Awakened Animals, awakened offspring?

[Chimera]

Do Awakened animals bear awakened offspring?

If so, it opens a whole new can of worms not answered in any setting.

A nation or tribe of horsemen riding awakened horses. Or perhaps FORMER horsemen, now dealing with a rebellion by their intelligent former mounts. ("We used to be a nation of great horsemen. Then those damned druids convinced us to make them intelligent. Within a generation of our people, there was not a horse that would be ridden within the kingdom. Now we live in fear of the great herds...")

Druids awakening farm animals. Do you eat an intelligent cow? (The story of the New York fishmongers and the talking fish notwithstanding)

Would an awakened Gelding be upset at his status?


How about Plants?

If a druid awakens something like a raspberry bush, then plants the seeds all over the place, plus the new plants from runners, do you end up with the region of intelligent, thorny raspberry bushes? Do they like being picked???

An oak tree drops a lot of acorns. If they were planted around, there could be an entire intelligent forest in no time.

Would an annual plant (lives and dies in one season) grow morose in light of it's short lifespan? (It's the Field of Depressed Daisies!!!)

 

[the Jester]

This is an issue that, afaik, is not addressed in the rules as written.

However, you've just made a very persuasive case for letting 'awakened' status pass on to offspring.

 

[Tilla the Hun (work)]

Indeed yes you have....

In my homebrew world, I already have a cult based druidic order that believes in reincarnation, and never letting dead bodies stay dead.

It's a twisted arguement, but I think they would indeed run around awakening things and propagating intelligent animals. Maybe not plant life... but herds of intelligent dire boars would scare my players silly - as well as actually challenge them quite a bit.

What does the intelligent cow think of the farmer? Or the sheep of the shearer?

For plants... just awaken the crops of the farmers...
For cities... awaken the rats in the sewers...

 

[Sejs]

Well, Awaken is an instant duration rather than permanant... so yeah, I'd figure it would pass the trait on to its offspring in the same way other traits are transfered.

It would take a number of generations to get breeds that were sentient on their own, with each successive have more intelligence until they reached human average. But yeah, sounds quite doable.

 

[Chimera]

Awaken is only a 5th level spell (far too low, IMO). So a single 9th level Druid, dedicated to the task, could easily awaken 300-350 animals per year. More if s/he had a 20 wisdom. A single 12th+ level Druid could awaken over 1,000(!) animals per year.

So we can see that any Druid cabal worth it's salt could transform an entire nation's horses (or other livestock) into intelligent creatures within a single generation of men.

Even without intelligent offspring, a cadre of high ranking druids could provide sufficient intelligent mounts for the cavalry of any army.

The question becomes: Is that of value?

Intelligence doesn't equal speech or knowledge. Just because a horse is suddenly as smart as you or I doesn't mean that it instantly gains the means of communicating with us, or the knowledge of how to deal with anything outside it's sphere of pre-existing knowledge. But of course, it can learn. Not speech, but how to communicate in other ways. How to deal with things it didn't previously understand.

Like how to open the barn door on it's own. Or the pasture gate. Or how to better evade recapture or prevent you from strapping it to the plow. How to cooperate to kick the crap out of you when you come bearing a saddle.

It would take a number of generations to get breeds that were sentient on their own, with each successive have more intelligence until they reached human average. But yeah, sounds quite doable.

Ah, but you don't breed the intelligent ones with the dumb ones. You breed them with each other. And you don't awaken equal numbers of males and females. You awaken small numbers of the Bulls and Stallions you would be using to breed anyways, and large numbers of mares. Then you breed these with each other.

Say that our single, rogue 9th level Druid was doing this without anyone's knowledge or consent. He would travel around, awakening the prize stallions, plus a large number of random mares. In a single year, he could perhaps awaken 10-30 stallions and 300 or so brood mares.

This could wreck havok on an entire community.


Intelligent Cows? "Don't you touch my udders!" Kick!

 

[Sejs]

Important to note that each casting, successful or not, costs the druid 250xp. Which could pile up -real- fast. And that because of the type change from animal to magical beast, you can't awaken successive generations.

So awakening an entire nation's livestock for example, wouldn't be all that feasable. More likely you'd create one intelligent breed and then begin cross breeding that breed's intelligence into other strains.


Hmm, question. Would the offspring of one awakened and one non-awakend creature be an Animal or a Magical Beast?

 

[mhd]

I'd say if both parents are awakened, then the offspring should be, too. Maybe not all of them, maybe not as clever as their ancestors. So over time it's possible for the trait to be eliminated, if there isn't that much inbreeding, lots of awakened animals or occasional new Awaken spells...

Awakened horses? Sounds like Mercedes Lackey's rather saccharine Herald series...

 

[tensen]

Awakened horses? Sounds like Mercedes Lackey's rather saccharine Herald series...

Considering those awakened horses were actually spirits of former heralds in those new forms, I don't think the Awaken spell is necessarily the way to go. But it does make for a good talking horse.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but how can books that involve rape, and other extreme hardships to characters be considered saccarine? Are we talking about the same books?

 

[tensen]

Important to note that each casting, successful or not, costs the druid 250xp. Which could pile up -real- fast. And that because of the type change from animal to magical beast, you can't awaken successive generations.

Well 250xp is a limiting factor... but not a highly limiting factor if that is the goal. I imagine the rest of the party might be advantaging a tad quicker than you. But at that point it is an investment. I can't see awakening hundreds. But you could do a dozen or so without doing more than a 10% hit in your XP. And if that was the goal of the druid group, I can imagine a good DM would provide a roleplaying bonus to XP to cover some of that expense.

 

[Tilla the Hun (work)]

Considering those awakened horses were actually spirits of former heralds in those new forms, I don't think the Awaken spell is necessarily the way to go. But it does make for a good talking horse.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but how can books that involve rape, and other extreme hardships to characters be considered saccarine? Are we talking about the same books?

Did you *really* want to ask that question? I shudder to think what, by comparison, would make it 'saccharine'... Chaotic Evil demi-gods might even relish hearing that question answered...

End hijack

Anyway - I think that Intelligence should be dominant trait. I further think that Intelligence in the natural hierarchy of predator vs prey could lead to some fundamental shifts that would tend to accelerate the reproduction of such.

In other words...

I've got a home brewed world, Umaria, and a kingdom Lammoria on a given continent. On this coninent, I have a druidic organization loosely bound together by a set of beliefs, that actively oppose the older, traditional, conservative druidic organizations that exist.
The cult is called, by lay peoples, the Cult of the Mad Cow. The cult calls themselves the Divine Utterers of Continuity. You can see where the nickname comes from... To make a long story short - their reasoning, based on their precepts, are as follows: 1) All creatures have souls, 2) Animals are sacred, 3) There is a finite number of souls in the world. 4) Sentient creatures that die have their soul go to a new sentient creature of the same type (people, generally). 5) Reincarnating dead people as animals result in intelligent animals. 6) Therefore dead people MUST be reincarnated as animals. No, their relatives can't decide this for them, it'll just have to happen.


Now they have an additional line of reasoning - awaken non-intelligent animals.

I can just see these guys awakening a stallion of a wild herd, a few male fish in the sea, and even the bull in the farmers stable. Although they may be surpised in the latter when the bull decides he has a good life right where he is .

After a few hundred years (2-3 hundred) or 10-20 generations, the intelligent animals have a decided survival edge over normal animals - they can reason their way past predator issues and such.

Suddenly the ecology of the world is turned upside down when the horses start hunting wolf packs, when goat herds start hunting mountain lions. After all, of course the Mad Cows targeted DOMESTIC animals first

I sense the next great adventure in Lammoria being a quest to exterminate the cult of the mad cow - not even evil people want this to happen....