handle animal, tricks, and totally confused player

[Sub_Zero]

So I was looking over a friends character the other day, and were both unsure of how his handle animal skill works.

In addition to his animal companion, he has a trained cat, raven, and pony.

The raven has the hunting tricks.

He wants to send his raven to fly ahead and seek out large creatures in the area, and then return to him. Basically he wants it to be his scout.

Does handle animal cover this? would this even work?

[Brf]

It could probably "Seek", which covers looking ahead for anything alive.

[Sub_Zero]

Is it able to communicate that back to the handler though? I'd assume so, but I don't want to give my friend bad advice. In this case would it only give broad awareness of whats ahead?

For instance in a sewer dungeon crawl sending an rat ahead using seek could not only scout, but it wouldn't appear out of the ordinary. Would it be able to return with intel?

[Brf]

Your animal would not be able to communicate its findings unless you had a Speak-with-animals spell or something. Typically, a "seeking" animal will point at what it finds. I imagine the raven would probably just circle over whatever it found.

[Sub_Zero]

so you can't use handle animal to get an animal to scout a room ahead for you? I just want to make sure I give the right advice this weekend.

[BigNorseWolf]

Sub_Zero wrote:

so you can't use handle animal to get an animal to scout a room ahead for you? I just want to make sure I give the right advice this weekend.

You can, but normally the animal finds something in the room the same way a canary finds gas in a mine.

[Itchy]

Sub_Zero wrote:

so you can't use handle animal to get an animal to scout a room ahead for you? I just want to make sure I give the right advice this weekend.

It depends. The Handle Animal Skill is pretty vague about some of the things it can do. I would recommend going through the full skill description with your GM prior to this Saturday's game.

If he has access to Speak With Animals, then I think any trained animal could scout out a room, but the "intel" will be limited. A rat might tell you that the room has one "really big two legs" and more than one "smaller two legs." That could mean a Bugbear and two goblins, A bugbear and 12 goblins, or a Minotaur and 5 humans. It also might tell you about what "food" they are carrying. I wouldn't assume an animal can count beyond "one, more than one"

If he doesn't have access to Speak with Animals, the intel (subject to GM approval) would likely be limited to presence/ absence of anythiing the rat considers to be a threat.

A raven trained for Hunting could probably (subject to GM interpretation of the Handle Animal Skill) find an enemy and sit in a nearby tree and caw periodically to draw your party to it.

-Aaron

[SlimGauge]

I remember playing long ago and discovering that my familiar counted 0,1,2,many, many-many.

[Itchy]

*Off Topic*
There's a lot of variations of how animals would count.

The Gully Dwarves in Dragonlance counted 1, 2, 3, not-more-than-3.

The rabbits in Waterhip Down counted 1, 2, 3, 4, hrair (a thousand).
*Off Topic*

*Back on Topic*
As I mentioned above, I strongly recommend clarifying with the GM how the GM wants to rule Handle Animal.

-Aaron

[Dennis Deadsky]

Thanks for the reference to Watership Down! Had you not made it, I would have.

Silflay hraka, u umbleer rah!

[DM Livgin]

This topic requires a lot of cooperation between the Player an DM. Not to mention similar expectations of what animal intelligence means.

For example, my blind Oracle in a naval setting had a pair of ravens to spot and warn him of incoming ships (seek), and to fish for him (fetch).

Another character 'adopted' a feral street cat and would teach it the scents of the party so it would hiss at anything unfamiliar within scent range (seek/guard), and prevent anything from sneaking up on the poor perception fighter.

Work together, come up with some acceptable limits to the animal intelligence, communication, and training.

[darrenan]

And Alan Turing counted 0, 1, infinity

[N N 959]

As others have suggested, there's a lot of GM variation that can manifest itself with something like this.

As GM, I would certainly allow an animal with the Seek/Detect ability to communicate something was found. I would also allow said Druid/Ranger to use Speak w/Animals to work out a more complex system of communication for permanent use i.e. wiggle both ears to indicate humans, paw the ground to indicate something buried. etc.

But what is important is that the GM does not just tell you what the creature sees/smells. However, this is usually what most GMs will do if they aren't thinking about it.

[Weirdo]

Itchy wrote:

I wouldn't assume an animal can count beyond "one, more than one"

I'd probably allow "one," "some" and "lots" with "lots" starting in the ballpark of a dozen.

Crows actually can recognize faces so they'd probably be able to perceive pretty detailed scouting info - but their ability to report that information to a trainer without Speak with Animals would be very limited.