Will a mature animal companion with Haste get 2 actions when not commanded?

Question

I tried to do this in a game, but the GM said I couldn’t and became irate when I asked why. He gave me an explanation that I didn’t think made sense. But instead of saying after the game we’ll figure it out, he became irate. Anyone have specific rules backing him up or why he is wrong?

Answer 1

Background

Animal Companions are Minions, and have different rules about how they act. The Druid's Mature Animal Companion Feat alters this, but not significantly.

Haste grants the Quickened Condition with the restriction that the extra action can be used as a Strike or Stride.

Strict RAW

Minions don't have a turn and will never benefit from Quickened.

You gain 1 additional action at the start of your turn each round. [...]

Mature Animal Companion gives them an action, not a turn, so this does not alter this.

It is a little grey

The text on Minions does include some ambiguity.

[...] A creature with this trait can use only 2 actions per turn and can’t use reactions. Your minion acts on your turn in combat...

This seems to indicate your turn is when they can use 2 actions "per turn", but could indicate that they do have a "turn" that is a portion of your turn.

If a GM rules that they do have a legitimate turn, Quickened/Haste would grant any Minion 1 action at the start of it's controller's turn regardless of if they were ordered about. Of course, most Minions would "do nothing" with this action (pending GM adjudication), but Mature Animal Companions do get to use an action without instruction and therefore could use both actions.

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My recommendation

A lot of game systems break down if Minions are considered to not have turns. They should gain/lose actions from Conditions. Each GM should rule for their own table if the action is usable without direction or if the single action from Mature is a more specific circumstance than normal Action allocation and doesn't qualify for the bonus action (essentially the Mature Animal Companion gets 1 Action or 3 if commanded).

If this comes up at my table, I'll rule that the Minion/AC does get to use the Quickened action. My justification? If the party bothered to Haste a non-PC, then that's a significant enough investment that they should get the normal returns (one additional action each round). It hardly ruins balance as the AC should, statistically, be falling behind what that action could do for a full PC and theoretically is more fun for the player(s) involved. If its a common tactic and affects balance more than expected, then that just means that I'd need to add in a Creature -1 or -2 from the party to offset the difference, occasionally.

Answer 2

Ruling that animal companions do not have a turn would have a lot of unintended consequences such as with effects that only take place at the beginning or end of your turn.

I think if the developers did not want animal companions to have turns it would be explicit.

Examples of effects that would not affect them - Persistent damage, CloudKill and many others...