Creature Handler Archive

A CL 10 will only give you a little extra damage, so if that is all you want is that, a droid may be a better option and no skillpoints need to be spent on CH.

With 4040 in CH, you can get up to CL 36 I believe. These are capable of doing a bit more damage, although even as a TKA you will probably outdamage them.

A low level pet is going to be best used to deliver triggered specials such as Stun, Intimidate, Blind, Knockdown, Armor Break and Snare. A higher level pet could do these and get some innate abilities such as Marring Storm that increases their damage. For convenience or your pet's survivability there are other specials you may want to consider. Go to this thread, the second section on special abilities specifically.

BE pets are an additional option to consider. They get one less ability slot and do not come with a possible free ability, however they attack at twice the speed. There are some other nuances, but the main trade-off is between ability slots for wild pets and speed and customization for BE pets.

Given all that, more direct answers to your questions:

1) The CL of pet usefulness really depends what you are looking for. Higher is going to be better on damage and be more versatile once fully trained and leveled. Lower can still be good for state effects. All grouped pets get a level boost like any other player.

2) I find a CL 36 pet can be used to good effect. With grouping, almost anything should provide some benefit. Whether it is enough or not you would have to see for yourself.

3) There is no way to control pet size, unfortunately. As it gains experience, it will grow to adult size. BE pets are based on a 'natural' size and a lot of them are coming out very small or very large for their CL. It may be possible to get a gurreck or something else that remains relatively small at CL 36. You would need to ask a BE about this.

Message Edited by Seiryuu on 08-31-2005 11:21 PM

Thank you very much!

I did some mucking around with a template program and I figured that I'd be better off with 0044, since the Special Attack commands aren't all that necassary if I'm able to find a Master CH to train it special attacks that I don't have (which I have). And if BE pets attack twice as fast, that will only be better for me. I don't want the pet to be the main source of damage, but I am looking for it to be enough to justify not having enough slots to reach 76. I figure with some skill, the abilities that I'd gain out of Smuggling, Teras Kasi, and the pet's special attacks/debuffs, I should be a pretty formidable force.

And about the size, I'll look into it. Concept is really important to me, and having a pet twice the size of my character would really ruin things for me.

A level 36 pet gives you the potential for 8000+ health.
You could train him with aggression 3 and he would be able to tank while you deal all the damage.

if you get lvl 3 of the pet gruoping tree this allows you to have 2 pets out at once upto a combined amount of your max pet lvl,and does not take into account a droid so it is possable as a low level ch to have some reasonable tanks as long as you are the main damage dealer.

That seems like a fairly good route to take. I don't think the special attack training from the Taming tree makes a difference anymore with the change to pet specials. You will be limited to non-aggressive skins without BE clothes, but there are plenty of good wild or BE pets still available.

Well, I think level 10 is too low to use as a viable combat pet, most high level enemies will knock it out in 1 shot. It won't matter if you attack your enemy first so you get the aggro if the enemy has an area attack, your pet will go down fast if it gets hit. I think Level 20 or above should be alright. I quite often use 3 Level 22 Spitting Rawls, they can take a few shots before being knocked out of the fight, and if I keep the aggro they last against the odd area attack. A lot of the cats are around there (Greater Sludge Panthers 23, Female Narglatches 22, etc.). Level 36 should work well for you. In addition to one of the other branches, I would go for 0040 which gives you Enrage that increases damage and Embloden that increases health, both will help your pet tremendously. Pet size is currently based on how much you use it, so the more you use it the larger it will get; size increases as your pet gains training ability slots.