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So im in the process of starting a new campaign and one of my characters wants to play an awakened housefly. I need some help with the stats.
any suggestions?
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Yeah. 1 hit point, no damaging attack, no hands for spellcasting. If he just wants to be a buzzing knowledge factory that's fine, but outside of that he can't be a viable character.
Yeah. 1 hit point, no damaging attack, no hands for spellcasting.
This, however, isn't entirely correct either.
For whatever reason, at least some magical animals without hands are capable of casting spells- why is up to the DM. I could see it either as they don't need to use somatic components, or their somatic components differ slightly.
So im in the process of starting a new campaign and one of my characters wants to play an awakened housefly. I need some help with the stats.
any suggestions?
Nice one.
Can't really do it with RAW D&D. D&D has never handled scale all that well. 3rd does it better than earlier (and later) editions, but more than a size class or two from 'standard' it starts breaking down.
Here is a stab at it anyway, assuming a fly that also has increased in size by an order of magnitude in the process of becoming intelligent (size fine is actually a significant advantage in and of itself).
Awakened Enlarged Fly
Size Diminutive
STR -12*, DEX +6, CON -12*, INT +0, WIS +0, CHR +0
Move: climb 5', fly 20' (good)
Drawbacks: No hands (can't pick up or hold anything, no hand/ring/glove slots, automatically fails craft, disable device, forgery, open lock, sleight of hand, and use rope skill checks), Can't Swim (automatically fails swim checks), poor vision (-6 spot checks), squishy (dies at -6 h.p., massive damage threshhold 30 h.p.), disgusting (-5 penalty on all charisma related skill checks when interacting with non-vermin),
Benefits: Natural climb speed (+14 racial bonus), natural fly speed, natural Armor +1, all around vision (can't be flanked), low-light vision, scent, blind sight 5' radius, vermin traits, racial feat (lightning reflexes), agile (jump and climb are dexterity based skills)
Attacks: none
*Character must buy at least 12 base strength and con before modifiers.
And that isn't even really screwing the player over. You are perfectly within your rights to declare that a fly can cast no spells that require a somatic component.
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Last edited by Celebrim; 25th August 2009 at 01:44 AM..
Remember, if you allow it to work, Awakened turns the target animal into a "Magical Beast"- which could matter for the purposes of spells or templates.
Quote:
You are perfectly within your rights to declare that a fly can cast no spells that require a somatic component.
While I agree, IMHO, you'd really need to be able to justify it to the player, especially in the light of other the fact that the other spellcasting magical beasts don't need to. The aforementioned Celestial Charger has no Still Spell feat, for instance. Nor does the Androsphinx, the Lammasu or Aranea- and that's just in the SRD. None of them have hands, either.
My guess is that they've done things that way so that magical beasts can do in the game what they could do in myth, legend and faerie tale.
An awakened fly would be allowed to use spells if it had any. Under RAW, animals with spells can use whatever animal body parts it has to perform somatic components of spells. This does not necessarily apply to shapechanged druids or other casters, but does apply to animals and monsters in their natural shape.
I'm not sure a fly has any organs capable of anything even approaching a verbal component.
It not only lacks a mouth/tongue/jaws capable of human speech and language, but it doesn't even have a voice box (insects have a method of getting oxygen that doesn't actually involve anything analogous to a lung).
So, they can cast any spell that requires only somatic components. Material components will be tricky with no hands or manipulative limbs, and with no voice, verbal components are out too.
I'm not sure a fly has any organs capable of anything even approaching a verbal component.
First, insects can produce noise via rubbing chitinous legs or wings together- a creative person could assert such actions could be manipulated by an intelligent being to produce sounds sufficient to satisfy the verbal component requirements of a spell.
Second, that whole "Magical Beast" type could arguably circumvent that. Even if you rule it doesn't, the text of Awaken specifically states:
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An awakened tree or animal can speak one language that you know, plus one additional language that you know per point of Intelligence bonus (if any).
So, the real difficulty for a spellcasting fly would be material components, not somatic ones.
A housefly is always buzzing around dead creatures and piles of garbage, eating, regurgitating, re-eating. If any creature has an obscure spell component lying about, it's a housefly - tucked away neatly in it's gut .
I'm envisioning this bloated black insect with glittering red faceted eyes, buzzing its wings in eerie mimicry of real speech; spitting up a gob of spell component glistening with bug saliva; waving about its forelegs and antennae.... And then the component vanishes in a faint flash, and a wave of magic shoots forth and stays the brave knight's Keen Flaming +3 Flyswatter!
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