Beastmaster can be a powerful choice for a custom sovreign

Hoarder spiders can also be tamed with Beastmaster; I have 2 of those things in my armies, along with 3 (I think) Umberdroths before turn 200, which pretty much means that I have won the game.  Granted, this was on Easy, but it surprised me how well a Beastmaster sov can do.

Umberdroths are not just good at easy. They are just as sweet at riddicculous early midgame (thanks to overpower they still hurt stacks and bash can be a nice thing...). Kul a Kulan fetched one for me mid-game (thanks to being a betrayer faction kingdom I could recruit him).

Umberdroths are some of the most terrifying things around so they are the natural pick (hoarder Spiders usually have a nasty host of bodyguards which might prevent from getting them much early. Those things should be powerful even endgame thanks to splash...).

May be worthwhile to test instead of Warlord (I do like it to be able to sensibly use units at all though...). Maybe in Beta 4. Didn't take it since the forums where awash with how week that profession supposedly was. Should also synergize well with brilliant which i take for most of my souvereigns... Proof that one shouldn't heed supposed forum consensus overmuch.

Picked up a hoarder spider in my most recent game, and it's a brutal one spider army.  Daze is the gift that keeps on giving,letting the Hoarder move on top of a group of units in two moves and splash damaging/killing bunches of them.  Plague Stalkers are great for their speed, and a Champion with a horse and boots of long striding can make a nasty reaction force with one Umberdroth and three Plague Stalkers for interior security.  Beastmaster is definitely worth the pick in my opinion.

It's not that it's a terrible ability. I like it. It might be a better ability for tarth to start with, but i find the number of turns it takes to cast the spell makes my eyes twitch. I don't like standing around while ppl hit me.

Another faction/hero ability that is OP'ed?  Perfect.  That's exactly what SD was hoping for.

It's possible to start the Taming process before the monster arrives.  But you tend to have to absorb two hits without dying AND succeed at your taming attempt.  Brilliant starting trait helps here (extra 2 Spell Mastery per level, plus you get a +10% experience as a bonus).

I tried it once, with no success. I have to try again I guess. Its not easy to pull off this (at least not until one finds a good way to do it )

Some monsters have very high spell resistance.  Ophidians are especially hard at they have 100 + Level Bonus in resistance, meaning you generally need to have 80-90 Spell Mastery to have a chance at taming them.  I haven't tried enough to see if spells or taming can be cast on Ophidians yet.  Daze from Hoarder Spiders always seems to work, but that may be because it's a mass spell and mass spells can't currently be resisted.

"Is each of the paths viable and fun?"  That's what we should be asking, rather than comparing different styles/choices in some eternal (infernal) competition.  Flavor/variety has its cost, and I believe no dev can be creative and so different in options while having everything equal out--equality leads to blandness, and that's only important if pvp is front-and-center.  I have so far won--or was going to win when I stopped playing--using ever combo I could think of, though the melee-only route was in trouble due to some tactical errors and a bad starting position.  Some paths are clearly more powerful than others--is that a terrible thing, really? Does that break the game in some people's opinion or am I missing something (like sarcasm)?  Yes, balancing things way out of line is important, but if we talk about OP and nerfing too much, we'll sound like the MMO crowd. 

For the beastmaster path, I think it's balanced that your leader has to take a beating while taming them (a wrestling of wills, kinda), and you have to baby them along (tactics is important early on because so many of the ones you can get before level 5 are so fragile).  But as you begin building up your armies of beasts, your kingdom/empire power climbs without your maintenance costs soaring, and before the end, the other factions are paying you to keep your hordes off of them.  Could my beasties withstand a powerful assault by a higher level AI using more expensive groups?  Probably not.  But man, it's fun to play Tarzan.

I have noticed that the victory screen indicates you acquire experience for taming a creature in battle (say if there is only a single beast that you tame). However, I have noticed a few times that my character doesn't seem to actually get that experience.  Has anyone else found this to be true?

Kinda late to the game here, but wanted to add one more aspect to this -

I am playing a game now where I took beastmaster, and then made my sov a commander.

If you take the accuracy bonuses on your commander, then creatures with maul (bears, and ascian if you can get him) become killing machines - they have something like 97% chance to hit, and with maul they kill many enemies in one interaction. I've had bears walk up to ogres and trolls and maul them to death in one go.

I use parrotmath's Maul debuff - which makes maul useful, but not supremely overpowered.

Oh, I think you are talking about Fallen Enchantress rather than LH.  Not sure whether the Maul debuff works on that.

no, i'm talking about LH.

the Maul debuff seems like a good idea.