1) Does an animal companion that is Combat Trained count as having the Attack trick twice?
What good would that be? "Hey, I went to college twice"?
2) When you increase the intelligence of your animal companions to 3, do you assume they can perform all tricks?
They don´t need tricks anymore since they have achieved a level of sentience where they can think on their own
1) Does an animal companion that is Combat Trained count as having the Attack trick twice?What good would that be? "Hey, I went to college twice"?
They don´t need tricks anymore since they have achieved a level of sentience where they can think on their own
2) When you increase the intelligence of your animal companions to 3, do you assume they can perform all tricks?
1) For your own edification:
•Attack (DC 20): The animal attacks apparent enemies. You may point to a particular creature that you wish the animal to attack, and it will comply if able. Normally, an animal will attack only humanoids, monstrous humanoids, giants, or other animals. Teaching an animal to attack all creatures (including such unnatural creatures as undead and aberrations) counts as two tricks.
Bolding mine. To answer the original question, I would say no. I would assume "Combat Trained" means it has the "Combat Training" package listed under Handle Animal, which only has the normal Attack trick. If this is a class-feature Animal Companion though, it's easy enough to spend one of your bonus tricks on upgrading the Attack trick.
2) Animals can always think on their own, since they have an Intelligence score. The trick (pardon the pun) is getting them to do what you want, instead of what they want.
Once an animal has an Intelligence score of three or more they are beyond animal-level instinct-only thought. It's now possible for them to learn language (but its not automatic?) though it may not be possible physically for them to vocalize, depending on how realistic your GM is. They're also capable of learning feats outside of the usual selection for animals. That's what the RAW says.
Reading a bit between the lines though, we see that Handle Animal only works on animals, and (with penalty) Magical Beasts with an INT of 1-2. Further, if we look at the definition of an Animal type in the bestiary we see that "no creature with an intelligence of 3 or higher can be an animal." So Handle Animal, and tricks by extension, don't work anymore. Wild Empathy has the same restrictions, so that's out. At this point what we're left with is a low-INT NPC, so that gives us the usual Bluff, Diplomacy & Intimidate trifecta. Assuming this is an Animal Companion however, one would assume its attitude towards you will always be at its peak. I would treat it more like a loyal Cohort at this point, rather than an Animal Companion.
1) Does an animal companion that is Combat Trained count as having the Attack trick twice?No. Use one of the bonus tricks to select attack again.
2) When you increase the intelligence of your animal companions to 3, do you assume they can perform all tricks?Yes. They're smart enough to understand a language, so they can and will do any trick that a "dumb" animal could do.