Illustration by Emily Fiegenschuh
One thing the Venture-Officers and I have noticed is that there tend to be questions that continually come up on the messageboards about pushing animals to do something, animals using trained tricks, and other such issues regarding animal companions, familiars, etc. The newly released Animal Archive added several new tricks that a lot of GMs were hand-waving. I received numerous emails asking for clarification. Instead of replying to each email separately, I thought the community could be better served with a blog post.
The Ontario Venture-Captain, Adam Mogyordi, has written Mergy's Methods in the past and posted on both paizo.com messageboards and the Southern Ontario Pathfinder Lodge website. Not only have these been popular, but players have advised they have been very helpful articles to explain confusing rules and the like. I reached out to Adam and he was thrilled to write something to help clear up some common confusions players and GMs might have about animal companions. Thanks, Adam! Below is the article he wrote for the Pathfinder Society community.
Animal Archive gives druids and other pet classes a wide range of new options. To utilize these options, a review of the basics is a good place to start. Today I want to go over some of the rules that go with handling an animal for GMs and players. There are some benchmarks Handle Animal users need to meet, and I also have some tips for handlers and their GMs.
New Tricks: There are 18 new tricks available in Animal Archive, and some of these may be taken more than once! But while you now have much more freedom in what your pet can know how to do (my personal favorite new one is Bombard), there is also a side to this that some players may find displeasing. The addition of a Flank trick and an Aid trick means that pets do not, by default, know how to perform these, even if they know the Attack trick. If you command your companion to attack, it will take the most direct route. If you want your companion to always flank, you now need the Flank trick. If your companion doesn't know one of these tricks, pushing your companion with a successful DC 25 Handle Animal check is also an option.
Handling Your Companion: Some players and GMs hand-wave this, but it's important to note that just because your pet knows a trick doesn't mean it can perform the trick on command. Animal companions certainly cannot read your character's mind, and that's why we need to use the Handle Animal skill. A trick the animal knows is DC 10 and is a move action. A trick it does not know is a full-round action at DC 25. There are, however, a few ways to make this easier.
Druids and other classes with the animal companion feature get a +4 circumstance bonus when handling their own companion from the Link class feature. This also allows them to handle an animal as a free action, or use a move action to push the animal. Keep in mind you may still only perform the free action on your turn, so even if your animal wins initiative, it's not going to automatically do what you want before can you order it.
With Link, we can set some benchmark numbers a companion class needs. The DC to command an animal to perform a trick it knows is only 10, but this increases to 12 if the animal is injured or has taken nonlethal or ability score damage. With the +4 bonus from Link, the magic Handle Animal modifier you want to hit is +5. If you have a +5 modifier at level 1, you are guaranteed to always command your uninjured animal companion (the number for an injured companion is +7). GMs may wish to log what the player's Handle Animal skill is at the start of the game so that they know when to ask for a roll.
Smart Kitty: If you have increased your animal companion's intelligence score to 3 using various means, then great! You can now have your companion learn any feat it can physically perform, and it can put ranks into any skill. What this increase does not accomplish, however, is any advantage in commanding your companion whatsoever. It's still the same DC 10 to handle and DC 25 to push. It may still only learn six tricks plus your druid bonus tricks. However, for every point of Intelligence it gains above 2, that is three more tricks it can learn. A smart animal will have more versatility without needing to rely on pushing.
Why druids don't dump Charisma?: So how do we reliably overcome DCs like 25 at reasonable levels? I think Skill Focus (Handle Animal) is certainly an option for some druids who see themselves as dedicated animal companion users. There is also the training harness item from page 76 of the Advanced Race Guide that will give you another +2 bonus on these checks. The most important thing is to not dump Charisma. If your druid has a Charisma score of 7, you are likely looking at a 20% chance of your animal ignoring you at 1st level. If you want to reliably push your companion, you are going to make it much more difficult with a negative Charisma modifier.
If you have other questions not addressed here, please feel free to reply in the comments below. Adam and I will do our best to try to answer those in a timely manner.
Mike Brock
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator
