Training an Animal Companion

[reveal]

A player in my campaign wants to get an Owl when he takes 4th level Ranger. He asked if it was possible to train the Owl to stay on watch at night with him sleeping. I think this is possible using the "Guarding" training under Handle Animal.

However, he also asked if the Owl could be trained to come to him and wake him up when the Owl spotted something during its watch. I have no doubt the owl can be trained to hoot or make noise if something approaches. But can the owl be trained to actually come to the Ranger and wake him up physically? There's nothing in the book that really addresses this. Knowing it's an INT 2 animal, could it be trained to do this? If so, what would be the DC?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

The problem is going to be "when something approaches."

If this were a familiar, there wouldn't be any problems, as familiars are smart enough to tell the difference between rats in the bushes, which can be safely ignored, and approaching hobgoblins, which cannot.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Sounds reasonable to me. I know someone whose kittens would wake her every morning for school (and they weren't even trained!). So I don't think it's a stretch to allow the owl to wake the character. And surely the owl knows what it would consider a threat; so training it to recognize a threat to the character shouldn't be too hard (probably anything size small or larger). It might require another trick though.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Sounds reasonable to me. I know someone whose kittens would wake her every morning for school (and they weren't even trained!). So I don't think it's a stretch to allow the owl to wake the character.

I'd probably allow this. The owl could simply land on the PC's head. Chances are, that'll wake 'im.

And surely the owl knows what it would consider a threat; so training it to recognize a threat to the character shouldn't be too hard

Actually, this is not so simple. Animals are usually in one of two modes. With their master and everyone is a friend, or guarding their territory and everyone is an enemy. Teaching an owl to differentiate between what is a threat and what isn't is simply not feasible in my mind.

This doesn't mean the companion can't serve as a guardian, though. It just means that, on occasion, you're going to get woken up because the owl sees another owl, or some other animal. Aside from a few false alarms, it'll do fine.