Feats for Animal Companions [3.5]

[hymer]

As our beloved animal companions stay with us, they tend to get more HD, and suddenly you need to start looking for feats for them.
What sort of feats do you like for your animal companion? Flavourful, powerful, or just plain fun feats?

[Malak'ai]

Multiattack and Imp. Multiattack are practically essential in my view.

[The Trickster]

Improved Natural Attack always seemed like a good idea as well.

[Baroknik]

I personally like quick reconnoiter on my AC's.

[Bronk]

Rapidstrike and Improved Rapidstrike can be good choices.

[The Viscount]

Most Animal Companions cannot take rapidstrike, as they are not the right type.

I'm personally a fan of Spit Venom for those animal companions with poison bite.

[eggynack]

Taking exalted companion and tossing VoP on them is pretty amusing.

Edit:
Most Animal Companions cannot take rapidstrike, as they are not the right type. So, what you're saying is that exalted companion is actually useful for more than just that one thing. Good to know.

[Uncle Pine]

Seconding Vow of Poverty. Also add Wild Cohort (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a) to get a bear companion with a bear companion which will eventually get a bear companion.

[RFLS]

Taking exalted companion and tossing VoP on them is pretty amusing.

Edit: So, what you're saying is that exalted companion is actually useful for more than just that one thing. Good to know.

Man, came here to say this and not one, but two people beat me to it =P VoP is pretty much nuts on an animal companion. Most DMs will toss a book at you for it, sadly.

On topic: If you have an animal companion that has a poison, Ability Focus isn't bad, though.

[eggynack]

Man, came here to say this and not one, but two people beat me to it =P VoP is pretty much nuts on an animal companion. Most DMs will toss a book at you for it, sadly.
Well, I have been known to obsessively troll around, looking for druid threads, both in order to share random nifty druid stuff, and in order to learn new random druid stuff so that I can use it and/or randomly share it in a nifty fashion. The current random nifty druid thing that I've been tossing around a lot is that summon swarm can get a murder of crows, which I think is cool beans. However, I might switch it out for the fact that you can combine aspect of the wolf and ghost companion to turn yourself into a ghost for days/level. You need some variety of raise dead, but druids have a few of those. Haven't worked out the ideal one yet though.

[Morphie]

What's the animal?

I'm currently playing a halfling druid with a riding dog companion, I chose Endurance and Steadfast Determination. Later I'll probably choose Improved Natural Attack and Combat Reflexes. I would choose Power Attack but I think the animal companion doesn't have enough Intelligence to subtract just some of his attack bonus to add to his damage.

[Jack_Simth]

Improved Unarmed Strike. Give the cat iterative attacks to go with Pounce & the natural weapons. Also opens up Improved Grapple, which is always fun.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Never give it Multiattack, it gets that for free. Improved Multiattack is still useful.

Give it enough cross-class ranks to take Mage Slayer, and even Pierce Magical Protection/Concealment are worthwhile.

Power Attack and Leap Attack are extremely good if it gets pounce. Put Armbands of Might on it and when it Power Attacks for -2 it gets +4 damage, which is increased to +8 by post-errata Leap Attack.

If you take Exalted Companion and get a Celestial version of your animal companion you can recruit one that has two flaws for Vow of Poverty at its 1st HD. Be sure to give it Nymph's Kiss with its first bonus exalted feat to double its skill points.

[Waker]

I am also a big fan of stuff like Quick Reconnoiter and Steadfast Determination. But since other people are being silly with VoP, I'll join in saying Shape Soulmeld and Bind Vestige.

[eggynack]

Never give it Multiattack, it gets that for free. Improved Multiattack is still useful.

I wouldn't say never at all. You only get multiattack at level 9, and that's if you didn't pick up an alternate animal companion. A fleshraker will delay that till level 12, and a brown bear will delay it till 15, though natural bond can push that down some. More importantly, it doesn't really matter at all that you'll get the feat later on. Within a day, you can ditch the fleshraker that has redundant multiattack, and get one that only has the advancement based multiattack. It's a pretty trivial cost, all in all.

[Chronos]

You'd have a hard time justifying picking that new companion's replacement feat, though. The one that's stuck with you, you can argue that you've been training it, but if you're just getting some random advanced fleshraker that's wandering by, it'll have whatever feat your DM thinks appropriate.

[eggynack]

You'd have a hard time justifying picking that new companion's replacement feat, though. The one that's stuck with you, you can argue that you've been training it, but if you're just getting some random advanced fleshraker that's wandering by, it'll have whatever feat your DM thinks appropriate.
That is a fair point. Still it's pretty possible that you would pick up an unadvanced animal that's bigger, thus skipping out on the free multiattack altogether. It's not necessarily the biggest concern, is what I'm saying.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I wouldn't say never at all. You only get multiattack at level 9, and that's if you didn't pick up an alternate animal companion. A fleshraker will delay that till level 12, and a brown bear will delay it till 15, though natural bond can push that down some. More importantly, it doesn't really matter at all that you'll get the feat later on. Within a day, you can ditch the fleshraker that has redundant multiattack, and get one that only has the advancement based multiattack. It's a pretty trivial cost, all in all.

Fleshraker doesn't delay anything with Natural Bond since you can apply your own effects in the most beneficial order. Put the -3 for a stronger companion first, then the +3 from Natural Bond lets you count your actual Druid level for its benefits.

[Harrow]

They qualify for Martial Study. Not saying it's a good idea to give it to them, but the option is there.

[eggynack]

Fleshraker doesn't delay anything with Natural Bond since you can apply your own effects in the most beneficial order. Put the -3 for a stronger companion first, then the +3 from Natural Bond lets you count your actual Druid level for its benefits.
I pretty much explicitly mentioned that. You're still talking about half of your career spent with your animal companion lacking the feat, and they might never even get it if you never let them advance that far. In fact, natural bond might actually make this situation more likely, because all of your animal companions will come with a hanging feat, no matter how advanced they are. Assuming you can pick that feat, anyway. As is, fleshraker is quite possibly the best option across all levels, but without that, a push towards alternative companions seems mostly ideal.

[Talya]

They qualify for Martial Study. Not saying it's a good idea to give it to them, but the option is there.

It's absolutely a good idea to give them. Especially considering after they take martial study, they qualify for Martial Stance.

I'm playing a VOP druid with an exalted companion unicorn. The unicorn has the devoted spirit stance that heals party members as it attacks, it's fun. She took Foehammer to qualify for it.

(Sadly, the DM didn't let me take VOP on my unicorn companion, but it's still a rather powerful companion with natural bond.)

[Sir Chuckles]

Does this theoretically mean you could give yourself a Bear companion, take Wild Cohort to get a second Bear, which all of you take Martial Study, and thus qualify for Martial Stance meaning that, in turn, you all take synergistic Stances, you Wildshape into a Bear, and therefor have triple kung-fu action Bears, one of which has access to very powerful divine spellcasting?

And, theoretically, you can then create a chain of command of such Bears?

[sleepyphoenixx]

If you can justify the cross-class ranks in spellcraft taking the Mage Slayer feat line is pretty nice for an AC.

[Coidzor]

Does this theoretically mean you could give yourself a Bear companion, take Wild Cohort to get a second Bear, which all of you take Martial Study, and thus qualify for Martial Stance meaning that, in turn, you all take synergistic Stances, you Wildshape into a Bear, and therefor have triple kung-fu action Bears, one of which has access to very powerful divine spellcasting?

And, theoretically, you can then create a chain of command of such Bears?

Yes.

The only way I'm seeing any kind of arbitrarily long chain is if Natural Bond can count or one's effective character level isn't actually penalized for taking an animal cohort off of the higher level animal companion lists, and if you can do that it's infinite chains of polar and dire bears at max strength or infinite chains of brown bears at near max strength. Amusingly, if I did my math right, black bears would diminish with each generation until they couldn't have a bear animal cohort.

[killem2]

Are you allowed to pick the 1st hd, and 3rd hd in the case of a flesh raker?

[eggynack]

Are you allowed to pick the 1st hd, and 3rd hd in the case of a flesh raker?
They seem to come pre-assigned, so I would say no. The ability does say that the animal companion has to be completely typical. Still, I don't think that there are any absolute rules for the that kinda thing.

Edit: I have considered the theoretical possibility of retraining though. Dunno if it works, but it's an interesting thought.

[lunar2]

the rules say it's a typical member of it's race, so no, you're stuck with those feats without DM approval. but all of it's advancement should be up to you, since it is your class feature.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

A Fleshraker has Improved Natural Attack as one of its starting feats, even though it doesn't meet the BAB prerequisite for it. So per the core MM errata, it should get that as a racial bonus feat, and have an open feat starting out.

[Telok]

I always thought that for something like a halfling druid a wolf companion to ride on would be good.

Then it happened: Fox's Cunning, a Belt of Dwarvenkind, and Psychic Reformation. It was convinced to re-pick some different feats. Wild Talent, Speed of Thought, Up the Walls, Martial Study: Steel Wind, and Martial Stance: Absolute Steel. Then I needed to teach it to psychically focus and stay in a stance.

The wolf with a base speed of 70 could run across walls and ceilings.

[killem2]

Well I'm a level 8 druid myself, I with with natural bond for myself, and the flesh raker took virulent poison, and ability focus poison.

(also war beast)

Currently asking if I can make it magebred.

[killem2]

Just got my answer. Answer is yes, but with a 3 level adjustment more. so treat fleshraker a a level 7 animal companion instead of a 4th level.

With an additional 3 level penalty?

My DM is ruling that because the exampls for ghost tiger and brown bear are increased to the slot of where a level 10 is, it is causing a +3 level adjustment.

Is it worth it for a flesh raker? (with natural bond of course)

http://eberronunlimited.wikidot.com/magebred-animal

[Rubik]

I had a neraphim psychic warrior build who had Shape Soulmeld: Phase Cloak and gave his dire bat wild cohort the same. He took Psionic Open Chakra and bound the phase cloak on both himself and his bat, and then spent a trick on teaching it to go ethereal at the same time as he did, so they could both travel ethreally, even when mounted. It came in really handy, way more than you'd think.