Purchasing Animals with / without tricks?


Rules Questions

Shadow Lodge

We started a campaign recently, PC's as lvl 2, and they wanted to spend their money on a some crazy animals to ride though the west...

ANYWAYS... I realized I dont think, besides horses, I've ever purchased animals in a game. So here's the question.... do combat trained animals come with 'tricks'. If so, which ones? If not, I dont think any of my PC's have handle animal... do you just have to pay a guy to do it for you?

Shadow Lodge

Bump. Please let me know if this is not a clear enough question.


Per the Handle Animal skill:

Handle Animal wrote:


An animal can be trained for only one general purpose, though if the creature is capable of learning additional tricks (above and beyond those included in its general purpose), it may do so. Training an animal for a purpose requires fewer checks than teaching individual tricks does, but no less time.

...

Combat Training (DC 20): An animal trained to bear a rider into combat knows the tricks attack, come, defend, down, guard, and heel. Training an animal for combat riding takes 6 weeks. You may also “upgrade” an animal trained for riding to one trained for combat by spending 3 weeks and making a successful DC 20 Handle Animal check. The new general purpose and tricks completely replace the animal's previous purpose and any tricks it once knew. Many horses and riding dogs are trained in this way.

So my assumption would be that the animals that are listed with an additional cost and are noted as "Combat Trained" would have the above group of tricks known.

Based on the comments in this blog, it appears that each point of INT the animal has equates to three tricks it knows\can know. From a RAW perspective, I don't know if the basic animals (the ones that don't mention something like 'combat training') would start with any known tricks.

You could probably extrapolate an additional cost based on the difference combat-trained animals and their 'untrained' variants to allow them to buy 'trained' creatures.


Yes, by RAW, you get the animal with whatever stats are included in the Bestiaries, and if the listed price says the animal you purchase is Combat Trained then you get that too.

Anything else is extra. Which means it's up to the DM (you, I presume?) to figure out. Negotiate for it. Fair price? Whatever you want, but one way to calculate it is to figure out how much cash a blacksmith could make during each week of his trade and then assume an animal trainer wants the same income level. Or another approach is to say that a trained hireling costs 3sp per day and is about the same amount of skill that a decent animal trainer would have, so he wants 3sp per day to train animals for sale - the PCs either must wait for him to train them or maybe the guy already has some, fully trained, ready for sale, but either way he'll charge for the time he spends/spent training them.

Shadow Lodge

Aw, I missed that, thank you, that makes sense.... it come with those six tricks in one if it's "Combat Trained".

Now here's the newest problem... Magebred animals (an Eberron template) I SWEAR it said all Magebred animals are combat trained.... but now I can't find where is said that...

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