Beastmaster and Natural Bond

[_flint_]

I have decided to create an animal companion based ranger/beastmaster. After doing most of the creation, it came time to do the feats, which is where i found the feat natural bond in complete adventurer. It reads:

"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 players handbook) This bonus can never make your effective druid level exceed your character level."

in the same book was the prestiege class, Beastmaster which has the animal companion ability.

"... a beastmaster gains the service of a loyal animal companion...Treat the beastmaster as a druid whose level is equal to the beastmaster's class level +3"

what i'm wondering is this; if a fifth level ranger with the natural bond feat took a level in beastmaster, would their effective druid level be 6 or 9?

thank you

[Dimers]

It'd be 9, yes. Natural Bond can't raise it above 6, but Natural Bond doesn't have to.

[Baldin]

Just to clerify the math:

Ranger lvl 5 = 2,5 = 2
Natural bond = +3
Beastmaster = 1+3 = 4

so you are level 6 which means your max animal companion level with natural bond would be 6.

2+3+1 (ranger, feat,beastmaster) and then an extra +3 from beastmaster, note that the beastmaster ability does not state the restictions natural bond has and thus boosts your effective druid level to 9.

[Gorfnod]

As an add-on to the OP's question, do most of you guys rule that Natural Bond works on a single animal companion or all of the Beastmaster's animal companions.

[The Mentalist]

As an add-on to the OP's question, do most of you guys rule that Natural Bond works on a single animal companion or all of the Beastmaster's animal companions.

All personally. I don't have the eloquence to explain why but basically it raises your effective Druid level for the purposes of your Animal Companion. Beast Master grants you an additional Companion. If it said something like "Treat your Druid animal companion as 3 levels higher" I would go the other way on it.

[_flint_]

As an add-on to the OP's question, do most of you guys rule that Natural Bond works on a single animal companion or all of the Beastmaster's animal companions.

Actually, in the errata for Complete Adventurer it says that it only applies to one of the animal companions.

in my opinion that's more evidence that it was intended for use with beastmaster.

[Coidzor]

^: Yes, and the errata is, in this case, stupid. Much like the scout errata that makes them unable to use skirmish while mounted.


As an add-on to the OP's question, do most of you guys rule that Natural Bond works on a single animal companion or all of the Beastmaster's animal companions.

For all people make a big deal about Dar making good use out of his ferrets, everything I've seen about them is that they're urban companions, and it's not really appropriate to the medium of 3.5 anyway.

So I'd always rule that, yes, Natural Bond applies to all of the animal companions, it makes most of them at least potentially somewhat relevant and the last one at least something conceivably relevant for an extra set of spot and listen checks if the opposition botches or you're playing with critical successes/fumbles with skill checks.

I'd probably also allow for the beast master extra animal companions to take the option of getting an urban companion (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) for the low-progression ones and maybe an animal companion or even a 4th level animal companion with urban companion (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) benefits instead of animal companion progression