Quote Originally Posted by TallerSpine View Post
You are correct. In that case page 104 describes animals as NPCs (controlled by the DM). Animal companions would fall under that bucket. I have seen sage advice advising that if you let players control their animal companion, be wary they do not attribute too much intelligence to them. Tactics would be beyond an animal companion.
Given that the section you refer to is a description of how a DM is to populate the world with various npcs and the section on animals there lays out how npc animals fit into the world, I'm pretty sure it's overstepping to apply that to mean that an animal companion is merely an npc under the complete control of the DM.

The very first line in the animal companion section is "A druid’s animal companion is different from a normal animal of its kind in many ways."

The animal companion rules then go on to list a bunch of ways they are different from normal npc animals in the world, most notable the feature Link, which looks to me like it states pretty clearly that it's the druid (or other character with a companion) that controls the animal, via their special free action use of the Handle Animal skill.

I think it's a pretty big leap to go from that to saying the DM has control of the companion, including their behavior *and* the choices made regarding their advancement. Never mind that a companion is technically just part of a class feature, putting it under control of the player.


As for your mention of tactics, the Handle Animal skill lines out fairly clearly what they can do or not do, and Handle Animal is a free action for the character, with a bonus as well.