If I'm reading right the primal companion of the ranger has a cr =your prof bonus. If that is the case then it appears you could make something like a level 3 Beast Master and lvl 7 in druid. Polymorph your beasty into a beast of cr 4 (prof bonus) or lower with full control over it. Is this correct in this thought?
***UPDATE!!!**** there is a Sage advice detailing how the steel defender does not have an actual CR (effectively counting as 0). So this answer, by extension, means that no other creatures with the "CR---Prof Bonus" thing would have one either.
Hmm... maybe I'm reading it wrong, but from what I can see the Primal Companion statblock doesn't have a CR... I don't know if it's considered the same "level" as your ranger... it gets Hit Dice equal to your Ranger level, but part of me thinks the designers deliberately gave it an inapplicable CR to avoid Polymorph shenanigans.
Hmm... maybe I'm reading it wrong, but from what I can see the Primal Companion statblock doesn't have a CR... I don't know if it's considered the same "level" as your ranger... it gets Hit Dice equal to your Ranger level, but part of me thinks the designers deliberately gave it an inapplicable CR to avoid Polymorph shenanigans.
On the primal companion stat block it has the "Challenge Rating--- Proficiency Bonus" thats why I'm sitting here thinking it actually has one and a decent one at that. That way the bm has a feasible upgrade option? Thats why I'm kinda at a loss. Does that verbiage mean it has a cr that can feasibly scale?
Ah, see, the way I read it was that the Challenge Rating is --- and the Proficiency bonus is meant to be a separate stat, so the CR is Blank and the Proficiency Bonus is clarifying that the Companion's Proficiency Bonus is equal to your Rangers PB. The two stats are just listed next to each other on the statblock in a way that makes it look like the two are related.
Ah, see, the way I read it was that the Challenge Rating is --- and the Proficiency bonus is meant to be a separate stat, so the CR is Blank and the Proficiency Bonus is clarifying that the Companion's Proficiency Bonus is equal to your Rangers PB. The two stats are just listed next to each other on the statblock in a way that makes it look like the two are related.
Which also makes sense. Normally you see things of differences below other things which would mean 100% its seperate stat; and things beside each other exemplifying the previous stat. Again normally, which leaves me confused on which way this is supposed to operate
When I read the "care and feeding" instructions for Primal Companion in TCoE, it states that the statblocks listed are to be used in place of the Ranger's Companion, which if you check the requirements for that are "Choose a beast that is no larger than Medium and that has a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower." There are the follow on instructions for how to use the Ranger's PB to increase AC, attack rolls, saving throws and the like, and how to determine the creatures HP dependent upon the Ranger's level. What I don't see are instruction to change the beasts CR as the Ranger reaches higher levels. One might argue that your DM could rework the CR of the beast with the guidance in the DMG and allow that to stand at the table. However, Transmorpher is most likely correct in the opinion that this is done to prevent shenanigans or to potentially have a companion that might overshadow the PC or other members of the party. This is supposed to be part of the supporting cast, not the starring role.
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Beast Companions and Primal Companions aren’t actually monsters, they’re player features, and thus have no CR. What’s the CR of a Spiritual Weapon? A Fireball? An Arcane Turret? N/A, none of those things are monsters/NPCs.
It specifically states that the Primal Companions have a CR = to the Ranger’s Proficiency Bonus. The same goes for Battle Smiths and their Steel Defenders, and all Artificers and their Homunculus Servants. Both it’s CR and it’s PB = the PC’s PB. If something has Str/Dex/Con/Int/Wis/Cha, Hit Dice, HP, etc., then it has to have a CR, even if it’s “0.” If it was not intended to have any CR at all, then why even include the word “challenge” on the statblock?
It’s a largely irrelevant distinction because CR only typically matters to balance an encounter against the party, and these critters are on the party’s side. That doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent.
Beast Companions and Primal Companions aren’t actually monsters, they’re player features, and thus have no CR. What’s the CR of a Spiritual Weapon? A Fireball? An Arcane Turret? N/A, none of those things are monsters/NPCs.
Well Those examples aren't monsters sure, there are others that are monsters such as a druid wildfire spirit. A summon Beast is a monster. The initial creature used for a Ranger do have a CR of 1/4 (as Kaavel and Transmorpher pointed out) and are also initially monsters found or picked for your companion. The Primal Companion is 100% a monster (or creature if you prefer). The turret you mentioned is an object with a stat block, same as an echo knight's echo. It does make sense 100% that its CR counts as 0 (as pointed out previously.) It is just that if it is 0, as others have stated, it seems odd for the placement of Prof Bonus right besides CR (albeit the way the CR looks with that dash makes total sense). Now granted this is also showing up in things like the steel defender which would lead to similar shenanigans; or in things like a creation bards animated summon thing. The hiccup on that on though is that it cant change its form if animated (now that could easily be argued due to using the bards create item thing on it, but it may be argued for things like polymorph too) Now is this super useful either way? Eh, kinda. The main thing I'm wondering though is if there is any official ruling on the primal companion (and for that matter things like steel defender and the like) for its CR and if it is tied to the Prof bonus or if that is just an odd placement for all creatures similar to it.Especially when it state it uses your prof in many places and that seems to continue on to how the CR stat is setup.
A [monster[Wolf[/monster] may be CR 1/4, but a Wolf Beast Companion with extra features and limitations on its actions is not a Wolf any longer. It does not have a CR 1/4, 1, or anything else. You can't summon it, you can't wild shape into it, It is a class feature, not a monster with a CR used to set encounter difficulties, which is primary purpose of CR (and, limiting certain spells). Not all creatures have CRs, only those that are combat-relevent NPCs/monsters. Player characters, for example, do not have CRs.
The new pet subclasses present statblocks for those features rather than asking you to do the math on your own sheet, but where a monster would normally have a "Challenge" entry, they instead have "Challenge - Proficiency Bonus (PB) equals your bonus." This is... odd, awkward wording, for sure, but really is not a challenge rating, as near as I can tell, just a way of describing what their proficiency bonus is. A monster derives its PB from its Challenge Rating; the new companions derive their PB from your character level instead.
Look at it this way, the statblock used in Summon Undead is written the same way. It still has to interact with a Cleric’s Turn Undead/Destroy Undead, or an Oathbreaker’s Controll Undead.
A Wolf may be CR 1/4, but a Wolf Beast Companion with extra features and limitations on its actions is not a Wolf any longer. It does not have a CR 1/4, 1, or anything else. You can't summon it, you can't wild shape into it, It is a class feature, not a monster with a CR used to set encounter difficulties, which is primary purpose of CR (and, limiting certain spells). Not all creatures have CRs, only those that are combat-relevent NPCs/monsters. Player characters, for example, do not have CRs.
The new pet subclasses present statblocks for those features rather than asking you to do the math on your own sheet, but where a monster would normally have a "Challenge" entry, they instead have "Challenge - Proficiency Bonus (PB) equals your bonus." This is... odd, awkward wording, for sure, but really is not a challenge rating, as near as I can tell, just a way of describing what their proficiency bonus is. A monster derives its PB from its Challenge Rating; the new companions derive their PB from your character level instead.
If that Wolf is a Beast of the Land Primal Companion it most certainly has a CR, it’s CR = the Ranger’s PB. That means it’s minimum CR is 2, and eventually it will increase all the way up to CR 6 when the Ranger hits 17th level. For PCs there is instruction to use Character level as CR.
So I just made a battlesmith to look at what it says the CR is of the defender on here. That does in fact say 0. This is leading me to think I was incorrect in how I was initially thinking (even if it is very very weird of how they did the wording, and for that matter why set it up like that?) Oh! It appears they fixed/altered it on the drakewarden Ranger though to have the Prof Bonus underneath the CR line.
So I just made a battlesmith to look at what it says the CR is of the defender on here. That does in fact say 0. This is leading me to think I was incorrect in how I was initially thinking (even if it is very very weird of how they did the wording, and for that matter why set it up like that?) Oh! It appears they fixed/altered it on the drakewarden Ranger though to have the Prof Bonus underneath the CR line.
You can’t go by DDB, they haven’t figured out how to correctly code stuff pulling PB from PCs yet. If you play with the PC’s level you’ll see the appropriate numbers don’t adjust on the creature as PB goes up and down.
So I just made a battlesmith to look at what it says the CR is of the defender on here. That does in fact say 0. This is leading me to think I was incorrect in how I was initially thinking (even if it is very very weird of how they did the wording, and for that matter why set it up like that?) Oh! It appears they fixed/altered it on the drakewarden Ranger though to have the Prof Bonus underneath the CR line.
You can’t go by DDB, they haven’t figured out how to correctly code stuff pulling PB from PCs yet. If you play with the PC’s level you’ll see the appropriate numbers don’t adjust on the creature as PB goes up and down.
If that Wolf is a Beast of the Land Primal Companion it most certainly has a CR, it’s CR = the Ranger’s PB. That means it’s minimum CR is 2, and eventually it will increase all the way up to CR 6 when the Ranger hits 17th level. For PCs there is instruction to use Character level as CR.
Dismissive banter aside, you're well aware that the statblock does not say "Challenge equals your bonus." Perhaps that's the RAI, perhaps not, but RAW all we know is that the word "challenge" appears behind a dash near a statement that tells us that the companion's proficiency bonus equals your bonus. How to interpret that is very much under question, don't act like it's obvious. A CR 3 creature, under the rules provided in the MM and DMG, or even level 3 character, under the rules provided in the PHB, would not be expected to have a PB of +3, so I'm not sure I believe that that's what it's trying to tell us when it provides that a level 5 Ranger's companion has a PB of +3. On top of that, the Ranger themself doesn't have a CR at all, so I'm not sure why a creature which cannot exist outside of their class abilities, which will never be encountered as an enemy or independent combatant, would be expected to have one.
Are there stat blocks from summons that don't have that word? What spell?
The "Challenge" space on a monster stablock is used to (1) provide guidance to the DM when building encounters, and (2) to reference when questions come up about its proficiency bonus... and only very rarely, (3) to interact with certain spells. It seems natural to me that they would stick the information about proficiency bonuses (use 2) in the same line for new class feature creatures that don't have CRs... but I do agree that printing "Challenge - ...." was a weird choice
If the intent was to provide that the creature has a CR equal to your Character's proficiency bonus, and that the creature breaks the general rule about proficiency bonuses in the DMG and MM to instead have a nontypical PB not based on its CR, then that certainly isn't spelled out clearly. And, it would be weird, because it would only be relevant to edge case (3). A DM that was building an encounter (use 1) would not be using a player class features to do so, since player class levels dont translate to CR anyway. With the feature already providing explicitly what the PB is, CR isn't needed for (2) either. So this whole complicated shenanigan was devised just to ensure that the companion had a (weird) CR for Polymorph rather than "n/a"? And the weird non-typical CR-not-linked-to-PB was found preferable, over treating the companion as a monster with a CR appropriate to its PB as described in the MM/DMG?
There are, but they are mostly from weird edge cases like Animate Objects so I'm retracting my statement. Probably shouldn't have deleted it, though, sorry.
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If that Wolf is a Beast of the Land Primal Companion it most certainly has a CR, it’s CR = the Ranger’s PB. That means it’s minimum CR is 2, and eventually it will increase all the way up to CR 6 when the Ranger hits 17th level. For PCs there is instruction to use Character level as CR.
A Beast of the Land Primal Companion can't be a wolf, and a wolf can't be a Beast of the Land Primal Companion. Your companion can have the form of a wolf, but it hasn't got the wolf's statblock, and it's a DM call how non-statblock features apply (such as being adapted to high altitudes).
Primal Companions are Challenge -. It says so right in their statblock, in Tasha's, very, very explicitly. None of them are CR 2 or CR PB.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's "explicit," but yes, I read "Challenge — Proficiency Bonus (PB) equals your bonus" as "Challenge — (Proficiency Bonus (PB) equals your bonus)," with the dash being the same "null" that folks say it means for Net damage. Reading it as "Challenge — [Rating equal to] Proficiency Bonus (PB) [which] equals your bonus" is a lot weirder and requires a lot more unwritten language, not just unwritten punctuation. I can rationalize that they skipped printing the parenthesis, because they really wanted to put "(PB)" in there for some reason and didn't want nested parenthesis. I find it much harder to rationalize that they just entirely skipped answering what the CR was, or thought it was somehow self-evident without that language. Also, regular Challenge ratings don't have dashes or parenthesis, so that still wouldn't entirely justify the " - " em dash.
If I'm reading right the primal companion of the ranger has a cr =your prof bonus. If that is the case then it appears you could make something like a level 3 Beast Master and lvl 7 in druid. Polymorph your beasty into a beast of cr 4 (prof bonus) or lower with full control over it. Is this correct in this thought?
***UPDATE!!!**** there is a Sage advice detailing how the steel defender does not have an actual CR (effectively counting as 0). So this answer, by extension, means that no other creatures with the "CR---Prof Bonus" thing would have one either.
Hmm... maybe I'm reading it wrong, but from what I can see the Primal Companion statblock doesn't have a CR... I don't know if it's considered the same "level" as your ranger... it gets Hit Dice equal to your Ranger level, but part of me thinks the designers deliberately gave it an inapplicable CR to avoid Polymorph shenanigans.
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On the primal companion stat block it has the "Challenge Rating--- Proficiency Bonus" thats why I'm sitting here thinking it actually has one and a decent one at that. That way the bm has a feasible upgrade option? Thats why I'm kinda at a loss. Does that verbiage mean it has a cr that can feasibly scale?
Ah, see, the way I read it was that the Challenge Rating is --- and the Proficiency bonus is meant to be a separate stat, so the CR is Blank and the Proficiency Bonus is clarifying that the Companion's Proficiency Bonus is equal to your Rangers PB. The two stats are just listed next to each other on the statblock in a way that makes it look like the two are related.
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Which also makes sense. Normally you see things of differences below other things which would mean 100% its seperate stat; and things beside each other exemplifying the previous stat. Again normally, which leaves me confused on which way this is supposed to operate
When I read the "care and feeding" instructions for Primal Companion in TCoE, it states that the statblocks listed are to be used in place of the Ranger's Companion, which if you check the requirements for that are "Choose a beast that is no larger than Medium and that has a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower." There are the follow on instructions for how to use the Ranger's PB to increase AC, attack rolls, saving throws and the like, and how to determine the creatures HP dependent upon the Ranger's level. What I don't see are instruction to change the beasts CR as the Ranger reaches higher levels. One might argue that your DM could rework the CR of the beast with the guidance in the DMG and allow that to stand at the table. However, Transmorpher is most likely correct in the opinion that this is done to prevent shenanigans or to potentially have a companion that might overshadow the PC or other members of the party. This is supposed to be part of the supporting cast, not the starring role.
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Beast Companions and Primal Companions aren’t actually monsters, they’re player features, and thus have no CR. What’s the CR of a Spiritual Weapon? A Fireball? An Arcane Turret? N/A, none of those things are monsters/NPCs.
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It specifically states that the Primal Companions have a CR = to the Ranger’s Proficiency Bonus. The same goes for Battle Smiths and their Steel Defenders, and all Artificers and their Homunculus Servants. Both it’s CR and it’s PB = the PC’s PB. If something has Str/Dex/Con/Int/Wis/Cha, Hit Dice, HP, etc., then it has to have a CR, even if it’s “0.” If it was not intended to have any CR at all, then why even include the word “challenge” on the statblock?
It’s a largely irrelevant distinction because CR only typically matters to balance an encounter against the party, and these critters are on the party’s side. That doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent.
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Well Those examples aren't monsters sure, there are others that are monsters such as a druid wildfire spirit. A summon Beast is a monster. The initial creature used for a Ranger do have a CR of 1/4 (as Kaavel and Transmorpher pointed out) and are also initially monsters found or picked for your companion. The Primal Companion is 100% a monster (or creature if you prefer). The turret you mentioned is an object with a stat block, same as an echo knight's echo. It does make sense 100% that its CR counts as 0 (as pointed out previously.) It is just that if it is 0, as others have stated, it seems odd for the placement of Prof Bonus right besides CR (albeit the way the CR looks with that dash makes total sense). Now granted this is also showing up in things like the steel defender which would lead to similar shenanigans; or in things like a creation bards animated summon thing. The hiccup on that on though is that it cant change its form if animated (now that could easily be argued due to using the bards create item thing on it, but it may be argued for things like polymorph too) Now is this super useful either way? Eh, kinda. The main thing I'm wondering though is if there is any official ruling on the primal companion (and for that matter things like steel defender and the like) for its CR and if it is tied to the Prof bonus or if that is just an odd placement for all creatures similar to it.Especially when it state it uses your prof in many places and that seems to continue on to how the CR stat is setup.
A [monster[Wolf[/monster] may be CR 1/4, but a Wolf Beast Companion with extra features and limitations on its actions is not a Wolf any longer. It does not have a CR 1/4, 1, or anything else. You can't summon it, you can't wild shape into it, It is a class feature, not a monster with a CR used to set encounter difficulties, which is primary purpose of CR (and, limiting certain spells). Not all creatures have CRs, only those that are combat-relevent NPCs/monsters. Player characters, for example, do not have CRs.
The new pet subclasses present statblocks for those features rather than asking you to do the math on your own sheet, but where a monster would normally have a "Challenge" entry, they instead have "Challenge - Proficiency Bonus (PB) equals your bonus." This is... odd, awkward wording, for sure, but really is not a challenge rating, as near as I can tell, just a way of describing what their proficiency bonus is. A monster derives its PB from its Challenge Rating; the new companions derive their PB from your character level instead.
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Look at it this way, the statblock used in Summon Undead is written the same way. It still has to interact with a Cleric’s Turn Undead/Destroy Undead, or an Oathbreaker’s Controll Undead.
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If that Wolf is a Beast of the Land Primal Companion it most certainly has a CR, it’s CR = the Ranger’s PB. That means it’s minimum CR is 2, and eventually it will increase all the way up to CR 6 when the Ranger hits 17th level. For PCs there is instruction to use Character level as CR.
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So I just made a battlesmith to look at what it says the CR is of the defender on here. That does in fact say 0. This is leading me to think I was incorrect in how I was initially thinking (even if it is very very weird of how they did the wording, and for that matter why set it up like that?) Oh! It appears they fixed/altered it on the drakewarden Ranger though to have the Prof Bonus underneath the CR line.
You can’t go by DDB, they haven’t figured out how to correctly code stuff pulling PB from PCs yet. If you play with the PC’s level you’ll see the appropriate numbers don’t adjust on the creature as PB goes up and down.
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Fair point.
Dismissive banter aside, you're well aware that the statblock does not say "Challenge equals your bonus." Perhaps that's the RAI, perhaps not, but RAW all we know is that the word "challenge" appears behind a dash near a statement that tells us that the companion's proficiency bonus equals your bonus. How to interpret that is very much under question, don't act like it's obvious. A CR 3 creature, under the rules provided in the MM and DMG, or even level 3 character, under the rules provided in the PHB, would not be expected to have a PB of +3, so I'm not sure I believe that that's what it's trying to tell us when it provides that a level 5 Ranger's companion has a PB of +3. On top of that, the Ranger themself doesn't have a CR at all, so I'm not sure why a creature which cannot exist outside of their class abilities, which will never be encountered as an enemy or independent combatant, would be expected to have one.
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Are there stat blocks from summons that don't have that word? What spell?The "Challenge" space on a monster stablock is used to (1) provide guidance to the DM when building encounters, and (2) to reference when questions come up about its proficiency bonus... and only very rarely, (3) to interact with certain spells. It seems natural to me that they would stick the information about proficiency bonuses (use 2) in the same line for new class feature creatures that don't have CRs... but I do agree that printing "Challenge - ...." was a weird choice
If the intent was to provide that the creature has a CR equal to your Character's proficiency bonus, and that the creature breaks the general rule about proficiency bonuses in the DMG and MM to instead have a nontypical PB not based on its CR, then that certainly isn't spelled out clearly. And, it would be weird, because it would only be relevant to edge case (3). A DM that was building an encounter (use 1) would not be using a player class features to do so, since player class levels dont translate to CR anyway. With the feature already providing explicitly what the PB is, CR isn't needed for (2) either. So this whole complicated shenanigan was devised just to ensure that the companion had a (weird) CR for Polymorph rather than "n/a"? And the weird non-typical CR-not-linked-to-PB was found preferable, over treating the companion as a monster with a CR appropriate to its PB as described in the MM/DMG?
I don't buy it.
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There are, but they are mostly from weird edge cases like Animate Objects so I'm retracting my statement. Probably shouldn't have deleted it, though, sorry.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
A Beast of the Land Primal Companion can't be a wolf, and a wolf can't be a Beast of the Land Primal Companion. Your companion can have the form of a wolf, but it hasn't got the wolf's statblock, and it's a DM call how non-statblock features apply (such as being adapted to high altitudes).
Primal Companions are Challenge -. It says so right in their statblock, in Tasha's, very, very explicitly. None of them are CR 2 or CR PB.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's "explicit," but yes, I read "Challenge — Proficiency Bonus (PB) equals your bonus" as "Challenge — (Proficiency Bonus (PB) equals your bonus)," with the dash being the same "null" that folks say it means for Net damage. Reading it as "Challenge — [Rating equal to] Proficiency Bonus (PB) [which] equals your bonus" is a lot weirder and requires a lot more unwritten language, not just unwritten punctuation. I can rationalize that they skipped printing the parenthesis, because they really wanted to put "(PB)" in there for some reason and didn't want nested parenthesis. I find it much harder to rationalize that they just entirely skipped answering what the CR was, or thought it was somehow self-evident without that language. Also, regular Challenge ratings don't have dashes or parenthesis, so that still wouldn't entirely justify the " - " em dash.
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