Tame: Can't say, since when I had it is was still nice. As beastmaster too, you can tame some pretty handy mobs. For example, I used to tame one that tripped people.

Serpent kinship and wolf kinship are completely different skills to bear kinship.

Serpent kinship is an in combat skill (or spell, if I remember correctly), where snakes slither out from around you and bite the guy. It can have lots of nice effects, from poison to freezing someone's muscles.

Wolf kinship does a lot of damage if called in combat and chases people down. To be honest, bear kinship was probably the weakest of the 3 by far, since bears aren't great and you take pretty big damage when they get killed (which happens pretty quickly).