Animals with levels

[hrs]

My party acquired a level 9 dog to guard the shop, it is not an animal companion, just a big nasty dog.
Is there a way to build such animal with HL?

 

[Silveras]

I am not familiar with anything like that in Pathfinder's core. The only thing I can think of is to go into the Editor and create a custom monster "race" for a dog with 9 HD.

 

[blzbob]

You can add hit dice to the animal.

 

[hrs]

Yes, I know is not core, the party has a well renowned base of operations in a big city where the bad guys sometimes break in when we are not around.
A guard dog, as per core, would be a joke compared to level 10 bad guys, so we needed something more substantial. A bigger beast made no sense since we live in a city so I had a look at the stats and a level 9 dog companion has statistics comparable with those of a lion. My master allowed us to purchase a level 9 dog from a trainer at the cost of a lion. It's just for show.

I saw that I can add hit dice thanks, but BAB, Natural Armor and the like are left out.
I was wondering if, since animal companions are already wired in somewhere, there was the option to build an animal companion without the PC.
Right now I added a Druid to the portfolio just to have the dog stats.

Maybe through the Editor?

 

[ChrisRevocateur]

Yes, I know is not core, the party has a well renowned base of operations in a big city where the bad guys sometimes break in when we are not around.
A guard dog, as per core, would be a joke compared to level 10 bad guys, so we needed something more substantial. A bigger beast made no sense since we live in a city so I had a look at the stats and a level 9 dog companion has statistics comparable with those of a lion. My master allowed us to purchase a level 9 dog from a trainer at the cost of a lion. It's just for show.

I saw that I can add hit dice thanks, but BAB, Natural Armor and the like are left out.
I was wondering if, since animal companions are already wired in somewhere, there was the option to build an animal companion without the PC.
Right now I added a Druid to the portfolio just to have the dog stats.

Maybe through the Editor?

Are you sure what you want is a level 9 Dog Animal companion? Just upping a dog to a 9HD creature would probably represent a "tough" dog better than an animal companion, as those are supposed to be a specific class feature. You can use adjustments to increase things like natural armor. The BAB most definitely should increase with Hit Dice though. If it's not increasing at the rate an Animal is supposed to increase when you add hit dice, you should report that as a bug.

Okay, enough on how you and your group interpret the rules, to actually answer you question the best I can:

If you have the Bestiary as a package, you could just use the Monster Creator (just pick "Bestiary Monster Creation" as the race) to throw it together, and manually increase stats when you want to up it's "level." Otherwise your "dummy druid" idea is the best option. I don't think you can create an animal companion without a character to attach it to.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

I saw that I can add hit dice thanks, but BAB, Natural Armor and the like are left out.

Adding Hit Dice will increase BAB, Saves, Skills and Feats. If you want to add Natural Armor then I would go to the "Adjust" tab and add a AC adjustment. I think they have one for Natural Armor. If their is not an official one I know my Adjustment addon does. Plus it has the ability to add other natural attacks and make other special changes to a character.

 

[Silveras]

You can add hit dice to the animal.

::Sigh:: And I don't know why that completely escaped my memory when responding.