| 4 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
Handle Animal doesn't give any requirements of the target animal's attitude in order to "Handle" or "Push".
Clearly there should be SOME requirement, but RAW there isn't, and instituting any requirement without RAW guidance seems arbitrary.
IF we wanted to base it off of Diplomacy, then we could require at least Indifferent.
If we look at Animal Archive, the Exclusive trick says it prevents others from issuing commands to your animal
"even if it is friendly or helpful toward them (such as thru charm animal)", so at least FRIENDLY should allow for Handle/Push?
We might also look at Charm Animal, basing itself off of Charm Person which imposes Friendly attitude and allows giving orders/ commands,
although since Charm Animal is working exactly like Charm Person, if we are going to make an inferrence from that,
then the exact same conditions should apply to both, and thus Diplomacy's minimum condition of Indifferent should then apply.
Regardless, there is also the question of DCs, it might be allowable to issue a command when the target is Friendly or Indifferent,
but the DC should be harder than it is if they are fully Helpful (just like Diplomacy),
but again, there is absolutely nothing in RAW to suggest that function for Handle Animal.
Tangentially, the attitude state might interact with Handle/Push-ability, for example at Indifferent you cannot Handle, but you can Push.
Anyhow, the RAW is clearly lacking here, even Animal Archive's Exclusive seems to acknowledge the sensibility in attitude state somehow affecting an animals' receptivity to commands (although it doesn't actually spell out the parameters for that), so I feel like this is solid FAQ (if not Errata) material, especially as threads touching on this topic seem to pop up on a recurring basis, with nobody able to give a definitive RAW ruling that is satisfying. So... FAQ away, you dirty animals!
EDIT: Wild Empathy gives us the nugget of info that Wild animals default to "Unfriendly" while Domesticated animals default to "Indifferent". That seems more appropriate to have in the Handle Animal description itself, since it is relevant even in games without any Druids/Wild Empathy characters.
EDIT2: It would be nice if there was some guidance on Animal Companions, as well as mundane trained animals, how their attitude state might change over time, both gradually as well as momentarily.