Taming a Companion for non-rangers



These guidelines are intended to be used alongside the Unearthed Arcana Revised Ranger, or when the party lacks a ranger.

Taming possibility

Your DM will decide if it is possible to tame a certain creature. The creature must be a beast, unaligned and have an intelligence lower than six. As a rule of thumb, a beast can serve as an animal companion if it is Medium or smaller, has fifteen or fewer hit points, and cannot deal more than eight damage with a single attack. In general, that applies to creatures with a challenge rating of 1/4 or less, but there are exceptions.

Taming a Companion

To succesfully tame a companion you must succeed on a series of Animal Handling checks over the course of a couple days. Every day you get to try and tame the animal. It takes food worth at least 25 gp and an hour a day to tame the creature. The DC will be set by your DM. If you roll a 20, you get 2 successes. If you roll a 1, you get 2 failures.

If you have three successes, you have tamed the animal, which will enable you to start training the animal. If you have three failures, the animal will escape and fight to get away. If you keep the animal in a cage, you get disadventage on your Wisdom (Animal Handling) check. If at any point you harm the creature, it will try to flee. It will fight its way out if it has too.





Taming a Creature Wisdom (Animal Handling) Check, DC ___

Success: O O O

Failure: O O O

Leveling your Companion

If you want to level your companion you can share your experience with your companion. At levels 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 the creature gains an additional hit die. The experience needed to advance a level are half that of a player character. The level advancement table for characters can be found on page 15 in the PHB.

Leading your Companion

To give an order to a companion, you spend your action commanding it. See "Training Your Companion" for further information. The creature therefore uses your iniative and acts on your turn. The creature can however make an attack of oppertunity with its own Reaction.

If the character that tamed the companion goes unconscious, the creature will use its movement to flank the character and defend it from further harm. This means the creature will not attack others, only if they harm the character or the creature.

Training the Companion

As you train your creature, it becomes better at following your orders. Follow the table below for the obedience of the companion. Make a Wisdom (Animal Handling) check after the order to see if the creature obeys the order.

Level Obedience DC 1 DC 20 2 DC 15 3 DC 10 4 DC 5 5+ DC 0

If you meet the obedience DC, the creature will follow your order. If the creature doesn't obey, it may proceed to take an action of it's own or do nothing. This will be up to your DM.

Giving orders

From fifth companion level, you can spend your bonus action instead of your action to give an order to the animal companion, as it has learned to read you better.















































































Ractapopulous Owl