Anyone ever played an Animal Lord?

[Scarlet-Devil]

The Animal Lord prestige class is from CA. I remember thinking it was awesome many years ago, and my character at the time was a very wisdom and dexterity focused Monk who was going to become a Birdlord.

What was your experience with it? I think the abilities are pretty cool for the most part, but I suspect they might not make for a particularly powerful combatant. The swift action Animal Growth is definitely interesting, if a little bizarre.

Come to think of it, a Pathfinder Ranger with the natural weapon combat style might be able to make good use out of an ape or bearlord's claws...

[Diovid]

Making the most of it involves having an Animal Companion. Of course a Beastmaster dip and the Natural Bond feat could help with that.

For monk specifically I could see something like monk 6 / fist of the forest 3 / beastmaster 1 / animal lord 10. With Natural Bond your effective druid level will be 17. One of the UA's fighting styles might be beneficial for meeting requirements.

I think the optimal entry for Animal Lord is Ranger 9 / Beastmaster 1 with the Ranger's Champion of the Wild variant. The Fangshield sub levels wouldn't be bad either.

[eggs]

I've used the 3.0 version for some NPCs. It's like a crappier hyper-specialized Druid with early Animal Shapes and full animal companion progression compressed into 10 levels - not a bad class overall.

I'm looking at the 3.5 version now, and the only thing that looks useful is its swift Animal Growth. But a 1/day ability at level 7 isn't really practical except for a one-off NPC fight.

[123456789blaaa]

You may want to check out the iron chef competetitions here on gitp (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=162702) They focus on taking suboptimal prestige classes and creating powerfull flavorfull and original characters based on them. The winner of the linked contest is sway, a snakelord.

[cabbagepach]

I have an ape lord archer... ranger lvl 9 ape lord 9 and tamer of beasts 1... I pulled my from masters of the wild and have yet to be dissapointed