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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Conaill" data-source="post: 1491540" data-attributes="member: 1264">I believe the Sage's suggestion was that the awakened animal companion would gradually lose the extra HD he had gotten from being an animal companion. As in jgsugden's house rule, you could rule that he loses his first two extra HD immediately (which he gets back from awakening). If the animal companion had more than 2 extra HD (i.e. Drd6 or higher), the remaining extra HD could fade as the awakened animal goes up in levels. So rather than adding class levels, you'd swap out animal companion HD's for class levels.Here's an example of how this would work out: A Druid11 wishes to cast Awaken on her Wolf animal companion. The Wolf starts with 2 racial HD and 6 bonus HD. Upon awakening, he loses two bonus HD, but also gains two new "racial" HD. He loses the Multiattack he got from being an animal companion to an 11th level Druid. The awakened wolf decides to start taking levels in Fighter. Each time he gains a Ftr level, he swaps out one more bonus HD, eventually winding up with a 4HD awakened wolf Ftr4. During all these levels, his ECL remains the same, but he does get small improvements from swapping suboptimal animal HD's for Fighter levels.Contrary to jgsugden's house rule, I would recommend that the animal companion link be severed immediately upon awakening. Having an intelligent ally is worth a lot more than an animal companion. Hence the need for a *feat* to get one...For more information on how exactly the Awaken spell works (including some Level Adjustment estimates), feel free come join us in the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=82688" target="_blank">Awakened Animals thread</a> over in General Monster Talk.</blockquote>

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