[3.5] Speak With Animals / Handle Animal or Wild Empanthy

[Thurbane]

Just wondering: is it stated anywhere that the ability to speak with an animal gives any sort of bonus or benefit when using Wild Empathy or the Handle Animals skill?

If not, I guess you could apply a discretionary bonus as a DM?

Cheers - T

[Silly Name]

The text of Speak with Animals, which most of those abilities explicitly mimic, state that it does nothing to make animals more friendly to you than they normally are.

A small bonus may make sense if the animal is already friendly, though.

[Morty_Jhones]

the 'Speak with animals' spell trumps 'Wild empathy' trate and 'Handel Animal' skill by converting it into a standard Diplomacy Intimadate interaction.

So good for those times when you want to find out what is anoying the bear thats is about to attack you but no good for stoping the Bear that is attacking you.

[Thurbane]

Thanks for the replies.

The Wild Empathy part makes sense - you are substituting actual communication to try to calm the animal (Diplomacy), instead of non-verbal communication (Wild Empathy).

For Handle Animal, I was thinking more long term uses, like teaching tricks etc. Surely this would be easier if you could directly tell the animal what you are trying to achieve?

[NontheistCleric]

There might be a circumstance bonus, but on the other hand, an animal's thinking and experiences might be sufficiently different that it doesn't particularly matter whether communication with them is verbal or non-verbal for most purposes, and a majority might actually be more comfortable with non-verbal, given that there are no animals (at least, of the Animal type) even in D&D with languages of their own.

[Silly Name]

For the purposes of learning tricks, I may rule that a character using Speak with Animals takes less time to teach new tricks, rather than giving them a +2 on the Handle Animal roll.

[Duke of Urrel]

When I'm the dungeon master, I allow the Speak with Animals spell to empower the spellcaster to use Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate skill to influence creatures of the Animal type. Although these creatures don't normally speak or understand language at all, the description of the spell clearly indicates that it empowers them to communicate with you and you with them. They shouldn't be able to understand complex ideas or technology, but they should be persuadable, and that means also susceptible to lying and intimidation. I also think creatures of the Animal type are too simple to lie to you and at the same time very gullible, so that unless your lie is totally absurd, they never add a circumstance bonus to Sense Motive checks.