Handle Animal Tricks

[Honest Tiefling]

So it occurred to me, that while many a group has enforced rules regarding the actions of summons, I have never actually played with the handle animal rules. Druids and rangers were never common at my tables, and even then, the companion got treated as a very dumb PC with no rolling of the Handle Animal skill. It wasn't bad, per se (some either politely faded to the background as needed, others were enjoyable, and a few exploited people's love of cats), but I wonder what the advantages of using the rules of Handle Animal? It seems like it would make training a part of the game, but I worry that it adds a lot of book keeping to a already cumbersome feature. Keep in mind, many players I've played with were great the RP, less so at the character management aspect.

Can these rules be fun? Alternatively, are there any home brew rules for this to make the skill worthwhile, and yet easy to use?

I didn't tag this as Pathfinder, because the rules seem pretty similar so I imagine that a system for one can be shifted to the other easily enough.

[HurinTheCursed]

Tricks are kind of mini feats that need to be trained. It is characterful only if they are trained for a specific task rather than being all rounder.
I would not go as far as say they are fun, but they are not heavy to keep track of (number of hours trained for the current trick).
They are a kind of skill tax (handle animal) and take a lot of time in the character's free time, not that much at the table but an animal companion is a powerful class feature well worth this small sacrifice.

It's much better than team training if you have any experience with that.

[Ruethgar]

I generally utilize the tricks and time required for handle animal in combat but skip the time to train and just consider it done magically as part of the animal companion class feature, or on the way as you adventure for normal animals. Until they are trained with the proper tricks, they act as animals appropriate to their type, a mammal or a bird will probably guard the owner against mundane threats(humanoid and animal), a reptile or a fish would probably hide. and most supernatural threats will cause any to run a safe distance away and hide. If cornered they go on the offensive until maneuverability is restored but otherwise always defensive. Once trained I allow some leeway in how they are played but the tricks denote most of their abilities in combat and anything outside of that must be closely related to their tricks or how a normal creature of the species would act(for example a lion might start grooming a party member out of combat even if not trained to do so).