Animal Companion question

[Danvil]

I am currently playing with the ranger and chose a bear animal companion. A couple of things regarding the animal companion mechanics are not clear too me and I could not find hints in the manual or strategy guide.

 

When the animal companion endurance is decreased during combat, after combat its health actually never changes. For the player and normal companions the lost endurance is removed from health points. Is this indendet? Can my animal companion actually never die?

 

If the endurance of my animal companion drops to zero my main character gets a penalty. But after combat the animal companion just recovers to full health and endurance. Is there actually no penalty for an animal companion dropping to 0 endurance?

Edited March 28, 2015 by Danvil

[Mazuo]

I've only been testing a ranger in the starting area, but I'd like an answer about this too.  It seems very strange that animal companions have a health value and then it seemingly doesn't ever take a hit.

[falchen]

The penalty is that hefty debuf the ranger gets if their companion drops.

[Ansa]

Well, in combat both your pet's health and endurance drop, he is just healed full back without need to rest, unlike your own char.

And yeah, the actual penalty is if he gets dropped you get crazy debuffs.

 

So, keep him out of harm's way and make sure nothing is focusing it, really.

Kind of disappointing on the concept, where it would be nice if the pet could tank for you, but we have what we have.

[Mazuo]

Well, fair enough, but if we ignore the bug where Bonded Grief is sometimes lasting too long and not fading at the end of the encounter there still just seems to be something off.  Small bits of endurance damage on NPC tanks have health loss associated with it.

 

PotD start, let a bear take some hits from the wolves and his endurance drops at least a couple dozen points but zero health loss.  I'm just not sure why he should behave differently than your other party members.  As I recall I even directly fired on a pet and burned up his endurance fully and he just gets back up afterwards and is ready as ever to fight again.  Perhaps I'm recalling something incorrectly or something changes later in the game.

 

Edit:  Never mind, I see why they're probably doing it this way as with permadeath in the universe there'd be no way to acquire another permanent companion if he took actual health damage.  Still seems counterintuitive, but I'll assume that's it until informed otherwise.

Edited March 30, 2015 by Mazuo

[Voss]

Yeah no health issue for pet.

However there is a hidden issue for pets: no athletics skill. This means they get highly fatigued pretty quickly, which drops their accuracy and endurance. I discovered this while wandering around during the gilded vale quests quite by accident, as I happened to mouse over my pet, and found a huge debuff and a tiny endurance number.

 

The pet is the worst aspect of the ranger class. I actually like the class, but babying this waste of meat is tiresome.

[falchen]

Obviously the solution to this is pet armor.

[Danvil]

If the ranger pet never takes hits to it's health, than it it should not have a health value at all. This feels like a bug.

 

I noticed the fatigue on the pet too. This is probably also a bug. The pet should share the same fatigue as the ranger.

 

My bear is pretty durable and actually makes a good tank. And even if he dies, the hit my ranger takes is not too terrible.