Beastmaster fix - PEACH

[Heliomance]

One of my players is wanting to focus on animal companions, but we all know the CAdv Beastmaster is a pile of crap. I threw together this fix from it, the Masters of the Wild Tamer of Beasts class, and some of my own ideas. If you could take a look and let me know what you think, that would be great, thanks!

https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/6UF8LexVE

[Elves]

Is the AC ability at 1st level in addition to your existing AC? It's unclear. If not, seems like a pain to wait until 4th level for the extra AC. If so, clarify the wording.

The -9 AC seems like a liability more than anything, and it's anticlimactic for your capstone ability to be your weakest. You could boost it to -6 or -3, or you could unify the progression of the extra pets at -3, -4 or -5. Or you could speed up the pet progression and have the capstone grant them all extra HD. Finishing with a bang is always good.

The alertness, low-light vision, scent and beast stride are unnecessary, I would focus on the pet abilities. Mechanically they deserve the whole power budget and thematically adding "and you become like a beast" muddies the waters.

[Heliomance]

Is the AC ability at 1st level in addition to your existing AC? It's unclear. If not, seems like a pain to wait until 4th level for the extra AC. If so, clarify the wording.

No, it's not an additional companion until 4th level. It is a 4-level boost to your companion for a single level, though.


The -9 AC seems like a liability more than anything, and it's anticlimactic for your capstone ability to be your weakest. You could boost it to -6 or -3, or you could unify the progression of the extra pets at -3, -4 or -5. Or you could speed up the pet progression and have the capstone grant them all extra HD. Finishing with a bang is always good.
Yeah, I was worried about it being a bit weak still. The main change I made over the base Beastmaster was that this one actually stacks with other classes, so you don't end up with a useless level 1 companion, but I'm definitely open to boosting it a bit more. Not sure what the best pattern would be though.


The alertness, low-light vision, scent and beast stride are unnecessary, I would focus on the pet abilities. Mechanically they deserve the whole power budget and thematically adding "and you become like a beast" muddies the waters.

Alertness, low light vision, and scent I only included because they were in the base class. I wouldn't mind taking them out, but I'd want to replace them with something. Beast stride seemed like a fun, flavourful ability to fill a dead level, and Beast Tongue is there because the player I'm making this for desparately wants to be able to talk to animals.

[Elves]

No, it's not an additional companion until 4th level.
I would clarify the wording. And again I would get that 2nd AC out ASAP.


It is a 4-level boost to your companion for a single level, though.
Maybe this power boost is worth redistributing onto the extra ACs, even to justify getting the first one at 1st level @ 1 HD.



Yeah, I was worried about it being a bit weak still. The main change I made over the base Beastmaster was that this one actually stacks with other classes, so you don't end up with a useless level 1 companion, but I'm definitely open to boosting it a bit more. Not sure what the best pattern would be though.
I don't know that they need to be at different HD levels when the power scaling is already present with how many you get. Why double dip? All three of your beastmaster pets could be at -3 compared to your primary pet. Or maybe it retards your primary pet so that you get 4 pets all at -3, starting with the first extra pet at 1st level. Or maybe 4 pets is too much to control at one time and you go with 3 instead; they're at -3/-6 compared to your primary but then the capstone bumps them by 3 HD each.



Alertness, low light vision, and scent I only included because they were in the base class. I wouldn't mind taking them out, but I'd want to replace them with something. Beast stride seemed like a fun, flavourful ability to fill a dead level, and Beast Tongue is there because the player I'm making this for desparately wants to be able to talk to animals.

I like beast tongue because it fits with the theme of animal tamer. the other abilities, including beast stride, try to cram in a whole other theme of becoming like a beast, not just taming/communicating with them.

Obvious other abilities to include are

1) the ability to swap out your ACs (whether that's literally calling one from the Beastlands, or just allowing you to keep ones in the "stable" and swap them out without going through the rigamarole.

2) active in-combat abilities that let you spend your actions to somehow empower or guide your pets.

[Heliomance]

So - if I dropped the 3-level boost to the main companion, and gave an extra companion at level-3 at both 1st and 5th levels, would that work better? Drops it down to 3 total pets rather than 4, which I think will be easier to manage at the table. It does mean I probably want another capstone, and I need to stick something in at 4th and 7th.

I still like Beast Stride, because it lets the beastmaster keep up with their pets in whatever terrain is most useful in that campaign. I like the idea of Tarzanning through the trees with your ape, or swimming alongside your pet shark, fighting as one unit. I have no special attachment to Alertness, LLV, or Scent, though.

Hmm - would it be too good to give a +3 level boost to your effective druid level for all companions, but only for the purposes of working out what bonuses the companions get, and not for the purposes of selecting a companion from a higher list? And where should that ability go?

Other options:
- give the benefits of the Wolfpack tactical feat (RotW) even if you don't meet the prereqs, but for the purposes of the feat only your animal companions count as your allies.
- some sort of improved flanking - either if you and your companion are flanking an enemy, all your companions treat that enemy as flanked, or possibly just count it as flanked if two or more of you are threatening the same enemy regardless of positioning. Maybe if three of you are flanking, negate Uncanny Dodge?

[Heliomance]

I've made some of those changes now - dropped down to three total companions, removed the filler abilities, added some flanking improvers, and given it a new capstone

[Elves]

So - if I dropped the 3-level boost to the main companion, and gave an extra companion at level-3 at both 1st and 5th levels, would that work better? Drops it down to 3 total pets rather than 4, which I think will be easier to manage at the table. It does mean I probably want another capstone, and I need to stick something in at 4th and 7th.
That would be better, but it brings the question of why people would take levels 6-10. It could be that beastmaster is just a 5 level class...

How about have one of capstone abilities be that from now on, whenever you take a class level that would advance your AC, it advances all 3 of your ACs. So people are still incentivized to max out the class, because if they leave before then, they don't advance their beastmaster companions.

Also maybe make the extra ACs at 1st and 6th instead of 1st and 5th. (then Epic Beastmaster grants a fourth pet at 11th.)



- give the benefits of the Wolfpack tactical feat (RotW) even if you don't meet the prereqs, but for the purposes of the feat only your animal companions count as your allies.
IMO, classier to make custom features.


- some sort of improved flanking - either if you and your companion are flanking an enemy, all your companions treat that enemy as flanked, or possibly just count it as flanked if two or more of you are threatening the same enemy regardless of positioning. Maybe if three of you are flanking, negate Uncanny Dodge?
That could be cool. Another good feature would be casting a buff spell on one of your pets also spreads it to the other pets for a shorter duration as otherwise keeping your pets buffed will be impractically expensive.

Being able to switch out animal companions from a stable of them is a good idea because it gives a feeling of having tamed many different pets while not inflating the number you have in combat.



Hmm - would it be too good to give a +3 level boost to your effective druid level for all companions, but only for the purposes of working out what bonuses the companions get, and not for the purposes of selecting a companion from a higher list?
I don't see a reason to do this. Let them pick from the higher level list if they want.

However, it would be reasonable to mandate that all of your ACs have to be different animals. Avoids fleshraker spam and creates visual variety.

[Elves]

Looked at the new abilities:


Improved Flanking (Ex): A beastmaster's pack is always in sync, each of them knowing how they all fight, able to take advantage of the smallest opening. When two or more members of the pack are flanking the same opponent, they each gain a +4 bonus on attacks instead of the usual +2.

or bonus = +1 per adjacent pack member?



Paragon Companions (Ex): A 10th level beastmaster's companions are true paragons of their kind. They grow noticeably larger than the norm for their species, and any onlooker can tell that they are truly exceptional examples of their kind by making a DC10 Knowledge(Nature) or Handle Animal check. The damage die for all their natural attacks increases by one step, as if they had taken the Improved Natural Attack feat. If they already have that feat, the size increase stacks. All the beastmaster's animal companions also gain the Magebred template (see Eberron Campaign Setting, p.295). (NB: As the beastmaster's companions will have higher than 2 Intelligence, the Magebred template's Excellent Learner special quality increases the maximum number of tricks they can learn to 4 per point of Intelligence, rather than 8. Similarly, ignore the part of the template that sets the animal's intelligence score to 2.)
This seems like a muddle of a bunch of little things. I think cutting it and doing the scaling thing mentioned in the post above would solve the puzzle of the class in a nice way.

You could simplify this ability to say a size increase for one of your ACs, but any kind of empowerment ability like that, since it mimics the benefits of increasing the AC's HD, would upset what I think is a nice balance you have of 0/-3/-3. It doesn't seem necessary.

[Heliomance]

It's not currently an actual size increase of the animal - they don't go from medium to large or anything. They just go from "normal if worryingly smart animal" to "stunning exemplar that would win every prize at an animal show from their sheer presence".