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Can someone help me understand the Handle Animal Seek command? It seems very ambiguous to me and I wonder if I'm missing something since I am new to Animal Companions.
Seek Command(DC 15): The animal moves into an area and looks around for anything that is obviously alive or animate.
So - a druid gives their animal companion the command to go forward and seek...maybe where the druid can no longer see/command it...and then what happens?
- Returns to master?
- Alerts the master at a distance with some loud animal noise?
- Attacks what it finds?
- Sits and points?
- Takes some other action?
Is the implication that the druid is supposed to be within line of sight and will know its companion has found something? (Drug-sniffing dog model)
It seems like the description for Seek might benefit from additional specificity about success/failure. Seek...and do what?
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This isn't really a PFS-specific question (I think you meant to post this in the other General Discussion forum), so I've flagged it to be moved somewhere where it can better get the attention it deserves.
But, off the top of my head, I can think of a couple handy uses:
1) Scouting ahead
Need someone in your party to take point? Send out the dog. Exploring a ruin? Have it sniff that statue. Just as in real life, sometimes the animal gets sent in to make sure it's safe for people.
2) Finding invisible enemies
Struggling to find that Rogue who just read a scroll of Greater Invisibility? Have Fluffy sniff him out.
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Thanks - Scouting ahead and finding invisible enemies are fine, but the question in my post is:
After the druid issues the Seek command, the animal companion does WHAT once it finds or doesn't find something living? Attacks? Signals? Returns? etc.
The text of the Seek command lacks the necessary detail to understand how to interpret what should happen on seek success or failure.
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Well, considering your Animal Companion is under the control of the GM, it'd be up to them.
If I was your GM, and you describe to me that you want to send your dog into the dark room to sniff out danger, I'd probably have it enter the room, do a Perception check, and growl if there was danger. No danger, and it instead just stands in the doorway wagging its tail.
Either way, you'd be able to understand whether it succeeded or not. Reasonable requests should be rewarded with reasonable actions.
Another example (again, if I was your GM) would be scouting ahead on a trail. Say your dog is 50' ahead of the group, and it spots danger. Depending on how you've described this animal to me, it may freeze and "point", bark, growl, or attack. Those all mimic RL tricks.
But treating your Animal Companion like another PC, and guiding its every action, from round to round, and having it move from this square to that, probably isn't going to fly.
YMMV. Animal Companions and their tricks aren't a "black and white" thing.
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Nefreet: The point is that the PC's animal companion does not belong to the GM. If the animal knows a trick, then it should do as it's told, not as the GM decides. And, in the case of Seek, there should be options to indicate what it found by some means.
Rainzax: I agree.
Seek lacks necessary definition.
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Nefreet: The point is that the PC's animal companion does not belong to the GM. If the animal knows a trick, then it should do as it's told, not as the GM decides. And, in the case of Seek, there should be options to indicate what it found by some means.
I can't find the rule now, but I believe N N 959 is correct in stating that it's found in Ultimate Campaign.
Animal Companions are NPCs. NPCs, by their very definition, are not player-controlled. Most games run Companions counter to the rules for ease of sake. Personally, when I GM, I don't want to control another NPC, so I usually (within reason) allow the player to do it.
Seek lacks necessary definition.
Several of the tricks are left to interpretation. Just look at "Come" vs "Heel", or determining how a Companion with the "Flank" trick approaches its target.
This is why we have GMs. To adjudicate rules interpretations. Even pretty solid, well understood rules are still debated.
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I am relatively new to animal companions and trying to consider how to play them as a player/druid, run them as a GM and include them as part of CORE or STANDARD campaigns. I haven't taken on all cases - I'm just trying to make sense of the druid companions at this point.
Thanks for the Ultimate Campaign reference. I have read through the information on pp140+. It offers some additional explanation, but still lacks necessary definition, IMO. But, it gave me slightly different perspective on the PC/NPC control issue.
Having read through the CRB, Animal Archive, Ultimate Campaign, forum threads, etc., animal companions seem to lack definition in many respects and warrant improved explanation in the rules. But, I also understand that there are multiple types of companions/cohorts/fluffy friends and that may be part of the challenge. But, for tricks, at least, definition shouldn't be hard to resolve.
N N 959: In answer to your question, if there is a trick that an animal learns, I expect it to explain what happens for a key component of the trick, which is detection in the case of SEEK. If a PC sends the animal ahead or out-of-sight/hearing, what happens? The nearby case is easier to understand. But, it seeks and does WHAT? Bark, point, sit, return, etc. Or, is this trick only relevant if it remains in sensory range of the master to hear a bark or see the reaction? It matters and should be part of the trick definition - maybe it's a ranged trick? As I see it, it's an obvious gap in definition, especially in the context of PFS.
Nefreet: I guess the problem is that Animal Companions are not strictly PCs or NPCs, and there may be moments and situations where the player has no control. But, in typical practice, the player commands the animal companion and runs all its attacks. When the rules substantially differ from what everyone does in practice, maybe the issue is the rule and not the practice. But...kind of a side point. Momentum and game complexity will usually favor player control in most normal situations when the PC and companion are in proximity.
I don't see much ambiguity in commands like Come and Heel. What do you mean?
However, I agree that the Flank command could include a path rule to account for AoOs and terrain effects (shortest path? avoids AoOs? preference for normal terrain vs. difficult terrain? etc. - could be any one of a number of options). Animal instincts are probably sufficient to avoid AoOs, since it would be in the domain of self-preservation (and there are many examples of real-world animal behavior when approaching difficult prey), but the trick should specify.
I guess I will just live with the large rule gaps for companions and resulting table variation. It's not likely to change any time soon, despite the fact that the gaps and problems become even larger in CORE campaigns. It's a strong disincentive to play companion classes in CORE games, besides the fact that other changes and clarification are also needed in STANDARD.
Maybe there should be a new and improved edition of the CRB given the CORE/STANDARD campaign bifurcation to roll in issues with traits, animal companions and maybe other fixes.
Thanks for taking the time to discuss this issue with me.
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I don't think the OP is trying to "let PC's screw themselves over" nor is he/she short on "common sense" or "logic" sufficient to adjudicate in the absence of explicit rulings. I believe this thread was created to ask the community if they were aware of such an explicit ruling that the OP is not.
It looks as though the rules are silent on what happens after the Animal Companion discovers anything that is "animate or alive" after being commanded to Seek. Looking over the rest of the tricks (Attack, Come, Defend, Down, Fetch, Guard, Heel, Perform, Stay, Track, Work), I see far less ambiguity as to how the animal ought to behave than for Seek. Maybe Fetch? (In terms of exactly what the animal will be able to recognize)?
Assuming all animals will behave like airport security hounds is neither "common sense" nor "logic" by the way.
If it were my game, I would let the player decide the "what happens next" bit ahead of time (return, bark, kill, sit) as part of training the animal, appropriate to the anatomy/psychology of the animal in question, and then let that set the standard. If they wanted to be able to teach the animal a more complicated or conditional Seek, I might raise the DC, or, have it count as two tricks. But either way work it out with the player beforehand.
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Yes - for me it's not a question of common sense or logic as rainzax aptly states. It's about trying to see if there are documented rules for SEEK. Unfortunately, after looking over all the animal companion info and discussing things here, the problem is that there are none, including with respect to key skills, such as linguistics as in my other thread. However, it is a fairly simple matter to correct these kinds of issues from a rules standpoint to make life easier for everyone. And hopefully, Paizo will review animal companions at some point and take care of the issues in a formal context.
What really screws players with animal companions is CORE, since none of the Animal Archive or Ultimate Campaign info is available, leaving them even more restricted (or broken, depending on your individual perspective) vs. STANDARD.
From the discussion, I agree that it's clear that whenever an animal companion is present, GMs and players will have to work things out in advance so that everyone understands how the tricks will work. I have no issue with push commands and tend not to forget them as GM or player. Also, the biggest issue with push is when there is combat or some other stressful situation. Otherwise, when stress isn't present, players can take 10 or 20 to get their companions (or other animals) to easily do whatever they want (or just roll for it until hitting the DC).
With respect to SEEK, the best adjudication, given the very vague definition of the command, is probably to require a single, animal appropriate SEEK response behavior tied to the trick (as rainzax also points out) that the specific animal has learned.
Beyond that, for every point of intelligence above 2, as a GM I might consider allowing the master to combine an extra trick or behavior with SEEK to reflect improved communication. For example, if the companion has INT 3, it might be able to SEEK and ATTACK or SEEK and FETCH or SEEK and GUARD (any known tricks) or SEEK and do something else with a Handle Animal roll/push.
Otherwise, it can SEEK and indicate in the one, agreed-upon manner, whether it be a bark, growl, return, point, etc. And, any type of SEEK response could be problematic - bark might alert enemies, return might allow someone to escape, point might happen out of visual range, etc. So? Choose a mode and use it wisely within the limitations of the vague trick...or wait until Paizo fixes it. ;-)
I'd also be open to players having dedicated tricks for different instances of SEEK, since the same kind of rule already applies to ATTACK (2 tricks to attack all creatures).
The problem with all of this (or any) GM interpretation is that, in the context of PFS, table variation is a source of GM and player headaches and it would all be avoidable with slightly more clear guidelines. Here's hoping for an eventual fix!
Thanks again...and to you rainzax.
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This discussion is interesting, but I think the outcome remains unchanged for me. And, having reviewed the state of Animal Companions in CORE for PFS, my CORE druid just spent 2PP on a wand of Speak with Animals. That is the only clear (as mud) path to success, I think.
N N 959 - For PFS, based on what you're saying, there can be no possible adjudication of SEEK other than to have the animal just go to look for something animate, where nobody knows what happens next without Speak With Animals, because there's no defintion of what happens in the trick when it does or doesn't find something. And maybe, if you send it far enough away, there's not even any indication that it will come back as part of the trick. It might come back for other reasons - COME trick (at a distance), but the earlier trick is over at that point.
Speak with Animals version: "Hey - go do that SEEK trick I showed you and come on back and tell me what you saw!" (I kind of like this one. ;-) )
If GMs add another action for a detection result or return behavior to SEEK, then it would be considered a made-up trick and invalid per the ruling you posted. However, if it has to go to the land of table variation, then the PFS statement about GMs creating rules for animal tricks is unenforceable or if you fall on the side of the rules, then table variation is disallowed.
I wouldn't say that having to choose a method of detection is irrelevant. If the player chooses the one method his pet uses (as table variation to fix the gaping definition hole in SEEK that Noah's Ark could sail through :) ), then it may not be applicable for all tests in a scenario, and so needs to be decided before the unknown tests occur, rather than when it's optimal for a player to do so in the moment. (Not to mention the fact that the player could change it from game-to-game - more impetus for a ruling.)
However, I think Handle Animal is per the original open-sourced RPG material from Wizards, but it would be nice if Paizo fixed this long-standing definition error.
OK - I just looked - it's unchanged from D&D. So, ironically, as it turns out, I went to the D&D references - like the Skip Williams articles. He recognizes this exact issue, but it is not addressed except with similarly vague GM assumptions.
The rules don't say what the animal does when it finds what it seeks [ed. EXACTLY!!], but I recommend that it stops and does something to indicate the subject's location. For example, a dog might "point" (strike a rigid pose with its nose extended toward the subject).
So, I cede my original observation re: SEEK to Skip Williams and the 2007 material and point out that this trick is long overdue for revision, improvement and additional definition to eliminate table variation, clarify what is supposed to happen in PFS, etc.
Also, animal companions, in general, require significant improvement and fixes so that they are not crippled in CORE until PC Handle Animal skill is high enough to reliably hit DC25's to push to make the animal do what is desired, especially considering the PFS ruling cited in your post and the dearth of tricks.
SEEK: Poor Definition
Animal INT3, Linguistics and Speak with Animals: Poor Definition
Basic Combat Tricks in Non-Core References: Tricks Missing and Poor Definition
Here are the Skip Williams Articles on Animals from 2007, in case anyone wants to read the whole thing:
Animals, Part One by Skip Williams
Animals, Part Two by Skip Williams
Animals, Part Three by Skip Williams
Animals, Part Four by Skip Williams
Again - I appreciate the discussion and hope the rules eventually improve.
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>Why would humans train an animal to find something and make no indication when it did?
Lassie barked to get attention. Drug sniffing dogs sit down. There's no flaw in my reasoning - there aren't 100 different detection responses - pick one - SEEK and do 1 thing (what? as in my 1st post)...but it may not work optimally in every situation, and without definition, it's subject to table variation. The trick requires definition as to what should happen and should include text about how many variants the animal may know as part of the trick.
So, on one hand, the developers want us to use common sense to make up rules regarding how tricks should work, and on the other, they say that in PFS, we can't make up rules about how tricks should work.
I will now make my pet squirrel catch an acorn 22 times. I call it the "Catch-22" trick.
Here's a suggestion that may help make things more concrete:
SEEK: The animal moves into an area and looks around for anything that is obviously alive or animate and makes an indication on successful discovery. When an animal learns this trick, it learns a single method to indicate success appropriate to the animal's physiology (sound, gesture, movement, etc.). Until successful, the animal will continue seeking in the indicated direction or area until another command is given by its master, it is attacked or injured, or it is left unattended for more than 1 minute/companion HD, thus ending the SEEK action.
Alternately, the trick could also say that: If the animal is unsuccessful (after X time), it does not indicate and returns.
Either way. But, I'm not holding my breath - it's obviously been 8 years of table variation at this point. :)
>Return behavior
To my reading, return behavior implies the COME trick, minimally, and by extension following requires the HEEL trick. They don't appear to be automatic and would otherwise require a push command without the related tricks. If an animal automatically came back every time and followed you everywhere just because it was bonded to you, those 2 tricks wouldn't be unnecessary.
>the more they are going to potentially screw things up
Sorry - respectfully disagree. Animal companions are screwed up now because of lack of necessary definition and mechanics - in CORE, especially.
>Gorilla training
In this case, for PFS and CORE, better definition will help.
My druid really likes the Speak with Animals wand solution, at least in CORE (for now), but it doesn't really fix the underlying problem.
Thanks for the additional explanation of your viewpoints.
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Indeed.
GMs (whether they're running PFS or not) are not robots.
Those suggestions I was outlining in my first couple posts were me speaking as a PFS GM.
The form of table variation that's frowned upon is the big stuff, like having a GM saying a raging Barbarian/Rogue can't benefit from Sneak Attack, when no such rule exists. Or GMs that restrict certain classes or mechanics, because they're "uncomfortable" with them.
Basically, you should be able to build a character and be able to have that character function from table to table.
The small stuff, like having a dog "bark" vs "point" when using Seek, isn't really worth sweating over.
Things would actually be made *worse* if its limitations were defined (and would contribute to that 1200pg Core Book that nobody wants).
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The discussion is certainly interesting, informative and helpful in various ways, perhaps in a larger context, and I appreciate the interaction, but I disagree that there is not a fundamental problem with the SEEK command. It's not because of being uncomfortable or uncreative or unable to adjudicate in a common sense framework. It has to do with how the animal has been trained in the limited scope of a single trick it has learned.
In one moment when seeking, the animal companion makes a noise, in another, it points or sits, in another, it returns and wags its tail - whatever is situationally safe and convenient for the player at a table in that moment where their companion is infinitely smart and malleable - doesn't work for me. There should be one way that the animal is trained to respond as part of the trick, albeit appropriate to any given companion physiology, where the player will then use their wits to assess if they want to try it or not.
In terms of bringing the focus back to the narrow issue of the original point I raised, nothing would be made worse by fixing this specific long-standing error in the OGL. There would only be much-needed clarity so that GMs could do the real work of adjudicating what happens in various situations when the animal executes their trick in the manner that they have been trained (to respond), especially since it has the potential to completely change the initiative and outcome of any one of a number of possibly hostile situations that players may face.
Until that day comes, at my tables, there will be 1 way that the animal can indicate as part of SEEK and the player will specify what that is at the start of the game. If it works to their advantage, great. If it doesn't, great. If Paizo ever fixes this OGL issue, great. Then, we can base GM adjudication on the additional clarity they provide.
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In one moment when seeking, the animal companion makes a noise, in another, it points or sits, in another, it returns and wags its tail - whatever is situationally safe and convenient for the player at a table in that moment where their companion is infinitely smart and malleable - doesn't work for me.
That's a consequence of allowing the player to control the actions of their Companion.
If that doesn't work for you, I have good news! Because players controlling their Companions isn't allowed by the rules.
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A pregame conversation with your GM (or your player) should alleviate most of the stress you're experiencing.
Player: "Hey GM, I have a Fox Hound as my Animal Companion."
Player: "Well, I trained him to Seek. I have him scout ahead, within sight of the party, to look for trouble. Since he's a hound, he bays if he finds something. He's not the pointer type."
Rogue: *mumble mumble*
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Nefreet/rainzax - completely agree, and it is the best compromise without an additional ruling from Paizo to fix this OGL error.
...at my tables, there will be 1 way that the animal can indicate as part of SEEK and the player will specify what that is at the start of the game.
Also, it has less to do with player control and more to do with the trained animal response as an implied required component of the trick that it has learned.
However, regarding control, if the animal is out of sight/earshot/command* range of its master while performing SEEK, what happens AFTER it indicates via its learned method based on the last player-controlled command is up to the GM to resolve (including managing the animal companion), whenever such resolution is required.
*(not to the exclusion of exotic combinations of spells/effects like domination and telepathy or even more common situations involving things that might impede a player from noting a response, such as darkness, silence, incapacitation, etc.)