Learning more about animal companions

[Human Fighter]

If you can command your master aka animal companion as a free action with handle animal, then what are the consequences of failure if you can just preform another free action?

In pfs especially, who controls the animal companion between the player and the gm?

If the pc who possess the animal companion goes unconscious, or dies, what happens to the animal companion?

With my limited knowledge of tricks, should an animal companion instructed to attack always charge, use all their attacks, and never 5ft step tactically for flanks or better positioning unless instructed otherwise by other tricks?

I'm sure I'll have other questions later.

[Human Fighter]

Does the master aka the animal companion get different initiative rolls? I don't see anything about sharing with the pc.

[Subparhiggins]

If a PC goes unconscious, provided they had already given an animal a command, it continues carrying out that command. So if you order your animal to attack, then take a dirt nap, the animal is going to keep attacking the target because there's no one around telling it to heel.

They do get different initiative, but most of the time its simpler to just have them either delay until their masters turn if they go first, or just have them always go on their masters turn.

[Human Fighter]

In the past someone at a pfs table said something about the animals bond seizes once the owner dies and it should stop fighting. I though that was ridiculous, and I figure the animal goes one man team mode doing whatever it wants.

[Mark Seifter]

Changed the thread title to one more likely to generate answers to the questions contained herein. The questions could be useful to people new to animal companions, so I recommend using wording that would be less confusing to other members of the community (for instance, not referring to the animal companion as "master aka animal companion", when the master is a rules term for the character with the class feature).

[Dafydd]

I believe you can only make 1 handle animal check a turn, so if you fail that, your companion would do whatever a normal animal would do.

By the rules, a GM is supposed to control all NPCs, which include Familiars, Animal Companions, Eidolons, and Cohorts. That said, I have never met a GM who wants to take on another aspect of the game they need to control. Ask the GM, but you will likely be controling the animal outside of bizarre events (like a control animal spell or wild empathy from a foe)

Without active direction from it's owner, or someone it is trained to obey, the animal would do whatever a normal animal would do. If the animal knows the Guard trick, it may guard the owner from foes. If it is a predator, and there is a weakened foe around, it may charge em and try to eat them. A plant eater is more likely to sit back or run. If the owner is dead, the animal may indeed run away from the battle.

Often an animal will charge for an attack, assuming it has the space. If it has the Flank trick, it is safe to assume it will attempt to flank. If the animal has pounce, it is almost guaranteed it will charge as it is stronger when charging and that is how most animals hunt (well the hunting ones).

Animal Companions have their own Initiative and are supposed to roll their own. However, since you can not order them out of turn, they will delay till your turn. Most people (I know) wave this and say it goes on the owner's turn.

With out the owner directing it, it may very well do nothing. If it is uninjured and has an attack order, it will likely continue the assault till it is under 50% or the prey is dead.

Hope this all helps,

[Human Fighter]

I figure if it has an order from before init is rolled, it'll continue to preform it. Example would be it goes first and delays, and was instructed to guard/defend. Allies are attacked, so it would immediately go out of init to defend. Make sense?

It would be really helpful to know how many handle animal checks per turn are allowed, especially when they're free actions.

[Bozworth.]

Human Fighter wrote:

If you can command your master aka animal companion as a free action with handle animal, then what are the consequences of failure if you can just preform another free action?

In pfs especially, who controls the animal companion between the player and the gm?

If the pc who possess the animal companion goes unconscious, or dies, what happens to the animal companion?

With my limited knowledge of tricks, should an animal companion instructed to attack always charge, use all their attacks, and never 5ft step tactically for flanks or better positioning unless instructed otherwise by other tricks?

I'm sure I'll have other questions later.

I'm not sure if there are consequences for failure for the druid if you are only trying to handle your animal companion (and not push it)--I haven't seen any from what I've read so far, so it seems like a druid would get as many tries as they want, or to save time just be allowed to take 20. Hopefully that exact question won't come up since it's only a DC 10 to handle an animal, you already have a +4 with your companion, and anything you are telling it to do that doesn't require a push probably won't upset the game anyway.

If this helps, I've played a lot of PFS with animal companions and I have never had a GM who expressed a desire to control my animal companion or made me roll handle animal unless it was something that would require "pushing" the animal. Recall that a "push" is required to convince the animal to do something that it wouldn't do normally and isn't trained for, and that a druid still has to use a move action to push, so he can retry but it takes additional rounds.

As to behavior: just remember that your animal companion is a creature with an intelligence or 2 (or higher if you boost it) that wants to help you. If you go unconscious or die, it will probably continue with the last command you gave it, but it's not a robot. If you told your loyal dog to "stay" and then dropped dead from a heart attack, it might stay, it might start barking, or it might whine over you for a few moments and then go seek help. These are RP choices, and you should be allowed to make them, just as the GM should be able to say no if you come with anything unreasonable.

Should an animal always charge? I'd say that depends on how you trained it. There is no charge trick, so I'd assume that when you taught the animal to attack you either taught it to always charge or never charge--just as long as you are consistent. If you are in PFS it could be a trickier question, since they don't allow custom tricks, and you may get told that your animal will always charge if it has a charge lane, but I can't find a clear rule on it (so I'd say do it the way you want until a GM tells you no, then obey that GM without making a fuss). Also, by default the animal will probably use every attack available to it, and use its most damaging attack if it only has a standard action--these are standard animal tactics.

Flanking: There is a "flank" trick, so your animal companion would probably need that trick to be able to flank on command. For a home game maybe you can convince a GM that specific animals, like a wolf, will flank by instinct, but for PFS that probably wouldn't fly.

5-foot stepping: I don't think a 2 or 3 animal level intelligence gets you the ability to 5 foot step for tactical advantage generally, though there could be specific circumstances that would make sense. The easiest way around this though is to get your companion's intelligence up to 3, give it a rank in linguistics so it understands spoken language, and just tell it to "step 5 feet to the left". Hope this helps.

[Bozworth.]

Oops, sorry, some of that was redundant to what Dafydd said, wrote a while ago but forgot to hit post so I didn't see the interim.

[Human Fighter]

It's appreciated. I'm running pfs, and I'm trying to run the game as best I can and as accurate to the rules as possible. I'm going to require rolls for tricks, but I really need to understand the limitations on the free action. Should the roll be done in secret? You wouldn't know if the animal responded anyways until it's turn.

[Bozworth.]

Human Fighter wrote:

It's appreciated. I'm running pfs, and I'm trying to run the game as best I can and as accurate to the rules as possible. I'm going to require rolls for tricks, but I really need to understand the limitations on the free action. Should the roll be done in secret? You wouldn't know if the animal responded anyways until it's turn.

If I was a player who wanted to be a jerk about it, I would just tell the GM that "I instruct my animal companion to do such and such 10,000 consecutive times just to be safe, do the rolls in secret if you want, but one will probably make it." At which point the GM could point to the FAQ stating that he can limit my number of repeated free actions in a round to a "fair number."

<http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9qda>

What's a fair number? Twice? Ten times? I feel like you're going to get arguments at the table over that. Even dumping charisma at level 1 with one rank in handle animal, a druid still only fails on a 1, 2, or 3 so hopefully it doesn't come up too often. Most druids should be able to tap the check. This is just my opinion, but when I GM pfs tables, I don't require a check for an animal companion unless it would be a push rather than just a regular handle animal--I just don't want to spend time on it. It is your call though.

[Bozworth.]

Correction: the exact wording on free actions is that the GM can decide a "reasonable limit" rather than "fair number," I do want to be precise.

[Human Fighter]

A handle animal consist of doing what exactly? Can it be hand motions, whistling etc. or is it something specific?

[R2D2TS]

Human Fighter you may want to check out this thread for some help from the PFS side. There is even a link to a google doc at the bottom of the opening post that compiled most of the information collected there.

[Human Fighter]

If the creature doesn't have the Flank trick, then can it gain the benefits of flank, or provide a flank? Can it take attacks of opportunity?

[Bozworth.]

Human Fighter wrote:

If the creature doesn't have the Flank trick, then can it gain the benefits of flank, or provide a flank? Can it take attacks of opportunity?

Yes and yes. Animals get attacks of opportunity; this is true for the Druid's animal companion as well as for the dire tigers about to attack the party. Same goes for flanking. The animal might not know that you want to flank with it without the trick, but if you are flanking you both get the bonus. This basically reflects the notion that a person who is threatened on both sides has to divide his attention to defend and thus finds it more difficult--that's true whether it's two people, two dogs, or a dog and a person.

[Human Fighter]

It seems weird how the flanking trick is written, especially when it says that the animal now ALWAYS takes AoO's

[Bozworth.]

Human Fighter wrote:

It seems weird how the flanking trick is written, especially when it says that the animal now ALWAYS takes AoO's

Good catch. I don't know the purpose of that sentence. I could speculate that maybe they meant to clarify that the flank trick does not allow the animal to avoid attacks of opportunity that it provokes by moving around to flank--but that would be speculation.

[Human Fighter]

Would you happen to know how tricks are communicated with an animal companion? It just says it's a free action, but do you have to make sound, or do signals? Thunderstone deafens the animal, and then what? Animal goes blind... So many things I don't understand.

[Bozworth.]

Human Fighter wrote:

It seems weird how the flanking trick is written, especially when it says that the animal now ALWAYS takes AoO's

Or just perhaps that given that the animal has limited AOOs and is threatening multiple people, that it will never decline to use an AOO on the target of the flank command. Seems an odd thing to put in though.

[Bozworth.]

That's a good puzzle, the rules don't specify, but I assume hand signals or sounds are the way. I don't think RAW say that the animal being deaf or blind prevents you from using the handle animal skill, though if anybody else knows different I'll accept correction. If I were GMing that event and I had foresight, I would ask the Druid "How do you give commands to your animal companion?" before I threw the thunderstone. The druid can decide how he does it since he trained the thing, and if the animal needs spoken commands then deafening it suffices to stop it understanding those commands. That said, if this is one of those calls that results in character death and somebody is calling the venture captain over to adjudicate, be prepared to hear the argument that there's nothing the rules saying a blind and deaf tiger can't be handled to scent out Lem and drag him from the burning building.

[N N 959]

Human Fighter wrote:

If you can command your master aka animal companion as a free action with handle animal, then what are the consequences of failure if you can just preform another free action?

In pfs especially, who controls the animal companion between the player and the gm?

If the pc who possess the animal companion goes unconscious, or dies, what happens to the animal companion?

With my limited knowledge of tricks, should an animal companion instructed to attack always charge, use all their attacks, and never 5ft step tactically for flanks or better positioning unless instructed otherwise by other tricks?

I'm sure I'll have other questions later.

1. I've not seen any limit on how many free action when commanding a trick the animal knows, so the GM has discretion on how many free actions you can attempt. I wouldn't expect more than 3 attempts per turn. For tricks the animal doesn't know, it's a move acton.

2. Per RAW (Ultimate Campaign), the animal is controlled by the GM. The PC gives the animal a command and the GM decides how the animal responds. In PFS, this is problematic because the GM can't draw on the history of interaction that a single GM in a campaign could. IME, PFS GMs let the player do what they want with the aCom. When I play, I tell the GM what I want the animal to do and let the GM decide if the action is modified.

What you should expect in PFS is that the GM will let the player control the animal unless the player has the animal do something the GM thinks is in violation of RAW or RAI.

3. I haven't seen RAW on a dead master. The animal might stick around for a number of months or it might depart immediately. There is true story about a dog that returned to the train station, waiting for its master to return long after the master had died. If the animal had been mistreated, the animal would probably depart immediately. If the master goes unconscious, the bond remains intact.

4. By RAW, the animal does not act unless instructed to act. However, it's within a GMs discretion to allow an animal to adopt habits. For example, if a 10th level druid always has the animal attack immediately, it's not unreasonable for the animal to do this without being instructed. Expect table variation.

Unfortunately, the rules for nuanced animal behavior are lacking. For example, there is no trick to tell an animal to take a 5' step or use Total Defense. As a GM, I've assumed some of these things are part of commands. For example, If the animal is ordered "Down" then I assume it takes a 5' step back and goes to Total Defense. If the animal is then ordered to Heel or to Come, then it will Withdraw when in combat and use Acrobatics to avoid getting hit. Also, a Come command forces the animal to travel in a straight line to the master, incurring any AoO's (if it cannot avoid them using Acro or Withdraw). Heel, would allow the animal to take the safest route it could perceive. None of that is RAW, just my trying to make sense of overlapping tricks.

Flanking is a controversial subject. By virtue of the fact that there is a flank command, it suggest that the animal will not naturally flank, regardless of what type of animal it is.

But all of this is subject to a lot of table variation. As a player, I try and discuss things with the GM before attempting them. I make sure I know what the GM says the animal will do before I command the animal. I also try and be consistent and reasonable. I don't try and get away with things that I know are in violation of how AComs are suppose to function e.g. pretending my PC can see what the animal can see.

[N N 959]

More answers...

1. There is no RAW about how any particular command is given to the animal. Assume that if the animal can see or hear the master, the trick can be given.

2. I don't remember where it's written, but animals roll their own init. If they roll higher than the PC, then they typically delay until they are given a command. The advantage is that they are not flat-footed while they wait. The PC can always delay to move right before the anima.

3. Per RAW, animal commands must be given on the master's turn. This can make complex interaction difficult, especially if the master needs the animal to do something first. If so, the PC can issue the command and then use a Ready action. Enforcing this type of limitation is important as it one of the things that distinguishes familiars, eidolons, and aComs. AComs are less flexible than either of the other two.