Animal companions and feats

[Orcsmasher]

Will someone from Paizo please explain to me why animal companions cannot take feats from the Bestiary? Isn't that kind of what they do? Most companions are monsters after all.

On a more personal note. I was at ConNooga this weekend and every single freaking DM told me that my animal companion, and anklyasaurus with a 3 intelligence, cannot speak. Why the heck not? They gave me some lame excuse that anklyasauruses don't have vocal cords. I defy anyone to prove that. Has someone somewhere found a whole anklyasaurus complete with skin, muscles, and organs?

I also think that people who made these decisions about whether a dino can speak has forgotten something. This is a FANTASY world. If I want to bump his intelligence to a 3 and spend a skill point on linguistics, my companion should be able to speak. Its not like with a 3 intelligence he's going to be a good conversationalist. We aren;t looking at a Shakespeare or a politician or preacher. 2 to 5 word sentences at best with at most 2 sylabble words.

Come on, fix the "rule" and let us have fun with our characters and their companions.

[TwilightKnight]

Calm, Orcsmasher. Let your inner gamer be at peace. :-)

The official guidelines for companions in PFS, preclude Bestiary feats. There isn't really a great answer that you will like, as to why, it just is, and PFS leadership is not likely to reverse this stance. However, boosting your companion's INT to 3 will grant access to all feats previously restricted by their low intellect. That's a pretty big boon.

Being a fantasy world aside, I believe that restricting animal speech is a matter of balance. Players with an AC already slow down combat since they essentially have two characters. Adding speech to AC's could slow down play even further. Also, it would be a little awkward to role-play the NPC's when the party spokesman could be the ape with max ranks in Diplomacy.

[jjaamm/Keldar]

TwilightKnight wrote:

. Also, it would be a little awkward to role-play the NPC's when the party spokesman could be the ape with max ranks in Diplomacy.

shudders

[James Risner]

Orcsmasher wrote:

Will someone from Paizo please explain to me why animal companions cannot take feats from the Bestiary?

anklyasaurus with a 3 intelligence, cannot speak.

PFS doesn't allow Bestiary Feats to be taken with Character Level granted feats, but there are ways to get bonus feats from Bestiary (Multiattack, etc.)

Bestiary p 308:
Magical beasts are similar to animals but can have Intelligence scores higher than 2 (in which case the magical beast knows at least one language, but can’t necessarily speak).

A.C. gain Int 3, can learn a lang also I'd say but can't necessarily speak it.

Parrots can't speak and ank's are birds, so they can't speak.

A.C.'s are very limited. They have limited ability scores, limited AC (typically way less than the Druid) and in general are designed to be in the background.

[Mok]

From my understanding, most mammals have vocal cords (more properly named vocal folds) in their larynx. The issue is one of how articulated and developed the vocal folds are.

It has been observed from some chimps that have lived with humans their whole life and learned sign language that the chimps at times have made an attempt to speak human language, but their folds simply can't pull it off.

So the issue is mechanical in nature and not one of intelligence. To give speech to an animal by raising their Int from 2 to 3 is equivalent to giving an animal paw a human hand just for raising their Dex by +1.

If you give an animal a 3 intelligence and the linguistics skill then they can understand common and that can allow them to be spoken to as a character. Other PCs can even speak to them and the animal will understand what is being said (as well as a 3 Int can pull off). It basically updates the animal to functionally be like a chimp that had been raised by humans, or Lassie the dog.

Now, when we turn to dinosaurs, things get a bit more interesting. Birds are the surviving ancestors of dinosaurs and they in fact do not have vocal folds, so the argument that dinosaurs did not have vocal cords does have some merit to it.

The twist is that birds make all of their sounds in a mechanically different manner. They do not have a larynx like mammals, but instead have a structure called the syrinx. In effect, birds are very good whistlers, having a very detailed way in which they can articulate those whistles. Mammals however, use their cords in a way closer to a musical stringed instrument. So birds are the wind instruments and the mammals are the string section.

Parrots have an added feature of having a very articulated tongue, which helps assist them in shaping their whistles so that they come out sounding very similar to human speech.

So when you turn to the issue of dinosaurs things start to get more interesting. Some of them likely did have a syrinx, or some early form of it. Likewise, study on hadrosaurs shows that they were likely very vocal and aural types of dinosaurs. However, the whole mechanism would have been more about scaling up from a flute to a tuba. So it really becomes an issue of what kind of articulation was needed by different types of dinosaurs and how detailed that articulation ended up being in practice.

Stegasaurus and other herd type of plant eating dinosaurs are likely to have adapted their sounds to work within a herd type framework. Sounds would be used socially to determine dominance within the herd and also to project location and warnings over a long distance with very low level sounds. These would likely be hoots and other kinds of deep "wind instrument" type sounds.

From what I've read, depending on the dinosaur, many would have had strong and powerful tongues, and so I think, along with the potential syrinx and the type of dinosaur being considered, that some of them might be able to articulate like a parrot. Still, this is all pure speculation, and parrots are a weird and almost unique case amongst many many birds.

The problem of course is that this is PFS and this level of minutia isn't really feasible to be presenting at every table.

Just doing a +1 Int bump in animals already reaps huge benefits:

- Almost all feats are available.
- No more handle animal checks.
- Linguistics can be selected which allows animal to understand languages.

So you already get a ton of benefits just from one little stat bump.

As a GM what I'd allow is that there are certain gestures that the animal could perform that would be consistent and understandable, such as signs that could convey "yes" and "no" to anyone who asks it a question. Going beyond that in a PFS setting seems like you end up going too far into homerules territory.

[Orcsmasher]

Logic arguments all. Thank you.

So, if an anklyasaurus communicates via whistles, could I take a rank in linguitics to understand him?

I never, ever intended for my AC to be the speaker for the group or anything like that. In fact what I was doing in game before some DM sanctimoniously pointed out that anklyasaurs don't have vocal chords, was simply have him simply say ouch, stop that hurts when ever someone would attack and miss because of his insanely high AC.

[Todd Morgan]

That probably wouldn't allowed by many PFS GMs, but you could just have a wand of Speak With Animals

[Mok]

I think what I'd do in your situation is just write out your argument.

1. That RAW says that linguistics presents merely "common" languages but does not exclude others.

2. That RAW the dino can take linguistics to understand common.

3. That RAW you ought to be able to take linguistics to understand your AC's "language" that it develops.

4. That this particular language is unique to that animal companion.

And then just add in a stipulation that as a 3 Int you'll make syntax never go beyond two basic words being communicate:

"I eat"
"Fire far"
"sleep good"
"smell fear"

etc.

And then just have that ready to present to a GM that is finding an issue with it. If they still shoot it down then sigh and wait for the next game.

I think reasonable people will find that argument compelling. I think what GMs would have trepidation over is when it allows for just way too much information. A big part of it is that you're still dealing with an Int of 3. If the AC is conveying "The orc is down the hallway and in the left hand passage. He's holding a rope that appears to be attached to some trap device." I suspect that's when the GM is going to think things are going too far.

[TwilightKnight]

Orcsmasher wrote:

Logic arguments all. Thank you.

So, if an anklyasaurus communicates via whistles, could I take a rank in linguitics to understand him?

I never, ever intended for my AC to be the speaker for the group or anything like that. In fact what I was doing in game before some DM sanctimoniously pointed out that anklyasaurs don't have vocal chords, was simply have him simply say ouch, stop that hurts when ever someone would attack and miss because of his insanely high AC.

While I like your 'fluff', and would allow that at my home table, I think the bigger issue is how it would be abused if made legal. There are many (most, I hope) that do not set out to "break" the game with their character builds, but those players do exist. We know that, if you really want to, the game can become "broken," but why would we want to help them on their quest?

[Tristan Windseeker]

You might want to look at this post. It seems that some Bestiary feats are now allowed.