Using Handle Animal on any animal

[勝20100]

The skill makes no mention of a master; and Animal Archive has a trick named Selective to have the animal only follow orders of the trainer.

Does it mean you can push/handle any animal?

I never thought a character could bark orders at an animal companion and have it attack the druid/ranger. It would probably only last a single round, until the druid use a free action to order it back or tries to give it selective as a full-round.

[MordredofFairy]

勝20100 wrote:

The skill makes no mention of a master; and Animal Archive has a trick named Selective to have the animal only follow orders of the trainer.

Does it mean you can push/handle any animal?

I never thought a character could bark orders at an animal companion and have it attack the druid/ranger. It would probably only last a single round, until the druid use a free action to order it back or tries to give it selective as a full-round.

use some common sense.

A very common "trained" animal is a dog.

Will a normal housedog accept orders from only ONE member of the family?
Not usually, if it is properly trained it will react to all orders given by family members.
If said dog is out on the street with a family member and some random stranger comes up and shouts "Attack" pointing at the family member, will the dog attack said family member?
No, it will rather see the shouting and behaivour as threatening and defend the family member.

As far as selective is concerned: There's for example police dogs or military animals imprinted on ONE person, same as helper/guidance dogs that will ONLY respond to "their" human, not ANY others.

I know suggesting "real-life" comparisons is off in a fantasy game, but the handling of animals requires them, as they are implemented in a half-hearted attempt of representing how it "should" work.

By all means, an animal or animal companion "knows" their group, "Knows" his packmate.
So EVEN if you were shouting orders at an animal to do something against it's nature, the best you could hope for at my table is an opposed Handle-Animal Check against it's training with a hefty circumstance-bonus for the owner.

Basically you have to differ between RAW and RAI in this whole section.
You can "push" any animal for sake of reducing micromanagement, not for sake of "breaking rules". Same as no sane DM would allow you to buy a couple thousand housecats for a handful of gold and "push" them to depopulate a little village. By RAW? Totally possible.

And that's were logical thinking comes into the equation.

[勝20100]

I always thought that the skill was also usable on wild or stray animal. I went back to the skill description and it does not mention any of that. The skill also doesn’t mention owner or master, that why I asked my questions.

Only druids seems to be able to improve the attitude of an animal with Wild Empathy. The other classes need Charm Animal.
There is no game mechanic to represent the ability for someone to befriend an animal by giving it food for example.

If I got what you wrote correctly, the selective trick is to prevent someone that befriended the animal (with Wild Empathy or Charm Animal) to obey to that person?
While of very limited use, it makes sense.

[Nefreet]

This seems like an appropriate place to put this.

[Snowleopard]

勝20100 wrote:

I always thought that the skill was also usable on wild or stray animal. I went back to the skill description and it does not mention any of that. The skill also doesn’t mention owner or master, that why I asked my questions.

yes the skill is usuable on any animal, but in order to command an animal it needs to be domesticated first.

勝20100 wrote:

Only druids seems to be able to improve the attitude of an animal with Wild Empathy. The other classes need Charm Animal.

There is no game mechanic to represent the ability for someone to befriend an animal by giving it food for example.

Rangers have some wild empathy if I am not mistaken?

And some food would likely give a positive bonus on the skill check.

勝20100 wrote:

If I got what you wrote correctly, the selective trick is to prevent someone that befriended the animal (with Wild Empathy or Charm Animal) to obey to that person?

While of very limited use, it makes sense.

In the wild charming a bear and getting it to attack someone would make a nice bonus member for an encounter. I wouldn't dare call that very limited as most natural surroundings have predators.

[勝20100]

The of limited use was only for the selective trick, sorry for not having been clearer.

[blahpers]

勝20100 wrote:

I always thought that the skill was also usable on wild or stray animal. I went back to the skill description and it does not mention any of that. The skill also doesn’t mention owner or master, that why I asked my questions.

Only druids seems to be able to improve the attitude of an animal with Wild Empathy. The other classes need Charm Animal.
There is no game mechanic to represent the ability for someone to befriend an animal by giving it food for example.

To be fair, that's what roleplaying is for. Sometimes, you have to actually act out winning over someone else instead of letting special abilities do it for you, and sometimes you simply can't do it. Wild Empathy just lets you use the dice to give a guaranteed outcome. There's no reason you can't toss a steak to a hungry wild dog and possibly change its attitude, but it's up to the GM, as the GM plays the NPCs.