Animal companion advancement

[Laniius]

When my animal companion advances due to hit dice, it gets skill points and feats. Does it also gain stat points every 4 levels, and can these stat points be put into int, thus avoiding the limited tricks issue? I will be using an aquatic animal companion, and most of them are stuck with an int of 1. At level 8, can my animal companion have an int of 3 (assuming starting at 1)?

[begooler]

An animal can't have an int score greater than 2.

Edit: Oh, and to actually answer the rest of the question, yes you can give it +1 to an ability score once every four levels. I wouldn't suggest choosing int, because the animal companion already gets bonus skill tricks from advancing. Eventually, you'll have all the tricks you need from bonus tricks, and the point you put in int will be redundant.

[Laniius]

An animal can't have an int score greater than 2.

Edit: Oh, and to actually answer the rest of the question, yes you can give it +1 to an ability score once every four levels. I wouldn't suggest choosing int, because the animal companion already gets bonus skill tricks from advancing. Eventually, you'll have all the tricks you need from bonus tricks, and the point you put in int will be redundant.

Thanks. I was asking because I wanted the animal companion to have an int of at least 3, so it could understand language and therefore I wouldn't have to bother with tricks. On another note, would it be worth it to boost an animal companion up to 2 intelligence from 1 (probably going with shark, it's an aquatic campaign) as it can learn 3 more tricks that way?

[Taelas]

While the Monster Manual says that increasing HD by a certain amount should give the monster an ability score increase, the designers do not actually follow this themselves (the example monster they use two pages later gains enough HD to warrant two ability score increases, yet the only ability score adjustments it gets are from size). The actual rule is clear enough, it's just somewhat questionable whether or not it was meant to be included.

[begooler]

In my opinion, no its not worth it, because by the time the animal has enough hit die to get an int boost, it already has more 3 bonus. While yes, you could give it the Intelligence bonus at that point and learn another 3 tricks, you really don't need that many tricks and will eventually get enough bonus tricks from druid levels that the int bonus becomes useless.

Constitution for example however, would continue to be helpful as your animal companion levels.