Animal Companion advice

[Kefkafreak]

As I said in my previous thread, I'm going to be playing a Beastmaster soon. I'll take 7 levels of Beastmaster and the Wild Cohort feat, which means I'll have 5 companions. Assuming the Natural Bond feat affects all of them, these are the effective Druid levels for my companions when I'm level 20 (I'll take 2 levels of a class that doesn't advance them):

Druid animal companion - 20
Wild Cohort - 20
Beastmaster 1 - 23
Beastmaster 2 - 18
Beastmaster 3 - 15

Size is not going to be a problem too often according to the DM.

Now, to my questions:

Which are the best animal companions at level 20? So far I have:

Charger: Dire / Horrid Tiger
Trampler: Dire / Horrid Elephant
Aerial: Roc
Grappler: Dire / Horrid Bear
Medium animal companion for when the others don't fit: Fleshraker Dinosaur

Does that sound right? I'm worried about the Fleshraker being worthless at this level. Also, we'll probably get to epic levels, so I'll have a sixth companion. I have absolutely no idea what to get in that case.

My second question is how to use them effectively in combat. They can't use magic items or wands so there's only so much they can do. I guess feats can fix this somewhat. Any tactical advice?

Thanks for the help.

[tyckspoon]

Welll.. you're not gonna like hearing this, but:
Natural Bond only benefits one Animal Companion as per the C. Adventurer errata and...

Only the 1st-level Beastmaster Animal Companion feature stacks with the Druid feature. The Extra Animal Companion feature specifically says to use only the Beastmaster class levels as the base, and even has an ending paragraph telling you not to stack levels with anything else that grants an Animal Companion for those companions. Also Beastmaster 1 doesn't grant you an extra companion- it just puts a level bump on the companion you already had. So, per RAW, your AC levels are 23, 4, and 1.. there's a reason Beastmaster usually isn't suggested as anything past a dip.

For making your companions useful, assuming either you work out something different with your DM or you want to try and do this anyway: Take Companion Spellbond (PHB2) so you can Share Spells up to 30 feet away and use your best buffs. The Bite of the Werefoo line in Spell Compendium is one of the best straight-up combat buffs I know of.

Edit: And note that Wild Cohort is not an Animal Companion and won't benefit from Animal Companion-specific stuff. On the plus side, its bonuses are based on raw character level regardless of what those levels are, so at level 20 your Wild Cohort gets level 20 bonuses even if you decide you just want to be a Commoner with a pet bear.

[Kefkafreak]

I can't believe I misread the class that badly :smalleek:

In any case, at worst I'll have 2 high level animal companions (well, one and a Wild cohort), so I'm still interested to hear which are the most useful and how to use them effectively. I'll just take a dip though.

[Coidzor]

Hmm, Giant Crocodile is supposed to be a great grappler. Druid Handbook (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1354.0) has some further thoughts on the matter.

[Cog]

For the additional companions, you might want to see if your DM is willing to let you apply the Urban Companion ACF (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) to the secondaries. The benefits are based of Familiar rules instead of Animal Companions, giving them much more relevant BAB and HP.

[Kefkafreak]

I just spoke to my DM about this. He'll let me add my Druid level to the Beastmaster additional companions and in exchange I'll lose every Summoning spell. The Natural Bond thing was already cleared beforehand (we won't be using the errata version).