Speak with Animals

Level: 1
School: Divination
Keywords: None
Range: Self
Duration: 1 hour
Mana Cost: 1

You attune your senses and voice to the natural world, allowing you to comprehend and produce the sounds, gestures, and emotional signals that animals use to communicate. For the duration:

You can understand the intent, emotional state, and basic information conveyed by any Beast you can see or hear.
Beasts can understand you in return, though their comprehension is limited to concepts within their natural experience — they understand danger, territory, hunger, and loyalty, but not abstract ideas such as politics, magic theory, or written language.
You gain Advantage on all Survival skill checks involving animal handling, calming, or directing Beasts for the duration.

This spell does not compel animals to cooperate, obey, or act against their instincts. A hostile or frightened animal may still attack even if it understands you. Communication is possible, but trust must be earned through roleplay or a successful Influence or Survival roll at the GM’s discretion.

Note: Creatures with the Demon, Vampire, or Undead trait are not Beasts and are not affected by this spell, even if they resemble animals in form.

Stunts

Voice of the Wild

While this spell is active, animals you speak with will not attack you unless you threaten them directly. Hostile Beasts become neutral toward you for as long as you maintain conversation.

Nature’s Informant

Once per casting, you may ask one Beast a single yes-or-no question about an event it witnessed within the last 24 hours. The GM determines honestly what the animal observed, limited by its senses and attention span.

Beast Empathy

While this spell is active, you can sense the emotional state of any Beast within 10 meters without needing to speak to it directly — fear, aggression, hunger, or calm registers as a faint impression. This does not require line of sight.

Pack Tongue

The spell’s effect extends to all Beasts of the same species as any Beast you are currently speaking with. If you calm a wolf, every wolf in the area understands your words for the duration.

Compelling Presence

Once per casting, when you successfully make a request of a Beast using this spell, you may spend 1 additional Mana to have the animal carry out that request as though it had been given a direct command. The animal completes one simple task of your choosing — fetching, guarding a location, leading you somewhere, or calling for others of its kind. Complex or suicidal tasks are still refused.

Wordless Bond

When this spell ends, one Beast you communicated with during the duration retains a vague memory of you as a trusted figure. Until the end of the scene, that animal will not willingly act against you even if influenced or commanded by another creature. This bond does not persist beyond the current scene.