Oltum
From HGWiki
Oltums are intelligent, magical falcons from the elemental plane of air.
The oltum is a powerful animal creature located at The Crossroads following the East Road outside of town. Oltums deals surprisingly strong melee damage and possesses the NWN vanilla Devastating Critical skill. With a few Druid or Ranger buffs, the oltum becomes an engine of destruction for players who have access to the Animal Empathy skill, and can make early leveling for parties or soloers a breeze.
A character with at least 20 points of Animal Empathy (whether through skills, items from the Merchants Emporium, or ability score bonuses from Charisma) can easily dominate an oltum and add them to their party (the required DC skill check is 39). Notably, unlike other creatures dominated through Animal Empathy, the oltum will follow the player across zone lines. Note that it will not follow the player across certain locations, such as teleports in between zone areas.
The oltum can make short work of creatures in the East Road, the Strange Tower, the Abandoned Farm, and even the Plains of War if the player is careful enough. It initially comes equipped with a few lackluster casts of Chain Lightning, which it will attempt to use before switching to melee. It is best to let it attack some softer targets to expend these spells before moving to more dangerous ones. You can use Potions of Speed, Stoneskin, and Monstrous Regeneration on the oltum to further increase its damage potential; just drag and drop the potions from your inventory onto the bird. Note that you will have to remove potions from your Pack of Holding beforehand, if applicable, for this to work.
Notes
Your character will need to spend at least one point in Animal Empathy, or you will not be able to use the skill.
While the oltum will follow you across zones, it will not follow you if you teleport through certain areas within a zone, such as the entrance to the Corpse Lord's main chamber. The oltum also will not follow you back to town if you use a Gem of Teleportation.
It can help for a player to use Invisibility to keep safe in high level areas where they would otherwise die quickly.
If your character dies with the oltum in your party, you will need to wait out your death timer before you can successfully dominate it again. You can examine the oltum for the red "Dominated" status to see when it is available again (i.e. when it disappears from its list of statuses). Attempting to use Animal Empathy again during this state will show a skill success, but fail to recruit the oltum back to the party.
