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Even with Speak with Animal, you gotta make yourself understood to the animal. Just saying, "Attack the man in Red" might not mean anything to the animal. You might have to use at least a move equivalent action to explain to the animal what you want it to do. I am not sure I'd require a handle animal check, but just because the animal can understand the words coming out of your mouth, doesn't mean it understands their intent.
Exactly, animals have a concept of fighting for self defense, for territory, or for food but attacking some 8' tall chunk of rotting flesh so the rogue can hit harder? I don't even think that concept is in the animal vocabulary.
I agree with you Andrew, but I think james_maissen's comments may have been made in reference to more intelligent animals (i.e. Int 6 with Speak with Animal, according to him, shouldn't even require Handle Animal)
That's what I understood from his comments anyways.
I wasn't really sure, which is why I didn't reply myself.
Seems to me that taking a wild animal and uplifting it to a 4-5 intelligence isn't going to automatically make it understand complex ideas.
It's worth noting that 'speak with animals' says "You can ask questions of and receive answers from animals", it doesn't really suggest you are able to fluently communicate and give orders.
I think it's reasonable to assume that teaching even an intelligent animal would require handle animal and training.
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I don't think applying logic to this is a bad idea. It was made largely from a game balance perspective (not that I think handle animal-less animal companions was somehow unbalanced).
The ruling from the powers that be is that animals are dumb now matter how high their intelligence is. Humanoids are reasonably smart no matter how low their intelligence is. You're not going to logic them into fixing this.
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Hey I don't have (much) of a problem with this, however if you can communicate with the intelligent animal in question then a handle animal check to communicate your desires for it to do a trick it's trained to do is not needed.
There is a skill for communicating your desires to an animal, it's called appropriately handle animal.
Here's a question: a fighter gets hit by feeblemind. What's he allowed to do?
Very simple tasks within the framework of the 20+ years of experience he has.
People are formed based on years of experience and teaching. Dropping a point of intelligence on an animal doesn't suddenly grant them those years of experience. Dropping someone's intelligence to 3 doesn't take it away.
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James, here is another Thread..
Just like I said in the other thread, It is Time to accept that you need to use Handle Animal. At this point you have said everything and now you are just repeating yourself.
Can we let this thread die? We are not getting anywhere anymore and the same things are being said on both sides.
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James I wholly agree this is dumb and arbitrarily punishing for characters with animal companions.
That said, there's nothing we can do about it.
Really?? 2 ranks in Handle Animal is punishing? Because that's all you need to auto-succeed on any free action HA checks for trained tricks, based on average Charisma.
If the character is as reliant on their AC as you imply, surely they can sink 2 ranks into a skill, or just 1 and take a 5% failure.
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There is a skill for communicating your desires to an animal, it's called appropriately handle animal.
There's a skill for many things, doesn't mean those skills are the only way to achieve anything.
A druid is wildshaped into the same form as their animal companion and thus can speak to it. The druid says 'use your trick to attack that you were taught to do' and the animal does it, cause it understands the druid.
Much like using alter self to change into an orc doesn't grant you the orc language, wild shaping into a cow does not grant you bovine language skills.
Nor is speak with animals the animal equivalent of tongues, if you read the spell it has a fairly limited role.
Ultimately Handle Animal IS the way the druid communicates with his animal friends. What sort of bonus does Speak With Animals give to your Handle Animal skill checks? Isn't that a strange omission?
I see you talk about the importance of rules in other posts... but it seems you you feel you can set aside the rules, add new ones, or just ignore the actual text of the rules when it's inconvenient to your point.
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James I wholly agree this is dumb and arbitrarily punishing for characters with animal companions.
That said, there's nothing we can do about it.
Really?? 2 ranks in Handle Animal is punishing? Because that's all you need to auto-succeed on any free action HA checks for trained tricks, based on average Charisma.
If the character is as reliant on their AC as you imply, surely they can sink 2 ranks into a skill, or just 1 and take a 5% failure.
2 ranks isn't a problem and that's great for most cases.
But what if you want your AC to:
Disarm someone?
Subdue them?
Grapple them (without mauling them)?
Get a flank?
Unlike 3.5 there's no tricks to cover this stuff so you need to 'Push' which is DC 25. Still not a problem?
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Unlike 3.5 there's no tricks to cover this stuff so you need to 'Push' which is DC 25. Still not a problem?
Except that James' post specifically referenced something the animal already was taught to do.
EDIT: As far as using AC's to perform Combat Maneuvres - that is probably an issue that should be addressed in the general rules forum.
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How would a bear or wild animal ever even have a grasp of these concepts?
Animals attack creatures in self defense, for food, or to defend their territory. Disarming someone? Subduing someone?
Even if you could speak bear, there is no concept in the bear language for "just rough him up a little" or "take that sharp metal stick out of his hand".
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How would a bear or wild animal ever even have a grasp of these concepts?
Animals attack creatures in self defense, for food, or to defend their territory. Disarming someone? Subduing someone?
Even if you could speak bear, there is no concept in the bear language for "just rough him up a little" or "take that sharp metal stick out of his hand".
You speak Bear? Really?
Seriously, in the real world, you have proved yourself wrong. Bears, like many wild animals, have dominance fights, which are, frequently, "just rough him up a little" rather than "kill him".
Do we need to go into wolves as pack animals being "naturally" inclined to do flanking style attacks?
So, wolves, naturally, have a grasp on flanking. Animals which have dominance fights have a grasp on roughing up opponents without, necessarily, an intent to kill.
Bulls have to be kept in IGNORANCE in order to be sure that they will attack the cloak instead of the human for bullfighting.
As to disarming, I would suspect it doesn't take much intelligence to go after the sharp pointy thing that causes pain instead of that leg.
And we won't go into the things that police dogs can be trained to do, which, oddly enough, includes something very similar in effect to grappling; and I wouldn't bet against training to disarm, since getting the dog to bite someone's arm to dislodge that gun wouldn't be that difficult to do, if you can train them to knock someone over and go for the throat...
the thing I find oddest I'n this whole animsl int discussion is it never would have occurred to me to not have max ranks In handle animsl as a Druid. it always struck me as a defining element of the class..like rogues and sneak.
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I agree with Gallard that those combat options should perhaps be available for training to an animal companion. I don't think that it would be unbalancing to have disarm or grapple as tricks (tho maybe with a pre-req of Attack).
To me, flanking is a non-issue (even with real world wolves), just get your AC to attack, then flank with your character.
However, these are not PFS issues, but things that should be raised with the designers in the Pathfinder rules. Who knows, maybe they'll look at it if they ever do a book focused on combat?? ;)
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the thing I find oddest I'n this whole animsl int discussion is it never would have occurred to me to not have max ranks In handle animsl as a Druid. it always struck me as a defining element of the class..like rogues and sneak.
Ummm. Which kind of Druid?
Druids can be defined as several different "styles" even without the APG archetypes.
Is your Druid an AC Druid, built around all the stuff to maximize your AC, including your spell list?
Is your Druid a Summoner Druid, built around maximising the effects of yoru Summon Nature's Ally spells?
Is your Druid a Wild Shape specialist, taking spells and abilities to maximize his effectiveness when wild shaped?
How about a Domain specialist, doing everything to maximize the effect of whatever Domain you chose instead of an AC?
Seriously, why would a Wild Shape specialist, as an example, take many, if any, ranks in Handle Animal?
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How about a Domain specialist, doing everything to maximize the effect of whatever Domain you chose instead of an AC?
Seriously, why would a Wild Shape specialist, as an example, take many, if any, ranks in Handle Animal?
Why would those types of druids then expect to have an equally effective Animal Companion?
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Why would those types of druids then expect to have an equally effective Animal Companion?How about a Domain specialist, doing everything to maximize the effect of whatever Domain you chose instead of an AC?
Seriously, why would a Wild Shape specialist, as an example, take many, if any, ranks in Handle Animal?
The Domain Druid wouldn't have one, he sacrificed it to get a domain.
But my question was in response to the previous poster's statement that Handle Animal is a class-defining skill. It isn't.
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You speak Bear? Really?
Seriously, in the real world, you have proved yourself wrong. Bears, like many wild animals, have dominance fights, which are, frequently, "just rough him up a little" rather than "kill him".
Do we need to go into wolves as pack animals being "naturally" inclined to do flanking style attacks?
So, wolves, naturally, have a grasp on flanking. Animals which have dominance fights have a grasp on roughing up opponents without, necessarily, an intent to kill.
Bulls have to be kept in IGNORANCE in order to be sure that they will attack the cloak instead of the human for bullfighting.
As to disarming, I would suspect it doesn't take much intelligence to go after the sharp pointy thing that causes pain instead of that leg.
And we won't go into the things that police dogs can be trained to do, which, oddly enough, includes something very similar in effect to grappling; and I wouldn't bet against training to disarm, since getting the dog to bite someone's arm to dislodge that gun wouldn't be that difficult to do, if you can train them to knock someone over and go for the throat...
All this is very true. But you make it sound like it’s as easy as teaching a dog to sit or shake your hand for a treat.
It takes months to train a police dog and probably longer to train a circus bear. And still, sometimes that bear or tiger will attack (i.e. Siegfried & Roy) no matter how well trained.
Additionally, to get their animals to do these crazy tricks, they actually spend a bunch of time signaling them manually, verbally, and with the promise of food treats. That isn’t a free action.
It is incredibly reasonable, and logical to expect a “push” when asking the animal to do complex actions, no matter how intelligent they seem. Even dolphins, which are arguably higher than Int 3, require pushing for the complex actions.
As for “just roughing them up” argument… I call BS. Those dominance fights are not just playing around. If the weaker animal doesn’t submit, the stronger animal will kill them. The initial battle is more of an intimidation battle (albeit by using physicality and strength rather than charisma) and then it turns deadly.
As far as wolves naturally learning to flank… Think of the tricks allowed and how it is a blanket rule across all animals as an abstract much like HP’s and AC is an abstract. If you start allowing wolves to get flank as a free trick and/or a trainable trick (without pushing) then you the designers have to start researching every animal and writing these things into their monster stat blocks. I think I’d rather have my developers spending time on new modules, new splat books, new chronicles, new player guides, et. al. than researching what animals actually, individually by species, do in the wild and what tricks they are capable of learning easily.
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the thing I find oddest I'n this whole animsl int discussion is it never would have occurred to me to not have max ranks In handle animsl as a Druid. it always struck me as a defining element of the class..like rogues and sneak.Ummm. Which kind of Druid?
Druids can be defined as several different "styles" even without the APG archetypes.
Is your Druid an AC Druid, built around all the stuff to maximize your AC, including your spell list?
Is your Druid a Summoner Druid, built around maximising the effects of yoru Summon Nature's Ally spells?
Is your Druid a Wild Shape specialist, taking spells and abilities to maximize his effectiveness when wild shaped?
How about a Domain specialist, doing everything to maximize the effect of whatever Domain you chose instead of an AC?
Seriously, why would a Wild Shape specialist, as an example, take many, if any, ranks in Handle Animal?
Your argument just supported the argument that AC specialized druids should take handle animal.
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Lets provide an example here:
Your Druid (who has +16 Handle Animal) has a viper companion (with tricks Heel, Attack, and Defend) and runs into a wild mongoose.
Druid: Bitey, heel.
Bitey: (despite being confronted with a natural enemy, is extremely loyal to the Druid and thus stays by the Druid’s side)
Druid: (Casts Speak with Animal) Hey Mr. Mongoose, could you please not attack my friend Bitey?
Mongoose: (thinks to self as only animals can, “huh? What’s a bitey?” and what do I know about this two-leg standing before me? I don’t like him and he kinda scares me, especially with that dastardly baby-stealer by his side.) Charges the viper, his natural enemy.
Druid: (in animal speak, since he cast speak with animals) “Bitey, go run around and flank the mongoose while I attack it.”
Bitey: (this to self as only animals can, “I heard the words come out of his mouth, and as he’s sometimes does, made a weird sort of sense. I mean I understand the invidual hissing sounds, but I’m not quite sure what he wants me to do, I’m confused.” Stands confused for a moment and then because he’s being attacked by a natural enemy goes into the dance with the mongoose.)
Druid: Crap (uses hand signals, whistles, and a few well chosen hissing words and makes his Handle Animal push check with a 10 on the roll) Bitey, go flank the mongoose please.
Bitey: (Finally no longer confused by a concept he’s not familiar with, goes and flanks the mongoose)
Now in a home game, you could say through experience, that this sort of thing being a regular thing, that eventually Bitey would learn to flank based on what the Druid hisses when using Speak with Animals. But in OP, you can’t do that, because there is no progressive roleplay between scenarios.
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Lets provide an example here:
Your Druid (who has +16 Handle Animal) has a viper companion (with tricks Heel, Attack, and Defend) and runs into a wild mongoose.
Druid: Bitey, heel.
Bitey: (despite being confronted with a natural enemy, is extremely loyal to the Druid and thus stays by the Druid’s side)
Druid: (Casts Speak with Animal) Hey Mr. Mongoose, could you please not attack my friend Bitey?
Mongoose: (thinks to self as only animals can, “huh? What’s a bitey?” and what do I know about this two-leg standing before me? I don’t like him and he kinda scares me, especially with that dastardly baby-stealer by his side.) Charges the viper, his natural enemy.
Druid: (in animal speak, since he cast speak with animals) “Bitey, go run around and flank the mongoose while I attack it.”
Bitey: (this to self as only animals can, “I heard the words come out of his mouth, and as he’s sometimes does, made a weird sort of sense. I mean I understand the invidual hissing sounds, but I’m not quite sure what he wants me to do, I’m confused.” Stands confused for a moment and then because he’s being attacked by a natural enemy goes into the dance with the mongoose.)
Druid: Crap (uses hand signals, whistles, and a few well chosen hissing words and makes his Handle Animal push check with a 10 on the roll) Bitey, go flank the mongoose please.
Bitey: (Finally no longer confused by a concept he’s not familiar with, goes and flanks the mongoose)Now in a home game, you could say through experience, that this sort of thing being a regular thing, that eventually Bitey would learn to flank based on what the Druid hisses when using Speak with Animals. But in OP, you can’t do that, because there is no progressive roleplay between scenarios.
Furthermore, lets discuss the language barrier.
I'd wager that anyone that either is arguing the same side of this argument as I am, anyone I'm directly arguing against, and all the people out there who just don't care or don't know which side to be on, are either just as smart, or smarter than I am. Of course once you get about 14 Int or higher, it all becomes relative when considering communication.
But I guarantee you, that if I sat down and started talking industry jargon with you on doors & hardware, and you aren't at least peripherally involved with construction, you'd be lost. You wouldn't know what I'm talking about. Yet we both speak English, and you comprehend the individual words, they just make no sense in context. If you listened to me for an hour and asked good informational questions,
Same goes for those who've never been in the military, I could talk military jargon with all the acronyms and abbreviations all day, and you might not make heads or tails.
Or a girl who doesn't care about sports (for that matter many of my gaming friends as well) would be lost when I start getting into a deep conversation about football.
Yet you understand the words block, formation, door, hinge, et. al.
But if I'm trying to give you direction on how to do something using the industry jargon, you might do the wrong thing, or totally misunderstand me. Be frozen in indecision because I confused you.
Same goes for me. If someone else knew something about the deep meaning and differences between political parties from around the world and tried to use specific jargon with me. I'd be lost.
So you are trying to tell me that your 3 Int Monkey is going to understand how to disarm a fighter simply because you cast Speak with Animals? I don't think so.
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Your argument just supported the argument that AC specialized druids should take handle animal.
No, it didn't. It simply pointed out that there are multiple TYPEs of Druid.
If you have an AC which is intelligent, say higher than the party Fighter, why would it not understand, "Attack from the opponent's rear."?
After all, you aren't really telling it to flank, you are telling it to attack from the other side of the enemy from you, its boon companion.
That, you have to admit, is something it should understand.
So, if you can TELL it to do something, why should you have to use Handle Animal?
As to dominance fights, it isn't just carnivores that have them, and I submit that it is unlikely that a reindeer dominance fight is targeting death instead of submission.
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Your argument just supported the argument that AC specialized druids should take handle animal.No, it didn't. It simply pointed out that there are multiple TYPEs of Druid.
If you have an AC which is intelligent, say higher than the party Fighter, why would it not understand, "Attack from the opponent's rear."?
After all, you aren't really telling it to flank, you are telling it to attack from the other side of the enemy from you, its boon companion.
That, you have to admit, is something it should understand.
So, if you can TELL it to do something, why should you have to use Handle Animal?
As to dominance fights, it isn't just carnivores that have them, and I submit that it is unlikely that a reindeer dominance fight is targeting death instead of submission.
My other example of trying to tell an animal what to do should clear up where my mind is at on this issue.
As for dominance fights... if the weaker reindeer won't submit, at the very least it will be permanently crippled if not killed.
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So you are trying to tell me that your 3 Int Monkey is going to understand how to disarm a fighter simply because you cast Speak with Animals? I don't think so.A false premise.
A 3INT PC is able to learn this, but perhaps doesn't already know how to do so. Simply telling him to 'disarm the guy' isn't going to work either.
Handle animal can train animals for tricks. Yet there is no trick for this, so handle animal cannot train the animal.
Handle animal can also communicate to the animal that it is time to perform that trick. In this regard any form of communication would suffice. This form of handle animal is not instantly training the animal within that span of 6 seconds now is it? Of course not.
There are many ways to communicate with animals, despite people not understanding that this can be the case. Should one be able to communicate with the animal then all is well. It doesn't matter if that form of communication is via the handle animal skill or some form of magic...
All handle animal is doing in this instance is the communication so if another form of communication succeeds then it is accomplished.
This would be like saying 'the door is locked' to your players, having them destroy the door (say via disintegrating it) and when they want to go through the now 10'x10' hole of nothingness demand that they roll a disable device skill check 'cause the door is locked'. There's no longer a door and there's no longer a lock!
Skills have a place in the game, but they do not have to be 'stop! don't pass go.. go directly to the skill roll' rather they make sense.
Handle animal has multiple uses.
One use is to train an animal. We're not talking about that use right now.
Another use is to communicate to the animal that the person wants the animal to do one of his tricks. While this skill can accomplish that, other things can also accomplish this... just like the locked door can be removed by other means than merely disable device to unlock it....
Unfortunately yours is the false premise.
Just because an animal has a 3 INT or higher, does not mean it isn't an animal.
The latest clarification was quite clear on this. Animal intelligence is animal intelligence regardless of how high the actual score is.
In real life, there are some dogs, dolphins, and horses that, if challenged to equate them to DnD stats, I would say had a higher intelligence than 2 (thus the Paladin's divine mount automatically starting at 6). Yet they still didn't have any higher cognitive functions. They were still an instinctual animal that happened to catch on to many tricks quite quickly. They still did instinctual animal things (Squirrel!)
So while your AC might be smarter than the average bear, it is still a bear with a lack of sentience.
Speak with animals or Linguistics does not suddenly give the animal sentience, and it still has to grasp complex instructions as an animal would try.
Your 3 Int Monkey is not the equivalent of your 3 Int Fighter. No matter how hard you try to make that argument, it just isn't true.
But those of you who want to keep beating this dead horse, go right ahead. I'm outta this conversation. You don't seem to want to hear what anyone else has to say on the matter.
Director of Brand Strategy
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As long as the task you're communicating to an animal is something it knows how to do (like attack or bear a rider into combat) and doesn't need to be pushed to do (like bite a zombie or get right up next to a dragon), speak with animals is sufficient to relay these instructions to the animal. It does not preclude the use of Handle Animal if there would normally be a check involved, such as pushing the animal to do something that doesn't come naturally to it.
All that said, this thread is pushing the PFS-relevance boundary here, and might be a better fit in the general rules forum. Let's try to keep discussions in the PFS forum for PFS-specific rulings, if possible to avoid clutter.
Thanks!
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Speak with animals or Linguistics does not suddenly give the animal sentience, and it still has to grasp complex instructions as an animal would try.I'm getting the feeling that you didn't read all that I wrote.
What I'm talking about is a trick that the animal has been trained to do.
All that is now left is to communicate to the animal that it's time to do it's trick.
Some people are of the opinion that they only way to do this is via handle animal.
They are mistaken. There are multiple ways in which a character can communicate this to an animal. Most of these involve magic of some degree or another.
This should not be surprising as magic offers a way to do things that you would otherwise need a skill to do.
But since you're out of here you won't read this, but perhaps others will and not get confused between these two uses of the handle animal skill.
-James
I'll address this point, because this point isn't beating the same dead horse all the other ones are.
Yes, magic could perhaps overcome some need for handle animal. And yes, a Druid gets speak with animals at 1st level.
But a druid has a limited number of 1st level spells at 1st level. So are you saying that your AC specialized druid is going to eschew Handle Animal because they will only ever need to command their animal to do anything two or three times a module? Not to mention, now they don’t have any other spells to cast.
Not taking ranks in Handle Animal, especially for a druid specializing in animal companions, is a metagame decision and silly. No matter how much you argue the point, or explain that there are more ways than handle animal to communicate with your animal, it does not make in character sense to not take handle animal at lower levels.
As such, I don’t have sympathy for those who are now detracted from for a couple levels due to this metagame choice.
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Meh, too much problems with what it can do and cannot do, how smart it is, that is why Im a paladin, I lvl up to 5th lvl take two lvls in ranger then at 7th lvl I take 5th lvl of paladin, take Boon companion feat and bam I get a large kitty that is not gonna be used as a mount but an awesome killing machine. And it is a magical beast with an Intel of 6. So yeah it understands me pretty well when I speak to it.
"Kitty go flank bad guy"!
::kitty nods and goes and flanks bad guy::
Um, no.
If you didn't notice your mount's INT is not a factor in how it behaves. It's an animal and thus uses handle animal to control in any fashion. This was brought up earlier in the thread.
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We're not pulling rules out from under anyone. The rule hasn't changed, only been clarified in light of the recent attention the FAQ blog instigated. A paladin needs to make Ride checks when riding her mount and Handle Animal checks when not (until 11th level, when the mount changes type to magical beast). If you have a build that was optimized for a different interpretation of the rules, you may still make Handle Animal or Ride checks untrained, and have the opportunity to put skill ranks in either with your next level; this is not an occasion to warrant a rebuild.
Um, no.
Like I said, earlier this thread.
Paladins aren't special. Their mounts are just as dumb as everyone else's, can't flank, and require Handle Animal/Ride just like everyone else.
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So are you saying that your AC specialized druid is going to eschew Handle Animal because they will only ever need to command their animal to do anything two or three times a module? Not to mention, now they don’t have any other spells to cast.Not taking ranks in Handle Animal, especially for a druid specializing in animal companions, is a metagame decision and silly. No matter how much you argue the point, or explain that there are more ways than handle animal to communicate with your animal, it does not make in character sense to not take handle animal at lower levels.
As such, I don’t have sympathy for those who are now detracted from for a couple levels due to this metagame choice.
I'm not trying to tell players how to build their characters. I tend to find it distasteful. If asked I'll give advice, but that's different.
What I was addressing was the rules itself. People were trying to say that one had to use handle animal in order to communicate, which is simply wrong and not supported by the rules. Many people didn't realize what options were out there in order to so communicate, and as such I mentioned a few ways expressly out there.
As to the choices an individual druid character will make in the way of skills that's their call. Whether or not you have any empathy for their choices shouldn't really matter.
I don't really care for people that try to make other people's decisions for them. Whether it is under the guise of 'it doesn't make sense for you not to do X' or the guise of 'it's more optimal to do Y' it is simply not someone else's call to make. In either case it is at the very best rude behavior, and I would suggest that people attempt to refrain from such in an effort to promote a better playing environment.
-James
So you basically agree with what I'm saying?
Look, I'm not looking to tell anyone how to play or design their characters either. But if as a player, you choose metagaming options, which basically is to say you are gaming the system or exploiting a loophole, then you gotta know if the loophole gets closed, there may be repercussions for your character.
So if those types of decisions are being made, and then players come back and start whining about it, I'm gonna call them on it.
Especially in an OP environment like PFS. If it were a home game, then the GM can make whatever calls they want, and if it later turns out to be a loophole he doesn't like, then he can work it out with his player in whatever way is the best for that particular group of people. In an OP environment, you don't have the luxury of that, and strangely enough they tend to attract the metagamers.
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Meh, too much problems with what it can do and cannot do, how smart it is, that is why Im a paladin, I lvl up to 5th lvl take two lvls in ranger then at 7th lvl I take 5th lvl of paladin, take Boon companion feat and bam I get a large kitty that is not gonna be used as a mount but an awesome killing machine. And it is a magical beast with an Intel of 6. So yeah it understands me pretty well when I speak to it.
"Kitty go flank bad guy"!
::kitty nods and goes and flanks bad guy::Um, no.
If you didn't notice your mount's INT is not a factor in how it behaves. It's an animal and thus uses handle animal to control in any fashion. This was brought up earlier in the thread.
If an animal starts with an Int of 3 or higher, it's not an animal; it must be a magical beast or other creature type (as is the case with a 1st level wizard's familiar). If an animal advances to higher than 2 on its own, it doesn't change creature types.A paladin mount starts with an INT of 6. It is a magical beast.
It counts as an animal for purposes of spells until the paladin hits level 11 where the mount gets the template. But the mount is a magical beast.
He does go on to believe that somehow a Paladin mount doesn't start with an INT of 6 as the rules and his reading of them above are otherwise at odds.
-James
The paladin gets a mount at level 5, that starts with an Int of 6. But to assume that the mount was born with an Int of 6 is the incorrect assumption.
It isn't explicitly stated, but I like to think that there is this herd of really cool horses somewhere that the gods like to pick from, and when the paladin has earned their mount, the gods wave their hand and the mount gets +4 Int and becomes the Divinely bonded mount.
Or perhaps the act of divine bonding gives the horse a +4 Int.
But just because the words in the paladin write-up says, "starts with a 6 Int" does not mean that the beast is magical. It just means that when the divine bond is enjoined, the beast gets a 6 Int.
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I don't necessarily disagree with you. As I mentioned earlier, I think most of the sudden hate on animal companions (barring weapon wielding apes) is silly. I'm just stating the ruling that we've already been issued by the powers that be.
You can cite rules all day long and try to logic this into oblivion. It doesn't matter. The people that get to make these calls have already had their say.
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that only a 1 would ever fail and only because a 1 has to fail.A 1 doesn't have to fail for skills.
Handle animal cannot be used on magical beasts with higher than a 2 INT.
Since the paladin mount has such a high INT, it can understand language(s) and as such you can directly communicate with them.
Thus handle animal doesn't apply to Paladin Mounts in any way, shape, or form.
-James
That is not the ruling made by the powers that be.
that only a 1 would ever fail and only because a 1 has to fail.A 1 doesn't have to fail for skills.
Handle animal cannot be used on magical beasts with higher than a 2 INT.
Since the paladin mount has such a high INT, it can understand language(s) and as such you can directly communicate with them.
Thus handle animal doesn't apply to Paladin Mounts in any way, shape, or form.
-James
I'm fairly certain that you are confusing Pathfinder Society with an organized play campaign that follows the Pathfinder rulebook, or even it's own rulebook.
That appears to have stopped being the case somewhere around 10/2/2010.
You're fighting an uphill battle, and you are surrounded by a hostile enemy.
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Baltic
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StuffI'm fairly certain that you are confusing Pathfinder Society with an organized play campaign that follows the Pathfinder rulebook, or even it's own rulebook.
That appears to have stopped being the case somewhere around 10/2/2010.
You're fighting an uphill battle, and you are surrounded by a hostile enemy.
If I remember correctly James has had problems with Pathfinder Society rules way before 10/2/2010. Wands of Lesser Restoration ring a bell?
Although I often agree with James explanation of the Pathfinder rules (RAW) it's the freedom of a GM or in this case the organized play campaign staff to deviate from these rules or interpret them differently.