Awakened Animal Level Adjustment?

[Michael Tree]

I'm trying to make an awakened animal cohort, but I can't find any information on what sort of Level Adjustment to give one. Is it listed anywhere?

 

[brehobit]

I've been assuming they just add their HD. So an awakened creature where the base animal has 2HD would have an EL of 4.

Anyone know otherwise?

 

[Will]

That seems logical from the write-up of lycanthropes.

Huh you say?

Lycanthropes are ECL = animal HD + 2 (afflicted) / +3 (natural)

Well, the +2 or +3 seems to sum up the advantages of shapeshifting (healing), communication with animals, a variety of forms, and a really nice DR.

If you just say 'ok, it's a critter without shapeshifting/healing/DR/...', you're left with animal HD.

Which makes sense to me. Most animals have a CR equal to half HD. Since they have no planning, nor can effectively use equipment, makes sense.

Giving intelligence... CR/level/HD become equal. Or something.


Personally, I would skip the +2 HD for awakening, at least for PCs. It screws things up a bit... HD is normally balanced by stats. High HD, high stats, etc. Adding 2 HD to a crow is not going to make a LA +2 critter.

 

[youspoonybard]

Using the old 3.0 ECL calc, a 4 - HD large awakened wolf is still a ECL 4 character...until something else comes up, that's what I'm going by. After all, savage species was supposed to be 3.5 compatible, right?

 

[nharwell]

Using the old 3.0 ECL calc, a 4 - HD large awakened wolf is still a ECL 4 character...until something else comes up, that's what I'm going by. After all, savage species was supposed to be 3.5 compatible, right?

Well, Savage Species doesn't really include rules for awakened animals (or reincarnated characters, for that matter). Mr. Redman said on the WOTC boards that he didn't consider such characters suitable for play...

 

[youspoonybard]

Well, Savage Species doesn't really include rules for awakened animals (or reincarnated characters, for that matter). Mr. Redman said on the WOTC boards that he didn't consider such characters suitable for play...

They never thought of the "cohort" use, eh?

Well, there's still the animal type, ability scores are known, no spell like abilities...

I was able to fill out the form just fine.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

The DMG suggests a +2 LA for a paladin's mount used as a cohort. I'd say that's a reasonable adjustment for an awakened animal in the same circumstance.

 

[youspoonybard]

The DMG suggests a +2 LA for a paladin's mount used as a cohort. I'd say that's a reasonable adjustment for an awakened animal in the same circumstance.

I thought the +2 LA was because of the Emphatic Link, Improved Evasion, Share Spells, Share Saving Throws, Improved Speed, Command Ability and the SR.

If I take a wolf from a forest and awaken it (not my animal companion), it doesn't have any of these special abilities, and I would be very hesitant to give it a +2 LA.

 

[Conaill]

This came up for me just last week, trying to roll up an awakened wolf PC for a one-shot game.

With the new 3.5 books and all those books on playing monster races i figure this would be a breeze... boy was I wrong!

The main problem I ran into is that an Awakened animal gains 2 HD from the spell. For a 2HD Wolf, that means he turns into a 4HD Wolf, and changes to size: Large! Changing from Medium to Large adds 8 points of Strength, 4 points of Con (and thus 8 more hit points!) plus a bunch of other goodies.

In the end, we decided the change in size was a bit too much, and I wound up with a Medium sized 4HD awakened wolf, with one extra level of Barbarian. In retrospect, I would gladly have given up that extra level of Barbarian for the increase to Large size! I'd be like having better-than-Rage stats 100% of the time!

The existing rules for CR recommend increasing CR by 1 when increasing size, even though CR only goes up every couple of racial HD. You'd probably have to do something similar for LA as well.

 

[youspoonybard]

Yes. At most, however, I'd say LA +1. Definetly not LA +2.