Arelith

with a minimum Level + Animal Empathy score requirement you can bind your Ranger's Animal Companion to a specific, permanent animal, which then if you use a summon-animal spell, that summoned creature changes to the 'bound' animal form as determined by the summon.

-The "totem" animal is based on whatever animal companion the Ranger Selects at level-up.

The minimum Level could be set at lvl 25 or 28 or something, where you get your character to the epic levels and you've pretty much locked in as many Ranger Levels as you're going to take...

Maybe tie in a minimum number of Ranger Levels as well. Cool addition for a Ranger or Multi-classed ranger who summons his/her companion and casts Summon Animal to always be mirror shapes of each other.

Added to rangers who speak with either of the NPCs in game who grant totems (but not available at creation). Totem rangers will not suffer the stat penalties of druids, because they can't Wildshape.

Note: a ranger who later multiclasses to druid will effectively therefore get the totem druid path without the stat cost. I'm allowing this to stand, because it's a distinctly suboptimal build choice for a totem druid. Still, it opens up the option of taking a few druid levels for shapechange RP without crippling your main form.