Interaction of Awaken & Leadership

[The Souljourner]

So I had a cool thought - I'd like to have my cleric take leadership and get some kind of cool mount as his cohort. I originally thought of a celestial warhorse, but they only get 3 intelligence, which doesn't make for much of a cohort. So the next thought was an Awakened warhorse. I don't know how that would interact with Leadership, however. I'm 6th level, so the best I can do is a 4th level follower... but the leadership feat doesn't really address non-standard cohorts.

Are there rules for this in a WoTC book somewhere, and if not, what do you think would be appropriate?

-The Souljourner

 

[The Souljourner]

34 views, no comments. I guess that means there are no rules for it. Well, here's my take - awaken doesn't give any kind of special abilities to the animal. 6 animal hitdice is pretty crappy - it's pretty much exactly equivalent to cleric levels without the spells, and without the armor or weapon proficiencies. My inclination is to give the animal hitidice half an ECL each. So call it ECL 3 for the 6 hitdice. Now add in the stats... +8 Str +6 Con +2 Dex +2 Wis -2 Cha. Pretty sweet... call that +2, now we're up to ECL 5. Faster movement, size large, and some natural armor is probably worth another +1 for a total of 6. However, this creature has no hands, can't climb anything more than a steep grade, and forget about ladders.... that's gotta be equal to -1 at least.

ECL 5 for something with 6 hitdice, no special abilities, no hands, and really good physical stats? Sounds fair to me.

Of course, that assumes you're rolling stats and giving the stat boosts on top of that. If you just have average horse stats, I'd say that's easily another -1 for a total of ECL 4 for an awakened horse with exactly the stats in the book (with the awakened modifications).

But maybe I'm just reaching the conclusion I was hoping for in the beginning.

-The Souljourner

 

[Conaill]

Hi, Souljourner!

Come check out the Awakened Animals thread for all your awakened animal questions.

The trick with estimation of Leval Adjustment is that you need to assume an optimal class assignment for the creature. Which for the horse turns out to be... <drumroll> ... a Monk! Doesn't need weapons, doesn't need armor, doesn't need hands... perfect for a quadruped! We decided that the Level Adjustment for an awakened heavy warhorse is +3 LA, mainly because of the impressive stat bonuses, plus natural armor.

Some later comparisons lead me to think that +3 may be on the high side, but it would be at the minimum a +2. Total ECL (HD+LA) would be 8 or 9. Sorry for your plans, but that awakened warhorse could make for a more powerful PC than your 6th level cleric!

 

[Pax]

Moral of the story: get an "ordinary" celestial warhorse for now, and when you can have an 8th or 9th level cohort, getit Awakened by a druid. ^_^

 

[The Souljourner]

Can't awaken a celestial animal... becomes a magical beast, and awaken only works on animals and plants.

I'll have to talk to my DM and see what he thinks. Since the warhorse wouldn't be able to accompany me on dungeon crawls and the like, I'd think it would be ok to allow it to be a little better than normal.

-The Souljourner