Druid/Beastmaster powerbuild.

[Sintar07]

I have a build I'd like to know the legality of (and the chances of the DM banning me from his house for using it).

Human Druid for five levels, and a level of Beastmaster. Max flaws taken (2) in exchange for feats, for a total of four starting feats. Two more feats from levels three and six, all feats are Improved Animal Companion (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Improved_Animal_Companion_(3.5e_Feat) hereafter to be known as IAC).

There are a total of six IAC, which are specifically stated to stack, for a total of +18 ECL when calculating my pet's abilities, and an additional +3 ECL from the initial Beastmaster ability for a total of +21 ECL, or 27 ECL at level 6 for my first Beastmaster pet.

In other words, I can take a Dire Tiger with 11 additional levels and the associated leveling bonuses at level six. I calculated that this monster would have over 150 HP and attack at 22/22/16 with +10 to all damage, but that's only before the feats, which due to an oversight in the prerequisites, can include Vow of Poverty and all associated bonuses: +AC, Ability Enhancements, other random defensive bonuses... And I could possibly have two of these tigers.

Acknowledging that D&D is not known for balance, this seems completely broken. Am I missing something in my reading of the rules? Is this in fact, legal?

[Urpriest]

Should we be assuming that your DM has already allowed homebrew from the Netbook of Feats?

Picking up an unbalanced homebrew feat will give you unbalanced results, I'm not entirely sure why you're surprised by this.

[Deadline]

Acknowledging that D&D is not known for balance, this seems completely broken. Am I missing something in my reading of the rules? Is this in fact, legal?

I'll second Ur-priest. This isn't legal via RAW, but if you are allowed to use danddwiki, balance and legality were tossed out the window long ago.

[Sintar07]

Should we be assuming that your DM has already allowed homebrew from the Netbook of Feats?

I wasn't aware this was homebrew. The descriptor categories don't include it.

[Urpriest]

I wasn't aware this was homebrew. The descriptor categories don't include it.

dandwiki is notorious for poorly labeling its homebrew. In this case, you can observe that this is from the Netbook of Feats, which isn't the name of a book published by WotC.

There are better resources out there for this sort of thing. This SRD site (http://www.d20srd.org/) has OGL content, and there are other decent-quality lists of non-OGL stuff out there.

[Sintar07]

I see. I'll have to double check a couple other things too then :( Thanks for clearing that up for me.

[Troacctid]

The non-homebrew equivalent feat is Natural Bond from Complete Adventurer, which gives you +3 to your effective level for the purpose of calculating an animal companion's bonus HD and stuff (but not the type of animal companion you can select) and can only be taken once.

There is a cheesy RAW exploit abusing an unclear rule with bloodline levels (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/bloodlines.htm) and multiclassing to get you super-high effective levels. (Bloodline levels count as class levels for some abilities, but they stack for each class separately, so a Druid 1/Bard variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#bard) 1/Bloodline 3/Beastmaster 1 would count as a Druid 4/Bard variant 4/Beastmaster 4 for an animal companion with an effective druid level of 15.) But that requires a pretty permissive interpretation that clearly goes against RAI, so it's probably not gonna fly.

[Jacob.Tyr]

I'm not sure where it was from, but I remember a rule regarding not being able to have an effective druid level for determining your animal companion stats higher than your total level...

NM, was trying to find a feat I've used to up the level that isn't from homebrew, and Natural Bond is what I was thinking of. It specifically can't up your effective druid level past your character level. Can only be taken once per animal companion as well. This is useful for Rangers, especially Ranger/BM mixes, as bonuses are applied in whatever order is most beneficial by RAW.

Ranger 6/BM 1 with Natural Bond gets 3(Ranger 6)+3(Natural Bond)+4(BM 1)=Effective Druid Level of 10

You might also want to consider Wild Cohort with Natural Bond if your DM rules it works. Wild Cohort is counted separately from your animal companion, but scales decently (Especially if you up the level by 3 with natural bond).

Wild Cohort + Natural bond on it uses 2 feats, at level 6 you'll get a pet with +5 HD +5 Natural Armor, Evasion, +2 STR/Dex, 3 bonus tricks.
Combine that with your Druid/BM pet at effective level 10 who has +6HD, +6 Natural Armor, +3Str/Dex and you'll have a pretty badass team of pets.

Wild Cohort: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a

Natural Bond: http://dndtools.eu/feats/complete-adventurer--54/natural-bond--2030/ (From Complete Adventurer)

[sleepyphoenixx]

That's actually pretty tame. With the Theurgic Bond and Theurgic Mount feats from dragon magazine and Arcane Hierophant you can get a 20th level character with a 40-60HD familiar companion/special mount and 9th level spells.

The classical Supermount build sacrifices spellcasting for an even stronger companion and uses only official sources iirc.

So while the specific feats you mentioned may be homebrew, insanely overleveled companions are actually rules legal.

[Coidzor]

Supermount (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/967311), or if you want to go hogwild and have a DM willing to playball with you to let you play as the mount, Ubermount (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?142554-New-World-Record-Mount-Familiar-Companion-by-HD)are the go-to methodologies of having an awesome companion.

Well, OK, Supermounting is at least. Ubermounting may actually refer to slapping Familiar on it as well and the monstrosity in the second link is taking things to their horrifying conclusion.