The Mod:

Increases some base stats and levels for the animal companion granted through the Storm of Zehir feat "Dinosaur Companion", by altering its template at all possible character summoning levels (be it a level 4 Ranger with summoning level 1 or a level 30 Druid with Epic Companion at summoning level 33).  I do not remember any NPCs in any of the dozens of modules/campaigns I've played even having dinosaur companions (except Umoja in Storm of Zehir), and as far as I can tell it does not modify any other creatures, any other animal companions, or any other NPCs.  With this installed, your trusty dino friend will not become an unholy terror rivaling the King of Shadows, but he will no longer die to a particularly raunchy orc-fart either.  A nearly perfectly geared ranger has ~60-62AC if desperate enough to use a tower shield (probably from a fighter level, for proficiency and the bonus epic feat) and I routinely run into enemies that still smash my face in if I’m not careful, so the dino’s end result *really* isn’t that overpowered… it’s just a hell of a lot tougher than it used to be.  The Saves seem a little (okay, a LOT) high, but a lot of modules are throwing enemies at me that spam Vampiric Feast at DC 40 and such, so again...

The Specifics:

Rangers have a summoning level (for companions) of Ranger Class Level-3, beginning at level 4, and the others summon at their combined Hit Dice total in classes with an animal companion... though supposedly this only works properly if it's the exact same pet with the exact same name because of a bug.  If the summoning levels don't stack properly, the highest of the possible summons is used.  The Natural Bond feat raises this summoning level by 3, up to Hit Dice total, for any character (including multiclass characters), and does nothing beyond Hit Dice total (so it's useless for a pure Cleric of the Animal Domain, for example).  The Epic Animal Companion feat raises the summoning level by an additional 3 for everybody, for a possible total of 33 (for Animal Clerics and Druids).  Companions are racially Beasts and have the base stats of such creatures (BAB progression at 3/4 Class Level), resulting in the three tables below for dinosaurs:

Default Deinonychus
SumLvl  DinoLvl 
01-02    L03bab2   45hp    ac18
03-05    L05bab3   75hp    ac21
06-08    L07bab5   105hp  ac23 <- 1 Attack Per Round
09-11    L09bab6   135hp  ac26 <- pet gains Multiattack feat, 3APR
12-14    L11bab8   165hp  ac28
15-17    L13bab9   195hp  ac31
18-20    L15bab11  225hp ac33 <- Multiattack makes extra attacks at -2 instead of -5
21-23    L17bab12  255hp ac36
24-26    L19bab13  285hp ac38
27-29    L21bab15  315hp ac41
30-32    L23bab17  345hp ac43 <- 4APR
32-35    L25bab18  375hp ac46

Cranked Dino 2 Mod
01-02   L06ab4    78hp   24ac
03-05   L08ab5    114hp 27ac <- 1 Attack Per Round
06-08   L09ab6    142hp 29ac <- pet gains Multiattack feat, 3APR
09-11   L11ab8    178hp 32ac
12-14   L13ab9    214hp 34ac
15-17   L15ab11  250hp 37ac <- Multiattack makes extra attacks at -2 instead of -5
18-20   L21ab15  318hp 39ac
21-23   L25ab18  370hp 42ac <- 4APR
24-26   L28ab21  414hp 44ac <- 5APR
27-29   L31ab23  458hp 47ac
30-32   L33ab24  494hp 49ac
33-35   L35ab26  530hp 51ac <- 6APR

Cranked Dino 3 Mod
01-02   L06bab4    90hp  28ac
03-05   L08bab5    130hp 31ac <- 1Attack Per Round
06-08   L09bab6    160hp 33ac <- pet gains Multiattack feat, 3APR
09-11   L11bab8    200hp 36ac
12-14   L13bab9    240hp 38ac
15-17   L15bab11  280hp 41ac <- Multiattack makes extra attacks at -2 instead of -5
18-20   L21bab15  360hp 43ac
21-23   L25bab18  420hp 46ac <- 4APR
24-26   L28bab21  470hp 48ac <- 5APR
27-29   L31bab23  520hp 51ac
30-32   L33bab24  560hp 53ac
33-35   L35bab26  600hp 55ac <- 6APR

(L25, bab1, 375hp, ac46 4APR) vs (L35, bab26, 600hp, 55ac, 6APR) is quite a significant buff, but given the circumstances that drove me to create this little mod, is neither overkill nor gamebreaking.  Oh, and I remembered last minute that I changed their move speed from "7 - default" to "6 - Very Fast", so that they are appropriately speedy without having to also edit Appearances.2da (compatibility).

What it means, simplified, and why the level progression is a tad uneven in places:

The Dinobuddy at max level costs 0-3 feats, gains 0-400hp, 10-22ac, and 1-3APR, depending on classes and number of feats spent, with even or slightly increasing returns).
I tested and specifically chose the level progression so that the twelfth tier Dinobuddy (the only one with 6 Attacks Per Round) is only available to Lvl30 Druids or Animal Clerics with the Epic Companion feat, or level 30 Rangers with both Natural Bond and EpicComp.  Given that most Ranger builds (the really nasty ones, anyway) only use 21 Ranger levels to capitalize on their free feats, a Ranger with a maxed Dinobuddy is possible if desired, but unlikely.  A basic level 21 Ranger receives a Dinobuddy at Lvl21/BAB15, intentionally 1BAB short of an extra attack per round.  That means that either the NatBond or EpicComp feat give a single extra Attack Per Round by increasing a Ranger's summoning level to the next tier, and both will give an extra APR each, making both feats roughly equal in value (and if you're going to drop three feats on an animal companion, it had better be worth it).

Installation and removal:

It's a 7zip archive containing an appropriately-named folder with 12 .UTC files in it.  Extract said folder and drop/copy it into your override folder, generally located in ~/My Documents/Neverwinter.../override.  When the game opens and loads stuff into memory, it'll will override its normal dino templates with the new ones and he gets beefier.  If two copies of a file are to be overridden, the engine will give precedence to the file in the folder that comes last alphabetically within the Override folder and use only that one (for example, baseitems.2da in folder "abadabba" overrides the basic game version of the same file, and a baseitems.2da in folder "watermelonlolz" will be used instead of one in "abadabba").  Remove the folder whenever you wish and things will go back to normal as soon as you reload the program, even within the same saved game.  That's how *everything* in the override folder works (unless the override is itself overridden by a module-specific .hak file).  Nearly all files and final numbers are recalculated every time the program loads, so it's pretty hard to permanently break something with the override folder.

Why is this even a thing, really?  Who would even bother?

I like to try out all kinds of different builds and difficulty mods, stress-testing them as I also enjoy the plot.  From my first Monk-led ignoramus-built campaign party of that got hulksmashed by the entire last zone on normal, to abusing Attacks of Opportunity with a Glaive-Warlock dealing 1,000+ damage in a round regularly... overcoming more and more difficult self-imposed challenges is half the fun, and it keeps the sense of achievement going.  I'm a fairly obsessive munchkin, but sometimes something breaks the minor RP aspect of a character so hard that it must be fixed.
Once one starts granting all spawned enemies extra stats (say... +20 to all abilities, 250% max HP, +10-15 enhancement to all weapons, etc), things get pretty rough with builds that aren't godly, and things get even worse when playing a solo character leaving all companions in puppet mode at the start of the zone (they're present so none of the banter is missed, obviously).  Things scale pretty well overall, and it takes some serious effort to win when stuff in Path of Evil's Scimitar Spires (lvl13+) is dual-wield critting a 50AC character for triple digits, or warlocks in EPIC CAMPAIGN are Blasting you in the face for 180-bugged-because>9d6-unresistable damage.
But animal companions don't scale at all with most difficulty mods (because they're a copy of a template dropped into the game, not "spawned and scaled").  While an animal companion amounts to precisely jacksquat most of the time, it kills the mood when your supposed best and only friend is always dying in three seconds and is totally useless for anything, so I made this to play around with.  Ralph the dino needs to have his fun too.
Maybe you're using difficulty mods and want your dino to scale with the enemies a bit, maybe you just want to watch a pet go Jurassic Park on a group of everyday Bugbears, whatever the reason... I figured maybe I could save some other people some time and put it up here.  Maybe somebody wanted something like this and didn't even know it until they saw it, I've had such things happen before.


 -- As for permissions here, "let anyone do whatever they want with it except delete it and I don't care about credit" is appropriate, so consider this permission to do so.  If my own credits matter, they're just stock templates taken from a game install and modified with a "tlkedit".  I can't imagine any problems with this mod, but if there's something horrid I overlooked that can be fixed without the toolset, I'll try to fix it if I can.