|
Does anyone see any reason that a creature with an animal intelligence cannot use the aid other action. Pack animals such as wolves help each other in combat, it seems like this would be useful in a world with creatures that are so hard to hit.
I feel like the short answer is -- it depends...
I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that "aid another" was strictly for skill checks or certain stat checks. Therefore it should not aid in hitting creatures in combat. There are other things for that like flanking and so on.
As far as the "aid another", it should depend on the circumstance. Your warhorse should not be able to "aid another" to open a lock, but I don't see why your warhorse couldn't offer its strength to help pull open a door (assuming a sufficient rope use check to tie the horse to the door).
|
|
Does anyone see any reason that a creature with an animal intelligence cannot use the aid other action. Pack animals such as wolves help each other in combat, it seems like this would be useful in a world with creatures that are so hard to hit.
I feel like the short answer is -- it depends...
I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that "aid another" was strictly for skill checks or certain stat checks. Therefore it should not aid in hitting creatures in combat. There are other things for that like flanking and so on.
As far as the "aid another", it should depend on the circumstance. Your warhorse should not be able to "aid another" to open a lock, but I don't see why your warhorse couldn't offer its strength to help pull open a door (assuming a sufficient rope use check to tie the horse to the door).
No Aid another can be used to give an ally a +2 to AC or to hit.
From the SRD:AID ANOTHER
In melee combat, you can help a friend attack or defend by distracting or interfering with an opponent. If you’re in position to make a melee attack on an opponent that is engaging a friend in melee combat, you can attempt to aid your friend as a standard action. You make an attack roll against AC 10. If you succeed, your friend gains either a +2 bonus on his next attack roll against that opponent or a +2 bonus to AC against that opponent’s next attack (your choice), as long as that attack comes before the beginning of your next turn. Multiple characters can aid the same friend, and similar bonuses stack.
You can also use this standard action to help a friend in other ways, such as when he is affected by a spell, or to assist another character’s skill check.So should animals be able to actively do this?
Interesting. I guess that I don't see any reason not to allow this. I would probably put in a caveat that both the creature receiving the aid and giving the aid need to have worked together before if they can't communicate. Otherwise, I guess I don't see any issue with it.
Does anyone see any reason that a creature with an animal intelligence cannot use the aid other action. Pack animals such as wolves help each other in combat, it seems like this would be useful in a world with creatures that are so hard to hit.
I would say yes assuming the animal knows the appropriate tricks. An animal that does not have the Attack or Defend tricks would not be able to aid other in combat.
If you want the animals to use Aid Another when you think it is appropriate, then it is a Handle Animal check.
Otherwise the GM rules when animals might use this action.
|
|
...Interesting. I guess that I don't see any reason not to allow this. I would probably put in a caveat that both the creature receiving the aid and giving the aid need to haveDoes anyone see any reason that a creature with an animal intelligence cannot use the aid other action. Pack animals such as wolves help each other in combat, it seems like this would be useful in a world with creatures that are so hard to hit.
I feel like the short answer is -- it depends...
I could be mistaken, but I was under the impression that "aid another" was strictly for skill checks or certain stat checks. Therefore it should not aid in hitting creatures in combat. There are other things for that like flanking and so on.
As far as the "aid another", it should depend on the circumstance. Your warhorse should not be able to "aid another" to open a lock, but I don't see why your warhorse couldn't offer its strength to help pull open a door (assuming a sufficient rope use check to tie the horse to the door).
No Aid another can be used to give an ally a +2 to AC or to hit.
From the SRD:AID ANOTHER
In melee combat, you can help a friend attack or defend by distracting or interfering with an opponent. If you’re in position to make a melee attack on an opponent that is engaging a friend in melee combat, you can attempt to aid your friend as a standard action. You make an attack roll against AC 10. If you succeed, your friend gains either a +2 bonus on his next attack roll against that opponent or a +2 bonus to AC against that opponent’s next attack (your choice), as long as that attack comes before the beginning of your next turn. Multiple characters can aid the same friend, and similar bonuses stack.
You can also use this standard action to help a friend in other ways, such as when he is affected by a spell, or to assist another character’s skill check.So should animals be able to actively do this?
Yes and no. I mean, part of the reason I don't really have an issue with it is, mathematically, I'm not sure if it really amounts to all that much...
At most, you can get 8 wolves on a typical character, right? So you would forfeit 7 attacks (potential hits) for one fairly guaranteed hit. At the level where they would need to "aid another" to hit, the character in question should be able to last quite a few rounds of single bites. In addition, your base wolf has a whopping +1 to hit. Make it +3 if they are flanking (likely with a group). Mathematically, this gives the wolves a 70% chance of even being able to "aid another". This means that 5 of the 7 wolves will probably be able to "help". This gives +10 to the lead wolf's ability to hit making his bonus +13 (maybe +14 if it's an advanced wolf) which still gives the lead wolf at least a 25% chance to miss an AC of 20.
Compare that to just doing straight attacks against an AC 20. 8 attacks with a +3 bonus means about a 20% chance to hit for each wolf. With 5 wolves, you've got a pretty good chance of hitting anyway. The other three are just icing on the cake.
In both scenarios, you've got a pretty good chance to hit once. In the second scenario, there are even chances that you'll hit more than once. So I'm not sure how much more dangerous it would be if they were doing the "aid another".
|
Assuming you're using the D&D 3.5 rules set, animals cannot use the Aid Another ability unless they are trained to do so. I don't have it with me at the moment so I can't give you a page number, but Complete Adventurer addressed this with a couple of new Handle Animal tricks for trained animals: Assist Defend and Assist Attack. To my knowledge, Pathfinder hasn't implemented rules for this or disqualified the tricks from Complete Adventurer so I continue to use them.
Both tricks required the animal to already have the Attack and Defend tricks so it uses four trick slots to teach an animal all four, five if you want to teach the animal to attack abnormal monsters like undead, oozes and such.
Wolves and similar animals do gang up on foes but they don't necessarily know this is effective. A pack of eight wolves surrounding a human is already getting flanking bonuses because the human's attention is split, but the wolves don't really know or think about this. It's just a benefit of circumstance and the wolves have adapted to hunt this way.
Similarly, a herd of elephants will form a wall around their young when attacked by predators but they aren't necessarily using Aid Another to give the calves or each other a +2 AC bonus. They don't need to know how to Aid Another because the calves are getting a +4 Cover bonus by being surrounded by a ring of 15000lb death machines and the adults don't need the +2 because they're usually tough enough and strong enough to survive most predators.
Getting a little off topic, but still useful, the Work trick covers most cases where you're using an animal to help pull open a door, drag an idol away from a secret passage, etc. You tell the animal what to do with your DC10 Handle Animal check and it starts pulling, lifting, etc. It doesn't really know how it's helping, but you can treat it as an Aid Another because you've got some extra muscle. If the animal is stronger than you or can drag more weight, it might be you Aiding the animal.
As a GM, I'd also allow animals with the Perform trick to grant a character a +2 circumstance bonus to certain Perform skills if the owner makes a DC10 Handle Animal roll, success indicating the animal accompanies the performance by tumbling, dancing, or running around with a tin cup to gather coins from spectators, etc.
When I read the title of this thread I assumed some player wanted his mules to be aiding his attacks.
I don't buy the whole argument that animals don't know when they are aiding others. That is not the point of the tricks mentioned. The point is to get them to aid in a specific fashion when commanded to, instead of relying on their own judgement. Likewise, animals don't need to know the "attack" trick to know how to attack. Instead they need to know the trick to know when and what to attack when commanded.
|
|
True. Any trick is just a means for the animal's trainer to command it to do something it is capable of that it might not consider doing on its own, but I see certain tricks as teaching the animal to do something it knows how to do better.
Attack, for instance, takes up two trick slots if you want an animal to fight unnatural creatures it would normally flee. Assist Attack has a prerequisite of Attack so I reason that you are teaching your animal a skill it normally wouldn't think to use on its own.
Some animals may instinctively flank but, to me, that isn't the same as a non-flanking animal knowing how to distract prey enough to grant its partner an attack or AC bonus.