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*Dungeons & Dragons
the Awakened Animal thread
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<blockquote data-quote="Conaill" data-source="post: 1482498" data-attributes="member: 1264"><p>Sure it's a friggin cat. (Actually, it's a magical, talking cat with 2HD.) But the ECL mechanism is in place exactly to be able to balance out power differences between monster races and the standard races. I don't see why it wouldn't work just as well on the low end of the ECL scale as on the high end. If Savage Species provides rules for players to run an Incarnate Stone Golem (ECL 20!) character in an Epic campaign, why couldn't we have rules to allow us to play a bunch of awakened animals in search of their kidnapped druid?</p><p></p><p>Sure, a "friggin cat", or even better a "friggin toad", even 2HD one, is not much of a match against a 2nd-lvl human. That's exactly the point. An awakened toad would be essentially unplayable in a 2nd level party, and it would need a serious boost in order for anyone to even consider it playable. (Just like a regular human in a party of illithid would need a serious boost to be considered playable.) Even with an extra character level an awakened toad is going to have serious trouble in a 2nd level party. </p><p></p><p>BTW, like you, I am definitely in favor of estimating LA's on the high side. So yes indeed, the player should typically say "it sucks, but I'll try it". But I wouldn't want him to say "That's <em>so</em> underpowered that no sane player would even consider playing it"! We can argue whether or not the awakened cat is balanced as a +0 LA race. But for some of the others such as the toad or the mouse (published elsewhere as a familiar) there's little doubt that they would be completely underpowered as a +0 LA.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Conaill, post: 1482498, member: 1264"] Sure it's a friggin cat. (Actually, it's a magical, talking cat with 2HD.) But the ECL mechanism is in place exactly to be able to balance out power differences between monster races and the standard races. I don't see why it wouldn't work just as well on the low end of the ECL scale as on the high end. If Savage Species provides rules for players to run an Incarnate Stone Golem (ECL 20!) character in an Epic campaign, why couldn't we have rules to allow us to play a bunch of awakened animals in search of their kidnapped druid? Sure, a "friggin cat", or even better a "friggin toad", even 2HD one, is not much of a match against a 2nd-lvl human. That's exactly the point. An awakened toad would be essentially unplayable in a 2nd level party, and it would need a serious boost in order for anyone to even consider it playable. (Just like a regular human in a party of illithid would need a serious boost to be considered playable.) Even with an extra character level an awakened toad is going to have serious trouble in a 2nd level party. BTW, like you, I am definitely in favor of estimating LA's on the high side. So yes indeed, the player should typically say "it sucks, but I'll try it". But I wouldn't want him to say "That's [i]so[/i] underpowered that no sane player would even consider playing it"! We can argue whether or not the awakened cat is balanced as a +0 LA race. But for some of the others such as the toad or the mouse (published elsewhere as a familiar) there's little doubt that they would be completely underpowered as a +0 LA. [/QUOTE]
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