Natural Bond

[burnevee]

add three to you effective druid level for the purpose of determining the bonus Hit Dice, extra tricks, special abilities, and other bonuses that your animal companion receives. this bonus can never make your effective druid level higher than your class level.

I have quite a bit of questions for this feat. i have a lvl 5 ranger with an eagle animal companion for right now. i want to PrC as a beast master once i hit lvl 6. from what i understand, with the beast master's 1 lvl a i get another companion correct? and that animal will be equal to my level (3 ranger + 1 beast master + 3 from feat that the class gains @ first lvl = 7) leaving my first companion just short by three levels.

i want to take this feat at lvl 9.. my question is: does this work for all animal companions? and if so it excludes the first animal companion i got from the beast master, correct? also does it work for my ranger class companion as well? and will it work if i were to take up druid after the beast master? :smalleek:

if any of this is not correct could you make a suggestion as to how to fix the problem! thank you very much!!!!
:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

[Thurbane]

I've asked the question of whether Natural Bond applies to multiple animal companions or not before in one of the old Q&A by RAW threads, and the answer was yes. I can't offer a link to back that up, but I'm sure someone will pop in and explain the relevant RAW soon...

[Vladislav]

Benefit: Add three to your effective druid level for the purpose of determining the bonus Hit Dice, extra tricks, special abilities, and other bonuses that your animal companion receives (see page 36 of the Player's Handbook). This bonus can never make your effective druid level exceed your character level.
"Animal companion". In singular. Just one. There's really nothing to explain about it, whoever answered your question back then was wrong.

To remove all doubt, it's also specifically stated in the Complete Adventurer errata on the WotC site (google for it).


Page 111: Natural Bond
If a character has multiple animal companions, the
bonus granted by this feat applies to one of them.

[Thurbane]

Well there you go...the errata is very specific.

[Duskranger]

add three to you effective druid level for the purpose of determining the bonus Hit Dice, extra tricks, special abilities, and other bonuses that your animal companion receives. this bonus can never make your effective druid level higher than your class level.

I have quite a bit of questions for this feat. i have a lvl 5 ranger with an eagle animal companion for right now. i want to PrC as a beast master once i hit lvl 6. from what i understand, with the beast master's 1 lvl a i get another companion correct? and that animal will be equal to my level (3 ranger + 1 beast master + 3 from feat that the class gains @ first lvl = 7) leaving my first companion just short by three levels.

i want to take this feat at lvl 9.. my question is: does this work for all animal companions? and if so it excludes the first animal companion i got from the beast master, correct? also does it work for my ranger class companion as well? and will it work if i were to take up druid after the beast master? :smalleek:

if any of this is not correct could you make a suggestion as to how to fix the problem! thank you very much!!!!
:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Besides everything said before, the first level of beastmaster gives you +3 levels like natural bond to your current animal companion, which is very usefull for a lvl6 druid, but not for a ranger since it makes natural bond prolly ruled as unusable.

I enjoy using Beastmaster to get a lvl 9 animal companion at lvl 6 as a druid.

[Urpriest]

Besides everything said before, the first level of beastmaster gives you +3 levels like natural bond to your current animal companion, which is very usefull for a lvl6 druid, but not for a ranger since it makes natural bond prolly ruled as unusable.

I enjoy using Beastmaster to get a lvl 9 animal companion at lvl 6 as a druid.

In general, the rule that bonuses and penalties are applied in the order most beneficial to their recipient means that this probably isn't an issue.

[Duskranger]

In general, the rule that bonuses and penalties are applied in the order most beneficial to their recipient means that this probably isn't an issue.

Can I ask where that ruling is from, I would love to show my DM that.

[Talya]

Besides everything said before, the first level of beastmaster gives you +3 levels like natural bond to your current animal companion, which is very usefull for a lvl6 druid, but not for a ranger since it makes natural bond prolly ruled as unusable.



Not really. It just lets you eliminate the level penalty on higher level animal companiosn -- by RAW you can use natural bond to offset the penalty for advanced animal companions.

[burnevee]

correct me if im wrong but taking this at ninth level would sve the next animal companion? the one that gets the minus three and would help the others that come later. because it goes as follows: lvl 1 beastmaster gains a companion that is equal to my lvl. then the mext one comes up as a -3. then a -6 then lastly at a -9.
basically the beast masters companions become weak in a sense. but with this feat i can have ones that are slightly higher than the norm right?

i do apologize but i get confused easily and i am rather new at this type of char.:smalleek:

[Talya]

correct me if im wrong but taking this at ninth level would sve the next animal companion? the one that gets the minus three and would help the others that come later. because it goes as follows: lvl 1 beastmaster gains a companion that is equal to my lvl. then the mext one comes up as a -3. then a -6 then lastly at a -9.
basically the beast masters companions become weak in a sense. but with this feat i can have ones that are slightly higher than the norm right?

i do apologize but i get confused easily and i am rather new at this type of char.:smalleek:

Probably, I'd need to look at the wording of beastmaster. But even for a single-classed druid, if they take an alternate animal companion (the ones with the penalties to their druid levels), they can offset the penalty with Natural Bond. This lets them take more powerful animal companions and mitigate their druid level penalty. If beastmaster's take penalties to their [i]druid level[i/] specifically, for the purpose of their additional animal companions, Natural Bond could be used to shore it up, yes. It depends how they phrased it.