Animal Companion Feat Clarification

[DivertedCircle]

Hey everyone, this website seemed like the place to come to clarify something I've been having questions about concerning animal companion feats. What it boils down to is this; do animal companions retain the base feats they possessed when they were merely animals?

For example, a Hawk has Alertness and Weapon Finesse as baseline feats. Would said hawk retain these feats when it becomes my druids animal companion? The Player's Handbook states "An animal companion gains additional skill points and feats for bonus HD as normal for advancing a monster’s Hit Dice". Does this mean a hawk with 6HD would only have 3 feats (first level, 3 level and 6th level) or would it have 5 having gained 3 on top of Alertness and Weapon Finesse? Or does this mean it has Alertness and Weapon Finesse as it's 1st level and 3rd level feats already?

I feel like there's an east answer here and I'm overthinking it.

Note: As I typed this out I realized the last option is likely the correct one but would still appreciate confirmation.

[eggynack]

The second one. The animal companion arrives to you as normal, with defined feats derived from HD, and then advancement adds more. This is especially clear when you take into account the fact that your cited text is specifically associated with bonus HD and advancement. An animal companion arrives completely lacking in both those things (or at least they do if they're not advanced based on your druid level).

[DrMotives]

Normally I'd say the 2nd one, but that's not what the hawk entry says. Firstly, the hawk per the MM has weapon finesse as its 1st HD feat. It does not have alertness. The hawk in the SRD however, has alertness as its 1st HD feat, and weapon finesse has a little superscript "B" after it, meaning that is a bonus feat. It gets that for free as a racial bonus. So if you use the MM, finesse is the default, but some hawks may have a different 1st level feat per the DM's prerogative. If you use the MM, they all have finesse, and most have alertness. The non B-marked feats can be swapped out, but for an animal companion probably won't be.

[eggynack]

Normally I'd say the 2nd one, but that's not what the hawk entry says. Firstly, the hawk per the MM has weapon finesse as its 1st HD feat. It does not have alertness. The hawk in the SRD however, has alertness as its 1st HD feat, and weapon finesse has a little superscript "B" after it, meaning that is a bonus feat. It gets that for free as a racial bonus. So if you use the MM, finesse is the default, but some hawks may have a different 1st level feat per the DM's prerogative. If you use the MM, they all have finesse, and most have alertness. The non B-marked feats can be swapped out, but for an animal companion probably won't be.
True. A hawk with six bonus HD, putting it at seven total, would have four feats, rather than either three or five. The hawk isn't somehow pulling weapon finesse out of its future. As a pretty strict general rule, you're just going to be adding a feat whenever you hit a new HD-feat threshold. The hawk in this case crosses two of those, which means two more feats than whatever was there at the start.

And, for the record, the SRD is the correct source in this case. The alteration was based on the monster manual errata, which made weapon finesse into a bonus feat on any creature that wouldn't ordinarily qualify due to the prerequisite, and which then added in a new first level feat to make up for it (in this case alertness). Because the bonus feat has this super specific source that only applies to weapon finesse, I don't think it makes much sense here to allow that feat to be swapped out. It's not precisely a racial free wheeling feat, y'know? Even if it kinda exists in the same rule-set as other bonus feats.

[KillianHawkeye]

Normally I'd say the 2nd one, but that's not what the hawk entry says. Firstly, the hawk per the MM has weapon finesse as its 1st HD feat. It does not have alertness. The hawk in the SRD however, has alertness as its 1st HD feat, and weapon finesse has a little superscript "B" after it, meaning that is a bonus feat. It gets that for free as a racial bonus. So if you use the MM, finesse is the default, but some hawks may have a different 1st level feat per the DM's prerogative. If you use the MM, they all have finesse, and most have alertness. The non B-marked feats can be swapped out, but for an animal companion probably won't be.

Regarding this discrepancy, the SRD is correct.

Y'see, there's this little thing called errata that you might wanna look into. Animals with only one Hit Die, like the hawk, don't actually qualify for the Weapon Finesse feat. Yet many of them were given it, and it totally makes sense for smaller or faster animals to have it. So it was fixed in the errata file by giving those animals a different feat for their first HD and making Weapon Finesse a bonus feat.



As for the hawk as an Animal Companion, if you have a nice DM you might be allowed to find a hawk which took something else instead of Alertness, but every single one will have Weapon Finesse because that's their bonus feat. Additional feats are gained at every 3rd Hit Die as normal for creature advancement, just as eggynack said, so at 6 HD a hawk will have a total of four feats (three from it's Hit Dice, plus Weapon Finesse).