Bag of Tricks and dancing wolverines...

[Nareau]

Bag of Tricks: This small sack appears normal and empty. However, anyone reaching into the bag feels a small, fuzzy ball. If the ball is removed and tossed up to 20 feet away, it turns into an animal. The animal serves the character who drew it from the bag for 10 minutes (or until slain or ordered back into the bag), at which point it disappears. It can follow any of the commands described in the Handle Animal skill. Each of the three kinds of a bag of tricks produces a different set of animals. Use the following tables to determine what animals can be drawn out of each.

Handle an Animal: This task involves commanding an animal to perform a task or trick that it knows.

Just to be clear--do I need to make Handle Animal (DC 10) checks to issue these commands? Or can I just shout, "DANCE!" and expect my magic wolverine to start boogieing?

Spider

 

[ceratitis]

i think that one is up to your dm but flavour wise i'd ask for a skill check or at least apply some benefit if you have the skill and use it.
Z

 

[IcyCool]

Attack
Come
Defend
Down
Fetch
Guard
Heal
Perform
Seek
Stay
Track
Work

Those are your commands. Maybe you might be able to consider Perform for this but, honestly, why?

 

[Infiniti2000]

I would say you don't need an actual skill check because (1) the item doesn't explicitly require it, (2) the item would therefore be much more restricted because not all characters have Handle Animal skill ranks, and (3) the Handle Animal skill has many more rules than otherwise implied in the item description. The biggest problem is the confusion between 'command' and 'trick' and more importantly what the animal's know. The Handle Animal skill restricts an animal's total number of tricks, but the item doesn't.

Therefore, I'd be lenient and allow:
1. All animals summoned by the bag know all tricks listed in the Handle Animal skill. Though the skill says "but are not necessarily limited to" I would not add others.

2. All animals summoned may be commanded by the summoner to do any of the tricks listed, as defined by the skill itself (in terms of actions required, etc.) except that a "Handle an Animal" skill check is not required.

Note that the one downside to this, which makes the item in some cases worse than Summon Nature's Ally, is that summoned animals don't immediately fight. They must be commanded to take action first. However, I could easily see the approach of having the animal react normally (fight back if attacked, etc.). But, being magical, they might not.

 

[werk]

Those are your commands. Maybe you might be able to consider Perform for this but, honestly, why?

But those are trained commands.

"“Push” an Animal: To push an animal means to get it to perform a task or trick that it doesn’t know but is physically capable of performing. This category also covers making an animal perform a forced march or forcing it to hustle..."

If you can make it do the hustle, you should be able to make it do any dance move that is anatomically possible.

 

[TheGogmagog]

IMHO: "The animal serves the character who drew it from the bag"
Is no different than any other summon creature spell. You drew it from the bag it can do anything a summoned creature can do. If your DM doens't think anything of allowing summoned dire wolves who 'flank' and appropriatly decide whether to 'trip' or 'attack', then there shouldn't be much difficulty in getting one to dance. No perform check required.

If I2k is your DM and summoned creatures (of animal intelligence) can only perfom from the tricks listed in the Handle Animal Skill, then you probably won't be able to command them to dance, flank or trip. A perform check would only be nessesary to 'Push' them to perform a new trick.

 

[frankthedm]

The item is unclear on how it works, and is very cheap as magic items go. Don't expect a lot of DM generocity on this item.