Can awakened animals speak?

[mvincent]

Why not go with an Awakened Raven. According to the Familair chart it can speak 1 language of the wizards choice. Basically the familiar is awakened in this manner.

A raven familiar is not awakened (if it were, it would not be eligible to be a familiar). It is just that in real life ravens can be taught to speak.

"never more" - raven

 

[s-dub]

This brings some fun plot hooks.

An evil druid awakens a houseplant or pet using maximized awaken and it starts to kill people using animate objects (it takes levels in wizard). At first, the deaths look like suicides or accidents, someone falls down the stairs, "hangs" themself, or dies in their sleep.

If someone gets suspicious, "ghosts" begin to manifest and seem to be the issue.

The PC's try to exorcize the "haunted house" but even though the "ghosts" leave the deaths still continue.

Once the house is abandoned for good, the druid takes the pet/plant to another home to begin the cycle again.

The PC's will probably not figure out what's going on until the second or third house they get called to.

 

[mvincent]

An evil druid awakens a houseplant or pet using maximized awaken

Little Tomb of Horrors

 

[Kmart Kommando]

I played a Ranger with Leadership, once - his cohort was an Awakened Horse Druid.

-Hyp.

I built a Halfling Outrider with Leadership with an Awakened wolf Druid as a mount. The wolf was the Hunter variant from UA, so his AC was high, plus Spring Attack, the Halfling had Mounted Combat, Mounted Archery, etc. and the wolf actually had another wolf as an animal companion.
The wolf Druid had Evasion while being ridden, due to the Halfling Outrider's class ability, but the wolf's wolf animal companion had Improved Evasion.

Sadly, it was a backup character, and my first character seemed to be immune to death that campaign.