf. (+2 for the scary dire wolf, +2 for the “Holy crap…is that wolf wearing a wolf?!)
What scarier than a wolf? A dire wolf.
What’s scarier than a dire wolf? A double wolf.
Let him come back as a winter wolf and get the trifecta!
So basically your companion was a wolf in wolf’s clothing?
The GM said yes to letting Mick have another Legband. As soon as we get some more downtime, he and I are getting Rings/Legbands of Protection.
Grats! Will it match his amulet of natural armor? You don’t want to clash after all.
Thanks. Although it’s Irlana that has the Amulet of Natural Armor. Mick has a Dire Collar. But it’s not the official one. It’s a homebrew item that GM dropped in a monster loot a few months back. It gives him the Dire template for 3 rounds a day.
I wonder what the pair would look like fully decked out.