Best Co-Hort for a Swift Hunter

[Avarice]

Party is:

Fighter2/Rogue1/Marshal1
Artificer 4
Warlock 5
Ranger1/Scout2/Factotum1

I’m actually picking up Leadership at 6 and am looking for optimized cohort ideas.

Right now, the three top options are:

Kobold Ranger Master of Many Forms
Gnome Beguiler into Rainbow Servant(DM considers RS 10/10 casting)
Half-Giant Charger/Spiked Chain user




Anyways, I’d love some suggestions or approval. This seems to be the best place for some insight.

[Troacctid]

Of course the best cohort is never just for one character, since you want to take the needs of the whole party into account. But in your case, I would encourage you to lean towards a cohort with abilities that can help enable your skirmishing. For example, if they can cast snake's swiftness, they can give you an extra attack that deals skirmish damage. If they have an ability that allows you to move without spending your action, then that enables full attack skirmishes. An initiator with White Raven Tactics could be the best of both worlds—if you move in one turn and then get a second turn in the same round, you still count as having moved, and can get skirmish on a full attack.

Another consideration, since you have a warlock in the party, is a spellthief, since at level 5 they can steal the warlock's invocations to gain secondhand access to all of their 24-hour buffs. Spellthieves can also use a lot of wands without a check, even though their spellcasting progression is slower (although the Trickster variant from Dragon #353 can speed it up), so they can do the snake's swiftness trick too.

[Avarice]

I’ll look into the White Raven thing. I’ve never played any ToB stuff, but I hear it’s good.