the Awakened Animal thread

[Sonofapreacherman]

Hey Conaill. I just came over from the fish thread. I'm looking at the awaken spell right now, and I don't know why you say that the "features" of magical beast are not included in the statistics of an awakened animal. Is that what the "augmented animal" distinction means? If so, where are "augmented animals" officially described for clarity?

Another question for you ... the spell says that awakened animals can't serve as animal companions, familiars, or special mounts. Are there any special provisions made for creatures that are *already* serving as animal companions, familiars, and special mounts? I probably know the answer to this question, but I thought I'd ask. What happens, for instance, if an evil druid comes along, kidnapps my familiar, and awakens it against both our wills?

 

[Krishnath]

That would depend on the DM I guess. Me, I would cause you to lose your familiar benefits immediatly, but you would not suffer any of the negative effects of loosing your familiar. You would also be free to immediatly call a new familiar (an pay the cost for it, of course) if you so choose. Aditionally the ex-familiar would now be an NPC under the DM's control who is friendly towards your mage (if you have treated your familiar well that is).

But that's just me.

 

[Conaill]

Hey Conaill. I just came over from the fish thread. I'm looking at the awaken spell right now, and I don't know why you say that the "features" of magical beast are not included in the statistics of an awakened animal. Is that what the "augmented animal" distinction means? If so, where are "augmented animals" officially described for clarity?

Yup. The Augmented subtype is described under "Types, Subtypes, and Special Abilities". Dunno what page, but you can find it in the SRD here. The crucial sentence is "A creature with the augmented subtype usually has the traits of its current type, but the features of its original type. (See also the second post of this thread, which collects a bunch of the relevant quotes.)

Another question for you ... the spell says that awakened animals can't serve as animal companions, familiars, or special mounts. Are there any special provisions made for creatures that are *already* serving as animal companions, familiars, and special mounts? I probably know the answer to this question, but I thought I'd ask. What happens, for instance, if an evil druid comes along, kidnapps my familiar, and awakens it against both our wills?

A Familiar is of the Magical Beast type, so can't be Awakened (the spell would simply fail). Same goes for the Paladin's Mount, I believe. Animal Companions, per the errata, do retain their Animal type so can be Awakened, but then they can no longer be your animal companion.

There are no firm rules regarding what happens to an animal companion's bonuses once it's no longer an animal companion, but I believe the Sage suggested they would gradually disappear. You can find some house rules for dealing with this situation over on this thread. My recommendation is to swap out animal companion HD as the awakened animal gets new ones, so swap 2 animal companion HD immediately because the animal receives 2 HD from the Awaken spell, the replace animal companion HD with class levels as the awakened animal gains XP. The result is that its total HD would stay constant for a long time, until it has gained enough XP to catch up with its former animal companion HD. (Of course, after Awakening, the animal becomes an NPC under control of the DM, unless you keep it as a cohort using Leadership.)

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Fractional HD..

Interesting thread... I am amazed at the amount of creative math.. my tendency leans more to the SWAQ

On fractional HD creatures, why not rule that Awakening an animal raises the creatures HD by two steps. In this manner, a 1/8th HD would awaken to a 1/2HD creature.
{assuming the steps of 1/16, 1/8/, 1/4, 1/2, 1 }

This will avoid the whole negative LA issue and limit the feasible sillyness of Awakening pointless creatures.

After all, who really wants to play an Awakened Toad Assassin....
{hmm, natural poison, easily hidden.. hmmm }

Anyway..

 

[JiCi]

I have made an awakened template right here, with all the LA:

Awakened template

 

[Doc_Souark]

I have nothing to add except that when I played an awakened Parrot/ Scorcerer- 6 , I used the spell as a guide and it worked out ok. Since I couldn't find a parrot anywhere I used the Ravan but had a beak attack instead of the Ravans claw attack.

JiCi I noticed you don't have Squirrels on that list, why the Squirrel hate man

 

[JiCi]

I only picked the official WotC books.

 

[BOZ]

the squirrels are your friends!

 

[MidnightLightning]

Spellcasting Awakened

Leopold: How would you play a Swashbuckler with this one? Remember it's not an anthropomorphic cat, it's your regular housecat without hands! Which means no weapon use, no tool use for the Rogue, and no somatic components for spellcasters. You can work around all of those problems, but it's definitely a factor to keep in mind when calculating LA.

As for spellcasters: Eschew materials and Natural spell. Give this thing a 3rd level and it will get both to take and be able to cast spells.

A little thread necromancy here, though I recently found this thread through various cross-posted resources. And I've been thinking of awakened animal spellcasters, and the above argument that they would not be able to use tools/weapons/somatic components/material components without proper hands. The Natural Spell feat was suggested as a solution, but I'll pose that the solution is that tools/weapons/somatic components/material components can be created/designed in such a way as to work for non-humanoid hands, so there's no need to force an awakened animal taking spellcasting classes to take the Natural Spell and/or Still Spell to cast any spells. And I present the Aboleth mage as an example. An Aboleth being a big fish, can take class levels in a spellcasting class to become an Aboleth mage, and does not have Natural Spell or Still Spell to cast spells with their tentacles rather than hands. True Dragons also learn to cast spells as a sorcerer, and they have claws rather than hands.

So, I figure that if a creature is capable of taking a class level in a spellcasting class its "natural" form, part of the acquisition of that class level is how to adapt the somatic components and manipulation of the material components to be successful in their spellcasting. The Natural Spell feat seems to be intended that if you learned spellcasting while in a different form, and now want to use it with a radically different body (like one without hands) you have to 're-learn' how (by taking the Natural Spell feat). Though an exception to that could be a Silver Dragon; which the SRD doesn't claim loses any spellcasting abilities they learned 'in Dragon form' when they use their Alternate Form ability to change to a human and gain hands.

So, to level the playing field for awakened animals and classed humans of a similar level, for spellcasting purposes they wouldn't have to be "two feats behind" necessarily.

 

[Alzrius]

I just wanted to mention that there's a third-party sourcebook based on the idea of playing a sentient animal PC.

The Noble Wild, from Skirmisher Publishing, covers pretty much every aspect of playing a sentient animal character, and does so quite well.