Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Charm animal is a 1st level spell. It is not really uncommon for a first level spell to be duplicated by a skill. (detect secret door? It's basically a perception check in a can.)
In this case, charm animal makes the animal friendly to you. It will do nice things for you even if you don't use handle animal on it. So, I can cast charm animal, and it will be friendly and do nice things for me. Or I can use wild empathy and get the same effect. Or I can use handle animal as a full round action / move action if I'm lucky in combat for every time I want the animal to start or stop something...
that hardly overrides charm animal.
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Charm animal is a 1st level spell. It is not really uncommon for a first level spell to be duplicated by a skill. (detect secret door? It's basically a perception check in a can.)
Because its still using the 3/5 search rules in a perception rules world.
In this case, charm animal makes the animal friendly to you. It will do nice things for you even if you don't use handle animal on it.
Kanigit Tells his horse to attack farmer brown. Farmer brown tells his horse to attack Kanigit. You want to handle this as an opposed handle animal check.
Kanigit tells his horse to attack Woodsy the druid. Since wild empathies annoying caveat is that it takes 1 minute, he casts charm animal.
You can try to give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn't ordinarily do
Since the horse wouldn't normally attack its rider you need... the exact same opposed check that you would have needed if you didn't have the spell in effect. Even then you would be pushing the limits of charm animal (probably to the point of non compliance and a new save)
Even the worst rules lawyers would be ashamed of the rules lawyering depths of depravity in your argument.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Even the worst rules lawyers would be ashamed of the rules lawyering depths of depravity in your argument.
You seem really fond of that phrase. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Handle animal would be the druids handle animal against kanigit's ride / handle animal, and if the animal in question doesn't have the trick, the druid has to spend a full round trying to get it to do it. And if it does have the trick the druid has to spend a move action.
If the druid cast charm animal, he needs no action whatsoever (aside from the initial charm casting). For example if he tells the animal to run away, that's probably not even a check. If he does need to make his check, it is now the druid's charisma vs the animals charisma. Thats probably slightly easier check than the DC 25 check to push the animal to do a trick it doesn't have.
This doesn't negate or devalue charm animal. It just means charm animal isn't the only way to achieve the same result.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Emphasis mine. This seems to suggest that the intent is HA doesn't work on a wild animal unless it's domesticated. It only works on domestic animals and by definition, domestic animals start with an attitude of "Indifferent." So at the very least, one must get a wild animal to a state of "Indifferent" before HA can be used. Enter the Wild Empathy ability.Rear a Wild Animal: To rear an animal means to raise a wild creature from infancy so that it becomes domesticated. A handler can rear as many as three creatures of the same kind at once.
A successfully domesticated animal can be taught tricks at the same time it's being raised, or it can be taught as a domesticated animal later.
Except that following the rules as written, all that seems to say is that only domestic animals can be taught tricks, and further, the later stipulation that untrained handle animal can only be used to push domestic animals implies that trained handle animal can be used to push wild animals. (why else bother saying that untrained HA can only be used to push domestic animals?)
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You seem really fond of that phrase. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Even the worst rules lawyers would be ashamed of the rules lawyering depths of depravity in your argument.
It means exactly what I'm using it to mean- completely ignoring the intent and taking the weaker interpretation in order to gain a mechanical advantage. You know damn well if you tried to pull that at the table you'd get a core rule book to the head.
People like you are the reason they had to include the line in the fly skill about the skill not actually letting you fly on its own.
One iota of common sense would tell you that animals don't take orders from people they don't know.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Animals also don't do tricks they haven't been taught, no matter how high your handle animal skill is, based on 6 seconds of "pushing"
We have already established this is not about real world animal handling.
That said, animals *do* do tricks for people they have not gotten to know. That's *why* you can hire horses out to be ridden. Thats *why* you can hire out oxen to plow fields. Thats why you can have security teams that have a common stable of dogs.
That said, since you appear to have completely left the realm of the rational, and resorted to threats of physical violence against me, I consider you to have nothing worth saying.
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So bringing this back to my original question which was basically, how a druid can effectively utilize her animal companion while wildshaped in PFS play?
It sounds like the consensus is the following:
1) At a minimum set your companion to "defend" another PC before you wildshape.
2) Trick commands most likely have a verbal and/or somatic comment and probably cannot be done while wildshaped in a form other than your companion. Hence, being able to do this would be one of the benefits of taking the wildspeech feet.
3)If you don't have wildspeech and want to be able to communicate with your companion, shift into the same form.
4) Even if your companion has an Intel of 3 and can be assumed to understand common, this does not negate the need for handle animal checks to command tricks or push.
5) If you want other PCs to be able to command your companion, give your companion the "serve" trick. They will get your Handle Animal bonus on the check instead of their own.
6)Get the "exclusive" trick to protect others from handling your animal.
Thanks!
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"It means exactly what I'm using it to mean- completely ignoring the intent and taking the weaker interpretation in order to gain a mechanical advantage. You know damn well if you tried to pull that at the table you'd get a core rule book to the head."
There is no such thing as rules as intented. Only rules as written. We can't know the writer's intent; that's called conjecture. We can only go with what he/she has written down.
I would contend you're trying to get even more utility out of an already overpowered game mechanic.