Arcane Hierophant Companion Familiar and Wild Shape

[schreier]

Reading it - it seems unclear regarding the need to have a companion previously.

In the Wild Shape section, it explicitly says "If you do not already possess the ability, you gain no new ability to wild shape. However, you add your arcane hierophant level to your druid level and gain the wild shape ability of a druid of the resulting level"
...
But in the companion section it says "Upon becoming an arcane hierophant, you must dismiss your familiar, if you have one ...." and "You may retain any one animal companion you already possess. You add your arcane hierophant class level to your druid or ranger level for purposes of determining your animal companion’s bonus"

The lack of "gain no new ability" and "add your arcane hierophant class level..." seems to indicate that you should be able to gain a companion even if you don't have the ability previously (you could have traded it away, taken a variant druid class, or used an archivist).

My thought is 0 (Druid levels) + 1 (arcane hierophant) would have a 1st level druid companion.

Also - what happens if you take a wild shape class after the arcane hierophant? For example:

Domain Wizard 3 / Archivist 5 / Holt Warden 3 / Arcane Hierophant 1 / Lion of Talisid 3 -- I believe that holt warden will grant trackless step - giving access to arcane hierophant. Arcane Hierophant will grant an animal companion, then Lion of Talisid would grant Wild Shape and retroactively add the hierophant level. At that point, it would only count as druid level 2 ... but if you went Hierophant 6 total - you would have druid 7 wild shape, right?

At that point, you would have arcane caster 9 / archivist 17 ... with wild shape druid 7 (lion-2+hierophant) ... companion familiar of familiar 9 (wizard+hierophant) / 9 companion (lion+hierophant)

Druid 5 would be a faster route, but I liked the more academic and versatile achivist

[Psyren]

The lack of "gain no new ability" and "add your arcane hierophant class level..." seems to indicate that you should be able to gain a companion even if you don't have the ability previously (you could have traded it away, taken a variant druid class, or used an archivist).

My thought is 0 (Druid levels) + 1 (arcane hierophant) would have a 1st level druid companion.

"Already possess" sounds like you need one going in for this to work. The future references to "your animal companion" in the entry then seem to refer to the one you had before entering the class.


Also - what happens if you take a wild shape class after the arcane hierophant?

This one seems like AH will stack with your wild shape regardless of when you picked it up, so long as you're getting it from a source aside from AH itself.

[schreier]

"Already possess" sounds like you need one going in for this to work. The future references to "your animal companion" in the entry then seem to refer to the one you had before entering the class.

This one seems like AH will stack with your wild shape regardless of when you picked it up, so long as you're getting it from a source aside from AH itself.

After, it does says "You add your arcane hierophant class level to your druid or ranger level for purposes of determining your animal companion’s bonus Hit Dice, natural armor adjustment, and Strength/Dexterity adjustment"

So the calculation doesn't seem to require it - but I can see it going either way. Based on the calculation, an archivist 5 / arcane hierophant 5 (just showing the relevant levels) would have a level 5 animal companion. The "You may retain any one animal companion you already possess." could be read as an option to keep the companion, but not being required.

I'm tempted to avoid the debate and just go Druid (more powerful, and simple) - but it does seem a gray area. Sometimes I wish WOTC would support 3.5 like White Wolf/Onyx Path supports the old World of Darkness (printing 20th anniversary updates) -- could make money, and answer questions like this (and the myriad of other gray area misprint interpretation type questions)

.....

I just noticed that the familiar section of the Arcane Hierophant says this:
"You add your arcane hierophant class level to your arcane spellcasting class level, and determine the Intelligence bonus and special abilities of your animal companion accordingly"

It specifically says "arcane spellcasting class level" --- which, based on earlier discussions with Master Spellthief, seems to hamper the power of that ability. That isn't caster level - it's class level ...

So a wizard 3/Druid 3/Arcane Hierophant 10/Incantatrix 3 (hypothetically) would have:
Companion level 13 (Druid + Hierophant)
Familiar level 13 (Wizard + Hierophant), not level 16 (since incantatrix impacts caster level, not class level). This makes it more like the class feature rather than the Obtain familiar feat. I wonder if you could take the Obtain familiar feat to make it include the prestige classes?

Obtain familiar feat says:
"For the purpose of determining familiar abilities that depend on your arcane caster class level, your levels in all classes that allow you to cast arcane spells stack."

Seems to explicitly allow it - so with Obtain familiar feat, all caster level related classes would be added together (including prestige) ... without the feat, only the base class levels would be included ...

Does that make sense?