Who used Drake Companions before?

[SangoProduction]

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/druid/animal-companions/drake-companions

I like the idea of a Drake Companion...just...it seems *really* lack luster. It starts off worse than literally every other animal companion, and by the time you're level 10, it's only just now turning medium size, and has only 2 "drake powers." Which are all rather unremarkable and heavily level gated (even ignoring the sheer glacial speed of obtaining them).

Even if you started off at like level 15, and planning to go into epic, I still don't see what role this really plays that an appropriate AC can't do. Unless you're really desperate for a companion that starts of sentient.

[Eldaran]

Yeah, they're quite lackluster. I find the Dragoon (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/dragoon-class) has a better take derived from the same concept.

[SangoProduction]

Yeah, they're quite lackluster. I find the Dragoon (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/dragoon-class) has a better take derived from the same concept.

Definitely, SoP blows this **** out of the water. But I was focusing on Paizo PF.

*Reads it anyway* Oh yeah. That's sexy. At least the improvements to the drake companion are.

[Fizban]

Haven't use it but- Has a bunch of skills, Linguistics implies it can talk, and UMD is one of those skills. Picking 10th is an odd place to complain about 2 powers when the 3rd is gained at 11th, and you've skipped the fixed one based on elemental type. Is it weaker? Sure, if you expect "appropriate animal companions,"- by which you probably mean picking a new most powerful thing that has your desired ability at every opportunity, then it's going to be weaker. Because if Pathfinder's animal companion list is anything like 3.5's, it's full of broken entries like everything else.

The most unique thing the drake here has over an animal is that animals don't grow (unless AC's in PF do?), which means that you can actually start with a little baby looking monster and then many levels later it will be bigger and beefier, rather than the optimized druid's hilarious march of animal best friends abandoned because they aren't powerful enough anymore. Normally you can't start with a dog and keep your dog (and even if you can size it up over time, that's not how dogs work). But you can start with a drake, keep your drake, and said drake can have a bunch of skills and a breath weapon rather than being limited to meatshield/mount if you want. The biggest problem I see is limits on equipment, which is more of an "oh yeah AC's aren't actually balanced with the idea of optimized equipment" problem. It's easy to see their stats aren't actually any better than animals, so the question is whether they're worse enough to entirely pay for the skills and special abilities and remove the equipment restriction. The idea of having to pay for mount status is similarly interesting but questionable restriction.

[SangoProduction]

Haven't use it but- Has a bunch of skills, Linguistics implies it can talk, and UMD is one of those skills. Picking 10th is an odd place to complain about 2 powers when the 3rd is gained at 11th, and you've skipped the fixed one based on elemental type. Is it weaker? Sure, if you expect "appropriate animal companions,"- by which you probably mean picking a new most powerful thing that has your desired ability at every opportunity, then it's going to be weaker. Because if Pathfinder's animal companion list is anything like 3.5's, it's full of broken entries like everything else.

The most unique thing the drake here has over an animal is that animals don't grow (unless AC's in PF do?), which means that you can actually start with a little baby looking monster and then many levels later it will be bigger and beefier, rather than the optimized druid's hilarious march of animal best friends abandoned because they aren't powerful enough anymore. Normally you can't start with a dog and keep your dog (and even if you can size it up over time, that's not how dogs work). But you can start with a drake, keep your drake, and said drake can have a bunch of skills and a breath weapon rather than being limited to meatshield/mount if you want.

Yup, PF ACs can grow. Mostly in terms of stats. But there are early game ACs that evolve at level 4, and later game ones that evolve at level 7. In Pathfinder, it's significantly simplified, and it's not a massive array of Druid level-3, or whatever, adjustments for animal companions. They are just available at level 1 and evolve later, or they aren't animal companions.

I picked level 10, for a few reasons: I don't see any games going past that point, unless they started at / near it; Even in a hypothetical game of 20 levels, that's half way through the campaign; I also always make my build level 10...for the aforementioned reasons; It also maximally demonstrates the glacially slow pace of customization - if by incident more than anything.