core hunter or Courtly hunter?

[ShiningCrusader]

hi everyone, quick question. out of both hunter and courtly hunter archetype, which preforms better?

[Daefos]

Since neither has Perform as a class skill, they're both equally lousy at it at first glance. But the Courtly Hunter can use their Songbird Refined Focus to gain a scaling bonus to Perform, making them the obvious choice.

So the Courtly Hunter performs better.

[legomaster00156]

To boot, Hunters tend to have low CHA, being MAD enough as is. Luckily, either version can take Savant (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/social-traits/savant) to compensate.

[ShiningCrusader]

:smallsigh: preform might have been the wrong word to use. what i meant was which is mechanically stronger? a hunter has teamwork feats but a courtly hunter gets a slightly stronger animal companion.

hunter pros
teamwork feats
bonus tricks
precise companion

courtly hunter
intelligent animal (don't need tricks now)
animal gains the ability to change into 4 different tiny animals by lv20
shares you class skills and skill ranks.

so overall which is stronger/better/cooler?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Partly it depends on how your DM runs animal companions-- most I've played with let you control your beast pretty much directly regardless of intelligence/tricks, making that part largely meaningless. But... the Courtly Hunter is going to be better at skills, while the vanilla Hunter is going to be better at combat.

EDIT: Note that if you want to be a more skillmonkey/socialite Hunter, a one-level dip in Inquisitor can get you a lot of Wis-to-social skills. Something like an Infiltrator Inquisitor with the Reformation Inquisition gets Wis instead of Cha for Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Perform (Oratory), and gets Wis as a bonus to Bluff and Diplomacy.

[Egopunk]

Vanilla hunter has the potential to be considerably better at combat because of teamwork feats.

Because of the base Hunter's spells and your already large skill pool, the Courtly Hunter is really just augmenting things you are already good at and honestly not by that much. The shrinking companion stuff is the only thing that could swing this and only then if you know you are intending on playing a full campaign inside a city.

If you just think you will spend alot of time in a city and tight spaces however, I would advise just picking regular hunter and a companion that never gets large such as the Small Cat option of a Cheetah, Ocelot, Puma or Marguay .