Talk:Animal Feat Training (3.5e Feat)

This feat is too long and complicated. Please try to rewrite it by leaving out all those little specials and exceptions that are unnecessary. Look at Power Attack for how long a good feat should be. Remember that DMs have to read and remember all rules that are relevant for the party characters (let alone monsters and NPCs), so if your feats wants to have a chance to be accepted at the table it had better be short and simple.

Here's an example of how short this feat could be:

"You can teach animals feats as a tricks. The normal Handle Animal rules for teaching tricks apply, the skill check DC is 25. The feat counts against the maximum of tricks the animal can learn and it must fulfill all prerequisites for the feat."

Note how much shorter the feat gets if you just use the normal Handle animal rules instead of writing your own. --Mkill 11:49, 17 July 2007 (MDT)

I'll look this over. In this particular case, I *AM* writing rules. All those twiddles are there to cover the most frequent cases. I will look it over. I am sure that I can simplify in places. I am sure that if I rearrange it a bit, I will clarify things.

For wordiness, look at Leadership or Tracking. It's good for feats to be short and sweet, but that's not always possible. --Dmilewski 05:39, 26 July 2007 (MDT)

It is always possible. If a feat gets too long you most likely have an ability that shouldn't be a feat in the first place. And yes, that means that neither Leadership nor Track should be feats (Leadership should be an ability that all characters have or none, depending on the campaign, and Track should be a use of the Survival skills, and the feat just makes you better at it).

A feat is not the right place to introduce new rules. --Mkill 06:54, 26 July 2007 (MDT)

After the revision

• It is not clear what "training an animal for war" means. Why not just remove that part?
• The whole special about the ranger should be a separate feat, with Ranger as prerequisite. --Mkill 06:53, 26 July 2007 (MDT)

There are places in the rules which talk about "training an animal for war" but don't otherwise explain themselves clearly.

I was still editing. The baby starting kicking my laptop. I had to save and close. You're just a step ahead of where I am. --Dmilewski 07:07, 26 July 2007 (MDT)