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It should be fairly clear from the PFS FAQ...
How can I teach tricks to an animal using Handle Animal?
You can teach any animal a trick so long as you follow the rules for Handle Animal on pages 97–98 of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. A GM must observe your Handle Animal check, and must initial what tricks the animal gained in the "Conditions Gained" section of the scenario's Chronicle sheet. The first time a character with levels in druid, ranger, or any other class that grants an animal companion gains an animal companion, the animal enters play knowing its maximum number of tricks as dictated by the animal companion's Intelligence and the character's effective druid level. If the character replaces the animal companion for any reason, the new animal starts with no tricks known, save for bonus tricks granted based on the PC's effective druid level. Once per scenario, you may attempt to train the animal companion a number of times equal to the number of ranks you have in the Handle Animal skill. Each success allows you to teach the animal a single trick; a failed attempt counts against the total number of training attempts allowed per scenario, and you may not attempt to teach the same trick until the next scenario. Alternatively, you may train one animal for a single purpose as long as you have enough ranks in Handle Animal to train the animal in each trick learned as part of that purpose. You may take 10 on Handle Animal checks to teach an animal companion tricks.
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I thought you could only train one trick per AR... did this change, or have I always been wrong?
Yes, it changed when the guide hit 4.0, I think.
You can now train 1 trick per rank of Handle Animal per chronicle.
I dont know how I feel about that, personally, as a druid with max ranks could, by level 6 (or earlier, depending on how picky you are with Tricks) have a new AC every scenario, giving them a much higher level of versatility than they previously had.
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Wait, the GM has to note new spells on your chronicle?
EDIT: Yep, right there in the FAQ. I'm just now starting my first spellbook-style character and haven't tried to copy any spells yet, so that never occurred to me. Guess I'd better check the FAQ for any other wizard stuff...
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most judges will be a bit put out of you want them to start filling out the AR before the game starts
I hope this isn't the case. There are a number of things that need to be written on the chronicle sheet. Although most will just tell you to remember to record it at the end. This one of the reasons I like to use index cards for initiative tracking. I can make notes about items the character bought, spell services, bribes, etc. and then reference that at the end when I complete the chronicles.
In the case of changing AC, you can "give up" one companion at the end of the previous session and train the new one during the break until the next one. You would need to make the HA checks prior to starting to cover that training. I see no reason for you to go through an entire scenario with an untrained (or barely trained) companion and make the checks at the end. If the scenario involved lengthy travel at the outset, I suppose you could use that time to train more tricks. If you have enough of a modifier that with a take 10, you auto-succeed, I don't see the need for the GM to get involved other than just to sign off on the training note on the chronicle.
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Except for retraining right now is not a huge deal.
If you, as most Druid's who choose Animal Campanion for their Nature's Bond should, take several ranks in handle animal, your animal gets the bonus tricks for free, and you can train up to your ranks in handle animal per session. We just had a ranger able to fully train their animal companion in one session (and would have had one trick to spare if their animal could have learned that trick). He did it taking 10 no less.
Most != all though Andrew. If we're talking about an 'old' Druid who skimped on those ranks (or a cleric with the animal domain) they might not have enough for 'instant retraining'.
Again, I understand corner cases make bad law, just playing Celestial's Advocate here for the 'veteran' player. I'm also not talking about "Dudley Druid, brand new first level Druid, and his companion monkey-with-hammer." I'm talking about Charlie Cleric, who's 7th level, several sheets under his belt and Ape-with-Hammers as his sidekick. Dudley isn't going to care about the change in reality, he wasn't there for it. Charlie however will.
I've been quite vocal that if you are a Druid who took an Animal Companion as your Nature's Bond (or any other class that wants an animal companion) and you tanked Charisma and took no ranks in Handle Animal, then you were exploiting a loophole and got what was deserved. Sorry if that rankles any feathers.
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End of con. Sunday, everyone has had 4 hours of sleep for the weekend, (total, between 5 players) and is filled to the brim with caffine and pizza, you need to haul 400 pounds of geek supplies to your car and then drive for 8 hours to get home and get an hour of sleep before starting work monday . Do you
A) spend another half hour filling out paperwork, or B
B) now who bought what during the c.. You bought a balista what book is that from... you know what who cares .You know what here's a sheet and here's a crayon, YOU figure it out.
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I think the point, which seems to have been lost among the clutter, is that it wasn't any of the many changes that drove these players from our ranks. It was the impression of a very bad attitude from the player-base (represented mainly by these boards).
We can disagree about things all we want, we don't need to be jerks about it.
It's been a long time since I looked at that thread, and whether people intended to or not it came off as full of vitriol and malice.
I removed a personal attack.
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I've been quite vocal that if you are a Druid who took an Animal Companion as your Nature's Bond (or any other class that wants an animal companion) and you tanked Charisma and took no ranks in Handle Animal, then you were exploiting a loophole and got what was deserved. Sorry if that rankles any feathers.Except for retraining right now is not a huge deal.
If you, as most Druid's who choose Animal Campanion for their Nature's Bond should, take several ranks in handle animal, your animal gets the bonus tricks for free, and you can train up to your ranks in handle animal per session. We just had a ranger able to fully train their animal companion in one session (and would have had one trick to spare if their animal could have learned that trick). He did it taking 10 no less.
Most != all though Andrew. If we're talking about an 'old' Druid who skimped on those ranks (or a cleric with the animal domain) they might not have enough for 'instant retraining'.
Again, I understand corner cases make bad law, just playing Celestial's Advocate here for the 'veteran' player. I'm also not talking about "Dudley Druid, brand new first level Druid, and his companion monkey-with-hammer." I'm talking about Charlie Cleric, who's 7th level, several sheets under his belt and Ape-with-Hammers as his sidekick. Dudley isn't going to care about the change in reality, he wasn't there for it. Charlie however will.
Thought I'd stay out about ape, but cant. There was no exploiting a loophole as you say. there was having an idea and than contacting the GM,and asking him about it. Than the GM making a ruling that said you could. It was than printed in the rule book.You may not like the rule, but josh ruled it that way.
It's funny how Knighterrant said earlier at the flgs, how civil this thread had stayed. Than NOT.|
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I've been quite vocal that if you are a Druid who took an Animal Companion as your Nature's Bond (or any other class that wants an animal companion) and you tanked Charisma and took no ranks in Handle Animal, then you were exploiting a loophole and got what was deserved. Sorry if that rankles any feathers.
Thought I'd stay out about ape, but cant. There was no exploiting a loophole as you say. there was having an idea and than contacting the GM,and asking him about it. Than the GM making a ruling that said you could. It was than printed in the rule book.You may not like the rule, but josh ruled it that way.
It's funny how Knighterrant said earlier at the flgs, how civil this thread had stayed. Than NOT.
I don't believe it was anymore than a messageboard post from Josh. There was nothing actually in the guide covering this.
Granted, at the time, the messageboard posts were considered official.
However, its been stated that Josh was in error with his ruling.
So the clarification was not a rules change as far as Pathfinder rules set was considered. The fact that it went against Josh's ruling for PFS does not mean it was a rules change. It means a mistake was corrected.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I don't believe it was anymore than a messageboard post from Josh. There was nothing actually in the guide covering this.
Granted, at the time, the messageboard posts were considered official.
However, its been stated that Josh was in error with his ruling.
So the clarification was not a rules change as far as Pathfinder rules set was considered. The fact that it went against Josh's ruling for PFS does not mean it was a rules change. It means a mistake was corrected.
Again, I know corner cases make bad law...
But since we went from 'message boards quasi-official' to 'no they aren't' again, 'grandfathering' would have been a nice option for hammer-monkey or the like.
I've no problem with rules changes, just this one seems to have nit a few players hard. Hard enough to cause bad feeling and hostility.
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I don't believe it was anymore than a messageboard post from Josh. There was nothing actually in the guide covering this.
Granted, at the time, the messageboard posts were considered official.
However, its been stated that Josh was in error with his ruling.
So the clarification was not a rules change as far as Pathfinder rules set was considered. The fact that it went against Josh's ruling for PFS does not mean it was a rules change. It means a mistake was corrected.
Believe as you will.
It was in the Guide.
Having a Venture-Lieutenant tell me that my friend deserved to have his character handicapped when he was following the rules and was willing to rebuild the animal companion if he could respec his stats, and then having him call me a liar by declaring what I posted in my initial post to be inaccurate is part of why I am so frustrated by this entire situation.
Micheal and Mark, if you are still following, I respect the jobs you have to do. I know that it is tremendously difficult and that you won't please everyone.
That having been said, seeing the tenor that people that have some kind of official standing in Organized Play, this doesn't help bring people in or retain them.
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Believe as you will.
It was in the Guide.
Having a Venture-Lieutenant tell me that my friend deserved to have his character handicapped when he was following the rules and was willing to rebuild the animal companion if he could respec his stats, and then having him call me a liar by declaring what I posted in my initial post to be inaccurate is part of why I am so frustrated by this entire situation.
Saying that what I felt you posted was inaccurate is not calling you a liar.
It’s merely saying that I believe you are mistaken. It is possible that I may be mistaken, and that it was actually in the guide. The first guide I printed was from February of 2011 (when I joined PFSOP).
I understand you are passionate about this issue. But let’s not overreact and assume I’m disparaging your good name by simply suggesting that you might be wrong.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I understand you are passionate about this issue. But let’s not overreact and assume I’m disparaging your good name by simply suggesting that you might be wrong.
Jared, Andrew,
In the interest of civility, I checked my guides. I thought I had the 2.0 guide saved, but it's the 3.0.3 guide. Which calls out the 'no Detective Chimp' case. Does anyone have an older guide?
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Yes, the Apes with Weapons bit was in the guide, nothing about the Handle Animal issue though.
Regardless, its beside the point. Treat each other civilly. Jared, I think you're reading a bit much into Andrew's posts. Andrew, I think you came off a bit harsher than you intended to.
The OPs friend (I'm not sure if that is Jared here or not) was playing completely by the rules of the time that he specifically okayed with the Campaign head of the time. Several people obviously found the ruling rediculous. I don't think attempting to change the ruling was an attack on anyone, but several of the posts in that thread definitely came off as personal attacks agianst those who were merely utilizing a valid ruling at the time.
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This discusses the weapon issue, but not the handle animal issue.
I can appreciate that when you can’t hear the tone of someone’s voice, or see their body language, they may come off as harsher than intended. Such is the way the internet and text speak works, unfortunately.
However, I still maintain that when a game mechanic requires a skill to make something work a certain way, and someone finds a way to bypass that mechanic to allow for a more powerful character, that is a loophole, and using it is exploiting it.
Handle Animal is a mechanic used to deal with animals and animal companions. There are very specific DC’s to train and get your animal to do something it might not otherwise be inclined to do.
If you choose to have your animal companion be the primary ability your Druid uses, then the mechanic (for game balance purposes) indicate you should probably not have a 7 Charisma (you probably don’t need a ton of it, but at least a 10 to 12 would be good) and should probably have ranks in handle animal, otherwise you wouldn’t be very good at ability you re claiming is your primary ability. To dump Charisma and have zero ranks in handle animal, so that you can make your Druid exceptional in other ways, then take the animal companion and claim that you don’t have to use the mechanic built into the game to handle animal companions, because you bumped up a stat, is a loophole.
Harsh or not, I don’t have sympathy, in a game where building power builds is extremely easy without using loopholes, for folks who exploit loopholes, and then when the loophole is closed it gimps their character. Sorry. Harsh or not, that’s the way I feel on that. Because it cheapens those of us who build good characters without using loopholes.
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I never made people roll Handle Animal for their Companions. It's just something that never occured to me until there was the big hullabaloo. Looking at it then it seemed rather clear that it had been the intent all along. Many judges and players did the same as I did.
Yes, we should have known. Yes, some people were using how were doing it in order to game the system. But a lot of people were innocent casualties in that mess.
Regardless, the ruling is what it is. Time has passed. I'd rather we didn't get into the old arguments all over again. I think we all could have treated each other better at the time and I believe that was what the OP was trying to get across.
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Yes, the Apes with Weapons bit was in the guide, nothing about the Handle Animal issue though.
Well, i have to wonder what people were doing with the critter until level 4 when they could raise the animals int. 1 rank, +3 from it being a class skill, +4 from it being your animal companion should be enough to get it trained to defend at least, and once the ape is defending you its doing most of its job without you needing to tell it anything else.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Big Norse Wolf -- it has been my experience that players generally ignore the Handle Animals skill entirely, and try to play an animal companion, or a familiar, or an eidolon, as if it were just another facet of the character's will, instead of an independent being under the control of the GM.
Now, somewhere in there, you probably objected. "But an eidolon is simply an extension of the PC's will. GMs don't get to make decisions for an eidolon." Well, by convention, that's true. And there's no mechanics for using Diplomacy to persuade your eidolon to cooperate.
But that reaction, how you felt about the eidolon: that's how most people feel about the animal companion. (Or a purchased pet, for that matter.) People playing druids have insisted: this is a class feature for me. You don't get to tell me how my character can run his class feature!
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-James
Can I improve my companion’s Intelligence to 3 or higher and give it weapon feats?Yes. Following the guidelines for animal companions as established on page 53 of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, this is legal. Your companion must be physically capable of wielding the weapon (no tigers with longswords, for example), though an animal’s natural attacks will nearly always be better by themselves without needing to spend feat slots and gold pieces to gear your companion.
Thank you James. Good to know.
This discusses the weapon issue, but not the handle animal issue.
However, I still maintain that when a game mechanic requires a skill to make something work a certain way, and someone finds a way to bypass that mechanic to allow for a more powerful character, that is a loophole, and using it is exploiting it.
You do realize that the "ape with a hammer" in the OP is not a druid, but a cleric with the Animal domain, right? And furthermore, the Animal domain grants Speak with Animals as a special ability, so even if the cleric never trained the AC, he could still use his domain ability to just tell it what he wanted it to do, right?
That doesn't speak to the druids treating their ACs as eidolons and ignoring the manditory Handle Animal checks, but that's a different topic for another thread, IMO.
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Big Norse Wolf -- it has been my experience that players generally ignore the Handle Animals skill entirely, and try to play an animal companion, or a familiar, or an eidolon, as if it were just another facet of the character's will, instead of an independent being under the control of the GM.
IMO, this can be largely mitigated if you require the AC to act on its own initiative count. I do this with my ranger's (boon companion) wolf. He has a default command of "guard" so the wolf will attempt to protect the ranger as well as itself. This can pose some interesting challenges when the AC goes first. I have to (should) wait until I act to handle it to do other things. Depending on the GM, you may/not be able to command the AC out of turn. Again, this creates some challenging gameplay.
What it does well is remove the "overpowered" aspect of the animal companion, especially when boon companion is involved, that many players take issue with. It makes it much more difficult to get into perfect position with the archer having his companion blocking for him against melee attackers.
I removed some older posts. Don't be jerks, and don't call people out like that. And if you're going to use certain words, own it rather than trying to evade the profanity filter.
I also removed replies to those posts.
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Big Norse Wolf -- it has been my experience that players generally ignore the Handle Animals skill entirely, and try to play an animal companion, or a familiar, or an eidolon, as if it were just another facet of the character's will, instead of an independent being under the control of the GM.
Now, somewhere in there, you probably objected. "But an eidolon is simply an extension of the PC's will. GMs don't get to make decisions for an eidolon." Well, by convention, that's true. And there's no mechanics for using Diplomacy to persuade your eidolon to cooperate.
*tunes up the mind reading device*
Nope. I treat the AC as its own separate character largely under the control of the Player that the character can try to influence. The GM has enough NPCs to control, and I don't think it would be fair to have the DM control the Critter, especially if the DM does something to get it killed.
Failing Handle animal checks, whether to get the Velociraptor out of the punch bowl or to get him away from a one on one duel with a monk and attacking the same character as the rest of the party, has been hillarious.
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This discusses the weapon issue, but not the handle animal issue.
However, I still maintain that when a game mechanic requires a skill to make something work a certain way, and someone finds a way to bypass that mechanic to allow for a more powerful character, that is a loophole, and using it is exploiting it.
You do realize that the "ape with a hammer" in the OP is not a druid, but a cleric with the Animal domain, right? And furthermore, the Animal domain grants Speak with Animals as a special ability, so even if the cleric never trained the AC, he could still use his domain ability to just tell it what he wanted it to do, right?
That doesn't speak to the druids treating their ACs as eidolons and ignoring the manditory Handle Animal checks, but that's a different topic for another thread, IMO.
Just because the animal understands what the master is saying, doesn’t mean the animal will actually perform said task without needing a Handle Animal check.
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Just because the animal understands what the master is saying, doesn’t mean the animal will actually perform said task without needing a Handle Animal check.
That's kinda weird. If the animal is supposed to similar to a bonded item and trust you as its friend and protector (vice versa) it would seem that being able to speak in its language would be a perfect way to communicate your expectations and instructions.
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Just because the animal understands what the master is saying, doesn’t mean the animal will actually perform said task without needing a Handle Animal check.Sounds like somebody who shares his living space with a cat ...
Right. The cat is the master, it knows you know what meow means, and expects you to comply.
I think in the end it all comes down to the GM in the end, because each situation is different. Sometimes a handle animal check is needed, sometimes not.
As for exploiting loopholes, who really can define what a loop hole really is if the rules are written in certain ways. In the end, as a GM, I want players to love and enjoy the game as much as I do. I'll always try and give the players the benefit of the doubt and not assume they are power building.
As a PFS and Pathfinder community, I want new and old players to always feel welcome in any game, on these boards, etc.
I've met many friends on these boards, through local games, and conventions. And feel lucky to be part of the game.
Just because the animal understands what the master is saying, doesn’t mean the animal will actually perform said task without needing a Handle Animal check.
Speak with Animals explicitly states in the spell description that if the animal is friendly to you it will do you a favor. I can only assume an Animal COMPANION will be friendly to their, well, companion.
I personally don't see this as being any more of a loophole than a multiclass monk/sorcerer casting Mage Armor on himself.
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It's either a free action, move action, or potentially (for non-ACs) a full-round action.
You can't do any of these outside of your turn
Depends on the GM. Some free actions can be done off turn. The one I know of off the top of my head is talking. If you have an auto-success at handling your animal companion and speaking a command is all that is needed, then some GM's will allow that off-turn.
I don't think that is anymore "abusive" than allowing a lot of off-turn discussions between players to coordinate tactics, etc.
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Depending on the GM, you may/not be able to command the AC out of turn.Why would you believe that you *could* possibly use handle animal outside of your turn?
It's either a free action, move action, or potentially (for non-ACs) a full-round action.
You can't do any of these outside of your turn,
James
Unless you're one of those druids with a cattle prod, speaking is all you need to do to command your animal companion. Speaking can be done out of turn.
You can also draw arrows outside your turn which is listed as a free action.