Inventing your own tricks.

[Lord Pendragon]

Handle Animal

So I'm toying with the idea of having my magus put points into Handle Animal and start training a falcon as a pet. Nothing magical, not a familiar or animal companion etc. Just a pet falcon.

Since our group's main mode of travel will be via airship, I thought it might also be cool if my pet falcon could serve as a scout, ranging far out and using its superior eyesight to spot other airships, etc. and give me warning of approaching trouble.

Unfortunately, none of the listed tricks seem to, well, do the trick (*wince*). Are there any rules out there to govern this, or would it be purely in the realm of DM fiat? If so, how would you handle it?

[Malag]

Inherent Speak with Animals spell might solve all your problems regarding scouting. It wouldn't mean that you don't have to use Handle Animal sometimes, but you could give basic instructions to an animal.

[Lord Pendragon]

Hrm. I'm playing a human magus, so I'm not sure how I'd get an inherent ability to speak with animals, other than a Wish maybe...

From the lack of other responses, I'm going to guess there isn't much precedent regarding creating your own tricks in APs or anything, so maybe my best bet is to ask my DM if I can teach the bird to scout as a trick, possibly 2 tricks if he considers the task overly complicated...

Part of me also wants to get a dog, but I'm thinking it'd be irresponsible in the extreme to take her dungeon crawling with me, so she'd be a ship dog. :)

[Malag]

As a GM, I would allow you to teach animal a trick "Scout". Animal would sniff and check for any activity in the vicinity and report.

Ruleswise, I am not sure if you can, but you should be able to make your own tricks as long as they are on the same level as rest of them. I can't say that I am completely sure of this tho.

Speak with animals could be easily cast from a wand via UMD. It's class skill for magus and scales with Cha just like Handle Animal.

[Graeme]

There's nothing wrong with developing custom tricks. The description for Handle Animal contains the following sentence:

PRD wrote:

Possible tricks (and their associated DCs) include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following

The Animal Archive added a set of additional tricks over and above the ones in the core rulebook. One of those is Hunt

Animal Archive wrote:

Hunt (DC 20): This trick allows an animal to use its

natural stalking or foraging instincts to find food and
return it to the animal’s handler. An animal with this
trick may attempt Survival checks (or Wisdom checks if
the animal has no ranks in Survival) to provide food for
others or lead them to water and shelter (as the “get along
in the wild” use of the Survival skill). An animal with this
trick may use the aid another action to assist Survival
checks made by its handler for these purposes.

Developing a new trick, Scout, seems to be a variation on the Hunt trick and so I would suggest it's a reasonable DC 20 new trick.

[Lord Pendragon]

Graeme wrote:

Animal Archive wrote:

Hunt (DC 20): This trick allows an animal to use its

natural stalking or foraging instincts to find food and
return it to the animal’s handler. An animal with this
trick may attempt Survival checks (or Wisdom checks if
the animal has no ranks in Survival) to provide food for
others or lead them to water and shelter (as the “get along
in the wild” use of the Survival skill). An animal with this
trick may use the aid another action to assist Survival
checks made by its handler for these purposes.

Developing a new trick, Scout, seems to be a variation on the Hunt trick and so I would suggest it's a reasonable DC 20 new trick.

Sounds like a solid place to start. With a modest charisma it may take me a few weeks to successfully train my falcon to scout, but it should be a fun bit of detail to add to his downtime routine. :)