Who/What can use magic items?

[Jacob]

While this is a possible interpretation of the effects, I would check with your dm and see what his or her take on it is.

Besides, in many games, the animal companion already gets treated as an npc. After all, it is one.

But an NPC Animal Companion is different from other NPCs, just like those gained from Leadership and other such abilities. These NPCs are bonded to you in some fashion. Normal animals require specific training to learn tricks, while Animal Companions just pick up tricks automatically. Then there's the whole Share Spells ability (among others), which you can't even do with NPCs or even fellow PCs. That alone should tell you how strong the bond is with the Animal Companion. And yet they are still not intelligent, and giving them intelligence via magic breaks that bond. Odd how that works out. At least that's how I think any sensible DM would do it. It doesn't stop the Blastoise setup mentioned above (which I love by the way), because one can still convince an animal it's a great idea. And it is.

 

[Greenfield]

I don't know that magical Intelligence boosts break the Animal Companion bond. I do know that Awaken specifically breaks it.

One argument might be that to be an Animal Companion, it needs to have animal level intelligence. To me, that's weak.

The other argument, specifically against Awaken, would be that to be an Animal Companion, it needs to be an Animal. Awakened animals become Magical Beasts.

I like the second one better. It jibes with the rules against the same creature being both a Familiar and an Animal Companion at the same time. Familiars are categorized as Magical Beasts.

The key objection to my specific question is still the ability to issue a command word. Intelligence may give understandin, or at least the capacity to understand about magic, but it grants neither the knowledge nor the ability to speak a language.

Now I suppose a Druid could teach an Animal Companion to activate a specific function of a command activated item as a Trick, but the command word would have to be something the Animal Companion could say. Hard to do, when you consider that the item creator has to be able to say the word as well.

 

[delericho]

Problem being, your Animal Companion is an animal. Giving it intelligence breaks whatever connection it has to you as an Animal Companion, so while Headband of Intellect and Pearl of Speech will certainly allow your Companion to use non-passive magic items...

Hmm ... I know that if you Awaken an animal it becomes a magical beast and it cannot be an animal companion. Though [MENTION=98644]Jacob[/MENTION] does raise an interesting point. At what point does the bond break?

I don't know that magical Intelligence boosts break the Animal Companion bond. I do know that Awaken specifically breaks it.

Bearing in mind that I hadn't given this even a moment's thought before Friday (when I read this thread)...

My take on it would be to apply the rule in the 3.5e MM (and/or Pathfinder's Bestiary) than "no creature with an Intelligence score of 3 or higher can be an animal" last.

So, Awaken turns the creature into a Magical Beast (and so breaks the Animal Companion bond) and then raises the creature's intelligence. Conversely, a headband of intellect (or the now ironically named fox's cunning spell) don't change the creature's type. As such, although they should raise the creature's intelligence, they quickly hit up against the ceiling imposed by its being an animal. So, a tiger (Int 2) wearing a headband of intellect +4 ends up with an intelligence of 2+4 = 2. (And a lizard (Int 1) wearing the same headband ends up with an intelligence of 1+4 = 2.)

Which kind of sucks, since you've just invested a huge amount of money in doing something cool, and it just doesn't work, but it would seem to be consistent in RAW. The alternative would be that the creature becomes a Magical Beast (augmented animal), and so not an Animal Companion, for as long as the headband is active... and likewise that casting a fox's cunning spell on a fox would turn it into a Magical Beast for the duration of the spell. Which also works by RAW, but seems oddly convoluted somehow - and also not really what the Druid is likely to want.

(The third option, of course, is just to let the Animal Companion gain the benefits of the Int boost with no other effect - that is, it remains an Animal, and so remains an AC. But given the relative power of the Druid compared with most other classes, I'd be reluctant to give them yet more advantages.)