The Animal Companion Problem

Gaear, how long has it been you've played with a druid? It's the AC every druid-player is awaiting... The black bear, while still a decent enough fighter, has very low hitpoints. The brown bear doesn't have this problem.

 

because it sounds smarter? ;-)
seriously though: no particular reason.

 

I haven't posted much at all but I've been a lurker here for quite a while.

The Co8 mod-packs are the only reason I still play this game, I enjoy and appreciate the efforts of the modders and I understand the effort that goes into modding (and figuring out how to do it.)

The AI change for AC's is a little odd, I found it jarring at first but I understood the rationale before I even poked around the forums to read more about it. While I don't feel quite as rabid about them being nerfed a bit, I do feel some apprehension that summons may be nerfed as well. I understand that AI programming is difficult, nuanced and the end results are usually judged subjectively.

The changes to the AC AI prevent it from needlessly destroying itself, but it has also made summons act a little too conservatively for some. If it isn't possible to separate the scripts for regular animals, summons and animal companions, perhaps a choice can be offered via the front-end? I haven't looked through the scripts in a very long time, perhaps I'll see if I can figure out how they work and if I can offer suggestions instead of just commentary.

All in all, I like the AC not killing itself and guarding the party, but if the summons aren't doing their kamikaze thing they aren't very useful.

 

For the bears, yes- haven't used the other summons though...

 

Okay, I just installed and activated the Circle of Eight Modpack 7.8.0 NC, and created a party of 5 (level 1) druids, and got them to acquire a jackal animal companion each, then off to the moathouse we went where we were promptly ambushed by 3 giant frogs. My druids wanted the jackals to engage the enemy, but for most of the combat, the jackals just ran over to my druids and guarded, or did absolutely nothing each turn. I believe that my jackals did about 5 attacks during the entire combat, and about half of those were from attacks of opportunity caused by giant frogs moving past the jackals. One jackal actually provoked an attack of opportunity from a giant frog by running past the frog to get to my druid. It was my druids who had to do the majority (i.e. about 75%) of the damage to the giant frogs in order to win the combat. If the jackals had been using the old "suicidal" animal companion A.I., I would have breezed through that combat, and the combat would have been significantly easier! For the love of all that is good and holy, please revert the animal companion A.I. to the old "suicidal" A.I.! It makes druids MUCH more effective in combat because the current "guarding" animal companion A.I is next to useless!

 

I think this behavior is designed by default to keep them alive more, but having tried the druid a bit and now playing a wizard using charms a lot, I agree that I'd prefer the suicidal method of them running off to attack as well since a druid wasn't really built to tank and I'd rather have the pet as a meat shield for a while to control the combat round. At it's current behavior, I can't even play the druid since I've been attacked by my pet more than it has helped me.

Charm spells still work good and you can at least depend on the pet to distract the enemy for a while.

Since the animal companion can be re-summoned regularly, it's not a huge lost to have the pet die and just re-summon...maybe if you had a party, it'd be beneficial to keep it around, but even then, the summons don't heal, or do anything really tactical so simple attack seems like the better bet to me.

It's really too bad in D&D that the summon monster spells are only 1 rd / lvl...Can't really be a pet "master".

 

Looks like we may need "Animal Companion Suicidal" as a Front End option on 7.9 Mod, eh?

LOL. While I like the Animals not being stupid in my current 7.8 game (I have only Meleny as a Druid and one Ranger who hasn't gotten her animal yet) I think I prefer the old attacking Companions as well.

It is great for role playing or story-line to keep your favorite Companion alive, but it really isn't hard to just say in your head "I would have told them to Heal and therefore they are not dead" and rename the new Companion the same for continuity.

Some sacrifices to role play have to be made for a computer game...

 

Another vote for a suicidal AC. I'm playing with a Druid currently, and frankly I don't bother summoning my companion any more, as he doesn't do anything useful for me...

 

Does an AC get unlimited AoO?

I would think if the sole purpose of my AC is to be between my Druid and on rushing baddies it would be helpful if it could attack, (or miss ) more than once.

 

I'm playing a Wiz 9 / Druid 1 now and notice that if I am in the threat range to engage in melee, my Animal Companion seems to attack as well. The scary thing with the AC is I've had it attack me before and don't know what causes that...Usually, when I am closer to death, it does this...

I think the suicidal AC is just more predictable so with druid as a level drop class, it at least won't mess up your plans. In my solo ironman games (very hard so far), having another character for enemies to target helps a lot.

 

The ai for the AC tells it to target the weakest foe I believe.

Sometimes the weakest and most hurt is YOUR PC.