Arelith

I apologize. I recently posted a very similar thread in feedback, but with the changes that occurred in the past few days with suggestions being re-openned and the forums being restructured I have to be realistic about the likelihood of that thread being overlooked.

The majority of animal companion options are more than twenty years old. This is extremely dispiriting for anyone looking to play a ranger or druid, and limits the kind of characters we can make and the stories we can tell.

I had an approved suggestion thread that was probably posted over a year ago, in which I suggested that more animal companions get added. A DM or admin responded that "Totemageddon" was coming. We are now well into 2024 and animal based characters have not gotten anything resembling the -familiar treatment.

There are a lot of cool animal and vermin models in the game. The wasp, phase wasp and turtle were absolutely amazing works of Arelith custom art, the crab familiar is hilarious and there are older models from the base game that would feel pretty new and shiny as animal companion options.

I really think it's time to pump out some new animal companions. Between the Arelith custom models and models existing in the base game, we have a lot of exciting possibilities. The Viking with the bear, the edgelord with the rat or the spider, the weirdo with the parrot, they've all been done to death. I don't want to be too pushy or specific but I have a short list of obvious picks.

-Every reasonably sized familiar option that is also a reasonable animal companion. Crabs, wasps, most of the quadrupedal animals.

-Non-carnivores. The server is infested with deer and roathes, and tree hugger pacifist characters don't really have a single reasonable animal companion option.

-Vermin. The aforementioned crab and wasps, several existing beetle models, a plethora of existing alternate spider models and others.

-Reptiles. The Arelith custom turtle and all the other cool reptilian models that inhabit the default game.

I understand that the traditional implementation of animal reskinning is tied to the druid totem system, and this necessitates a bit of balancing which is time consuming. But it's been a very long wait, and deciding which totem gets +2 to which ability scores and +4 to which skills can be a cumbersome process. The totem system seems profoundly inelegant next to the simplicity and freedom of -familiar.