Unusual DM Approved Animal Companion Help

[KarateVagrant]

I recently started an Eberron campaign with my buddies. I'm a Druid/Animal Summoner and I decided to take a Parakeet as an Animal Companion. Since I took Animal Summoner as well I gain a second AC. My DM said since I wanted to stay in character with my AC he would allow me to add tiny birds and add a Swarm template to my AC.


Now here is my problem, Swarms have an auto-hit that doesnt really benefit from combat feats, and Skill feats seem useless on an AC, and other general feats dont make sense on a swarm of tiny sized tropical birds. What would you recommend for Feats to give it and extended rulings on the Swarm attack?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The Mage Slayer line of feats in Complete Arcane is pretty good for an animal companion, technically a swarm does threaten the space it occupies, but it may not have any regular attacks that it can make AoOs with.

Most swarms have some kind of distraction or debuff like nauseated that have a saving throw, Ability Focus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsterFeats.htm#abilityFocus) can be used to increase that DC. It could maybe take Improved Natural Attack (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsterFeats.htm#improvedNaturalAttack) to increase its swarm damage by one step. Improved Toughness in CW could be useful, as could the +2 saving throw feats.

[KarateVagrant]

The Mage Slayer line of feats in Complete Arcane is pretty good for an animal companion, technically a swarm does threaten the space it occupies, but it may not have any regular attacks that it can make AoOs with.


Oh! I didn't know ACs could use skills other than the ones listed in the Core Rulebook. That definitely helps me decide where I should allocate the skill points!
I'll ask my friend if I can borrow their source books so I can get the whole collection of feats

[Deophaun]

technically a swarm does threaten the space it occupies
Do they? You can only threaten squares you can make melee attacks into. Swarms, of course, cannot make melee attacks.

[Hiro Quester]

Mage slayer requires a rank or two in spellcraft. That requires your beast to be intelligent enough to be trained to recognize the distinctive somatic movements made by someone casting a spell.

Many reasonable DMs would consider that a bit of a stretch for your regular bear or tiger AC. For a swarm of tiny birds? RAW it's possible, but a bit cheesy. And many DMs would consider that a stretch. (Mine did when I suggested this feat.)

By the Way, I'm sure you have see then WOTC article on vermin druids and how a swarm AC might work. Here's the Wayback machine's archive (https://web.archive.org/web/20130531141850/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20040705a) of it.

EDIT: Since normal Animal Companions can benefit from wearing magic items, but a swarm really can't do that, you might ask your DM about making it good (assuming you are good), and the AC swarm taking Vow of Poverty. This gives it many of the bonuses an AC would get from magic items.

Further Edit:
Feats that pump up the AC's saving throws would be helpful (will saves are usually a weakness).

You might also consider some feats that might help it survive (e.g. Tempting Fate, a Luck feat that enables damage that would kill it to instead make it -9HP and stable. This is a great feat for an AC that is often in dangerous situations, but perhaps doesn't have the hit points to survive such dangers.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Mage slayer requires a rank or two in spellcraft. That requires your beast to be intelligent enough to be trained to recognize the distinctive somatic movements made by someone casting a spell.

Many reasonable DMs would consider that a bit of a stretch for your regular bear or tiger AC. For a swarm of tiny birds? RAW it's possible, but a bit cheesy. And many DMs would consider that a stretch. (Mine did when I suggested this feat.)

It doesn't necessarily need to recognize which spells are which, just whether or not someone is casting a spell. Animals can be trained to recognize all kinds of gestures, phrases, and objects, many service animals can even recognize someone in uniform, whether police or EMT or similar. It's not much of a stretch to teach it to recognize common somatic and verbal components of spells, objects that are used as spell components, etc.