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I do recommend that one of the tricks be "exclusive" since not all GM's agree with BNW, especially since handle animal doesn't say anything about the animal having to be friendly before you can get it to do tricks.
Those DM's are disingenuously cheating anyway, and won't let you do the same to them, guarantee it. Get up and leave the table they're out to screw with the player.
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I do recommend that one of the tricks be "exclusive" since not all GM's agree with BNW, especially since handle animal doesn't say anything about the animal having to be friendly before you can get it to do tricks.
Those DM's are disingenuously cheating anyway, and won't let you do the same to them, guarantee it. Get up and leave the table they're out to screw with the player.
I would allow a handle animal check on anothers animal companion.
They are trained animals and someone skilled enough can make commands on them.
I have allowed players to do it. As a DM I never had the opportunity
Ahem, BNW's impressively righteous designation of who is Good and Evil aside,
Exclusive is also useful for situations before combat has broken out, i.e. NPCs who are not yet perceived as hostile (but are about to become so).
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I do recommend that one of the tricks be "exclusive" since not all GM's agree with BNW, especially since handle animal doesn't say anything about the animal having to be friendly before you can get it to do tricks.
Those DM's are disingenuously cheating anyway, and won't let you do the same to them, guarantee it. Get up and leave the table they're out to screw with the player.
I would allow a handle animal check on anothers animal companion.
They are trained animals and someone skilled enough can make commands on them.
I have allowed players to do it. As a DM I never had the opportunity
An overly literal ruling completely flying in the face of common sense that allows a dc 10 handle animal check to be miles better than than the wild empathy class feature, leaps and bounds ahead of charm animal, and better than dominate animal is beyond the pale.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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As one of the GM's in question, I would gladly let PC's do it. As a matter of fact, there is a thread in the gm forum where I complain about the fact that the npc has no way to control his animal companion, let alone his multiple vermin non class feature allies, and Iam told to hand wave it, and I object, because if I hand wave it, I have no way to resolve what happens if the pcs try to control the animals in question.
I say that you need the Animal to be at least Indifferent before it takes Commands, and I might add they need to be Friendly as well* (less RAW).
Although you cannot make Diplomacy Checks on Animals, the rules about Attitudes still apply.
Because it is an Animal without Language,
there is the formal Handle Animal/Trick system as opposed to free communication, but otherwise it's the same.
Otherwise there is little point in Wild Empathy to change emotion, you can just give "Lay Down/Go Away" command directly.
Within that framework of needing at least "Indifferent" status, there should be no problem using Handle Animal on any Animal.
Fortunately the Companion Class Feature comes with Bonus Tricks you can use for Exclusive if you wish,
to help with situations like when a NPC thought to be friendly/indifferent
turns on you but tries to take command the animal to do something not defensively optimal first.
* Intelligent social creatures with languages convey requests all the time via language, even to Indifferent people. Animals don't really work that way, even among Animal communication they will generally make requests only to those they are Friendly with (or have Intimidated into acting Friendly), not to 'Indifferent' strangers, and doing Tricks on command requires a higher level of rappoire than an 'Indifferent' relationship. The base Handle Animal DC (for Tricks they do know) is 10, equivalent to Helpful but not Friendly, so it seems plausible to require they be at least Friendly to you, to match that DC.
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No, because the slots ruling explicitly does not apply to items made specifically for animals, like horseshoes, saddles, and bridles.
(I asked about this when the ruling was made, because it seemed silly for horses not to be able to wear horse shoes.)
The exact wording (and this is where there is some legitimate variation)
The bridle is not called out as being specific to any animal, and belt (saddle) is now a specific slot. On the other hand the bridle says it can be worn by things that normally wear bridles so....
FYI, horseshoes are not specific to one type of animal, they work with any animal with hooves you can attach them to.
(at least for this and this magical sets of horseshoes... this set is quite explicitly only applicable to horses, although that's doubly odd because it states "[these] äre affixed like normal horseshoes" when both the others are compared to " ordinary horseshoes", so there shouldn't be any functional difference there. But that restriction would still apply irrespective of PFS' rule being liberal re: animal-specific items.)
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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The bridle can only be used by an animal.
So the question is, is the line " any item specific to an animal," meant to mean "any item that is can only be used by an animal" or is it "any item that only one animal type can use."
In one case the bridle can be used, in the other case, it's not really clear saddles or bridles are legal.
Oh, side note, using the bridle *does* require buying the book it is in. (Knights of the inner sea.)
She was making that poor tiger wear a headband?
That's just sad.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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* Intelligent social creatures with languages convey requests all the time via language, even to Indifferent people. Animals don't really work that way, even among Animal communication they will generally make requests only to those they are Friendly with (or have Intimidated into acting Friendly), not to 'Indifferent' strangers, and doing Tricks on command requires a higher level of rappoire than an 'Indifferent' relationship. The base Handle Animal DC (for Tricks they do know) is 10, equivalent to Helpful but not Friendly, so it seems plausible to require they be at least Friendly to you, to match that DC.
Just remember, Handle Animal is based on a cinematic version of animal training. There is no level of real world ability that allows the person to hand a bag to an untrained pet bird, and after two minutes of interaction, the bird flies off and delivers the bag to a person in the audience. Yet pretty much any marginally competent animal trainer in pathfinder can do that. Or *any* other trick in the book. Including get help, bombard, flank, entertain. Yes, with 2 minutes of training, you can teach an animal to be so entertaining, that onlookers take a -2 to perception, or you can turn the dog into a bomb sniffing or drug sniffing dog... (DC 25, take 20, +3 for class skill, +1 rank +1charisma bonus. full round action (push) * 20 is two minutes.)
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Eh, looking at the combat-trained tiger, it's really not over-powered. It's large, so it won't be effective in most dungeons or anywhere else with 5 foot corridors (since you can't give it feats like Narrow Frame to avoid the penalties).
If you're small and riding it, you'll always have to use a move action to dismount (you can't fast dismount if it's more than one size category larger then you).
If it moves it's full speed while you're mounted and you try to cast a spell, you'll have to make concentration checks. Well, unless you start to invest feats for mounted combat and stuff.
There is the whole having to use a move action to give it a command (druids and rangers can do it as a free action).
And a lot of GMs tend to kill animal companions, so that's like 500 gp down the drain if someone kills it. Druids and rangers get to go out in the wild between scenarios and summon a new companion for free.
You'll also be missing the whole "empathic connection" with your companion, so there would be a certain communication barrier. Your tiger might smell something in the room, but how does it tell you there's something there? Watch its tail twitch a little? As opposed to having some empathic feeling that your companion tells you that there's something close by (I realize that empathic connections do not give you a language between you and your companion, but you can sense that their hackles are raised and they're suddenly on guard, meaning there is something close you might not see).
And it only has a 14 AC, it will probably get hit a lot if it gets into combat.
More awesome creatures are like the Giant Gecko that can climb on ANY surface. Safely casting spells from a ceiling or climbing up something out of the way? Pretty Awesome.
Just try it out and see if it actually overpowers the table. It probably won't. It would definitely help a table that ends up being all spellcasters with no melee characters. It happens.
I guess I'm just saying try it out and talk to that person if it does become a problem.
@FLite: Sure, being a fantasy game there is fantastic stuff you can do, that said,
plenty of what Handle Animal does IS plausibly mappable to normal real-world animal handling.
The Push DC really is so high that it is outside the scope of normal mundane reality,
if you're not Taking 20, only the most extraordinary animal handlers can hope to achieve that on even a half-frequent basis, not typical NPCs.
If you are Taking 20, then it is outside the scope of the combat scale which the game's mechanics are focused on balancing and modelling.
Regardless, focusing on the more realistic mundane use cases of Handle Animal is where you can make comprehensible comparisons with reality.
I'm not quite sure why you responded to my post that way (even if very interesting, thanks!),
just because my interpretation of the over-all rule there is rather grounded in RAW, IMHO...
The only part that was questionable (and I labelled as such) is the variation from the Indifferent=Commandable rule (from Diplomacy),
but I also laid out the aspects of RAW that are in line with the Friendly=Commandable interpretation, i.e. the DC correlation.
I specifically used an example of a friendly animal that already knows tricks, even if you are not the primary owner,
just to avoid the chasm between mundane reality and the higher DC fantastic possibilities.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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I don't really see a DC 25 as unachievable in reality. Remember, with take 20, that's a skill bonus of 5. (Using it consistently in a combat round is pretty hard to achieve, especially without the ability to take ten.)
My response wasn't really a criticism of you. I agree that there is some value in mapping the skill to the real world version, but there are a lot of arguments out there that say "you can't use handle animal that way, because (real world example)" and my response is that much of what Handle animal lets you do, you can't do in the real world.
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I don't really see a DC 25 as unachievable in reality. Remember, with take 20, that's a skill bonus of 5. (Using it consistently in a combat round is pretty hard to achieve, especially without the ability to take ten.)
you're talking a dc 10 to make an animal attack its owner if it has the attack trick.
Weird, I thought I had posted something about how the Diplomacy Modifiers for things like "lengthy or complicated aid, dangerous aid, aid that could result in punishment" should apply to Handle Animal... specifically the last one, which is +15 DC. Needless to say, there's plenty of other areas of the rules where a modifier in another section really should logically apply although that's not actually stated, I don't see the difference here.
Regardless, only characters who are allies who you work with on a regular basis would be in a position to be "Friendly" and pull something like this out of the blue (unless using Charm, which is another story obviously). Even in that limited situation, if applying plausible modifiers like I mentioned, only heroic level Handle Animal specialists would be semi-reliably pulling 'Attack your Master' tricks out of the blue... Again, that is if you choose not to spend your free Bonus Tricks on Exclusive... which you have many levels to do, because they aren't going to be beating that 25+ DC at low levels. ...Or maybe Druids do just like to play tricks on each other getting their Animal Companions to attack each other, nature-style humor.
I don't really see a DC 25 as unachievable in reality. Remember, with take 20, that's a skill bonus of 5. (Using it consistently in a combat round is pretty hard to achieve, especially without the ability to take ten.)you're talking a dc 10 to make an animal attack its owner if it has the attack trick.
I would allow an NPC or PC to command someone else's animal, if they succeeded on the handle animal check.
However, it wouldn't be a DC 10. It would be a push attempt at DC 25. In most cases I wouldn't allow the command be one to attack an ally of the owner - as you indicated BigNorseWolf, the skill isn't a dominate - but pushing the animal to flee has a good chance of taking them out of the combat.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I would allow a handle animal check on anothers animal companion.
They are trained animals and someone skilled enough can make commands on them.
I have allowed players to do it. As a DM I never had the opportunity
We've had to do this at the table too. (Druid didn't buy up handle animal, bad die rolls, and then the oracle started ordering the animal around)
congrats on the second star BTW.To the OP. Don't forget riding the tiger (great, now i've that song stuck in my head) would require concentration checks to cast.
I just checked. "Attack" Trick says: "The animal attacks apparent enemies."
So it would not cover attacking allies.
(that would also apply to allies that are dominated but haven't proved their enemy-status to the animal yet, or creatures disguised to appear as allies to it, i.e. that the master might really want the animal to attack)
Attacking an ally would thus always be a Push. (unless the animal is already specially trained to attack friendly allies)
We've had to do this at the table too. (Druid didn't buy up handle animal, bad die rolls, and then the oracle started ordering the animal around)
Yeah, totally legit, either in cases where the nominal 'master' is unconscious/dead/not present, or maybe there is two companion class PCs but one is tight on skill ranks and just doesn't put anything in HA - the other one can effectively handle their companion better than they can themself. (You can only handle your own Companion as a Free Action though, so having somebody else do it has major drawbacks)
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In order for the tiger to gain it's rake attacks, it must begin it's turn already grappling. Thus on the charge/pounce, it is "only" the 2 claws and bite with the grab attempts.but the Tiger has the Pounce ability, which states
"Pounce (Ex) When a creature with this special attack makes a charge, it can make a full attack (including rake attacks if the creature also has the rake ability)."
David, my apologies. I had forgotten that wording was included in pounce. Though it is lovely to have such a wonderful direct mechanics contradiction, the wording of pounce would lead one to believe it makes an exception to the standard rule.
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I would allow a handle animal check on anothers animal companion.
So what I am about to say does not work as a perfect comparison, because I will be comparing life to gaming. However, I think you will find the point valid.
If someone tried to physically handle or verbally addressed my pit bull with any level of authority other than my family, they would get their a$$ chewed up.
If someone tried to physically handle or verbally addressed my pit bull with any level of authority other than my family, they would get their a$$ chewed up.
My Rottie is the opposite. Anyone can walk up and tell her to do tricks.
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I would allow a handle animal check on anothers animal companion.So what I am about to say does not work as a perfect comparison, because I will be comparing life to gaming. However, I think you will find the point valid.
If someone tried to physically handle or verbally addressed my pit bull with any level of authority other than my family, they would get their a$$ chewed up.
Yes, but that's because you taught it the "exclusive" trick.
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Yes, but that's because you taught it the "exclusive" trick.
Hah! I haven't taught that beast anything other than how to love us by loving him back good. That is just his natural disposition. He is not fond of strangers, but he is the best dog in the world to us. We just have to take precautions like 6 foot privacy fence, always out on a strong leash with a body harness, ect. He won't attack people unless you try to touch him or us or speak at him aggressively, but we like to handle our end of being responsible. We have guests over often enough, and he is fine around them because they know not to try and pet him or anything.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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BNW,
It's my understanding that new game mechanics like new animal tricks are designed to give GMs and players more tools to simulate the same reality they were referencing before.
So, it's not that animals could suddenly flank with their masters, after 13 years of never being able to do so. Rather, there were new mechanics to adjudicate that situation.
Same with the "exclusive" trick.
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before that it was in the realm of "Judge Variation" - 15 years ago, (Heck, 20 years ago, back in 1st edition days) I for instance would not allow someone in a Druids party to give the AC commands (other than the druid that is).
In one case, I have had a Druid down (neg HP) and bleeding out, with the AC over the body "guarding" him from the other party members who were trying to cast spells on him (or give first aid). The AC didn't know that they were trying to "help", just that his Druid was hurt and these creatures were trying to cast spells on him...
I have never seen even the worst bit of rules lawyering munchkinism attempt to say they could command an enemy animal companion or a wild animal with handle animal before the exclusive trick came out. Did you?
The exclusive trick is valuable even though animals don't take commands from people they don't know. Its still very important in case the animal gets charmed (and considering their lemmingesque will saves thats a real possibility)
A DC 10 (or heck, even a dc 25) handle animal check acting as dominate animal completely obviates the need for wild empathy. Completely.
Wild empathy takes a minute without a feat. Push an animal is a full round action.. its 10 times faster.
Wild empathy doesn't let you actually make the animal do anything. And it doesn't do anything.
A skill check is far easier than a wild empathy check. A skill starts 3 points higher because of the trained skill bonus and there are more ways to increase it.
It replaces charm animal, with no save. Heck, charm animal does absolutely nothing by this reading.
It not only replaces dominate animal it does it BETTER. The animal would get another will save if you told it to attack its owner with dominate animal. With this alleged interpretation Oh look a dc 10 it attacks...
If your reading of the rules lets you toss a first level spell, a third level spell, and a core signature class feature down the toilet then something has gone horribly wrong.
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BNW,
It's my understanding that new game mechanics like new animal tricks are designed to give GMs and players more tools to simulate the same reality they were referencing before.
So, it's not that animals could suddenly flank with their masters, after 13 years of never being able to do so. Rather, there were new mechanics to adjudicate that situation.
Same with the "exclusive" trick.
Exclusive (DC 20): The animal takes directions only from the handler who taught it this trick. If an animal has both the exclusive and serve tricks, it takes directions only from the handler that taught it the exclusive trick and those creatures indicated by the trainer's serve command. An animal with the exclusive trick does not take trick commands from others even if it is friendly or helpful toward them (such as through the result of a charm animal spell), though this does not prevent it from being controlled by other enchantment spells (such as dominate animal), and the animal still otherwise acts as a friendly or helpful creature when applicable.
The trick, the ENTIRE rational for making wild empathy, charm animal, and dominate animal useless, ITSELF suggests that you need to make the animal friendly or helpful to you before using handle animal.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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And nosig, there's nothing restricting animals from deciding to flank on their own, if you think that's what they'd do. (The same with animals avoiding obvious violent enemies when moving through threatened areas to attack.) It's just that now, there's a way for the people at the table to determine if the master can give the animal an instruction to flank.
The rules in Animal Archive haven't changed the way wolves behave.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Weird, I thought I had posted something about how the Diplomacy Modifiers for things like "lengthy or complicated aid, dangerous aid, aid that could result in punishment" should apply to Handle Animal... specifically the last one, which is +15 DC. Needless to say, there's plenty of other areas of the rules where a modifier in another section really should logically apply although that's not actually stated, I don't see the difference here.
I totally agree with this, and wish they had included a "use the same modifier to diplomacy roles" or some variant in HA, but under the rules as written, there are people who would argue that it is not allowed.
For one thing, it would *also* apply to the animal's owner, who will often be asking for "dangerous aid." (every time you send the animal into combat, it is providing dangerous aid.) Which would conflict with the "animal has taken damage is a +2 DC"
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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I just checked. "Attack" Trick says: "The animal attacks apparent enemies."
So it would not cover attacking allies.
(that would also apply to allies that are dominated but haven't proved their enemy-status to the animal yet, or creatures disguised to appear as allies to it, i.e. that the master might really want the animal to attack)
Attacking an ally would thus always be a Push. (unless the animal is already specially trained to attack friendly allies)
That is a totally valid point I had not considered. I agree with that interpretation.
However, how does this square with the second line of the skill:
You may point to a particular creature that you wish the
animal to attack, and it will comply if able.
Would you rule that if the creature the owner points to has not attacked or acted agressively, the animal won't attack?
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Another interesting thought.
In reality, Tricks are taught with Triggers. Having handle animal doesn't psycically tell you what an animals Tricks or Triggers are, and I would say any time you are telling an animal to perform a trick without knowing the animal's trigger, you are effectively pushing it.
So, if you have seen the owner command the animal,
1. what would be the skill needed to identify the trigger. (I assume HA?)
2. what skill would be used to used to disguise the trigger. (I assume bluff?)
3. if the person is a pet class that gets HA(trick) as a free action, they are clearly using a shortened form of the trigger, in that case is it even possible for someone observing the free action to work out the trigger? (I would say no.)
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Sorry nosig, got ranting. The first point is to you specifically, "had you ever seen someone try using handle animal on an enemy animal before the exclusive trick came out?" I had seen flank and no flank arguments before the flank trick.
Sure. Lots of times. Across a wide range of game systems. In fact, in most game systems, that is part of what handle animal is for. It's just that most game systems, they have the decency to include penalties for agressive or wild animals, and they put limits on what you can do. (ie, handle animal can only make a wild animal hold it's ground or run away, cannot make it do the entertain trick.) Also, most systems don't let even the best animal trainer spend 6 seconds and convince his untrained pet dog to do back flips and sing.
The issue is that they made Handle Animal incredibly potent when they added push and did not limit what push could do, pushing it into purely cinematic territory.
So now you have the situation where rules as written, either anyone can walk up to any animal, and make it do anything with a DC 25 check (absent the exclusive skill) OR no one can influence a strange animal in any way without magic. OR It is a GM call every individual time (which is generally frowned upon in society play. )
The problem is not the exclusive trick, the problem is that HA is so oversimplified and overpowered that RAW it is gamebreaking, a fact they tried to fix with the exclusive trick.
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The problem is not the exclusive trick, the problem is that HA is so oversimplified and overpowered that RAW it is gamebreaking, a fact they tried to fix with the exclusive trick.
You're assuming an incredible amount there. You're assuming that they have the way you interpret the rules in mind when they wrote the exclusive trick, rather than the exclusive trick stopping charmed and wild empathied animals from turning on the party- which is what the trick explicitly says it does.
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We read that rule differently. You read it as "Excusive trick overrides charm" I read it as "Charm does not override Exclusive."
As a result we assume different things about the RaI. Short of a developer clarification, neither of us will convince the other.
You don't need MORE developer clarification to tell you something in your interpretation has gone wonky.
In order for your interpretation to work
1) You have to invent your own non raw subsystem for the contradictions arising from your interpretation when you have 2 animal handlers
2) You Render charm animal, wild empathy, and dominate animal obsolete
3) You throw in a non raw caveat against pushing a wild animal
4) You make the exclusive trick absolutely required, even though we've gone 15 years without it.
In your quixotic quest to avoid adding a single sentence to handle animal in the name of the raw you've wound up adding paragraphs.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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What part of neither of us will convince the other do you not understand? If you want to resurrect the argument in the other thread, go resurrect the other thread.
My original point remains. Whether or not NPC's can command your tiger and to what extent will depend on the GM involved.
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If someone has training in hanbdling animals yes, Lormyr. They maybe be able to give commands to your dog.
If ceaser milan comes and tells your dog down. I could see that dog obeying.
Now I would never allow someone to sick their animal companion after their owner, but I could definiately allow them to tell the animal down.
It is a trained only skill and if you are going ot put ranks in it you can definately use it to give commands to animals.
Now if some guy buys this trained tiger he had for a day and someone else has TRAINING on how to handle animals. Well that could be a very confusing situation for that animal.
Thanks Mr. Morris.