Complete Guide to the Animal Handling Skill in D&D 5e
The butt of all skill check-related jokes, Animal Handling is not a commonly selected option at character creation. Let’s get into the skill’s potential uses and see if this reputation is warranted.
Animal Handling is a Wisdom based skill used to interact with beasts, and specifically beasts. Rules as written, this skill doesn’t apply when interacting with other creatures like monstrosities. This means we can use it when interacting with bears, but not Owlbears. This is stupid and should be ignored by all DMs. So what are the limitations here? Well, with wild animals we can use this skill to calm them down, assert dominance, scare them off, simple things like that. The real uses come when interacting with tamed animals. First, some DMs will call for Animal Handling checks when you are riding a mount like a horse and the situation calls for it. Things like the horse being spooked, navigating it through treacherous terrain, pushing it to move as fast as possible, etc.
There are limits to this skill of course. No matter how well you roll, you cannot assemble an army of squirrels to do your bidding, nor should your DM allow that. Even if you can convince beasts to join your side, the vast majority of beasts will be near useless in any serious encounter. There is the possibility of using this to have favorable interactions with dinosaurs, and using a skill to circumvent an encounter with a T-Rex would be very powerful. This of course is very campaign dependent, as many campaigns intentionally don’t include dinosaurs, but if you’re planning on delving into the jungles of Chult, this might be worth considering.
Lastly, let me dispel a misconception you might have formed as you read that last paragraph. A Paladin using Find Steed might seem like a great candidate to use this skill. However, the spell itself states that the steed obeys the commands of the caster, no strings attached. You tell that horse to jump off a cliff and it will do it, no Animal Handling check required. Same goes for Find Greater Steed, and all conjure and summon spells. This also applies to the Beast Master Ranger. All that basically means that there are pretty much no classes or subclasses that really want this skill for some sort of synergy.
I went into this hoping to find some amazing secret tech, and I found jack squat. It’s a real shame, as I could definitely see someone wanting to build a character with a Disney princess-like connection to nature and beasts, but 5e as a system just doesn’t support that fantasy. Beasts are only common in the very early game, and even then they don’t come up all that often, as DMs like to use more interesting monsters. Conventional wisdom is right about this one. Steer clear, there are plenty of other fantastic Wisdom based skills.
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