Handle Animal in Combat vs. Unfriendly Animals

[princeimrahil]

I hate to ask this question, but it became the basis of a heated dispute in a game recently, and I need clarification.

While keeping watch in the jungle one night, one of the PCs, a Barbarian/Druid, saw a dire tiger hungrily eying him and his companions. He said that he wanted to use the Handle Animal skill to make the tiger "heel." I said that he could use his Wild Empathy skill, but not handle animal. He said that he could "push" the unfriendly dire tiger to perform a trick, because the text of the rulebook says that he can "push" any animal.

Was my interpretation of the rules wrong?

[Stubs McKenzie]

You are correct, the handle animal skill allows all sorts of checks to rear, train, and push animals, but only those who would otherwise be willing to be trained or pushed. An animal hell bent on killing you does not care that you are saying sit over and over.

EDIT: That would also apply to any animal that would be considered hostile, or any animal that is trained not to obey anyone but their trainers. You can remind him that if it played the way he thinks it should all animal companions could be turned against the party with a simple skill check

[karkon]

Quote:

Wild Empathy (Ex): A druid can improve the attitude of an animal. This ability functions just like a Diplomacy check made to improve the attitude of a person (see Using Skills). The druid rolls 1d20 and adds her druid level and her Charisma modifier to determine the wild empathy check result. The typical domestic animal has a starting attitude of indifferent, while wild animals are usually unfriendly.

Diplomacy
(Cha)

Check: You can change the initial attitudes of nonplayer characters with a successful check. The DC of this check depends on the creature's starting attitude toward you, adjusted by its Charisma modifier. If you succeed, the character's attitude toward you is improved by one step. For every 5 by which your check result exceeds the DC, the character's attitude toward you increases by one additional step. A creature's attitude cannot be shifted more than two steps up in this way, although the GM can override this rule in some situations. If you fail the check by 4 or less, the character's attitude toward you is unchanged. If you fail by 5 or more, the character's attitude toward you is decreased by one step.

Diplomacy is generally ineffective in combat and against creatures that intend to harm you or your allies in the immediate future. Any attitude shift caused through.

Edited quoted for clarity regarding discussion.

So a druid can use diplomacy on an animal even a hostile animal just as diplomacy can be used on hostile people. So with a high enough check he could move it to indifferent. That is what the rules say. Keep in mind that being good with animals is kinda their thing and trying to keep them from doing that is like telling a wizard he can't cast a particular spell.

As far as pushing the animal with Handle Animal the rules are unclear. You could certainly read it that way. Allowing that might have been fun when the animal's attitude shifts. Diplomacy says the shift can last less than an hour but generally 1d4 hours. So allowing it might have led to an interesting encounter later where a suddenly agitated dire tiger bites the druid.

I am disinclined to say an animal that was just recently hostile can be pushed in this manner. The encounter is already defeated and they could just walk by. You could allow it for the fun times later (as above) but I think that is a little much short of a charm animal spell.

[Stubs McKenzie]

As princeimrahil stated, his PC did not want to use Wild Empathy to change the animals attitude, he just wanted to bypass that step, and make a hostile animal bend to his will to do whatever "trick" he wanted it to do with a DC25 check. If the barbarian/druid were to use Wild Empathy to change the tigers attitude from hostile (it being hungry, and viewing the PC(s) as a meal) to at least indifferent, then he would be able to use handle animal in such a way, but anything less than indifferent and the creature does not want anything to do with obeying your direction.

I couldn't find the chart referenced in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, but the 3.5 document follows for attitudes, and examples of behavior for each:

srd wrote:

Attitude ~~~ Means ~~~ Possible Actions

Hostile ~~~ Will take risks to hurt you ~~~ Attack, interfere, berate, flee
Unfriendly ~~~ Wishes you ill ~~~ Mislead, gossip, avoid, watch suspiciously, insult
Indifferent ~~~ Doesn’t much care ~~~ Socially expected interaction
Friendly ~~~ Wishes you well ~~~ Chat, advise, offer limited help, advocate
Helpful ~~~ Will take risks to help you ~~~ Protect, back up, heal, aid

This is an excerpt from diplomacy that might help as well:

srd wrote:

If a creature’s attitude toward you is at least indifferent, you can make requests of the creature. This is an additional Diplomacy check, using the creature’s current attitude to determine the base DC, with one of the following modifiers. Once a creature’s attitude has shifted to helpful, the creature gives in to most requests without a check, unless the request is against its nature or puts it in serious peril.

As Diplomacy states, at an attitude of indifferent you can make requests of a creature, or in this case animal. Without the animal's attitude being at least indifferent, you therefore cannot ask it to do what you want, and pushing a creature with the handle animal skill is still asking, just with more work on your part.

[RedDogMT]

You made the right call.

The 'Push' action could have been a little more detailed, but in reading the entire skill it is easy to infer that untrained or wild animals must be domesticated before the player can train them...and that takes quite a bit of time.

If the animal that the player came across was a friendly domesticated dog, I would agree that he would have a possibility of getting it to heel with an Animal Handling check.

Wild Empathy would have been a better choice, but the most he would be able to do is shift the animal's attitude. If the animal was shifted to friendly and a speak with animals was cast, I can then see it possibly doing as the player asked.