This came up with a Sentinel and his Wolf companion tonight, but I believe it is a general question.
Normally you can only take free actions after a charge. After commanding a animal companion to charge may the controlling creature take other actions (besides free ones)
Yes
The sentinel rules note:
Standard Actions: To take a standard action, your animal companion needs you to take a standard action to command it to do so.
Thus, the action the character is taking is "Command animal companion to take standard action." not "Express an arbitrary standard action through an animal companion." Just as the animal companion cannot be the source of your druid invocations, as sentinel/druid powers cannot manifest from the animal companion because:
Your animal companion is considered an ally of you and your allies. It can be affected by powers in the same way as any other creature can be.
Therefore, the fact that it is an ally means that the charge originates from the ally, not from the commander of the attack.
Of interest, however, is if the wolf can then be commanded to take actions subsequent to the charge:
- No Further Actions: The creature can’t take any further actions during this turn, except free actions.
Therefore, the creature, the sentinel's ally qua animal companion, cannot take any further actions. The druid therefore can indeed command the animal to take further actions, but the animal cannot act on those commands, and so the commands themselves are all kinds of pointless.
The companion's turn is ended by the charge, but the character's turn is not.
Chargeddi states, in the body of the description of charge (and importantly to me, not as an addendum to the action cost):
A creature’s turn usually ends after it charges.
Since the turn ends is described in a format closer to the effect line of an attack power, rather than as an addendum to the action cost, the beast companions turn is the only one that is ended.
As far as applying to all types of companions, the rules for companions do not appear to be totally consistent across sources (though in ways that don't matter for this question), and I'm not sure that the later sources can be considered updates to earlier sources. The animal companion rules from Martial Power p41 and p42, for Beastmaster Rangers, have some alternate actions (Defend and Other Healing) that are not in the animal companion rules for the Essentials Sentinel Druidddi.
