How many animals can a PC have in combat?

[AkitaBlanc]

I am a druid and I have an animal companion. I've bought an emperor cobra and a white tiger. According the core rules if I have an animal that is not my companion I must sacrifice a move action to tell it what to do. Is their a limit to how many animals i can use in addition to my class feature companion?

I Have scoured the pathfinder books and message boards for answer and I can't seem to find any direct reference to my specific problem.

Maybe I've been looking in the wrong place but I'm not the only one who needs to know.

[Ouachitonian]

I don’t know about Druids, but a Packmaster Hunter could theoretically have 20 animal companions. A Beastmaster Ranger can has a similar number.

[Zhangar]

Speak with animals and being friends with your animals can probably speed up the process of commanding them.

That being said, I think the actual answer to your question is "however many the rest of the table will put up with."

After all, past a point you're just going to be bogging everything down.

[Chess Pwn]

Per the rules, infinite is the limit.
PFS has a rule that you can have only 1 combat animal.

[Azothath]

AkitaBlanc wrote:

I am a druid and I have an animal companion. I've bought an emperor cobra and a white tiger. According the core rules if I have an animal that is not my companion I must sacrifice a move action to tell it what to do. Is their a limit to how many animals i can use in addition to my class feature companion?

I Have scoured the pathfinder books and message boards for answer and I can't seem to find any direct reference to my specific problem.

Maybe I've been looking in the wrong place but I'm not the only one who needs to know.

as this is a General Discussion thread, as many as the GM allows. Of course you may not have enough actions to actually command all of them at once.

This is where using animal behavior comes in handy and your GM's knowledge as they will say it's reasonable or not (a lot isn't covered in the core rules). If you can get a alpha animal in the pack to follow a command the rest of their pack will follow through. Same as a cow/sheep with a bell that the rest of the herd follows. back to RAW...

The other thing you've missed is tricks and pushing an animal to perform a trick (such as attack). That's the other limiter. Keep Handle Animal skill at a decent score. Times for various things are in the Handle Animal skill description.

In PFS the FAQ gives the limit as 3 with roles as; active pet, working-mount pet, non-interactive pet. The critter in the active pet role gets to do combat, use wands, etc as where the other guys have very limited actions.

[blahpers]

All of them.

[Mudfoot]

Lots and lots. Summon Nature's Ally is a thing*. So is Charm Animal. So is a bag of holding full of wasps.

* strictly, 9 things

[PossibleCabbage]

Wealth by Level says a level 20 character should have 880,000 gold pieces, and rats are 1cp each, so a level 20 character can have 88 million rats (or about 29.3 million cats.)

[Coidzor]

Carry Companion is another spell that lets a surprisingly wide variety of spellcasters potentially cause an avalanche of animal flesh if someone does an AoE dispel, at least given sufficient downtime and ability to find or buy and then befriend animals.

[Grimcleaver]

Here's my problem with trying to tie rules to things like this: The world has a lot of NPCs in it. Like bajillions. Trying to balance that reality against the game rules is bananas.

Having an animal companion or a cadre of raised skeletons is 100% no different than going into a tavern and standing on a barstool and after a rousing speech having a dozen rowdy adventurers willing to raise their steel to your cause.

In fact, it's 100% no different to you joining an army of hundreds of thousands of folks marching to go do battle against the Worldwound.

There's lots of creatures in the world. Some of them will be on your side. This is just a thing that happens sometimes. You can't game balance it. When you try it just makes the game rules an inconsistent illogical mess.

This is true of so many things in roleplaying games and is indicative of a huge problem with trying to "game balance" everything.

[Pizza Lord]

You can have as many as you wish. While it's true that Handling non-companion animals is a move action to give them a command, as long as you train them with the Defend trick and order them to defend yourself or another, then they will attack any foes that threaten to harm or approach their charges. They will function on their own volition and will not be controlled by you. Only if you decided to direct them to attack or move in a specific manner would you need to use the move-action command, so it's possible to have plenty of animal guardians and not need to use up all your actions having them fight as long as you are being attacked and they are set to 'defend'.