Monsters and Memories Beastmaster in Shroud of the Avatar

A leather-clad brawler who fights beside a bonded beast. How to rebuild the M&M Beastmaster in Shroud of the Avatar: schools, deck and specialization.

Shroud of the Avatar has a whole skill school for what a Beastmaster does. With Taming you bind a creature to a taming necklace, call it out with Summoning, heal it and bring it back when it dies. What shrinks is the stable: SotA gives every character one pet slot.

This post is for Monsters & Memories Beastmasters who want the same game in SotA. It is part of every Monsters & Memories class in Shroud of the Avatar. If SotA is new to you, read the character creation guide and the deck building guide first. SotA has no classes. It has 21 skill schools and two specialization slots, and what players call a class is a deck plus a specialization pair; the classes explainer has more.

What the Beastmaster is in Monsters & Memories

The official class page describes a brawler in leather who draws on the fury of the wild. It can fight alone but prefers a bonded beast at its side, and much of its kit goes into keeping that companion alive. Seven races can play one: Deep Gnome, Goblin, Halfling, Human, Ogre, Troll and Wood Elf.

The official deep dive describes a rework from a hybrid built on Shaman spells to a berserker who tames beasts. The spellbook is gone; mana stays and now stands for the bond with your beast. Pets level through their own experience, eat a set diet and can be swapped at a Kennel Master. Each pet has a role: DPS (Jackal, Snake, Wasp, Wolf), Tank (Bear, Beetle, Crocodile) or Balanced (Bat, Rat, Spider). Each family also gets one utility ability, such as a spider's web root. The stated goal is a damage class whose DPS pet does a little under half the damage, and whose Tank pet holds solo and small group fights under Guardian Spirit. The new melee attacks favor slow two-handed weapons.

Pet care

• Bestial Bond: bonds a target beast to you.

• Revive Companion: brings your pet back to life.

• Mend Companion: heals your pet over 12 seconds.

• Shrink Companion: makes your pet smaller.

• Cleanse Companion: removes Disease and Poison from your pet.

• Invigorate Companion: resets your pet's abilities and your Command cooldowns.

Spirits and commands

• Savage Spirit: pet Attack Speed, Agility and a chance to Rip; one Spirit buff per pet.

• Guardian Spirit: your pet takes less Physical Damage and its Provoke recovers sooner.

• Command: Kill: your pet makes one heavy attack.

• Command: Protect: you take less damage and your pet takes part of it.

Kinship

• Kinship: Bat: a brief bat that blinds your target.

• Kinship: Rat: a planned stealthy rat you steer for scouting.

Group auras

• Predatory Instinct: group Offense and Agility.

• Prowler's Instinct: group Movement Speed, and targets cannot detect you from behind; works indoors.

Senses and movement

• Sight of the Beast: better vision in the dark.

• Sight of the Predator: much better vision in the dark, worse in bright light.

• Hunter's Chase: a short burst of speed.

• Aquatic Affinity: better Swimming and slower air use.

Damage

• Enraging Strike: weapon damage plus Strength, Dexterity and Agility for you and your pet.

• Savage Strike: weapon damage with a bonus against a bleeding target.

• Chop: a two-handed hit that sets up your pet's critical hits.

• Maul: damage per equipped weapon, and the target deals less Physical Damage.

• Mangle: a two-handed hit that cuts healing received.

• Pounce: leap to the target and speed up your pet.

Utility

• Howl of Dominance: lowers the target's Physical Damage and raises yours by the same amount.

• Call of the Faithful: swaps in a stowed pet from a distance.

• Bestial Glimpse: see through a beast's eyes.

• Lick Wounds: a channeled self heal paid in mana.

• Lull Beast and Preservation: shared with the Druid; Preservation raises a mount.

The Shroud of the Avatar translation

The Beastmaster is the Tamer in the archetype library. The primary school is Taming, one of the five strategy schools. Support is Bludgeon for your own weapon, plus Tactics as a third school, though the starting deck below has no Tactics glyph yet. Strength of Earth (Earth) and Dash (Air) are one-glyph splashes.

Tame Creature binds a creature to an equipped taming necklace, and Summoning calls a tamed creature out of it. Heal Creature is the pet heal, Frenzy is the pet buff and Resurrect Creature brings a dead pet back. The rest of Taming is innate: Pet Strength Training, Pet Hide Toughness Training, Pet Speed Training, Pet Taunting Training, Combat Training and Refresh. Innate skills are always in effect and never go in a deck. Your own attacks come from Bludgeon: Crushing Blow, Knockdown and Break Weapon.

A character has one pet slot. One summoned or tamed creature is out at a time, and the one that is out when you cross a scene line comes back with you. A creature in the slot draws on your maximum Focus while it is out, and a higher-level one draws more. That is the closest SotA comes to mana as the bond with your beast.

Specialize in Taming and Bludgeon: Taming carries the pet and Bludgeon carries your own damage. You have exactly two specialization slots, and only the schools in them pay out. Slotting a school and training its Specialization skill are separate steps: you buy Taming Specialization and Bludgeon Specialization from a trainer, and you set the slots at any trainer or Oracle Confirmatory with no lock-in. Each specialized school gets about 1.3 % mastery per Specialization level, which changes individual skills in that school, and one extra deck copy of its glyphs. The skill pages show that Taming Specialization gives Heal Creature a chance to remove negative effects too, which covers Cleanse Companion.

Every pair of specializations has a name in game. Catnip has confirmed five so far, and Taming plus Bludgeon is not one of them. Taming plus Bard is, and it is called Ringmaster. Take that pair if the group auras were your favorite part of the class; Savage Sonata (Bard) is the match for Predatory Instinct.

A starting deck shape. More copies unlock as each skill levels, and the last copy needs the school specialization.

• Summoning

• Tame Creature

• Heal Creature x2

• Frenzy

• Resurrect Creature

• Crushing Blow x3

• Knockdown x2

• Break Weapon

• Strength of Earth

• Dash

That is 14 glyphs. There is no maximum deck size, but the minimum rises with your character to 23 and a short deck is padded with blank Slugs, so add copies as they unlock.

Gear is leather and a bludgeon. Choose Link What I Am Wearing on the deck, and the set equips with it whenever the items are in your inventory. Worn armor slows Air spells (leather by 14 % on Catnip's Blink example) and Fire and Death spells by half that; other schools are unaffected, so only Dash pays here. Catnip's work log also describes a Pet Gear option, Follows Deck, that saves your pet's collar, toy and accessory with the deck; no public patch note has it yet.

There is no deck code yet. Codes come from the game's Share Deck button and load with Import Deck; we will add one when the site's deck planner ships.

Ability by ability

M&M systems with no SotA equivalent: Shrink Companion, and Aquatic Affinity, since SotA has no underwater play.

Leveling path

Skills grow as you use them, and each gain spends from your adventuring pool, so set them to Training in this order. You start with 25,000 experience in each pool, experience is permanently doubled, and there is no hourly ceiling. Right-click a skill for Training, Not Training, Train to Level or Unlearning; a skill that is not training gains nothing. The XP planner has the cost of each level.

First, Tame Creature, Summoning and Crushing Blow. The first two get your pet into the fight; Crushing Blow is your attack and your stun. Leave the rest Not Training.

Second, Heal Creature, Frenzy and Resurrect Creature, then Knockdown and Break Weapon. Your pet now stays up and comes back after a death. Each skill page lists its prerequisites.

Third, the pet innates for the role you want: Pet Strength Training and Pet Speed Training for a damage pet, Pet Hide Toughness Training and Pet Taunting Training for a tank pet. Combat Training raises your pet's level, so train it for either. Then buy Taming Specialization and Bludgeon Specialization from a trainer. Both cap at 200; a realistic target is 100.

None of this is permanent. Unlearning returns 100 % of the experience to your pool, and dying never removes experience from a skill. Battle Fatigue starts at adventurer level 80.

What Shroud of the Avatar does not have

Four rows map to nothing. Kinship would need a second creature out, and a character has one pet slot. No glyph resets your pet's cooldowns the way Invigorate Companion does, no glyph moves your damage onto the pet like Command: Protect, and you cannot borrow a beast's sight as with Bestial Glimpse. Pets do not eat or earn their own experience, so the diet and the pet leveling are gone; Combat Training raises a tamed creature's level instead, and taming necklaces stand in for the Kennel Master.

FAQ

Can I switch to another build later?

Yes. You change the two specialization slots at any skill trainer or Oracle Confirmatory, with no experience cost and no lock-in, and your decks update at once. Unlearning a skill returns 100 % of its experience to your pool, slowly on each award or instantly with an Obsidian Item of Unlearning.

How many pets can I have out at once?

One. A character has one pet slot, and the in-game Oracle gives the same answer if you ask. A second creature, like the Kinship bat, has nowhere to go.

Can my pet tank for me?

It can hold threat. Pet Taunting Training keeps a creature's attention on your pet within its tether. Damage is worth a quarter point of threat per point plus a flat 5 per landed hit, and healing someone else is worth about a sixteenth of a point per point healed, so your Heal Creature casts draw far less attention than your Crushing Blows.

Why might Taming numbers change?

Catnip's balance pass across all 200+ skills is still running, and bringing Bard and Taming down was one of its stated goals at the start. Treat every pet number as provisional until the pass closes, and check combat records for live values.

The hub lists every Monsters & Memories class in Shroud of the Avatar. The Bard post covers the songs behind the Ringmaster pair, and the Shaman post covers the class the old Beastmaster borrowed its spells from. Mechanics verified against Catnip Games' work log and patch notes as of October 2026; the balance pass across 200+ skills is still running, so numbers can move.