Handle Animal / Tricks / Wild animals

[Sub_Zero]

Another question I've had about playing a druid came up recently. A few guides and advice threads on druids talk about the call animal spell to find an animal and then train it up using handle animal.

How does this actually work though?

under rearing a wild animal:

Quote:

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.

This seems to indicate that handle animal to teach them tricks is supposed to be used on domesticated animals, not wild animals.

Am I missing something, because I really want to be the doctor dolittle of my group, which means recruiting local animals to help my party on their quests.

[Hendelbolaf]

I think that quotation just says that you can train them while you are raising them from a wee animal or you can take a grown one and "teach the old dog new tricks" so to speak. Just get the animal any way you can and then spend the time to train them. Of course being able to talk with them should help this process out a lot.

[Brf]

It takes you one week to teach an animal a trick, but your Call Animal spell only lasts one hour per level. Once the spell expires, the animal runs off or whatever its inclination is to do. If it likes you, and stays around, I assume you would treat it as domesticated.

[Sub_Zero]

Brf wrote:

It takes you one week to teach an animal a trick, but your Call Animal spell only lasts one hour per level. Once the spell expires, the animal runs off or whatever its inclination is to do. If it likes you, and stays around, I assume you would treat it as domesticated.

That's kinda what I meant. How do you get the animal to stick around for training, because the rules seem to imply that the animal is already domesticated, or at least won't bolt at the first chance it gets.

[Brf]

Call Animal wrote:

Once the spell's duration expires, the animal acts in accordance with its attitude. Most animals will likely wander off, but a hostile predatory animal may attack, especially if it is hungry or provoked.

I assume to make it stick around you would have to raise its attitude to "Helpful". When the spell expires, I would think its attitude would be lowered by however many steps the spell raised it by in the beginning.

[shadowkras]

"Domesticated" animal is any animal that you managed to train or raise from birth. But the skill doesnt require you to domesticate an animal first (there is no mention of that anywhere).

From what i understood, the difference is only that a domesticated animal is easier to handle for untrained characters.

[Brf]

The last section of the Check section states:

Quote:

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.

There is nothing in the skill description that implies you can teach a wild animal, other than the "rear a wild animal" section. It does not say if you can domesticate an adult wild animal.

[blahpers]

Question: Can you "push" a hostile bear to make it go push a rock around (Work trick) instead of biting your face?

[Robert A Matthews]

If you used call animal, nothing is stopping you from using Wild Empathy while the spell is in effect to make the animal stick around after the spell wears off. In fact, it would stand to reason that most Druids and Rangers probably use this spell whenever they are seeking a new animal companion.