Leadership and Awaken

[Li Shenron]

I agree with those who say that you shouldn't make a cohort animal in the first place. Cohorts and followers should always be intelligent beings, while animals can be of course animal companions. An awakened animal instead is perfect as a cohort.

Anyway, since you already have it, I think that if it doesn't qualify as a cohort anymore after awakening, it will became an NPC friend. He can choose to follow you or otherwise go off on his own, but you would not have the guarantees of leadership over it. At least until your leadership score becomes again high enough to reinstate the leader-cohort relationship.

If I were your DM, but if I had allowed already the original "animal as cohort" option, I'd probably come up with some friendly compromise, such as letting you awake him but NOT giving it the HD increase which would put it beyond the limit, until you have levelled up enough so that it would be fine with the extra HD as well.

 

[Thanee]

Well, I think normally you won't even need a feat to get an 'animal friend', you only need the Handle Animal skill and some way to 'obtain' the animal and then train it.

Really, an animal is just a weaker cohort than what you can normally attract, so there is little reason not to allow that, and that's what the DM in question thinks as well. In fact, it would be more difficult to convince the DM to allow the Leadership feat with a standard cohort than with an animal cohort.

The main advantage of Leadership will be, that the animal will continue to advance.
Training will still be necessary, but it will advance corresponding to a typical cohort's level advancement (only difference, it gains HD instead of class levels, and we won't count XP, but rather have it advance whenever the leading character levels up).

Anyways, there are basically two realistic options then...

1) The animal is awakened already to begin with (some druid has done that in the past); gonna have to ask the DM about that one, as it probably makes the most sense with the cohort as an intelligent being.

2) The character will at some point awaken the animal (with a scroll and UMD), the animal will then not advance any further until the character has gained another 2 levels to compensate for the additional HD; the animal will continue to be a cohort, tho.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Li Shenron]

Well, I think normally you won't even need a feat to get an 'animal friend', you only need the Handle Animal skill and some way to 'obtain' the animal and then train it.

I didn't mean an animal friend, of course you can get that just buying the animal and training it with handle animal. I meant that once awakened, if you cannot keep it as a cohort (because now its HD or level is too high), it becomes an NPC. Supposedly, it is a friendly NPC.

I see now that the reason for the choice is to advance the animal, so in a way you're trying to use Leadership to get something similar as an animal companion. Nothing wrong in the concept, and in fact somewhere I think I've seen a feat to give you exactly an AC. I tend to see Leadership to represent someone's attitude to rally intelligent followers and a single (or more, if you take L more than once) very loyal servant, and not animals or other inferior beings, but no need to be picky here.

In the end, your options are pretty much what I agree should be: either 1) as the best option, or 2) at least to keep some more consistency with how the written feat works.

 

[brehobit]

One other note. I'd give most awakened animals a +1 ECL modifier too. Their stats are generally very good.

I have a halfling who has an awakened-wolf barbarian as a follower/mount. This is *really* similar to a warg, which, as I recall, has a +1 ECL.

To answer your question squarely, if this happened during a game, I'd probably let you keep the follower but it wouldn't gain levels until things got back to where they should be. I'd disallow it for a new character.

Oh, final note. Awakened animals (and followers in general) often do very well with Vow of Pov. Really nice. (I have a 15th level caster (with VoP) who has an awakened-mule cleric with VoP. Really handy.)

 

[Silveras]

I don't think this is right, tho. In fact, awakening should make the animal *more* suitable as a cohort (for the Leadership feat) if anything, not less.

Oh, I agree that it would be more suitable *after* being awakened. I just don't think that a trained pet that suddenly gains sentience is going to *automatically* want to be an adventurer's errand-runner. Maybe s/he wants to take up tap-dancing, instead. Who knows ?

 

[Conaill]

And to emphasize, it's the ECL of the awakened animal, not just the HD, that needs to be two less than your HD. Determining the ECL of such a critter is a thread in itself.

Yep, that's this one: The Awakened Animal thread