Breeding of Enhanced Animals by Druids (BEAD)

[Speaks With Stone]

What happens when a druid wildshapes and then breeds with a then suitable mate. All of his physical stats changed, but his mental stats remain the same. Could not a druid thereby breed a pack of super intelligent wolves? Even if the wolves only wound up with a quarter of his intelligence, they would still be at the minimum twice as smart as the average wolf.

What if a circle of druids continued this process over several generations? You could potentially gain human-like intelligent wolves.

Also, on a different note, what happens if a druid uses the ritual from MotW to increase the HD of both animals in a mating pair? Would their progeny have a tendency to greater HD when fully grown? Couple this breeding method with the above method and you could have a forest lead by super-intelligent and stronger than normal animals.

Of course, if you made the animals smarter than normal, they would no longer be considered animals, but probably beasts, so you would have to breed in the extra HD before the mating process, or else you would not be able to use the ritual on them.

Any thoughts?

(P.S. Not that this druid has tried or specifically intends to try breeding with his animal friends. I believe the phrase is, "It's okay to love your pets. But it's not okay to LOVE your pets."

 

[nharwell]

Why assume that offspring would inherit the druid's intelligence? After all, he is a human (or whatever) in the form of a wolf, not actually a hyper-intelligent wolf. If you allow breeding to work at all, I would rule that the offspring are normal.

Now, your question about "enhanced" animals breeding brings to mind another question -- what about awakened animals breeding with each other. In this case, they are intelligent magical beast, so I would think that their offspring would be as well. I'd be interested in other opinions, though...

 

[Axiomatic Unicorn]

I think the 1 hr/level duration of wildshape would make gestation very difficult.

 

[Zhure]

Two words: Ewwwwww, gross!

 

[Number47]

I think a better name would be Druids Researchining Enhanced Animal Design (D.R.E.A.D.)

The wildshape thing wouldn't work (unless they changed something). If a part of the body is separated, it returns to normal. This is the same reason poison doesn't work.

As for breeding Awakened animals, well magical talking animals are a staple of fantasy and myth.

 

[Axiomatic Unicorn]

per MoTW, poisons now work.

 

[Greatwyrm]

I'm left asking myself if a druid would even really do this.

Maybe I could see it as a last ditch attempt to save a species on the verge of extinction. On the other hand, stuff going extinct is part of nature's way too.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

You still need to be "preganant" for a while, I'm guessing, or you can be the male. Of course, this brings up all kinds of psychological problems, and I think if other druids heard about it they'd show up via tree stride and other such stuff to put a stop to it. Since the male's *seed* (I'm worried about their editor, sorry) has wolf's DNA, I would assume your tactic would only work if the druid has a high Intelligence (eg a 10 Int druid couldn't produce more intelligent wolves at all).

In the end you'd get a whole bunch of smart (magical) beasts if you get it right, but druids have this nasty ability to identify natural (and therefore unnatural) animals, then they'll kill your intelligent wolves and probably do somehting terrible to you.

 

[Speaks With Stone]

DREAD is a much better acronym, thanks.

If you accept that dragons can polymorph into human and breed offspring with additional powers (aka sorcerors, if you believe the myths), then why not allow the wildshaped druid to breed?

Back to the Awakened question, say you awaken a breeding pair (or say 7 breeding pairs), then could you not breed an entire new species of intelligent magical beasts? This certainly explains the talking animal phenomenon, but has a lot of unusual possibilities. First of all, if a lot of wolves become super intelligent and can talk, they could quickly replace the local wolf population. From there things could spiral out of hand as druids expand on different species and leave no natural animals.

It seems to me that an awakened animal would strongly desire an intelligent mate. So it seems to me that any time you awaken an animal (or tree), you create the problem of having to handle the following questions:

Can I make a breeding pair?
Should I make a breeding pair?
If I can, but I shouldn't how do I explain to my awakened friend that he can't get an equitable mate?

It seems to me that the awakened animal who has to reconcile such a life would be a fun character to roleplay. Especially, if he became a druid specifically for the (unspoken) purpose of learning the awaken spell and making a mate on his own.

Hopefully, the product of such magicly changed critters does not come out horribly warped/mutated.

What bizarre possibilities!

 

[Fade]

I think the point some people are trying to make is that this sort of thing is fundementally unnatural, and so abhorrent to druids.