Do Animal Companions share MAP

[ANMCHunter]

So we recently came up with the above question. Our table has rules that Animal Companions share MAP since they happen in your turn:

PC1 pg 209: "An animal companion is a loyal comrade who follows your orders. Your animal companion has the animal and minion traits, and it gains 2 actions during your turn if you use the Command an Animal action to command it; this replaces the usual effects of Command an Animal, and you don’t need to attempt a Nature check. If your companion dies, you can spend a week of downtime to replace it at no cost. You can have only one animal companion at a time."

PC1 pg 402: "The more attacks you make beyond your first in a single turn, the less accurate you become, represented by the multiple attack penalty. The second time you use an attack action during your turn, you take a –5 penalty to your check. The third time you attack, and on any subsequent attacks, you take a –10 penalty to your check. Every check that has the attack trait counts toward your multiple attack penalty, including Strikes, spell attack rolls, certain skill actions like Shove, and many others."

Since the animal companions turn happens during the turn of the player, that implies that its the same turn and as such incurs MAP.

But the mounted combat rules state explicitly that your mount and you share MAP.

So do normal companions and their handler share MAP? Nowhere that we could find it states the positive or negative of that question.

[Moth Mariner]

Short answer:
No, they have their own multiple attack penalty track.

Longer answer:
Note that the rules for MAP don't say that attacks happening on your turn become less accurate, they say your attacks become less accurate.
Animal Companions are not you, and you are not them. They are a minion and they follow the Minion rules, meaning they have their own actions.

Mounted Combat is an example of Specific beating General. The general rule is each creature has its own MAP, but when mounted the specific rule overrides that: now you share MAP.

Same for Summoner Eidolons: despite being a separate creature, the rules specifically override that, and they have to share MAP with their summoner.

[Anne Archer]

Moth Mariner is correct.

I will add that a Mature Animal Companion has the following advantage: "... Your animal companion has greater independence. During an encounter, even if you don’t use the Command an Animal action, your animal companion can still use 1 action that round on your turn to Stride or Strike."

You can be unconscious, and the companion will still get one action.

[Claxon]

Moth Mariner has the right of it.

By RAW, animal companions (and minions more generally) do not share MAP with the player character.

They already have a hard time staying relevant, this would honestly just make it pointless to have an animal companion for offensive purposes (but there is plenty of use for utility and defense).

The exception as you and Moth Mariner note is that if you are mounted, you and your mount (which might be your animal companion) share MAP, that is a feature of the mount rules, not companions.

[pauljathome]

Claxon wrote:

They already have a hard time staying relevant, this would honestly just make it pointless to have an animal companion for offensive purposes (but there is plenty of use for utility and defense).

Just wanted to point out that this is NOT true for characters (very likely spellcasters) who essentially never make attacks that affect MAP.

My gnome druid is VERY happy with his Llama, thank you very much :-) :-)

[ANMCHunter]

Okay! Thank you all for your replies, that certainly helps haha!