One of the things I've never quite seen covered by the Core rules is the act of commanding a companion, be it an animal, summon, or eidolon. Talking is a free action that can be performed at any time, and all three of the aforementioned have initiative, so does the one controlling them make the action to command them do so on their turn, or his own?
The way I've been having the druid at my table do it is that the animal companion acts immediately after being told what to do on the druid's turn, so essentially, two characters are acting in the same round.
What is the proper way of doing this, and if there isn't any, how do you houserule it?
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I've usually seen it done where the animal or character will delay until the initiatives for both are the same.
Basically, the lowest initiative sets their position in the combat rotation. Usually, this is done in order to simplify initiative order.
I've also seen it where the animal companion always goes on the players initiative, and no initiative is even rolled for it.
I have also seen the occasional dm that ran companions and summoned creatures himself.
In that case, the dm would decide, based on what the player ordered done, what exactly the animal companion did. But that's more of a headache than most dms want to deal with, so usually it's wrapped up with the player.
The *official* way to run it would be to have both roll initiative, with the animal companion being restricted to acting on his initiative. Since having an animal perform a trick like attack is a handle animal check, it isn't something that the druid or ranger would be able to order on a different initiative than their own.
I'm less familiar with eidolons. But I would assume that, as long as the command can be understood by the creature without gestures, and with just a short phrase, a character could order it as a free action.
However a lot of things like attacking a specific creature might involve a hand gesture to single the target out. That might have to wait until the player's turn.