BEASTMASTER ARCHETYPE GUIDE - Pathfinder 2e

oh what a good day at adventuring I even leveled up can't wait to see what tomorrow brings [Music] good morning dog no biscuit you want biscuit let's go get a biscuit come on you did so good good cookies howdy my name is nonat and my hair looks horrible today because I took a shower and put my headphones on Welcome to My Guide to The Beastmaster archetype for Pathfinder 2E now some of the more observant ones of you out there may be asking yourself wait a second acrobat archaeologist Beastmaster that's not what comes next and you're right good job with alphabet I'm going slightly out of order here today for a very special reason and that is to support the generous sponsor for today's video Eldritch Osiris games and their upcoming Kickstarter monstrous beasts a guide to friend them let's be honest we all need more monsters to potentially throw at our players but what if I told you that Eldritch Osiris isn't just making a bestiary but rather they're making a bestiary with a huge plethora of new animal companion options EOG is going above and beyond with this bestie area you are getting both GM options and player options which is fantastic most of the time a bestiary is just helpful for a GM but they are making something that is helpful for your entire table and they've released a little teaser just to get you enticed if you look in the description of this video there is a link to the drive through RPG that will give you a little surprise a little tease into just what monstrous beasts has going for it I'm not going to show you all the details you have to go and get it yourself it's completely free but if you've ever wanted an owl bear animal companion Now's the Time if you want to stay updated on monstrous beasts a guide to friend them click the second link in the description that will take you to their backer kit there you can sign up for their mailing list to be notified right when the campaign goes live and y'all speaking from Kickstarter experience that mailing list is the lifeblood of a campaign so you would be doing them and me a great favor if you went down and supported them it's completely free just throw your email on that list it does so much for a project at the time of recording this there's about 50 people on their mailing list I want to see that number shoot up to at least 150. I know at least a hundred of you can click that link put your email on that list I'm sure it would mean the world to EOG and help them to get that much closer to making monstrous beasts a reality thank you Eldritch Osiris games the only Pathfinder workers Co-op for sponsoring this video let's talk B The Beastmaster is a fascinating case because it is two full pages of feats but the Feats themselves aren't really gonna be explainable in this video that's because most of their Feats are gain an animal companion improve the animal companion keep improving the animal companion I don't personally have a video on Animal Companions even though I've been talking about making one for two years now but I'll add a card to how it's played video it's a little bit old but it should still be incredibly accurate on all of the details of Animal Companions if you don't know how they work check out that video I'm also going to be blunt with you Beastmaster is probably the single strongest archetype in the entire game this is because for one class feat and only needing to be trained in nature you can get an animal companion an animal companion that levels up with you improves its stats every single level and will always be useful as an additional body on the battlefield even if you never improve it to a mature companion or above it's still an extra creature it's still extra action economy it's still phenomenal this is one of those archetypes that if you're trying to min max and win the game if everyone in your party takes The Beastmaster dedication you're gonna win you know if you have four characters that's four extra bodies four extra chunks of hit points four extra flanking opportunities it's actually kind of broken that's why I really encourage you to sincerely think if you want to take The Beastmaster archetype make it a role play Choice don't just take it because power but that's another great part of The Beastmaster it's a really fun role play opportunity adding a pet or even just a full-on companion to your character is super cool so let's stop wasting time and dive into the Feats of what exactly it can do the dedication may look like a lot of words but all it really says is you get an animal companion there's a lot of clarification here on like the focus spells you get out of the archetype and stuff but nothing of meat is there aside from you get an animal companion I guess you do also get the call Companion action which you can spend a minute swapping Animal Companions if you have more than one and yes The Beastmaster can have more than one however don't let that fool you into thinking you can just have like five Animal Companions per character you can still only have one active companion at any given time but you can have up to four different companions by taking the additional companion feat this means you can have a flying companion a swimming companion a normal companion like a mammal and a burrowing companion all as four different companions you can swap between depending on where you're going oh you're going underground better bring my purple worm campaign that's not a thing but I wish it was going on a pirate ship let's call my Shark companion and even if you go across the sea to a new continent once you get on land hey you can call your tiger companion back to you I promise it makes sense somehow right GM at level four you can take the heel companion feat to get the heel animal Focus spell this is the heal spell except it can only be used with one or two actions for touch or 30 foot range and it can only be cast on animals simple as that it's just heal on animals also at level 4 you can mature your companion so at level four you have a lot of different options additionally on top of maturing your companion it also gets a free action per turn even if you don't issue it a command also at level 4 you can take magic hide which is a single action Focus spell that gives your animal companion plus one Armor class for a minute giving your animal companion a bonus to Armor class is honestly pretty difficult in pf2 I have not seen barting come up very much even though I do think it exists so giving them a status bonus to Armor class is really helpful also also also at level four you can take wild empathy which means you can use diplomacy to make an impression on animals I don't think you're going to be taking this if you took The Beastmaster archetype but maybe if you're playing with free archetype and you just have to put that extra feat somewhere you can hang out with squirrels level 6 is the only unique Focus spell to The Beastmaster Beast Master trance this costs three actions and a focus point to cast but you then start seeing through your companion's eyes for up to one minute this is really interesting but also kind of difficult to use at low levels this is because you still have to use your own perception check to see things but you can command your animal to go a certain distance and look around the problem is this does not give you telepathy with the animal you can't command them to do something even if you see something they don't only once you are character level 11 and this is heightened to sixth level can you actually do that and start issuing commands while in beastmasters trance this is when the spell gets the most useful especially if your animal can fly and then once it's heightened again at character level 15 there is no longer a range on the spell if you are on one side of the planet and the animal companion is on the other you can talk to them and see through their eyes very useful for Recon or leaving them at a post to guard your camp or something and the duration is up to one hour the problem with some of this is the targeting requirement for beastmasters trance sure the planetary range is cool but in order to cast this you need to be able to see your animal companion so if you have some kind of portal they can jump through and you can see through their eyes that's helpful but otherwise the increase of range isn't that helpful overall aside from being able to run as far as they can for up to an hour at level 6 they can also take companions cry which if you now spend two actions to issue a command to your animal companion instead of just one they get three three actions that turn so if your animal companion is just really far away you could give them two of your actions they could spend two actions closing the distance and then still get an attack off it's situational but useful when you need it level 8 is incredible companion the companion gets stronger level 10 is Beastmaster bond this is fantastic and I would say almost a must take you have telepathy with your Animal Companions it's a range up to 100 feet too and it doesn't say anything about being blocked by walls or anything so as long as there is a straight line of a hundred feet between you and your animal companion you can hang out and have a Skype call and if you happen to have legendary Proficiency in nature you have permanent telepathy with no range as long as you are on the same Planet you can communicate with your Animal Companions this leads to some cool possibilities of role play potential because remember you can have up to four companions you can only have one active one but this means you could still telepathically communicate with your inactive ones just because they're inactive doesn't mean they don't exist you could still as a GM even use those extra companions as a way to give The Beastmaster additional information and that's super cool also at level 10 is in large companion you get in large companion which enlarges your companion they get affected by a fourth level in large spell this can only target your animal companion no other animals or targets and it lasts for one minute it is nice that it's not sustained though you just make them big and let them go now beastmaster's call is so freaking cool and it's such an interesting strategic option for any character really I'm sad I've only ever seen this kind of thing on The Beastmaster for one action you conjure an astral projection of one of your inactive companions not only does it appear in one square within 30 feet of you it also automatically gives its support benefit what this means is for three actions you could beastmasters call to have one inactive companion appear and support for another action you could command your other animal companion your active one to move into position and support and for your third action you can hit the target triggering both support benefit at the same time and that's so freaking cool this also lasts until the start of your next turn unless it takes damage at any point if the astral projection takes damage it does disappear now I do notice it only says it provides support benefit I don't think you can flank with the astral projection I'll leave it up to you in the comments to sort of discuss and talk about but it doesn't say it actually exists it just says it provides the support benefit companion your companion becomes either Nimble or Savage I know I'm really just running through these but again Watch how it's played video if you want more detail on animal companion advancement the other option for level 14 is also great side by side as long as you and your animal companion are both adjacent to the same Target you are considered flanking with each other so even if a large two by two creatures in front of you and you two are just in front of it as long as you're both adjacent to the creature it's flat-footed against your attacks very nice and finally at level 16 lead the pack is cooler than it is useful you get to have two active companions at any given time which is awesome you could have two direwolves flanking you at all times fighting alongside you but it's really hard to manage with lead the pack you have three options on your turn when it comes to commanding your Animal Companions if you spend no actions to command one of them gets to take one action if you spend one action to command them either both of them get one action or one of them gets two actions and the weirdest part of this is if you command an animal using lead the pack you can't command an animal again now there's no once per turn requirement on command an animal normally you can command your companion to take two actions and then command them again to take two actions but if you have lead the pack and you command an animal on either of your active companions you're no longer allowed to command again now partially I understand this because that's turning two actions into four actions and both of those creatures have separate multiple attack penalties if you could do this you could theoretically attack three times per turn at full bonus and potentially even more times at a penalty which would be insane so because of that lead the pack just ends up feeling kind of cumbersome and in a lot of cases you'd rather just be able to command one companion twice than each companion for one action and yeah you can't command one for two actions command the other for two actions if you command an animal with lead the pack you can't command an animal to make either companion act again until your next turn so this is an unfortunate case of balancing because it absolutely needs to be balanced but it kind of makes lead the pack mostly useless the only time lead the pack is actively helpful is if all three of you are already adjacent to the enemy if that exact situation occurs you're in business command attack at full penalty attack at full penalty then you still have two actions to do whatever you want the hard part is getting them into that position in reality if you need to close the distance you're gonna be command both of you move up into position okay now I move into position and maybe attack and now we're all sitting ducks plus it's level 16 so you're probably all taking massive damage it's cool maybe I'm missing something here but it's really hard to use lead the pack effectively but it's also still really really cool to have two companions next to you at all times and that and that The Beastmaster honestly I thought that was gonna take a lot longer than it did only 20 minutes to record from start to finish including the plug for our generous sponsor Elgin Osiris games and their monsters beats the guy to friend them Kickstarter go click the links check out the owl bear companion and sign up for the mailing list do it for me but yeah overall Beastmaster is insane Animal Companions are so strong because they require so little investment and the fact that you can get one just for a class feat and nature training proficiency is honestly incredible that's it for me y'all I want to give a huge shout out to my YouTube members and my patrons if you want to become one of them there is a big blue join button below this video next to the big red subscribe button which if you haven't hit you probably should I mean come on you don't want to be like left out cut that out if you enjoyed the video please do leave a like and hey check out one of these videos of the other archetypes I've covered because I think I can put two videos up if not it's gonna be like a video and a subscribe to me button both of which are just fantastic choices thank you so much for watching I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day and until next time no not ones

Channel: Nonat1s (On Hiatus)

Views: 15,551

Keywords: Pathfinder, Pathfinder 2e, Pathfinder Second Edition, Advanced Player's Guide, Pathfinder 2e APG, Nonat1s, Pathfinder 2e Nonat1s, Pathfinder 2e Level 1, Pathfinder 2e new features, Pathfinder 2e New Ancestries, beastmaster archetype, pathfinder 2e beastmaster, beast master, 2e beastmaster, pathfinder beastmaster, nonat1s beastmaster, animal companion 2e, pathfinder animal companion, pathfinder 2e animal companion, nonat1s archetype guide, nonat1s class guide, beyond class

Id: 9d2P9YBzO78

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 26 2022