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View Full Version : [3.5] What is the strongest Animal companion/Special Mount/Whatever



DarknessLord
2010-02-18, 05:46 PM
Okay, I'm trying to figure out how to, at level 20, stack the most bonus hit die, and other bonuses upon a single creature that serves as an animal companion or equivalent, so far the best I have come up with is a
Ranger 1/Paladin 5/Ranger 3/Beastmaster 1/Ashworm Dragoon 10
With the Devoted Tracker, Holy mount, Natural Bond feats, as well as performing the rite of consecrated sand (or whatever it's called) to make your Ashworm your special mount (and thereby your animal companion). Which ends up with Level 9 equivalent paladin for the special mount (Add the ranger levels from holy mount), and 9 for druid animal companion levels (3 Natural bond + 7 from beast master level and bonus) and a level 10 Ashworm's Dragoon bonus, which, IIRC all the bonuses are untyped, so they stack, gives us
+20 hit die +24 natural armor +10 to str, +3 to dex,
as well as Empathic link, Evasion, improved evasion, share spells, share saving throws, link, devotion and multiattack, plus 4 bonus tricks.
Which is slightly worse than a hypothetical Paladin 5/Druid 15 with Devoted tracker (which I could never find a paladin variant or druid variant that allowed me to get that to work) holy mount and natural bond.
Plus, it has to be an Ashworm without it's poison, which is a kinda weak base creature.

Now I'm not that great of an optimizer GITP, so I'm sure you can do better, what's the best single animal companion or whatever in terms of:
A) Bonuses that stack on top of it
B) Actual ability to kill things.
The actual character's combat abilities are irrelevant, let's extend this to include his/her ability to buff it with spells and items, any official 3.5 source is okay.

Flickerdart
2010-02-18, 05:49 PM
Halfling Outrider progresses everything (and, not or) for their companions, so splice some of that in.

Eldariel
2010-02-18, 06:04 PM
Take the following:

Fey Bard
Prestige Ranger
Prestige Paladin
Beastmaster
Arcane Hierophant

With Holy Mount, Theurgic Mount, Theurgic Bond for W/E and Devoted Tracker. I'm not sure whether the stack or Halfling Outrider gives you superior outcome; the numbers are pretty trivial. But you get two AC progressions, doubled Mount progression and a familiar progression all on the same creature.

~50-60 HD Dragon companion should be pretty trivial to achieve.

DarknessLord
2010-02-18, 07:01 PM
What's Fey Bard from? And can it be lawful, or is this one of those where he/she becomes lawful after they got what they needed from bard?

Eldariel
2010-02-18, 07:03 PM
Unearthed Arcana for practically all. And I don't remember how the alignment-crap goes there.

Grumman
2010-02-19, 12:44 AM
Plus, it has to be an Ashworm without it's poison, which is a kinda weak base creature.
As it possesses the Magical Beast type instead of Magical Beast [Augmented Animal], it might gain Magical Beast HD instead of Animal HD. If so, it becomes significantly more powerful.

The build I've got for Cally is this one:

Paladin of Arvoreen 5/Halfling Outrider 3/Wild Plains Outrider 2/Beastmaster 1/Ashworm Dragoon 9

It gives you +22 HD, compared to your +20. You could get it up to +25 without much difficulty, but this way the rider is more powerful.

PlzBreakMyCmpAn
2010-02-19, 12:45 AM
Please use the search function. Its not like no one has ever made a supermount build.

The last question exactly like this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7919789) is only a page back

Mongoose87
2010-02-19, 12:57 AM
Shouldn't we include bloodlines, so they stack with all the levels, including the Outrider levels, which stack with the other levels?

PlzBreakMyCmpAn
2010-02-19, 02:29 AM
Shouldn't we include bloodlines, so they stack with all the levels, including the Outrider levels, which stack with the other levels?They don't stack with all levels, only with the base ability belonging to each level

and yes I did. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=142554)