Working on some ideas for a Dhampir and was thinking of being a hunter with a wolf companion while using this alternate racial trait.
Vampiric Empathy
Though dhampirs often relate poorly to humanoids, some share an affinity with baser creatures. These dhampirs gain the ability to communicate with bats, rats, and wolves as if under the effects of a speak with animals spell (caster level equal to 1/2 the dhampir’s Hit Dice). In addition, they gain a +2 racial bonus on Diplomacy checks when dealing with these animals. Whenever these dhampirs initiate an exchange, animals begin with a starting attitude of indifferent. This is a supernatural ability. This racial trait replaces manipulative.
In fact if this would change other aspects of handling my animal buddy that I'm not aware of (I've never had an animal companion so even things that seem obvious or rudimentary would likely be news to me) would be nice to know.
Yep, the mechanic of handle animal stays, even if their INT increases.
Two advantages to higher INT for animals: they can put a point into the Linguistics skill to understand you, and they get more tricks.
You still have to train them with tricks/Push them to do stuff they aren't trained for.
Many threads about this.
What I have listed above boils it down to what you need to know.
Well, are Diplomacy checks necessary if you can legit speak to your human companion?
Your animal companion is not a robot automaton, and needs persuasion. By RAW, [if] an animal is friendly toward you, it may do some favor or service for you, but that's not guaranteed, so if you want to make sure that the animal will do what you want it to do instead of what it wants to do -- No, Fluffy, put down that ball of string and go fight that scary monster instead! -- you need something more than just the ability to speak with it.
|
You still need handle animal unless it is sentient via Awaken (at which point it is no longer an Animal Companion)
This is from the PFS FAQ but it is reasonable to use it for all tables:
Also note that raising an animal companion’s Intelligence to 3 or higher does not eliminate the need to make Handle Animal checks to direct its actions; even semi-intelligent animals still act like animals unless trained not to. An animal with Intelligence of 3 or higher remains a creature of the animal type unless its type is specifically changed by another ability
---------
Edit to add: Also the Vampiric Empathy is for using diplomacy on other animals that are generally NOT your animal companion or familiar, in order to make them friendly and answer questions.Speak with Animals says "If an animal is friendly toward you, it may do some favor or service for you." So that's a diplomacy check and kind of a grey area ... you could not do all the things you could do with an animal companion or familiar.
^that
Alrighty then, I was a little confused based on the part in the racial trait where I got a plus to diplomacy so I wasn't sure if it would've been a diplomacy check instead.
On a side note, if my wolf buddy has the scout trick does this mean he can tell me exactly what he saw?
EDIT ^ Well it is good to see I'm not the only one who got confused by that. Maybe it means more intelligent versions of these creatures like awakened ones?
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This is getting into one of those gray areas, it will depend on the GM. Some will look at "INT 2" and say, "the wolf tells you about strange man smells. but worse than normal. also, there was a squirell and i growled at it. than i saw a movement in the bush and paused for like, two minutes staring at it but it was a thing that was not food moving up a tree.""
wouldn't it be:
"I started walking and smelled some man, so I went to SQUIRREL!!"
|
Well you could use diplomacy with your wolf animal companion, but it would probably be a bad idea.
PC: "Cujo! Attack that man" I make a diplomacy check.
GM: Okay, diplomacy(ask for favor) is a 1 minute action, so you and Cujo will be out of the fight for the next ten rounds. What do the rest of you want to do?
Where it really would be helpful is out of combat, in place of a "push" action. If you have a minute or two, the diplomacy DC to ask your AC for a favor is almost certainly lower than the DC 25 Push to get it to do something it is not trained for. (If it isn't you really need to start treating your AC a lot nicer.)