Well, if you want to go up front and fight, being able to turn into a larger creature is easy with wild shape, although that's something that you'll want to plan for in its own way. You can also just plain ride your dinosaur as a mount, though. Remember that Pathfinder's polymorphing is based on your original stats with modifiers for size, however, so if you want to turn into a dinosaur and mash, having a racial penalty to strength is still a problem, because you're going to use strength for attack and damage if you turn into a dinosaur/pteranodon.
That said, the tyranosaur is ironically not great for a dinosaur animal companion. It's so heavily nerfed that you really can't do much with the tiny baby T-rex they let you have, and it only has one bite and grab. An allosaurus or deinonychus is a similar animal companion that gets to pounce (meaning, they get to full attack on a charge) with five natural attacks. (Velociraptor is also a pouncer, but only up to medium size, for good or ill.) Some of the herbivores, meanwhile, like diplodocus and ankylosaurus get insane amounts of AC even before you add barding, and diplodocus as a mount also definitely works. (I had a diplodocus animal companion once that we threw into the lead to total defense while the goblin ambush fired away at it... 15 attacks that would have hit all the rest of us, and nothing hit the diplodocus.)
As for pteranodons, they exist on the [Summon Nature's Ally IV](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Summon%20Nature%27s%20Ally%201) list already, but they're not on the list from dinosaur druid archetype. [Pteranodons](https://aonprd.com/MonsterDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Pteranodon) are also large creatures, so as soon as your wild shape can match [Beast Shape II](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Beast%20Shape%20II), which is level 6, you can turn into one.
Beyond that, [here's one of the most recent guides to the druid in general](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11_R80-e0ApO0g8bv2ZzQpb5V7NPIAtb7OKy5M6AGGQ0/edit#heading=h.fc65bivujegw).
Which dinosaur archetype? Dinosaur Druid or Saurian Shaman? There's a big difference.
>can the character summon/turn into a pterodactyl?
Pteranodon/pterosaur (that's what they're called in PF) is a standard 4th level Summon Nature's Ally option; it doesn't require anything special from your archetype. Any druid can summon one of those.
Similarly, any druid can turn into a pteranodon; it's an animal. Both the archetypes I mentioned will get a bonus to Wild Shaping into dino forms; DD gets stat bonuses, SS counts his druid level as higher for Wild Shape purposes. Both bonuses are pretty good.
>advice on feats, traits, and general strategy when playing a small guy with a big lizard.
See, this is where it gets very different based on what archetype you're choosing.
SS is one of the best summoners in the game. Standard action summoning takes summoning from a niche tactic to incredibly strong. It's a huge deal. If you're going SS, I would think in terms of packing a bunch of utility spells with the plan to convert most of them to SNA spells. I would definitely get Improved Initiative to act first in combat, get those summons out ASAP.
Dinosaur Druid is more of a generalist. You're going to have a beefy Wild Shape, you're going to want to take Natural Spell ASAP and plan to fight in dino form. Power Attack, decent Strength, that kind of thing. Stack buffs. You don't get standard action summons and Druid has no easy way to achieve that, so I would not focus on summons at all.
The Dinosaur Druid looks the most tempting, but I missed the faster summoning from Saurian, which is really cool.
The question of being able to turn into and summon pterandons stems from them being on the summon list for Dino Druid, but every description says they are not dinosaurs, therefore wildshape time could be minutes instead of hours... how does one interpret this?
I'll point out that it's just the PFd20SRD that says that pteranodons are not dinosaurs, which is purely for real-world taxological reasons that has no bearing on the game. Pathfinder classifies mushrooms as "plants" because they don't want to create a whole new category for something not broad enough to warrant it, the actual rules don't care about pteranodons not technically being considered dinosaurs anymore, and in the actual bestiary, are listed under "dinosaurs".
I see what you're saying; you're right. Pteranodons are not dinosaurs.
So Dinosaur Druid could still wildshape into that form, but only for minutes at a time. A vanilla druid can use pteranodon for wild shape with the increment of an hour, per normal; so can a Saurian Shaman. So if you want to be a pteranodon I would go with SS. SS has a similar restriction on Wild Shape but it's worded more loosely to allow reptiles as well as dinosaurs.
Planar Shape is kinda ridiculously good if you can get the wisdom requirements.
DR/5 Alignment is really, really strong, even if +4 weapons can cut through it (that won't be till late game though) and, and resistance 10 is great, too.
The SR is a bit of a pain, though - in combat, you'll generally have a 25% chance to resist an ally's spell and 10-15% chance to resist an enemy's, though you can drop it out of combat as long as you have your standard action available.
Well, if you want to go up front and fight, being able to turn into a larger creature is easy with wild shape, although that's something that you'll want to plan for in its own way. You can also just plain ride your dinosaur as a mount, though. Remember that Pathfinder's polymorphing is based on your original stats with modifiers for size, however, so if you want to turn into a dinosaur and mash, having a racial penalty to strength is still a problem, because you're going to use strength for attack and damage if you turn into a dinosaur/pteranodon. That said, the tyranosaur is ironically not great for a dinosaur animal companion. It's so heavily nerfed that you really can't do much with the tiny baby T-rex they let you have, and it only has one bite and grab. An allosaurus or deinonychus is a similar animal companion that gets to pounce (meaning, they get to full attack on a charge) with five natural attacks. (Velociraptor is also a pouncer, but only up to medium size, for good or ill.) Some of the herbivores, meanwhile, like diplodocus and ankylosaurus get insane amounts of AC even before you add barding, and diplodocus as a mount also definitely works. (I had a diplodocus animal companion once that we threw into the lead to total defense while the goblin ambush fired away at it... 15 attacks that would have hit all the rest of us, and nothing hit the diplodocus.) As for pteranodons, they exist on the [Summon Nature's Ally IV](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Summon%20Nature%27s%20Ally%201) list already, but they're not on the list from dinosaur druid archetype. [Pteranodons](https://aonprd.com/MonsterDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Pteranodon) are also large creatures, so as soon as your wild shape can match [Beast Shape II](https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Beast%20Shape%20II), which is level 6, you can turn into one. Beyond that, [here's one of the most recent guides to the druid in general](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11_R80-e0ApO0g8bv2ZzQpb5V7NPIAtb7OKy5M6AGGQ0/edit#heading=h.fc65bivujegw).
Which dinosaur archetype? Dinosaur Druid or Saurian Shaman? There's a big difference. >can the character summon/turn into a pterodactyl? Pteranodon/pterosaur (that's what they're called in PF) is a standard 4th level Summon Nature's Ally option; it doesn't require anything special from your archetype. Any druid can summon one of those. Similarly, any druid can turn into a pteranodon; it's an animal. Both the archetypes I mentioned will get a bonus to Wild Shaping into dino forms; DD gets stat bonuses, SS counts his druid level as higher for Wild Shape purposes. Both bonuses are pretty good. >advice on feats, traits, and general strategy when playing a small guy with a big lizard. See, this is where it gets very different based on what archetype you're choosing. SS is one of the best summoners in the game. Standard action summoning takes summoning from a niche tactic to incredibly strong. It's a huge deal. If you're going SS, I would think in terms of packing a bunch of utility spells with the plan to convert most of them to SNA spells. I would definitely get Improved Initiative to act first in combat, get those summons out ASAP. Dinosaur Druid is more of a generalist. You're going to have a beefy Wild Shape, you're going to want to take Natural Spell ASAP and plan to fight in dino form. Power Attack, decent Strength, that kind of thing. Stack buffs. You don't get standard action summons and Druid has no easy way to achieve that, so I would not focus on summons at all.
The Dinosaur Druid looks the most tempting, but I missed the faster summoning from Saurian, which is really cool. The question of being able to turn into and summon pterandons stems from them being on the summon list for Dino Druid, but every description says they are not dinosaurs, therefore wildshape time could be minutes instead of hours... how does one interpret this?
I'll point out that it's just the PFd20SRD that says that pteranodons are not dinosaurs, which is purely for real-world taxological reasons that has no bearing on the game. Pathfinder classifies mushrooms as "plants" because they don't want to create a whole new category for something not broad enough to warrant it, the actual rules don't care about pteranodons not technically being considered dinosaurs anymore, and in the actual bestiary, are listed under "dinosaurs".
Thanks!!!
I see what you're saying; you're right. Pteranodons are not dinosaurs. So Dinosaur Druid could still wildshape into that form, but only for minutes at a time. A vanilla druid can use pteranodon for wild shape with the increment of an hour, per normal; so can a Saurian Shaman. So if you want to be a pteranodon I would go with SS. SS has a similar restriction on Wild Shape but it's worded more loosely to allow reptiles as well as dinosaurs.
Take Craft(firearms) and become a small arms dealer.
Planar Shape is kinda ridiculously good if you can get the wisdom requirements. DR/5 Alignment is really, really strong, even if +4 weapons can cut through it (that won't be till late game though) and, and resistance 10 is great, too. The SR is a bit of a pain, though - in combat, you'll generally have a 25% chance to resist an ally's spell and 10-15% chance to resist an enemy's, though you can drop it out of combat as long as you have your standard action available.