[3.5] Druid Animal or Urban Companion.

[D4rkh0rus]

Whats the general consensus of the community, given a typical Nightstalker initiate druid 20 (hide and MS as class skills).

Is the Animal Companion worth using? or is it better to trade for a Urban one? Are any of those remotely useful?

Do state a reason why.

[Bad Wolf]

Animal companions are generally seen as better because they tend to have more HP. Also, consider the fleshraker. It can get about five attacks in a round, all with poison. And the spell venomfire gives a creature with poison an extra 1d6 points of damage per level.

So a fleshraker at druid level 20th, can deal about 105d6 of damage, if I've done my math correctly.

[D4rkh0rus]

That sounds awesome, but The setting and DM wont allow me to cherry pick my companions, I'll have to do with what I get.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

It depends on what you want it to do, and what you would be allowed to combine it with. If you could get Improved Familiar to gain an Imp or Quasit or Pseudodragon as your Urban Companion, then it's probably worth using. Otherwise I would completely skip it and just get a Riding Dog with Trip and make it a Warbeast.

[Troacctid]

Urban Companion is better if you're multiclassing, since it scales with non-Druid levels. I've had builds that dip a single level of Druid, and I always go for the Urban Companion on those.

On a Druid 20, though, I think you take the animal companion, and it's not particularly close. It just scales so much better.

[D4rkh0rus]

so, the general consensus is that an Animal companion is better than an urban one even if the Natural habitat (I.E, the creatures I can choose) are not defined?

Even though, with a Familiar, I could theoretically rear twice as many beasts with handle animal (Since the fam would get the same amount of ranks as I) and doubles up on knowledge, tracking etc. Its good to know :P

[Troacctid]

You don't have to rear animals to handle them. There's no limit to the number of trained animals you can have, if you have time to train them.

[eggynack]

At 20? Probably the urban companion. I mean, what is a fleshraker really doing when you have shapechange? By that point, you're generally going to be better off slightly augmenting the things you're otherwise doing with a fancy bonus, and maybe tossing on a few wands to double down on spells. If direct melee combat is still relevant at 20 in your game, then I guess an animal companion could be better, but I suspect it's just really not.

[Urpriest]

so, the general consensus is that an Animal companion is better than an urban one even if the Natural habitat (I.E, the creatures I can choose) are not defined?

Even though, with a Familiar, I could theoretically rear twice as many beasts with handle animal (Since the fam would get the same amount of ranks as I) and doubles up on knowledge, tracking etc. Its good to know :P

If the natural habitat is not defined, then you can't use either ability anyway. You need the DM to actually tell you what the restrictions on character generation are before building a character.