D&D 5E Animal Friendship

[russkiemikhail]

I've been DMing a game where somebody took animal friendship as a spell. The description of the spell's effect is rather ambiguous. It only says that the animal is favorably disposed to you and wont attack you without reason but the spell's duration is 24 hours. If it were only to "charm" an animal so it wont attack you then why the long duration? I think the rule implies that some form of communication or relationship to the caster is intended. I've been interpreting this, so far, as the animal responding to verbal command with an animal handling check for success against a DC as determined by the DM. I'm presuming no telepathy is involved. Does anybody else interpret this differently? If so, then how and what specific procedure to follow to determine success.Thanks in advance for your reply.

 

[iserith]

A charmed creature can't attack the caster and the caster gets advantage on any social interaction related ability checks. I would consider Animal Handling a check that could resolve uncertain in a fictional action to influence the beast, (Check out the optional Social Interaction rules in the DMG, pages 244-245.) I don't think it confers any special ability to communicate with the creature. Speak with animals might be best here. But I don't think such a spell is necessary to get the basics across.

I imagine the longer duration is to offset its limitation to beasts of a particular range of Intelligence scores (say, as compared to a charm person spell which might generally be more useful, depending on the campaign). As a druid or ranger, I'd want this spell to try and get a powerful beast companion for a full day.

 

[Minigiant]

Animal friendship just charms an animal.
The Charmed condition just means the beast cannot aattack you and you have advantage on checks to interact socially.

No telepathy if you want to speak with the animal you need the speak with animal spell of a racial, class , or item feature that does that. Animal Handling in most nonharmful usages should get advantage. You could convince the beast to leave, do a small simple favor which does not require explanation, or to not get involved in a fight.

The spell doesn't let you give it commands. It's your friend, not your servant.

 

[empireofchaos]

Pretty much agree with Minigiant. It's useful to get an animal to stop attacking you, but it doesn't turn it into your companion, and you don't automatically get to communicate with it without a Speak with Animals or something similar.

I had a case recently where a PC party was tracking a crow familiar belonging to a wizard who was messing with them. They wanted to know if any other crows in town were aware of a strange bird in their midst, and aware perhaps whether they knew if it regularly flew to a certain building (where it's master presumably lived). The ranger cast Animal Friendship on one crow, and it flew over and started to peck the ground near him. But he had no way of getting information from it until the druid came and cast a Speak with Animals to help him out. Then, in exchange for gifts of crumbs and seeds, the crow told the druid what the party wanted to know.

Moral of the story: the ranger should have taken both spells when he gained spellcasting ability. But he wanted Hail of Thorns instead.