Can my Celestial Servant Mount use its Smite Evil in PFS?

[Sparky Spain]

(Here's hoping I'm reaching the wrong conclusion...)

I'll be playing an aasimar nature oracle with the Bonded Mount revelation, and the Celestial Servant feat. So, that should get me:

* an animal companion (a horse, of course) with a 6 Intelligence
* I give it one rank in Linguistics (Celestial) so it can understand me
* Celestial Servant gives my horse Smite Evil once per day

So far, so good, but then I start looking at PFS specific rulings...

* From the PFS FAQ: "Also note that raising an animal companion's Intelligence to 3 or higher does not eliminate the need to make Handle Animal checks to direct its actions..." (uh-oh)
* Since you need a specific trick for specific actions (like flank needs the Flank trick), and no "Activate Special Ability" nor "Smite Evil" tricks exist, I'd have to use the "Other" trick from Handle Animal to tell my mount to smite evil.
* Since the "Other" trick is purely up to GM discretion, PFS doesn't allow it.

Putting all that together, am I correct that I can never get my mount to use its Smite Evil ability, per PFS RAW?

Also, would the above change if the animal companion was a Totem Guide? At level 6, a totem guide animal companion can "speak with its master as though the two shared a common language".

Thanks in advance to everyone who's read all of this.

[CWheezy]

I would assume it would just smite the first evil thing it came across

[BigNorseWolf]

Animals know how to use their feats.

I don't think it should take much to extrapolate that ruling to they know how to smite.

A little trickier is telling it that something is evil so that it tries to smite. A 6 int and a point in linguistics SHOULD cover that, especially if the precedent is you can tell an int 3 animal to turn on a feat as complicated as body guard.

You have more than enough ruling behind you to be right but a DM might still say no if they really really really don't like it and you'd be kind of stuck.

Given all of the passive abilities of the celestial servant feat I'd say take the feat anyway and consider smite the cherry on top you should have 90 something percent of the time. If the DM objects just roll with it.

[Aaron Mayhew]

At six intelligence, that animal companion is smarter than a nagaji paladin I know, and she still seems to know when and how to smite.

Not a ruling. Just an observations.

[BigNorseWolf]

Hehehe. One of my characters is the Arcane sorcerer Fabrizio, whose stats are Str 14 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 7 Wis 7 Cha 19. His thrush familiar has an intelligence of 9 and rising, so it usually tries to suggest better courses of action.

Tries.

[MeriDoc-]

You can summon celestial and fiendish monsters who smite good/evil without an issue. The servant will have less of an issue.

[Sparky Spain]

Thanks for the help, puts my mind as ease.

(...and my mount being smarter than a PC is hilarious!)