I have a player in my Extinction Curse campaign wanting to make an animal instinct barbarian (bear) who takes the Animal Tamer dedication to get a bear companion for his act. Do you think that violate his animal instinct anathema?
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The tutu, the kazoo, and the other silliness are disrespectful, yeah. Just having a bear and having it do tricks wouldn't be, IMO.
A traditional lion tamer's act is pretty respectful of the animals in question (the training may or may not be, depends on the tamer, but the act itself usually is), just as an example of a more respectful act.
Really, anything that leaves you with the idea that this is a dangerous wild animal and not to be trifled with should count as respectful. Anything deeply undignifed not so much.
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For all you know, the bear enjoys it. Don't kink shame.
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For all you know, the bear enjoys it. Don't kink shame.
Disrespect is a totally fine kink if everyone's down with it, but so's playing with fear. Both remain anathema to certain folks in Golarion (animal disrespect for Animal Instinct Barbarians, causing fear to devotees of Desna).
For what it's worth, there is even a magic item from Extinction Curse that summons exactly that:
https://pf2.easytool.es/index.php?id=5507&name=wondrous_figurines
Maybe your player can use that instead of dressing up their animal companion.
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Know what's disrespectful? Dragging an innocent bear out of its natural habitat and expecting it to risk its life for you day after day after day, adventuring.
Wearing a tutu? Not so much.
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You're playing a Circus Themed AP. Lighten up.
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I politefully agree with Aratorin. It sounds like your player is getting into the circus theme. I wouldn't discourage that for the sake of anathema semantics.
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Remember: just because something isn't socially acceptable today, doesn't mean it wasn't socially acceptable a hundred years ago.
Remember: You aren't playing pathfinder 100 years ago, you play it today. It's a social activity, so before making a character you know is socially unacceptable make sure the rest of the people at the table are comfortable with it. If you say things in-character that make people at the table uncomfortable, angry, hurt, etc. saying "I'm just trying to be historically accurate" doesn't really do much to diminish the sting. And it's quite possible people at your table won't feel empowered speak up in the moment, especially if they think you will simply dismiss their concerns with "it's just what my character will do."
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Remember: just because something isn't socially acceptable today, doesn't mean it wasn't socially acceptable a hundred years ago.Remember: You aren't playing pathfinder 100 years ago, you play it today. It's a social activity, so before making a character you know is socially unacceptable make sure the rest of the people at the table are comfortable with it. If you say things in-character that make people at the table uncomfortable, angry, hurt, etc. saying "I'm just trying to be historically accurate" doesn't really do much to diminish the sting. And it's quite possible people at your table won't feel empowered speak up in the moment, especially if they think you will simply dismiss their concerns with "it's just what my character will do."
It's also worth noting that Golarion is a fantasy setting with full gender equality in most cultures, and little in the way or racial prejudice among human groups in most locations. There are exceptions, but most attitudes are much more in-synch with modern first world notions than they are with those of 100 years ago (slavery is, admittedly, a notable exception to this).
In short, 'realism' is a completely invalid defense for this sort of thing in most of Golarion most of the time.
I bring this up because we're talking about an AP here, which is to say a game set in Golarion.
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I have a player in my Extinction Curse campaign wanting to make an animal instinct barbarian (bear) who takes the Animal Tamer dedication to get a bear companion for his act. Do you think that violate his animal instinct anathema?
Your title and your post seem to be operating in direct contrast to each other.
I do not think it is a violation of his anathema to take the Animal Tamer dedication and have a bear companion. Especially if giving the bear a personality and having it enjoy its performance is a part of his character concept.
Having a bear companion and deliberately disrespecting it and forcing it to do things it doesn't want to do would be breaking the anathema, but it would also be a really flagrant and red flag raising behavior to deliberately want to play a character that wants to have a companion that his character knowingly treats abusively. At the very least that is behavior that should be discussed by the table because it takes the game into pretty dark territory where people might not be comfortable.
The question seems to presuppose that the player has no control over the character of his animal companion and that seems suspect to me. Letting the character of the bear be the character of the bear that the player wants as a companion is probably fine.
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Remember: just because something isn't socially acceptable today, doesn't mean it wasn't socially acceptable a hundred years ago.Remember: You aren't playing pathfinder 100 years ago, you play it today. It's a social activity, so before making a character you know is socially unacceptable make sure the rest of the people at the table are comfortable with it. If you say things in-character that make people at the table uncomfortable, angry, hurt, etc. saying "I'm just trying to be historically accurate" doesn't really do much to diminish the sting. And it's quite possible people at your table won't feel empowered speak up in the moment, especially if they think you will simply dismiss their concerns with "it's just what my character will do."
If any of the bears at the gaming table are offended by a (non-bear) player having their in-game character dress up their in-game bear in dainty clothing, those bears can go ahead and let their disapproval be known.
This isn't about misogyny or slavery or child sweatshops making running shoes, or any of the other activities of yore that were once the norm and are no enlightened taboo. It's about in-character respect for animals. Given the abundance of people who dress up their dogs, I'd feel safe saying that this hasn't become mainstream verbotten.
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Remember: You aren't playing pathfinder 100 years ago, you play it today.
I see people putting outfits on dogs and cats ALL the time, so as of today, it seems acceptable enough. Want to see how many dogs in tutu images you'll with a goggle search. The issue today is with wild animals and their treatment but that really isn't an analogous situation with an animal companion. So in general, I see no issue with the OP.
so before making a character you know is socially unacceptable
I don't think this is what they where saying. If you've already agreed to a fantasy circus adventure, I think we can assume you've already bought into what that means. The AP itself features images of a bear with a top hat, someone juggling boars and an archetype that allows you to train your animal companions to perform so we already can see the theme.
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I have a player in my Extinction Curse campaign wanting to make an animal instinct barbarian (bear) who takes the Animal Tamer dedication to get a bear companion for his act. Do you think that violate his animal instinct anathema?
That sounds like a question for the bear.
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Given that it's a fantasy world where you can cast a spell and literally ask the animal how they feel about things AND some deity can just start teleporting Purple Worms with Druid levels on your head if you disrespect the Nature on large scale, real-world XIX century assumptions that animals are fine with whatever we do to them because, duh, they're just animals and Lord Almighty told us to inherit the Earth and make it our servant MIGHT not apply.
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The one question I had much earlier seems to have been dropped from conversation, but I think that the one actual game issue here is who decides what the bear wants, the player or the GM?
That is why I felt like the title of the thread was misleading to the question posed in the OP.
Is the Animal Tamer dedication incompatible with an animal instinct barbarian's anathma?
I don't think anyone would have said yes, until the entire conversation was centered around having the bear act in a way that some people consider degrading (hence the title).
Saying "ask the bear" ignores what is really happening in game, which is the question of whether or not the Player should be able to decide what their animal companion's personality is like and how far that can stretch into being someone who is making others at the table feel uncomfortable by saying "no its ok, the bear likes it."
How ok this is, and how far is too far, is entirely a table by table conversation. If someone at the table has experiences that turn the concept of "a bear wearing funny clothes" into something that is triggering of trauma, then it is disrespectful to that player to make this situation something that is ok.
Hopefully, if you are considering running a circus themed campaign, talking about what does and does not feel like like condoning animal cruelty, as opposed to having fun with the themes of the campaign, is something that comes up in session 0 and is defined for the table, but it is something that the whole table should be prepared to address respectfully if it comes up later in play, because it will likely be a heavy theme in multiple chapters of this Adventure Path.
If everyone is ok with such themes, deciding to let the player have a bear who honestly enjoys wearing costumes should not be considered a violation of the character's anathema, because the assumption is that the character is respecting the bear's character.
But if other players or you as a GM have issues with Animal Companions being treated as comic relief and it feels like the character is making light of degradation or abuse, and that has the potential to be upsetting to the people playing the game, then the behavior should be stopped above the level of saying it violates the character's anathema.
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So if I treat my Bear animal companion like Yogi Bear, I guess I'm considered an offensive bigot to Druids and will be hunted down for it.
So if I treat my Bear animal companion like Yogi Bear, I guess I'm considered an offensive bigot to Druids and will be hunted down for it.
My entire post was about how it would be a question for your table, and that is ok. There is nothing inherent about the Animal Trainer archetype that conflicts with the animal instinct barbarian.
Whether or not the bear wants to be a clown can be a player decision or not, the game doesn’t set hard rules about animal companion personalities. But it’s not really the bear deciding it or not, it’s the players at the table, and deciding your character gets to act in a way that is hurtful to other players at the table is not really cool and should be avoided.
I mean, it's fair that there are some things in a literary sense that are disturbing and should be taken with discretion. But something like this is not that much more disturbing than the Yogi Bear example. If anything, I think it's more funny than Yogi Bear and his pic-a-nic bas-kets.
We're forgetting the #1 key thing here: This is a fantasy world with make-believe and magic. It's not real. It's pretend, or simulationist at best if we ever come up with PathfinderVR. The fact that someone wants to pretend they have a bear dressed up all crazy-like is something that should be quite minimally offensive and more comical than anything.
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Seems to me the game was doing fine until the druid player butted in with his knowledge on how fantasy bears think and act. *rolls eyes*
Seems to me the game was doing fine until the druid player butted in with his knowledge on how fantasy bears think and act. *rolls eyes*
Random rule 256:
The druid is always right about animals.
The cleric is always right about gods.
The wizard is always right about magic.
Geez, do you guys learn nothing in RPG school? :P
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Personally,
I am fine with tension like that in my games, if it is done at the character level and not the player level: The Animal instinct barbarian believing he is revering his totem and the druid thinking it is disrespectful could be an interesting party dynamic as long as it doesn't turn to the characters attempting to undermine each other, it even sounds like fun.
However, If a player says that another player's depiction of their character is actively causing them distress, and the other player says "I don't care," it means it is time for the table to decide if the game is worth playing and if everyone is not better off playing a different game or finding new people to play with.
That is why the original post is misleading. In world, the answer to the question is obviously, "this is a world of magic, it is absolutely possible to find out if the bear wants to participate in the performance, and assuming that it doesn't would be disrespectful to the bear, just as forcing it to perform if it didn't want to."
That answer doesn't really deal with the situation though because the bear is not real. The situation gets more complicated when you ask the question who decides what the bear wants, and it is better not to have players deliberately doing things with their characters that push past the boundaries of other players comfort zones. Be aware of that, keep an open and respectful dialog going at your table, and it will very likely be fine for everyone involved.
So to answer the question of the title of this thread:
you need to talk to your table about that if it seems like it might be a problem.
to answer the actual question in the original post:
It would only be an anathema to the animal barbarian if he was deliberately disrespecting the wishes of his animal companion. That is something that can be resolved in game, but if you are worried you are pushing the boundaries of other players at the table, ask them, not the internet for an appropriate answer for your game.
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The Barbarian should be the one wearing the pink tutu and dancing.
Who said they weren't?