Talk:Improved Animal Companion (3.5e Feat)

Balance

This feat is completely broken. It's unbelievable how it ever got a power rating of 4.60. Want an example?

Human Druid. Level 1. Take this feat with both your first level feat and your human bonus feat. Guess what, it stacks and there is no limit!

Congratulations, you are now a first-level character who walks around with one of the following:

• Bear, brown (animal)
• Dire wolverine
• Crocodile, giant (animal)
• Deinonychus (dinosaur)
• Dire ape
• Dire boar
• Dire wolf
• Elasmosaurus1 (dinosaur)
• Lion (animal)
• Rhinoceros (animal)
• Snake, Huge viper (animal)
• Tiger (animal)

My personal favorite is the rhinoceros for sheer hit points, but pretty much anything from the list will walk over any CR 1 encounter. I also like the wolf for its trip attack and the tiger for the combination of hide - charge - pounce - rake - improved grab, all in one round.

Want to go insane, take flaws and keep taking this feat, your DM will ban this after one session anyway so why not enjoy the moment?

For DMs who want to nerf the feat, try the following:

• remove the possibility to take it multiple times
• set maximum level = ECL

This way, the feat does what it's supposed to do (help multiclassed characters and high-level rangers) without the potential abuse. --Mkill 06:18, 19 June 2007 (MDT)

I concur. A +1 LEVEL ability is strong. A +3 LEVEL ability is overpowering. --Dmilewski 09:05, 9 July 2007 (MDT)

I notified Siegfried of the NBoF about it and he agreed. It seems likely that they will change this feat for the next edition. --Mkill 09:09, 9 July 2007 (MDT)

I'd like to additionally point out that a similar feat now exists as an official WotC feat, that only increases the AC's strength up to your character level, that's designed for multiclassing. I don't see this as balanced in any other way. --Maverick_Wolf 13:56, 08 August 2007 (EST)

For the record, the feat Maverick Wolf mentioned is called Natural Bond and it can be found in Complete Adventurer. --Mkill 09:06, 8 August 2007 (MDT)

The feat Natural Bond(Complete Adventurer, pg. 111), increases a druids effective character level by +3 when determining an animal companions advanced abilities as set out on the sidebar of the PHB (pg. 36). The feat specifically states that you "can never make your effective druid level exceed your character level". In addition, a feat like this would not stack. Feats are generally designed to only be taken once. Any feat that can be taken multiple times and/or have effects that stack, say so in their description, usually under the "special" heading. --Kothias 21:14, 11 December 2013 (PST)