Awakened Wolf

[Tuskus]

One of my current Pcs has been wanting to play an awakened wolf, I see no problem with this, but some of the other Pcs brought up a few interesting points about everyday life as a wolf. Has anyone played an awakened animal that would like to point out some of the more difficult parts of this character concept. (other than the ladder climbing and equipment buying)

 

[s-dub]

Other than getting attacked by everyone if he goes out alone?

 

[brehobit]

Actually it works quite well IME. You really want a rider for all sorts of reasons (combat, role-playing) and I took leadership for that as no PC wanted to do it.

Also, I'd go with a worg rather than an awakened wolf. It works better on almost every level unless INT is important to you.

Worg swordsage 2 with VoP is darn powerful and a lot of fun. The whole not owning anything can be viewed as a cultural decision. Really justifies the whole thing nicely.

Oh, and such an NPC is only CR 4 technically. Really nasty CR 4 with a goblin rider that has mounted combat. Touch AC is like 18 (+4 to dex and wis), real AC is around 25. Plus you have the rider being able to replace either with a d20+14 or so (4th level goblin ranger with 16 dex is 7 (ranks)+4 (goblin) +3 (dex)) if you get hit.

Mark

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

How can a worg be a swordsage?

 

[Zurai]

How can a worg be a swordsage?

What edition are you playing? There are no class restrictions based on race in 3E. Worgs are intelligent creatures (they can even speak). There's no reason they couldn't have levels in any class. There are even martial disciplines in Bo9S with natural weapons among their favored weapons (Shadow Hand and Setting Sun have unarmed strike as favored, and Tiger Claw has claw as favored).

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

Actually 3.0, GURPS and Mutants and Masterminds; but that is neither here nor there...

I asked because I am not very familiar with the Swordsage class. I was intrigued. My understanding of the class was that is was the typical "mage with a sword" type class. If they cast spells normally and with most spells requiring somatic and verbal components... I can understand verbal components but its kind of hard to gesture without thumbs and fingers so somatic spells are out the window.... And thus almost all spells are too since there are very few with non-somatic components. Unless tail-wagging counts...

 

[Zurai]

Swordsages have nothing to do with magic, other than a few of their manuevers being supernatural rather than extraordinary. They don't cast spells at all. There are no verbal, material, or somatic components to manuevers; the only requirement is that the character is not helpless.

 

[chitzk0i]

I asked because I am not very familiar with the Swordsage class.

Yeah, swordsages don't cast spells. They can initiate various maneuvers which have a tiered pogression like spells.

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

Thank you, that answers my question. I did not know and now I do.

 

[Thurbane]

Swordsages have nothing to do with magic, other than a few of their manuevers being supernatural rather than extraordinary. They don't cast spells at all. There are no verbal, material, or somatic components to manuevers; the only requirement is that the character is not helpless.

He may be thinking of Duskblade?

As for the wolf, maybe take a 1 level dip into Sorcerer and get yourself a spider monkey familiar or something similar with "hands" - it'll make life a lot easier. Barbarian is a pretty good class for awakened animals, as is Fighter (put all those feats into boosting your natural weapons i.e. Weapon Focus: Bite, Improved Critical: Bite etc.). If you do take Sorcerer, try to concentrate on spells with no Somatic component, take the Eschew Materials feat or have your monkey restock your spell component case. The Still Spell feat is OK, but everything is up a level, and taking a round if you're a spontaneous caster...

The party I DM for has an awakened warhorse as a cohort - he hasn't levelled yet, so I am yet to encounter class issues.