[PF] Critter-Geddon

[Spore]

Greetings,

I am theoreticizing if there is a way to MAXIMIZE the amount of critters of various power levels in pathfinder. The build level would be about 10, methinks.

Keypoints are:

varying power, so no flood of 1 HDritters that are swept away with Burning Hands
possibly a wide array of types of combat roles and creature TYPES
permanent undead are generally frowned upon
Leadership is sadly banned
managing the minions and shortening the down time is greatly appreciated


I am personally thinking about small master summoner with improved familiar (imp or quasit or anything to scout/fly, via Eldritch Heritage (Arcane)), animal companion (some brute force via Eldritch Heritage (Sylvan), eidolon plus standard action summons.

But I feel there HAS to be a more creative way (and certainly a less feat intensive one) besides HORDES of undead. I am using 5 feats already [Skill Focus Knowledge, Eldritch Heritage (Arcane), Eldritch Heritage (Sylvan), Improved Familiar, Bond Companion] and I'd love to go for Spell Focus (Conjuration), Augment Summoning and improved summons anywhere along the road without resorting to being human (halfling sounds nice, plus it let's me ride my eidolon more easily).

[Ethereal Gears]

There's a two-feat feat chain in Faiths and Philosophies that grants you an AC from the ranger list at -3 effective druid level, I think. That's better and less rule-lawyery than trying to nab one via the Sylvan bloodline (not that I think that's wrong; you get such a crappy AC, -5 level, I think any sane GM should allow it). But that's if you're fine with, say, a wolf. If nothing else, it'd allow you to get two animal companions from separate sources, though obviously that wouldn't help with the feat-intensive bit...

[Spore]

I need the SF for that familiar anyways so the Companion is effectively only 1 feat anyhow (or two with Boon Companion, netting me in a AC with -1 EDL). I just realized my Charisma and power is perhaps enough to bind several crittery demons to my will via (Lesser) Planar Binding allowing me to stock up additional 2 creatures for the period of 10 days.

So I just need some reasonable combinations of MHB outsiders and reasons/benefits to serve me. (Or just uncharismatic idiots that agree on everything. A pack of Hell Hounds, Jet Hounds or many Dretch/Cacodaemons/Lantern Archons/Lemures will easily follow my commands and offerings.

[Alent]

There's basically no cap on taming animals and magical beasts as a Ranger. They just can't benefit from your companion bonuses and can only do tricks that you teach them well in advance. (preferably through roleplay to minimize party and DM misunderstanding of what you want them to do.) forcefully Pushing them all will be nigh unto impossible, but if you teach them enough tricks you can maneuver them as a group without pushing.

Optimize Kn(Nature), Survival, and Handle Animal, Look up the highest hitdice animals and magical beasts with 2~3 int in your given region by climate on the PF SRD, use Kn (nature) rolls to confirm you know that said creature exists and can thus track it, then use tracking and/or random encounter rolls to find an infinite number of them.

In places like, say, Temperate Mountains at level ten it's perfectly reasonable to find and tame things like Pyrohydras. (Cut off a few spare heads while you're at it and animate them as templated shriekers with animate dead and fly if you really want to push the envelope.)

This way does have more downtime than most given you can only effectively tame three animals at once and it takes weeks, but you can basically just keep expanding your unit count until your DM cries uncle. Your own level matters very little for what power level of creatures you can tame, too.

Token inappropriate high level 3.5 suggestion: Manifest true mind switch with a dragon and establish dominance over all the local kobold warrens and use Tucker's Kobolds on your DM.

[Spore]

I really like the flavor of a relatively mundane character whose strengths are but its companions. Thanks for your suggestion.

Would you suggest just dipping into ranger, making this a bard (so that you can aquire many animals and magical beasts and buff them in your combat time rather than attacking yourself? Or does this take away too much on Wild Empathy and the Companion?

[Ethereal Gears]

Oh! I hadn't noticed you could actually get both Arcane and Verdant EH via the same Skill Focus. That's neat. Hrm. Would dipping Shadowdancer be an option, to get a friendly shadow buddy? I'm not sure what you're aiming for here, but I think I would find permanent companions more fun than ones that're just serving you on a contingent basis. Again I know I'm not helping with your state of being feat-starved...

EDIT: My point being, the Master Summoner bit already gives you a ton of temporary critters, so more permanent ones might be fun.

[Spore]

Shadow Dancer is fine because it's

a) a undead with your own alignment

b) not an unfortunate soul being forced into unlife.

I think that's another good idea (but it's costly on the feat- AND on the skill side).

[Alent]

I really like the flavor of a relatively mundane character whose strengths are but its companions. Thanks for your suggestion.

Would you suggest just dipping into ranger, making this a bard (so that you can aquire many animals and magical beasts and buff them in your combat time rather than attacking yourself? Or does this take away too much on Wild Empathy and the Companion?

Using bard is fine, a bit more powerful in fact, the companion is ultimately your weakest animal anyway and you can afford to lose it. Using bard just introduces a few simple obstacles to be aware of. The first is that Wild Empathy is keyed off your ranger level+cha. Dipping hurts it a bit, but you can still optimize it through Animal Speaker, Cha, and Cha check spells. (Eagle's splendor, Tap inner beauty, Circlet of persuasion, if you can tap Marshal: Motivate Charisma, just for starters.) Since it's still fundamentally based on Diplomacy, you're just trying to hit a reasonably trivial non-scaling DC check to move them to indifferent.

Instead of dipping Ranger, a bard can take the Animal speaker archetype and get wild empathy as a song. I think I'd prefer having the dip as I'm stingy with turns of song and you never know when you're going to need to make a surprise check in the middle of a different song. You also get the Summon Nature's Ally line of spells for your minionmancy, so take the archetype one way or the other.

Kn(Nature) is easy enough to advance as bard and do a better job at it to boot. Track is just a +1 bonus to survival if you only use ranger as a dip, but you're just optimizing survival to find stuff, anyway, so... don't dump wis? Does PF have a way to substitute Cha to Survival? At the least, buy or train some wardogs or falcons or something- they give you circumstance bonuses to tracking and are built for it already. As an animal speaker you can take birds as your type and have speak with birds at will, just ask him what he saw.

When you're getting your monsters, once you have empathy checked them to indifferent, you can push them with handle animal and start using training harnesses, training whips, and training sleeves for an extra +5 competence bonus on the handle animal checks to tame them. (The harnesses are untyped bonuses, but animal type specific and the training whip was removed from the PF SRD, oddly. If your DM is a good sport, commission a Tarrasque training harness as a joke.)

Being a bard opens up some neat flavor and charm monster protection- Teach your animals to attack off certain leitmotifs. If you know who your enemy is, scry his smell, compose a leitmotif for him and use target dummies wrapped in illusions of your enemies and prestidigitated to have the right smell in your training. Hammer it until using charm monster to give them non-perform check commands would go against their nature, causing their use of charm monster to actually get them killed. (If you're using large enough hitdice creatures, mass charm monster is the same as if not worse than charm monster, anyway.)

Work out some kind of way to mark other targets, too. This can be as simple as splashing chicken blood on them. Convince your DM throwing a bottle of chicken blood is a ranged touch attack. (it is!)

Put your Versatile performance into wind instruments to save on skill ranks. (Perform to Handle Animal and Diplomacy) Get one of those horns (trumpets?) from 3.5 that boosts your perform check so you can hear bardsong all over the battlefield and use it for your leitmotifs and inspire courage.

I pity the DM who has to plan encounters around a level 10 bard with an army of fiveheaded pyrohydras, Venomous Shrieker heads, T-rexes, Giant Rocs carrying their light weight limit in boulders (10d10 RTT thrown damage), Summon Nature's Ally (Air or Earth elementals), Mountain bulettes, and anything else you can shake up. :belkar: