Awakened Animals as Cohorts?

[Greyskull]

I have read somewhere that awakened animals can take class levels, and a druid of mine wants his animal to do so.
I ruled that do to that he needs to take Leadership, and the animal becomes his cohort.
But how do I determine the Level Equivalent of the awakened animal?

In his case he wants his good old faithful war horse to take some levels, and looking at the creatures presented there I think a 3rd or 4th level is reasonable, but I wnat to hear your opinions.

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Greyskull

 

[Tonguez]

Yeah I'd say a war horse is about +3 =(HD 4 -1 (no hands))

maybe +4 if you take into account speed and natural weapons

 

[Obsolete]

PG 37 masters of the wild

Awakened Animals
Awaken is a 5th-level spell available to druids. Because it
grants humanlike sentience and intelligence to an
animal, the creature's type changes to magical beast. This
spell greatly changes the relationship between druid and
animal companion. Armed with intelligence and the
ability to speak at least one language, the animal no
longer needs training to understand the druid's wishes .
Thus, the druid gains a source of advice and ready conversation
in addition to a guard and a servant. Of course,
as a fully sentient creature, an awakened animal develops
its own desires and ambitions .

While normally a creature with such a high intelligence
isn't subject to animal friendship, an animal awakened by a
druid remains her companion as long as she treats it with
respect, as discussed above. The animal continues to
count against the druid's Hit Dice limit for animal companions.
For a time, the awakened animal can even exceed
the druid's level. (For example, an awakened dire bear suddenly
has 14 HD, but it remains with a 12th-level druid).
Until the druid once again exceeds the animal in Hit
Dice, however, she cannot gain new animal companions.
As a general rule, an awakened animal continues to
assist the druid, at least as long as she continues to include
it among her companions. When she elects to
leave that animal behind (by befriending a new one), it
soon departs.The animal remains friendly with the druid
and may assist her from time to time, but it no longer accompanies her on adventures.

As you can see from that quote above they are still able to be animal companions. Now since you ruled otherwise there is a dragon mag article with ecls that include some awakened animal. I forget which issue but someone out there has to know which it is

 

[nharwell]

For awakened animals, I use (hit dice/2) as a starting point for ECL, as animal hit dice aren't worth very much in my experience. On the other hand, if you rule that awakening the animal changes its type to "magical beast", it should be more. Or, if you give skill points and feats for the change in Intelligence, you should use a higher ECL (normally animal hit dice do not give skill points or feats).


Do not use the ECLs in Dragon Magazine. They are completely unreasonable (at least for awakened animals).

 

[Gez]

Do not use the ECLs in Dragon Magazine. They are completely unreasonable (at least for awakened animals).

I kinda liked their Medium-size Zombie ECL. +5, IIRC. How appropriate...

 

[Greyskull]

Thanks for all the Fish

I have read all the comments and decided that I will give the horse a +4 ECL. While it has 6HD they are not worth as much as 6 character levels, but it's ability scores are far from being low.

 

[Gez]

Oh yeah, in the DMG, they say an appropriate ECL for special cohorts should be at least CR +3, and to increase that if there are special capacities. They don't always follow this rule, though (Owlbears have ECL of CR +2); and sometimes this just don't make sense (a steam mephit would be ECL 6 or 7 according to that, while it's probably barely worth ECL 5).