Animal Companions: can carry things or not?

[Zygmunt Molotch]

PF1e, rule opinion question:

there is no hard ruling I can find, which, is fine, if that's how it is, I was however looking for something concrete to quote to my players, any ideas?

non standard companion: Ape

Problem: wants a backpack/saddlebags, thing is... that just bumps up the carry capacity of the druid to way over the entire party...
Advantage: large apes require 140lbs of feed a week...

[damned]

If it doesnt fit in with your view of the world say it cant be done or make him use half the carry for food.
If you like the idea let him do it - is it that much different from a bag of holding?

[esmdev]

I think ape decide what ape want carry! Maybe ape has itch on back want scratch on tree not know break thing in strange bag? Ape store ape thing in bag! What in ape bag belong to ape! Ape learn from person! Start keeping ape thing in person bag! Person carry ape rocks for ape, more room for food in ape bag!

[Trenloe]

It really depends how you want to run your game. A lot of players treat their animal companion as an intelligent second PC. Whereas, in most instances, this is not the case in PF1e and they're limited to handle animal "tricks" and the "owner" has to use animal handling to convince them to do things (pretty much an automatic success for tricks the AC has, but harder for other things). Some info here: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/SKILLS/handle-animal/#Handle_an_Animal and https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/Druid/animal-companions/#Controlling_Companions

The Animal Archive player companion (https://paizo.com/products/btpy8w7p?Pathfinder-Player-Companion-Animal-Archive) had some additional information on what type of magic item slots were available for animal types, and you could extrapolate what kind of normal equipment they could wear (if you feel the animal would accept it). Certainly an animal companion horse would be Ok with saddle bags. It's up to you as the GM if you feel the ape would be OK wearing a backpack and coming to the PC to let them access items in it - probably using the "come" trick. If you don't think there's an appropriate "trick" then the owner may have to use the "push an animal" use of the handle animal skill.

Again - it's all up to you as to how you allow animal companions to be used in your game. Rules as written require the use of tricks and the handle animal skill - even for an intelligent animal.

[Kelrugem]

I've sent it already via discord, but in case others are interested, here some links to (additional) 3.5e rules about that: https://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031125a (the bottom) and https://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/rg (there are a lot of links, at least four about animals (part I to IV)) :)

There were also some rules in some supplementary books, but of course there are no links to that :)