Animal Companions

[herkles]

My personal motivation for asking about this is I'd like to use a Crag Cat as an animal companion for my ranger at some point if possible.

Crag cats are magical beasts. They can't be animal companions.

Dire animals are also magical creatures (they are fictitious animals) but they're on there. And Crag Cats... there's nothing special about 'em. Sure, they're immune to like one effect in PnP, but that has nothing to do with this.

actually not true, dire wolves, for example, are real creatures. They just happen to be extinct but they did exist.  More over, there are many animals that the dire version could be based off of as well.

[Feronius]

I am sure there is at least one non-magical creature in D&D that also looks like a mountain cat with a white pelt, right?
Judging from the surprised reaction when discovering it is a magical creature, I doubt she wanted a crag cat for its stats.

[Crimson Shuriken]

I was not implying the person wanted a crag cat for its stats, I was pointing out that they are more than they might appear.
I thought sharing the the 3rd edition write up of the creature might shed light on the WHY they are magical beasts and not animals.

[Feronius]

My question and comment were not directed towards any specific reply.
I have to admit I kind of skipped right past the post with the list of stats.

There are other mountain cats with white pelts though, right? A snow leopard maybe? I know there are at least other types of mountain cats.

[Dark Dreams]

My question and comment were not directed towards any specific reply.
I have to admit I kind of skipped right past the post with the list of stats.

There are other mountain cats with white pelts though, right? A snow leopard maybe? I know there are at least other types of mountain cats.

^ this. I'm really not after a PnP Crag Cat as a companion, because they are extraordinary... but NWN crag cats are about as vanilla as animals get. My motivation for the idea is purely from an RP standpoint, because of the terrain that Katerina focuses on (Balinoks). As far as the server mechanics of implimenting optional animals, it is admittedly a bit of a hassle (I believe it's a 2da modification if I'm not mistaken) and as a former builder/developer, I can totally understand and relate to not wanting to touch that with a 10 foot greatsword.  I didn't have my hopes up for it, but I thought it was neat enough of an idea to mention at least 

[Dark Dreams]

There are already some Dread Familiars and Companions that you can already choose from.

Everyone and their grandma picks up the assassin imp. If only it tried to murder your friends and family like it was suppose too...

I think that's only an option for Familiar, not Animal Companion.

I could be mistaken though.

Yes, there are custom creatures on the familiars list (I saw someone with a snowfox just the other day) but no custom animal companions.. where's the ranger love?  XD

[Merry Munchkin]

The developers could simply replicate the panther animal companion stats, but change the graphics appearance for it -- there is no real need to give it any new stats, or make it a "real" Crag Cat for the purposes of having it as an animal companion.  It sounds like folks just want the option to have an animal companion that looks like a Crag Cat, for RP purposes.

You could basically do the same thing for most other animal companions -- a bear could be given alternate appearances to replicate a black bear or brown bear or polar bear, a wolf could look like a dire wolf or a winter wolf, etc.

[McNastea]

I believe there are basic mountain lion templates and skins or whatever you'd like to call them that could be used in place of a crag cat. They're regular animals so they are allowed by those rules Blue listed to be companion, unlike crag cats, and have the lighter coat you seem to be wanting out of a large cat companion. They also live in the mountains, the terrain you mentioned you wanted your companion to be from (bears would also work too, though). But that's assuming anyone is willing and able to go through and add those in.

[Feronius]

Having a mountain goat animal companion, possibly by using the boar template (might have to mute, remove or ignore the boar soundfiles though), would be great.