Effective Druid Level for Animal Companions

[Haligon]

Hopefully I'm not duplicating effort; I haven't seen this anywhere else in the forums.

I am trying to build two things. the first is an Ainmal Companion that imposes a penalty to effective Druid Level for advancement purposes (similar to the way the Dragonne works in the Bonus Bestiary...though that also requires Leadership). Building the creature is not so much the issue, as I think I can modify an existing creature to suit. However, I am not sure how to code the penalty to effective Druid Level (-3, So A 7th level Druid or Paladin would be considered as Lvl 4 Druid, while a 7th Level Ranger would be considered as a Lvl 1 Druid). I'd also like to include a minimum level for Druid or Ranger before they could qualify for the companion.

Is this possible? For this item, the change in Effective Druid Level is the important one...the other I can just monitor manually.

The second item is a Feat to boost effective Druid Level for the purpose of Animal Companions, but no higher than Character Level. This would have a effect similar to the way Magical Knack works (or Practiced Caster in 3.5) for Spellcasting, but would affect only Effective Druid Level. I believe there is a Boon Companion Feat buried in one of the Pathfinder books that operates in the same manner, though I don't have details on it. I don't want to step on IP, so any indication of how to boost Effective Druid Level would be sufficient, as I can enforce the maximum on my own (by building 4 feats for the possible modifiers).

Any thoughts anyone has on these would be appreciated, thanks.

[Lawful_g]

Heh, I'm doing a similar thing in 3.5 working on the natural bond feat, as noted over in that forum. I found out that there is an animal companion thing with fields on it, but I don't have pathfinder, so I can't say what it is for you. My problem was that you have to modify it in an early phase, before levels have been added, but I want it to cap out at the character's HD/level.

[Lawful_g]

This is the script I wrote that adds to animal companion level, again, for 3.5. Things may have changed, but I hope it helps.

First 497
~ Add 3 to our companion level.
hero.childfound[cAnimClass].field[CompClLev].value += 3
hero.childfound[cAnimComp].field[CompLevBas].value += 3

[Mathias]

You did see that the Dragonne is available as an animal companion already, right? Make a copy of it in the editor, and take a look at how it handles its companion levels.

It looks like I accidently left the field that allows you to set the minimum level of your companion out of the editor, so I'll put that on my to-do list. In the meantime, start creating your animal companion as a copy of the Dragonne. Although that field can't be seen in the editor, the Dragonne's value of 10 is still there. Set up everything else about your companion properly, and then use a text editor to open the .user file your animal companion is in.

You'll see the following line among the code:

 
<fieldval field="rCompLevel" value="10"/>

Change the 10 to whatever level your race requires, and don't change anything else. Save the file, and then re-open the Hero Lab editor, and go to your race. Press the Test Now! button, and that ought to incorporate the change you just made.

Look at the Eval scripts for the Dragonne. One of those is the script that changes the effective companion level of the Dragonne.

[Mathias]

In both 3.5 and Pathfinder, hero.childfound[cAnimComp].field[CompLevAdj].value is intended as the adjustment for the companion's effective level. Lawful_g, you ought to be able to change only that, rather than changing two different fields (and actually, the CompLevBas is not intended to be changed - it records what the value of the companion level was before CompLevAdj was incorporated).

It is incorporated into the rest of the companion mechanics at First/499, so you'll have to set it before then. Use First/498.

As Lawful_g noted, the problem is that at that early point, everything is still in the middle of setting things up. At that point, the Classes.? and Hero.HitDice tags from classes have been added to the Hero, but the races and templates haven't added theirs yet.

The best workaround I can think of is to use the "Choose Amount of Activation" option - the value entered by the user can be read at First/498, and then in an Eval Rule that runs in the Validation phase, you can test to make sure the value selected is the correct number. Lawful_g, in the d20 files, the Charges mechanism is probably the best way to have the user set the amount of bonus.

[Haligon]

Whoops, missed that entirely. I hadn't expected Bestiary Companions to be in the data set, so I didn't even look.

I'll check that out shortly, thanks!

[Mathias]

All the animal companion options, and all the improved familiars (except for Pseudodragons) from the Bestiary and Bonus Bestiary are already available.

[Haligon]

I was able to code in what I needed, thanks

For anyone else trying to do this in Pathfinder, It took me a bit to process that there is no adjustment to Animal Companion level occurring per se, instead the "rCompLevel" value implies an adjustment, since it sets the baseline at which the familiar is available. Since the Dragonne becomes available at level 10, there is an implied reduction in effective level of 9 (there is another entry on the Dragonne to bring the effective level *up* to 6 at that point).

FWIW, on the Feat issue, I simply coded 4 Feats (Boon Companion I - IV, 1 per possible modifier), and will use the appropriate Feat unless a better workaround comes along

[Mathias]

That rCompLevel mechanism is actually a leftover from the d20 files, where different animal companions became available at different levels, and gained the powers available to the companion of a 1st level druid at that point. There was no reason to re-invent the wheel when converting those mechanisms to Pathfinder.