Awakened Animals as cohorts

[Cheiromancer]

If a fighter's mount were awakened by a cooperative druid, could he use the leadership feat to take it as a cohort?

Savage Species doesn't deal with awakened animals. In the absence of other rules, I was thinking that leadership + awakened animal should be about equal to a paladin's mount. The hit dice improvements of a paladin's mount look roughly the same as the level advancement of a cohort,...

Anyone know of some rules guidance for this situation?

 

[Zhure]

Yes.

I've heard rumors that's how awakened creatures will be treated in 3.5.

Greg

 

[kigmatzomat]

Unfortunately there aren't many rules covering this. Heck, they're pretty vague on awakened animals in general. (Are they magical beasts now? If so, what BAB do they use? etc, etc) Fortunately animals don't have much in the way of specials, so their ECL should really be equal to their HD. Add any class levels they gain and use that as their cohort level.

Me personally, I make sure awakened animals have 1 + 1 feat/4HD to reflect their boosted intelligence since they don't get any retroactive skill points. The down side to animals as combat cohorts is that they don't get any additional attack progression. This seems very, very freaky to me but that's the way natural weapons work by default.

An awakened warhorse who takes the fighter path will surprise no end of wolves, horsetheives, or other mounts when they start picking up focus & specialization: hoofs, dodge, powerattack and cleave. And as they will be picking up 1/2 your XP while only a 4th level creature, they should level quite quickly, at least for a while.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Yes.

I've heard rumors that's how awakened creatures will be treated in 3.5.

Greg

Hmmm. Another little bit of 3.5 I'll have to adopt into my 3.0 ("Classic"!) games...

 

[Steverooo]

And as they will be picking up 1/2 your XP while only a 4th level creature, they should level quite quickly, at least for a while.

As Awakened, don't they get +2 HD?

 

[Cheiromancer]

As Awakened, don't they get +2 HD?

Yes, they do. It's interesting (to me at least) that a paladin's mount also gains +2 HD.

A paladin's mount gets 2 more HD every three paladin levels, and so advances a little more than 1/2 the rate of its master. A cohort gets a 1/2 share of xp, but, being a lower level, doesn't need as much xp to advance a level; so it, too advances a little more than 1/2 the rate of its master. Pretty neat parallel, isn't it?

I'm planning a halfling fighter/ranger with an awakened dire weasel mount. The weasel will take fighter levels, emphasizing defensive feats like expertise and dodge. When its base saving throw is less than its class level, I hope that it will be able to switch to survivor (from save species). That will get it uncanny dodge, evasion, improved evasion, and DR 5/-. Plus great saves. No BAB, but my character wouldn't want his mount to outshine him in combat.

I'm paranoid about mounts/cohorts dying on me, so I want it to gain those defensive bennies. Of course I'll max out ride so that I can use the mounted combat feat to negate successful attacks against the mount.

After 6 levels in each of fighter and ranger, I'll try to take the cavalier prestige class. Should be fun!