Animal Empathy - How useful is it?

[ArcanaFTW]

I've seen AE being used by a few rangers as a roleplay skill, but just how useful is it? I've been wondering, especially in areas like the Underdark, and higher level places.

[The Rambling Midget]

It's no more useful than a domination spell, except that it only works on animals and has a far greater chance of success if you put a lot of points in. I'm pretty sure it works on Beasts of Malar, but animals seem to thin out after that. There are Ancient Dire Bears in a few places. Good for meat shields.

If you're going to be spending the majority of your time in forested areas, it's great. For a generalist, there are far better skill investments.

[KregorRanger]

Like TRM said. It's an all or little sort of investment.

If you want it to gain heavy meatshields and higher level creatures in high level areas, and you're specializing in natural/forest areas, and you want to be able to calm them even when you're in combat, then dump some decent points into it.

If you're just going to do it for flavor, say charming deer, grizzlies, other forest creatures and the like to lead them away, use them as quick fodder, etc., then you only need to spend points in it for your first few ranger/druid levels.

Even with low empathy ranks, it's fairly easy to sneak up on a hostile animal out of combat, reveal, and get off a roll to gain one charmie. Once you're in combat, however, it gets way more difficult.

Then of course, there's wolves....

[Mithreas]

[Cortex]

For how long you've been waiting for the opportunity to use that image?

[Mithreas]

Roughly 24 hours since it popped up on my Facebook feed.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

As a ranger I find the skill to be invaluable in most worlds. I will grant you that I haven't gone epic in this world, but what is often overlooked is that AE also functions on "beasts" and "magical beasts" so long as they aren't immune to mind-affecting (and quite a lot of them aren't, at least not by default.)

As an example of some "magical beasts," some of which I've actually seen and others which it wouldn't surprise me to find: Basilisk, cockatrice, ankheg, manticores, giant stirges, wolf-spiders, worgs, winter wolves, bullettes, gray renders, griffons, owlbears...

Oh, and they count as henchman- so you get your animal companion, your Animal Empathy Buddy, and if you can cast ranger spells, you also get your summon spells, although by the time you're using those they won't be useful for the level you're at.

Still, you can bring your own three man team anywhere you go.

Afterthought: On one server, I had this one ancient dire bear I would always go fetch near the top of a mountain whenever the server came up. I'd have him follow me all over the place. Named him Grumpy, would leave him with large piles of fish when I got near towns and collect him after I left.

...I must find an Ancient Dire Bear on a mountain, now.

[The Man of the Moon]

... would leave him with large piles of fish when I got near towns and collect him after I left.

...I must find an Ancient Dire Bear on a mountain, now.

You know to respect and take care on your animal fellows!

Respecto!

[SwampFoot]

I had Humnter Underleaf regularly use AE on a particular bear in the crag areas with about 50% success.