Which is Harder: Taming Beasts or Commanding People?

[unseenmage]

Am curious, within the confines of the rules is it easier, in terms of investment of character building resources, to tame normally wild unintelligent creatures or to influence the actions of sapient NPCs?

Say I have two options, I can command an animal to perform a task in game, or I can command an NPC to do it. Which will cost me more character resources? WBL, skill points, spells, whatever.

How does this differ appreciably from the same dichotomy playing out in the real world or a more simulationist game?
Should all wild animals always have some % chance to ignore commands and be wild?
Should all NPCs have an unbreakable will to be free and survive so that no amount of coercion can make them dive into lava for the player?


I was raised primitively on a remote small family farm so my experience with truly wild animals has largely been in harvesting them as a food source. The few times my parent attempted to dabble in the wild animal trade it was my experience that no amount of handle animal checks could domesticate an already adult wild creature, not even for a trick or two. At least not on the spot anyway.

Similarly, making people do stuff is hard, to oversimplify the matter. I tend to be that MtG player who coerced others into doing my dirty work and even in that simple narrow endeavor the equation often sprawls beyond my comprehension.

So, I caught myself wondering about NPC attitudes, both man and beast, and how much abstraction is too much and which was actually more difficult in-game.

3.5 or PF, I play both so discussion of either will suffice.

Is it harder to make critters do stuff for you or to make people do stuff for you?

[khadgar567]

hard teaching beast new trick. harder teach npc do something. hardest make wizard stop breaking game.

[daremetoidareyo]

To be honest, diplomacy, bluff, intimidate, and handle animal all key off of charisma. So commanding people requires 3 skill points per level, and handle animal is a 1 skill point add on. There is a ton of feat and spell support for diplomacy and bluff, and handle animal has a few expansion of creature types affected feats (vermintrainer/eastbound/creature type trainer).

A marshal can do it all and double his charisma bonus to the roll, all at level 1

[Fizban]

NPCs are always vulnerable to talking unless the DM declares them invulnerable- it is well known how easy it is to end Hostile attitudes when Diplomacy is run as-is. Wild animals can only be made non-hostile with specific level-based class features or magic (though the class feature was a skill in 3.0), so animals are more difficult, even before the fact that they can only perform tricks rather than carry out commands. If the DM lets people use game mechanics to mind crush NPCs, NPCs are easier, no contest.

If the DM is using better NPC influencing rules, then that depends entirely on how they work, but most likely the changes are written specifically so that you can't just roll to order NPCs around, period. Which means that, assuming they haven't changed Handle Animal, animals are the only option left, and the investment of "play a Druid aka one of the strongest classes in the game" isn't exactly a tradeoff. Wild Empathy does lack the massive pile of extra boosts that Diplomacy has, but an actual Druid or Ranger can also just chain-cast Charm Animal until it's trained.

Note however, that the Handle Animal skill doesn't seem to know what the word "domesticated" means (animals bred specifically to be tractable*), and may imply that only "domesticated" (raised from infancy with the Handle Animal skill) animals can be trained- which would mean that captured baby animals can be made perfectly tractable, but grown wild animals cannot. Of course then the Animal Companion stuff comes up, which may be an exception to the implied rule, or may the the evidence that no such rule is implied.

*This is so massively important that the way DnD ignores it is pretty hilarious. In real life, almost any dog is trainable and will work with humans and can play nice with other animals, because dogs are a domesticated breed (of wolf). But while you can raise a wolf from infancy to bond with one specific person, it will not work with other humans or play nice. Even a half dog/half wolf is much more volatile, enough that IIRC from my wiki reading, that might have been why wolfdogs were banned a lot of places. Essentially the DnD form of "domestication" lets you take the wild out of an animal so it will work with anyone without actually breeding a domesticated version over generations, which means there are *tons* of animals in DnD that should be "domesticated," including many magical beasts.

[PunBlake]

Here's how I think of your question, OP: Which check can be opposed, and by what?

Bluff can be opposed by Sense Motive: the Social AC.
Diplomacy is opposed by fixed DCs given by a table, which scale from 1-50.
Handle Animal (teach/train) is opposed by a fixed DC 15 or 20, depending on the goal; rearing is DC 15+HD.
Intimidate is opposed by the target's level check (1d20+ECL).

Spells can make said opposition basically impossible, but that requires expense of more resources.

It is more resource-intensive (in both skill ranks required for success and spells) to command sentient beings than animals. However, sentient beings can in general do more than animals.

[Efrate]

By raw human are easier. Diplomacy is busted. There is no hit dice. No opposed check. You can make some helpful or fanatical and there is really nothing they can do about it. It requires a bit more resources but you are pretty easily rewarded with a fanatical minion who can handle complex instructions. It also takes little time.

Handling animals requires less build resources, but more time and money usually, because a baby battle tyrant or the like isn't cheap, and you have to deal with hit dice. They also cannot handle complex instructions, and it takes a lot of time,

Bluff is the easiest, because glibness exists and plus 30 on a check is huge, even if the npc gets the plus 20 for things being outrageously unbelievable. Not many npcs invest in sense motive or have good wisdom, or sense as a class skill. By mid levels you should be able to reliably bluff past most anyone you interact with without glibness as long as you don't try to go silly.

Tl;dr People, diplomacy is that good.

[Goaty14]

A: If you're a cat, Handle Humanoid makes both equally easy and/or difficult.

[Saintheart]

I was raised primitively on a remote small family farm so my experience with truly wild animals has largely been in harvesting them as a food source. The few times my parent attempted to dabble in the wild animal trade it was my experience that no amount of handle animal checks could domesticate an already adult wild creature, not even for a trick or two. At least not on the spot anyway.

...I'd say if you were rolling dice in order to domesticate an actual, real-life wild animal then you're probably doing it wrong. :smallbiggrin:

More seriously, Glibness gives you a +30 to your Diplomacy check, while Guidance of the Avatar and Divine Insight are both available earlier, stack with each other, and provide a maximum of +35 to all checks, including Handle Animal. :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin:

[Erloas]

...I'd say if you were rolling dice in order to domesticate an actual, real-life wild animal then you're probably doing it wrong. :smallbiggrin:To be fair, no matter how many times I've rolled dice at my boss I still haven't got that raise either...

[Saintheart]

To be fair, no matter how many times I've rolled dice at my boss I still haven't got that raise either...

I've found no matter how many times I've rolled dice at the casino tables I still haven't gotten that big one-time raise either. :(

[daremetoidareyo]

To be fair, no matter how many times I've rolled dice at my boss I still haven't got that raise either...

You are rolling diplomacy when you are supposed to be rolling intimidate.

[liquidformat]

So handle animal is used to make an animal perform a trick it knows, make it perform a trick it doesn't know or train it to perform a trick. The first two are more or less instantaneous and the third takes weeks. In comparison intimidate, bluff, and diplomacy are all more or less instantaneous whether or not you are using altered rules. So hands down it is easier to deal with people. Also using handle animal on a hostile animal doesn't really have any clearly defined dc's but I would think it would add some pretty nasty circumstance mods.

So really the comparison should be between wild empathy and the bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate. In which case it still goes to the latter as they are easier to buff.