A HUGE Animal Companion? Bestiary Entry for Trico from The Last Guardian (PEACH)

[xXAmaroqXx]

First of all, what the heck is a Trico? Trico is the name of a species as well as a certain individual magical beast, developed by Team ICO studio. Within that game, it is a creature that abducts chosen humans from their home to deliver them to a distance place and later serves as the protagonists animal companion to solve puzzles with and navigate treacherous terrain. While they CAN be used as sort of combat beasts, they do not seem too adept at fighting. You can find out more about its origin and "The Last Guardian" here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...heLastGuardian


This is a homebrew intended for play in Pathfinder first edition. Now for the actual Bestiary Entry I wrote up. I wanted to make a large to huge size animal companion because I think it is a cute creature and it would fit well our campaigns that are often dominated by large and larger creatures, that regular characters can feel tiny against. However, I would like people's opinions on the entry itself, particularly with a look at its balance.
My Version of the trico as a regular CR 6 enemy is loosely based on the manticore from bestiary 1, with a couple of tradeoffs. The Animal Companion version is significantly weaker, as it needs to be in order to be well in line with other companions. I based the Trico companion on the "Large Cat" animal companion and traded away its biggest asset, their Damage per Round, by removing both pounce and rake, and downgrading the claws into the more accurate talon secondary attacks. In return, Trico gains huge size with a natural attack range of 10 feet and brings more utility to the table: Namely, that being the Lightning Bolt Spell-Like ability which is fired from the tip of its tail (with a relatively low DC to balance out its at-will usability, the limited flight and exceptional ground based maneuverability and its swallow whole special ability. Those who know the Setting know that Tricos are not supposed to be fierce fighters, so I hope that the creature finds some love among other Pathfinder players as well. I tried to keep it close to the original, which included it being a bit more bothersome to control, further lowering its threat rating in turn for an appropriate representation of its fickle nature. The fact that it can only fly for a short time MIGHT be a bit lore inaccurate, but I did want to focus on the creature not being used for permanent flight and thus making it just another roc. Besides, in the game, trico crashes pretty much every time it takes flight, usually from exhaustion, so I assumed that it has troubles keeping itself aloft. I did however wonder if I should enable permanent flight at around level 13, where it doesn't make a big difference anymore as everyone and their dog can fly. But the focus is definately on ground based movement and the exceptional climbing and jumping.

Please tell me how you like the entry, and whether you think that the creature is worth giving it a go, or if it would benefit from a change here or there. I worked for several days on it, but if you think there is room for improvement, please do tell me - especially if you think I made a mistake in the Lore description. Thank you very much in advance and please enjoy!