Animal Empathy / Animal Companion Considerations...

[wundyboy]

Hi its wundy and I have a few considerations for Animal Empathy.

As it currently stands, the system is usually used for AE'ing powerful animals and using them to explore the setting / server by yourself. It's harder to justify to bring your companion on a quest because usually they spike up the content in quests exponentially (Like necromancers' undead and summons tend to do). The issue, however, is the strength of most animals. Some animals are indeed powerful, but most are probably going to die very quickly in a quest, even with spells.  Even with the most careful micromanagement it is supremely hard to utilize these pets in quests.

So I just have a few considerations for them and their current implementation.

-You don't have to wait for resets for animal companions to return- they come back after a rest. I'm unsure why this was implemented, but it generally just makes it not fun to even bother with a pet.

-Acquiring new animals is now reliant on your invested Animal Empathy skill, instead of overall level. It's a bit disappointing to hit 6 as a pure ranger and try and tame a decent pet. Most animals require higher levels, and the animals you can tame aren't that worthwhile to even bother taming.  So at level 6, with a hard skill of 9, you can tame stronger beasts like Dumpster Bears or Grizzled Wolves. At 8/9, you can tame the strongest versions of the beasts, like Silverback wolves (or whatever they're called) and Ancient dire bears with a hard skill of 11/12. This is to prevent people from using AE gear to cheat out on the AE checks of normal taming / dominating. Or just lower the level required for taming animals (the easier solution, but able to be utilized by multi-classed rangers...)

-A potential system to improve animal companions similar to the necromancy system. As it is right now, the animal companion system is a bit lacking. However, with high animal empathy and lore, you can improve your pet to have higher AB, AC, HP, or movespeed, just as the necromancy system does.

-Duration of animal emapthy increases with current animal emapthy skill (unsure if this is implemented or not already, need to test more..)

These are some massive changes, but with druids nearly being KOS, and rangers almost always being multiclassed now, I think it'd be a cool way to spice up their companions and give them a slightly better edge than what they currently have.

[SunrypeSlim]

How about giving Skill Focus: Animal Empathy +2 virtual levels towards taming? So a level 6 Ranger with SF: AE would count as level 8.

I'd prefer to regain the companions at rest, but I'm also fine with losing XP for it when/if they die.

If GSF: Transmutation had a similar effect on Animal Companions as Necromancy does on corpses, that would be cool. I'd be happy to sacrifice HP/Ability scores temporarily to give my beast a boost.

[Necro]

Not a bad idea, maybe have something similar to wildshaping, where buffs your companion gets are based on cha, or wis, or a mix of both even (Since thats a very dicey stat spread)