To be even more broad, any creature can wear armor/barding, provided it has a corporeal form. Barding is just the catch-all term for non-humanoid armor.
As Mr Kilcoyne points out, "can wear" and "proficient in wearing" are different things. In the same way that your wizard can put on full-plate if he wants to (even though he has no armor proficiency), so can your cat or pegasus.
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Alright, so going by the rules of handle animal, a T-Rex animal companion could be fitted with barding, assuming he has Combat Training tricks?
Combat Training (DC 20)
An animal trained to bear a rider into combat knows the tricks attack, come, defend, down, guard, and heel. Training an animal for combat riding takes 6 weeks. You may also “upgrade” an animal trained for riding to one trained for combat by spending 3 weeks and making a successful DC 20 Handle Animal check. The new general purpose and tricks completely replace the animal’s previous purpose and any tricks it once knew. Many horses and riding dogs are trained in this way. (An animal trained in this way counts as trained for war, and becomes proficient with all forms or armor. See FAQs and Animal Type.)
No mention of Barding in there. You could put Barding on the T-Rex anyway; but unless he/she has the Armour Proficiency Feat the T-Rex will take the armour check penalty to its attack rolls and skill checks; again I quote-
A character who is wearing armor with which he is not proficient applies its armor check penalty to attack rolls and to all skill checks that involve moving.
I believe some exceptions exist, I think theres some rules that cavalier mounts can basically wear armour? But in the majority of cases, slapping armour on your animal companion's etc. is feasible from level 1- it will just suffer penalties until proficient in it.
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Alright, so going by the rules of handle animal, a T-Rex animal companion could be fitted with barding, assuming he has Combat Training tricks?
Combat Training (DC 20)
An animal trained to bear a rider into combat knows the tricks attack, come, defend, down, guard, and heel. Training an animal for combat riding takes 6 weeks. You may also “upgrade” an animal trained for riding to one trained for combat by spending 3 weeks and making a successful DC 20 Handle Animal check. The new general purpose and tricks completely replace the animal’s previous purpose and any tricks it once knew. Many horses and riding dogs are trained in this way. (An animal trained in this way counts as trained for war, and becomes proficient with all forms or armor. See FAQs and Animal Type.)
Says can use all forms of armor. barding is armor
Oops, I overlooked that last line. Another small change from 3.5 that's caught me out *sigh*. Well you have your answer ;)
Easy to do. That answers my question. Glad you guys had this discussion.
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Oops, I overlooked that last line. Another small change from 3.5 that's caught me out *sigh*. Well you have your answer ;)Easy to do. That answers my question. Glad you guys had this discussion.
The only problem is that the section in bold above doesn't exist in the rules. The poster copied it from d20pfsrd.com, where it had been added by the website editors, referencing a post that didn't actually say that. d20pfsrd.com has now been corrected.
Try the FAQ instead.
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The issue I see with armor proficiency for any animal is that proficiency would mean the animal has been trained to don/doff the armor as well as to perform a large number unnatural maneuvers while wearing the armor. Having said this, barding for a horse (for the sake of simplicity) cannot be donned or doffed by the horse. It requires someone else entirely to put on or take off the various associated pieces. The horse itself is merely trained to accept the additional burden of weight when speaking strictly of wearing barding.
To use something like spiked barding and training the horse to fight with it in combat would be an altogether different sort of training. not to mention really brutal in the field of battle.
I see no reason what-so-ever to have an animal take a feat in any armor usage simply because the animal itself cannot physically perform the actions required to properly don and doff the armor. Time spent training it like a trick, on the other hand would be needed in my opinion, with the training done using the heaviest available armor for the horse, that way it scoffs at the light weight stuff you actually buy when in your lower levels and looking to throw most of your money away.
In the case of barding on animals, standard or otherwise, I just can't bring myself to logically equate the "wearing" of armor with the "using" of armor. Accepting the armor should be a trick, not a feat, mainly because you can train that particular trick to a small dog in a matter of minutes.
Think of it... is the dachsund "wearing" a sweater or "using" a sweater? With the sweater being a RL equivalent of extremely light cloth armor. Unless it was something my grandmother crocheted, in which case the dog would be encumbered to the point of immobility.
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Accept that the Mount ability of the Cavalier indicates that the animal must have the feat to use the armor with out penalty. From the second paragraph: "The mount is always considered combat trained and begins play with the Light Armor Proficiency feat as a bonus feat."
This implies that an animal would require the feat Heavy Armor Proficiency to wear plate barding, which means that the animal would also require Medium Armor Proficiency in order to qualify for Heavy. I think it would take a little more training to teach an animal to wear armor. It's a little more complex than teaching it to attack or fetch.
I still stand by my opinion. In part because I don't care much for the Cavalier, and in part because I'm stubborn that way.
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From a rules perspective, proficiency has nothing to do with the ability to don or remove the armor. If a character with no armor proficiency puts on plate armor it takes the same amount of time as a fighter who does the same. The ability to don it without help is reasonably a function of having hands or other appendages that can manipulate it.
Armor proficiency also has nothing to do with the wearing of armor. Anyone, whether fighter, wizard, cavalier mount, or dachshund, can wear armor. Proficiency give the ability to move with less restriction and attack without penalty.
So why are we sitting here debating when all we have to do is be a 5th level druid so our T-Rex can wear Full Plate?