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Just recently started with my first druid in pathfinder. (I’m playing in PFS with a Nagaji Naga Aspirant if that matters.)
He is level 2 with a constrictor snake as his animal companion.
The other scenarios we have had sneaky scout type characters in the group, so the snake was just some extra muscle traveling beside me. This time we had no one like that. So I intended to send the snake out as a scout. I know I have seen other people use their animal companions like that. (And I don’t remember them casting any spells or doing anything in particular to prepare, but I could be mis-remembering that part.)
The GM pointed out I have no way to communicate with it and it only has an intelligence of 1 so how can it recognize what needs to be reported back anyway. I guess I was thinking the animal companion is more like a familiar, so it would be more intelligent and I could communicate with it. I did go re-read the relevant portions and I was wrong. This could be quite a bit more limited than I thought.
After this scenario, I will definitely buy a wand of Speak With Animals so I can talk to the snake without burning my few prepared spells. But what kinds of things can I have the snake do and what can it tell me with only an intelligence of 1. What about some of the other animal companions that have an intelligence of 2 or 3. Does that make a significant difference?
It has sufficient stealth and moving quietly is something that snakes do. But can I actually have it check the perimeter of a building.
It has the perception to find a door. But would it recognize that to report it back to me?
I have the trick so it can guard me. But can it discern if the guy walking behind me is an ally and is getting ready to swing his axe at an enemy and not me, so attack the other guy not my ally?
This will vary greatly from DM to DM. Upping the int definitely helps.
If you have the animal archive (and you definitely should if you're running a critter) the Sneak, detect, and seek tricks will be the ones you need to send your critter out. The detect trick is advanced enough to have the critter spot secret doors and the like, so spotting normal doors should be a cinch.
If you go fully by the rules, your GM should be controlling your AC anyway.
Yeah, sending ACs out to "scout" is one of the most common things I see done that stretches the AC rules to the breaking point. With an int of 1, even if you can talk to the animal it's probably going to mostly talk about what it smells, whether its hungry and if something caused its hackles to raise. "There's three skeletons and a zombie around the corner, and I think there might be a ghoul hiding in the room too" is way, way beyond the intellectual capacity of an un-enhanced animal.
I have, at times, boosted my AC's intelligence with "Fox's cunning" to get scouting done, but that's a temporary option using up a level 2 spell.
Its best to assume unless told to via a trick your animal acts well like an animal. So in the case of the snake it wants to eat and sleep. You may find even with speak with animals the bezt reply back you'll get is wether or not food is ahead.
If it was outside of pfs using it like this I'd be really concerned for that halfling small child or pet up ahead.
But my guesd is expecting your snake to beha e like a snake when asked to make decidions on its own (scouting) is ptobsblt beyond the roll of a pfs gm.
As for the book yes there is an animal book.
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Animal Companions usually feature as flanking buddies, mounts, or combat buff targets. Information gathering is typically limited to using Scent to help you follow a trail - scouting out solo is not in their typical job description. There may be a few Druid spells that help with that, though - I'm sure there are a few that either raise intelligence or allow you to bond your senses.
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I know I have seen people use a wolf, cheetah, and giant eagle (or some other bird) for scouting where they did not accompany the animal.
I am almost certain they did not cast Speak With Animals when the animal came back to report or cast fox's cunning on them so they would know what to do.
But I get what you guys are saying. Unless I can get/use some spells or items that will help out, I shouldn't be trying to use the snake for a scout.
Drat, that was part of the reason I took a snake to begin with.
Your snake is no different than a police or rescue dog. Let's use a rescue dog for example.
If a rescue dog finds someone, it starts barking/digging/whatever. If you could understand its barks, it's basically saying "person! person!", not, "There are two people here and one is unconscious!" A trained intelligence 1 creature will see the world in it's more basic form.
Another common mistake I see players try to make is flanking. "My bear takes a five foot step to flank." No, it doesn't. It either attacks or doesn't attack. Would a police dog flank? No, it would latch on to that bad guy and never let go (until ordered to).
Now, the example that you are using is the "Seek" Handle Animal trick. With a successful check, your snake will go look around for something alive. It's not going to understand "Check the perimeter of the building". It will understand "Go look", and it will make a reasonable search of an area that you specify. If it finds something, it will report back that it has found something (most likely with some sort of tell that you have trained the animal to give you) but if you were to directly ask it what it found, it would probably respond with "people" or "stinky" or "dogs" or "scary". Some base level interpretation that the creature will have. Your DM needs to work this out with you.
Using an animal companion as a real scout is a useful idea, but you really need to give it an Int boosting item to do it effectively (or spells as said above for a temporary boost).
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Well, I would say some animals instinctively understand the concept of flanking. Canines, some felines, primates, etc... surrounding and trying to get behind a target is part and parcel of their combat hunting tecniques.
But those are all the more intelligent animals. I agree snakes (as far as I know) do not do anything like that. They are much less intelligent creatures.
Like I said, from the way I've seen them used, I guess I just assumed they were more like a familiar.
Another common mistake I see players try to make is flanking. "My bear takes a five foot step to flank." No, it doesn't. It either attacks or doesn't attack. Would a police dog flank? No, it would latch on to that bad guy and never let go (until ordered to).
1) there is a flank trick for that
2) animals do flank. While it doesn't understand the concept of a hit bonus, most animals would much rather bite you on the rump than come at you face to face.
well, they can do the peanut butter trick, but folks and clergy might accuse you of worshiping lamashtu.
"There's three skeletons and a zombie around the corner, and I think there might be a ghoul hiding in the room too" is way, way beyond the intellectual capacity of an un-enhanced animal.
I remember having an AC who, when asked to count how many enemies, revealed that any number more than two reports as "many".
Well, as someone said earlier, it's very GM dependent.
Still, if you go by "da rules", you should read up on the Handle Animal skill, as that has "da rules" you need.
Your companion has certain tricks that at level 1 is assumed you have already taught it (the # of tricks based upon intelligence and if you're a druid, etc). After that, you have to teach it tricks (the DC is listed in Handle Animal section).
If you are asking your pet to do a trick it knows, it's a basic request and the DC to preform the trick is only 10. If it's a druid companion, you get +4 to your handle animal skill (which is a class skill, so you should have an effective skill of roughly 7 or 8 in handle animal at level 1) and the request is a free action. So, even at low levels, there is only a very small chance it wont do the trick.
If you ask your companion to do something not listed under it's known tricks, it's a push action (takes a move action for a druid) and the DC jumps to 25, which isn't easy for the first few levels. A low intelligence animal can't know many tricks, so that's the balance factor.
As far as communicating with your animal companion, your GM could assume that some tricks like "seek", your companion could do a specific move once it finds something, much like a dog sits and barks when it smells drugs in a box. That gets awfully hard for a snake, but you might think of something.
The easiest way to communicate with your companion is to wildshape into a similar form. This allows you to communicate with similar animals. Another easy way to communicate with your companion is to increase its intelligence to 3 at level 4 (assuming it starts at 2 intelligence). This allows the animal to understand common, although you should talk to your GM prior to doing this to get their approval for such a thing.
Hope that answers all your questions.
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give it a 3 int, and a rank in linguistics. it still can't speak, but it understands a lot more.
An Int of 3 or 300 makes nearly no difference when it comes to animal companions. Getting them to perform ANY action is all based on your handle animal skill and the tricks defined as legal for the game.
Per the rules (especially in PFS) the only thing an AC can do is limited by the known and available tricks in the game. If it's not on that list of available tricks then your AC can't do it, and since there is no scout trick it can't be a scout.
As for using the seek trick to fake it remember all that trick does is send it into a specific area to look for a living or animate object, that's it. It'll go to the indicated location and the first living/moving thing it finds it will stop and indicate it somehow (dogs bark or point, birds circle it, etc) there is no report back trick to use.
Animal Companions are EXTREMELY limited in what they can do and the new rules for PFS restricts them even more. They are good for fighting, tracking or grunt strength work, just about everything else is off-limits.
For the OP, what you are trying to do requires something significantly better then an AC, you'll need a familiar for that.
What you're doing works fine. There's two tricks specifically for scouting ahead, and you can call the animal back. If you weren't supposed to do it there wouldn't be two tricks for it.
If you want to be absurd about it, you can't make an animal eat anything because.. well.. no trick
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Another common mistake I see players try to make is flanking. "My bear takes a five foot step to flank." No, it doesn't. It either attacks or doesn't attack. Would a police dog flank? No, it would latch on to that bad guy and never let go (until ordered to).
Police dogs are trained to attack directly like that, watch some videos of wild animals attacking other creatures (especially any pack animal) and you will see them circling the prey and angling to attack from behind commonly, animals know that prey can fight back and attacking from behind the 'claws' (swords, etc) means you're less likely to be hurt and will have an easier time of it. They may not be able to explain what a 'flank' is but you can bet, for example, a wolf knows exactly how to do it, there's a reason it's commonly known as 'wolf pack' tactics.
I guess with my example it would depend on the animal. A wolf is more likely to use teamwork tactics since it is natural for them then say an eagle. Tricks notwithstanding.
However, it goes both ways. A wolf companion, if attacking with two other allies might move out of optimal combat position to ensure the foe is surrounded. Think a triangle shape with the foe in the middle. No flanking bonus but surrounded.
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Again though, this is a *trained* animal, they can be trained to do a large variety of tricks, imo it's not hard to believe that as part of the Attack trick they can be taught to attack a foe from directly opposite their master or his friends, etc. I don't think allowing an AC to flank is breaking the limits on its abilities or making it too powerful or acting beyond how it could tbh, though clearly ymmv depending on GM.
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Again though, this is a *trained* animal, they can be trained to do a large variety of tricks, imo it's not hard to believe that as part of the Attack trick they can be taught to attack a foe from directly opposite their master or his friends, etc. I don't think allowing an AC to flank is breaking the limits on its abilities or making it too powerful or acting beyond how it could tbh, though clearly ymmv depending on GM.
You are making the basic mistake of expecting the rules of the game to be the same as real world rules.
If you want an animal companion that flanks you will need to invest one of your AC's few tricks in taking the FLANK trick or burn your move action to push it (DC 20 Handle Animal check) to flank the target.
Here's the best explanation I can give you. All Animal Companions are wild animals completely under the control of the GM who can make them do whatever he wants whenever he wants. If he believes it will attack it's natural prey, jump on the table during dinner or empty it's bowels during an audience with the king it will because it's NOT YOUR CHARACTER. Anytime you want it to do or not do something you make a handle animal check to try and get it to do what you want. If it's a trained trick it's pretty easy and quick to get it to do that but if it's not a trained trick it's a lot harder (DC 20+ and a move action).
What the OP is trying to do is outside the list of tricks that Pathfinder has made available (listed HERE). Now since he's playing in PFS where you are not allowed to create new tricks there is no rules legal way to use your animal companion to go scout an area and report back on what it saw.
It will simply go there and alert you to what it finds.
Like I said, from the way I've seen them used, I guess I just assumed they were more like a familiar.
That is such a common misinterpretation that I almost expect any future edition of Pathfinder to just treat them as familiars.
If someone sends their animal companion out to scout, the GM should probably remove any miniature from the table once it is out of line of sight just to reinforce the idea that it is more of an NPC than a part of the PC. Though, in many gamer's opinions, that may cross the line and violate the separation of powers 'agreement' between player and GM.
... If you have the animal archive (and you definitely should if you're running a critter) ...Is this another book? I'm not familiar with that one. I will look into it, but not sure I've got the funds to buy a new book right at the moment. Maybe the near future though.
Thanks.
The Animal Archive is one of the thin Player Companion books, I think it's about $12. Has a bunch more tricks in it, some feats, and some archetypes for both PCs and for Animal Companions (I'm using it in our current game to play a Huntsmaster Cavalier with a pair of dogs. One with Bodyguard archetype and one with Racer archetype)