Talking Animals!

[arwink]

With Druids running around with Awaken, how could you not?

A druid PC in my game had a talking wolf that worked really well. Had a very strongly defined personality worked out before she was introduced to the game, and it gave me something to hang her style on when she was awakened. Very sarcastic, very protective and very vicious.

The fun part was introducing her to the rest of the party. The Druid hadn't really told anyone what was going on, so they were kinda shocked when the wolf started chatting to them from the table at the pub. There was also talk of killing it as a demon-spawn, especially when it was discovered that the druid had used a cut-price ritual from a secretive organisation of wizards to effect the awaken. As the campaign progressed, the wolf did a lot of evolving - both physically and a character. Everyone got pretty attached to her, and it's almost a given that talking animals will appear in my games again.

Also, if you really want to know how to make normal animals terrifying, go check out P'Kitty's Of Sound Mind adventure. The intelligent animals there freaked the players out more than a room full of mind flayers.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

a) I have to be fiendish to be a GM?

Of course you do. I mean, if you aren't the spawn of hell, how will you be able to create appropriate adventures for the PCs?

 

[kibbitz]

Of course you do. I mean, if you aren't the spawn of hell, how will you be able to create appropriate adventures for the PCs?

By being utterly nice? PCs feel so warm and goody-goody to the point where they'll sing and dance with the big bad black dragon and the dragon will be persuaded to go and be nice and contribute his breath to the Mountain Dew industry

But seriously, a few things to add.

Awaken surely allows for more talking animals, but if the druid is supposed to preserve the status quo, well, when and what to awaken? When can Awaken be used and when not? Why not Awaken all the animals you can lay your hands on? Barring mechanics limitations, of course.

Anyway, normal animals can be terrifying even without intelligence, I feel. Wasn't there an Alfred Hitchcock thing called "The Birds" or something similar?

 

[Piratecat]

We have a talking onyx dog, a figurine of wondrous power. Everyone loves him. It isn't cutesy; animals can have their own personalities without making the campaign slip into a Disney cartoon. I really like the idea.

Talking animals? Put out a talking rabbit, do you think Lewis Carrol and Alice in Wonderland, or do you think Bugs Bunny?

I think of BunBun from Sluggy Freelance.

 

[arwink]

Okay.

Right about now, that old rabbit phobia is going to start kicking in again.

Well, the obvious mechanical reason for a druid not awakening everything in sight is the xp cost. 250 xp a hit may not seem much, but when to have to burn through 2000 xp to awaken an eight member wolf pack, you might think twice before going through the process.

The why's and ethics of awakening is probably pretty open to the DM to interpret. There are a lot more druid codes out there in 3e, they arent the peaceful status-quo goes anymore. I'd probably go for aging druids, at the end of their lifespans, awakening a few animals around them to keep their wilderness safe if they don't have successors. I think a lot of druids are going to awaken their animal companions when faced with the option of sending them back into the wild or keeping them around. Awakening animals and trees to guard a sacred site is probably acceptable, and I can see evil druids awakening various animals as more competent servants/underlings or as particularly innocent looking assasins.

 

[kibbitz]

Nah, dropped the cutesy bit after thinking it over during dinner. Don't ask why I thought of it, just did.

Still, at the risk of playing with semantics, we are talking about "talking" animals. Does the ability of "man-speech" equate to it being more intelligent than normal? And how will that affect its behavioral patterns? Assuming it is an animal and not something else, a talking animal would mean either an animal with a permanent Speak with Humanoids spell on it, or an Awakened animal. Very, very significant differences when it comes to RP interaction.

 

[arwink]

Good point,a nd I think it's going to depend on your own individual take on the whole concept.

Personally, the best example of talking animals I can remember is the narnia series, which clearly gives the talking animals anthropomorphic traits absent in the mute creatures. When I included talking animals in 2e, this was usually the approach I took. Slightly bigger, definately smarter, and more human. The animal traits were present as personality quirks.

With awakend creatures, I tend to look at the animals background. A druids companion, suddenly finding itself smarter, capable of speach and wandering with the druid through a sizable metropolis, basically started to take on human traits and mannerisms. There was no question about it, I simply started thinking about it in terms of the current surroundings and the actions of the druid, her best friend, and went from there.

A wolf another party encountered in the forest, simlialy awakened to serve as a guardian, was simply a wolf capable of speach and rational thought. He didn't think like a human, but he thought as well as one. This time round, the references I used when building the personality were the wolf characters in the belgariad and tad williams tailchasers song. I tried to keep the animal traits as dominant as possible, and left the human elements at a bare minimum. Strange syntax when they were speaking, a decidedly wolfish persona and a general tendency to talk in a pack.

Yet a third strand I can remember taking is fey creatures, which didn't think like humans or the creatures they resembled. The main goal there was to just make things alien, to emphasis that this was neither human nor beast.

I'm not sure there was a point in there. I meant there to be. Basically, I think it's one of those ideas worth playing with, trying in different styles when possible. There's too many approaches to deal in specifics...

 

[Templetroll]

My daughter started gaming with our group when she was ten and she just turned thirteen this past weekend. During that time she has preferred to play talking animals. The one time she tried a human it was a teenage witch named Sabrina who died during the first encounter that session.

She started with a talking cat and she worked hard at being as self-absorbed yet curious as a cat should be. She worked her way through five of her nine lives; the DM provided her with an amulet that allowed her to change into a tiger so she could be more effective in combat.

She played a faerie dragon that worked well with the gnome illusionist I was playing and once used the Message spell to freak out the mighty dwarf fighter (and the player, who thought his PC was getting a warning from a ghost or something!)

Her talking owl was an emissary from a race of creatures that lived in a hidden valley in the High Forest and worshipped a gold dragon. She was wise and used the stealth ability of the owl to great effect. She had asked the DMif she could have a backpack and had to describe how the owl could use one. She pointed out the owl could turn it's head completely around and use its beak to work a simple closure and get things in and out of the backpack.

Currently she is playing a wolf Awakened by treants and granted druidic abilities to help protect the High Forest. We found saddlebags of holding that the wolf can wear but she is adamant about not being considered anyone's 'pet' or 'pack animal'. The wolf has bitten other PCs who make such jokes. She also considers herself the 'Alpha female of the 'pack'/party and makes certain to rip out the choice pieces of meat from slain foes if she is hungry. The party has also set aside some things like the liver of animals for her to have when possible. The Trip attack of the wolf has also been very effective in the combats the party has engaged in, changing the tide of battles as often as her druidic spells have.

In a campaign I'm running for her and my wife she is playing a wolf variant with horns that is a sorceror, kind of Monster Rancher type of thing. I've made her a minion of Lurue, the Unicorn demigod associated with Meilikki in the FR. My wife is playing a Hathran working to be a Rashemi Witch.


I can recommend talking animals highly and they don't need to be cartoonish at all.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Talking animals can be downright creepy if done right- think Son of Sam. Here's an idea from one of the Swashbuckling Adventures sourcebooks-

A magical parrot (we'll just call him "Mad Jack") has been passed around from sailor to sailor over the years. This parrot, whenever it gets the chance, uses a suggestion effect upon it's owner, ordering it to brutally murder helpless individuals whenever it gets the chance. Example:

Captain Blarney has just captured a cog laden with booty bound for a distant shore. He's subdued the crew, and has them gathered on deck before him. However, just as he's about to tell them that they will be marooned on the nearest shore, Mad Jack immediately chimes in- "Sqwak! Kill them all! Kill them all and drink their blood!" Captain Blarney, missing his saving throw against the bird's suggestion, can't help but comply.

A talking animal with a taste for blood can be very disturbing (and not at all cute).

 

[myrdden]

Greetings!

What do you think about including talking animals, and using them in your campaigns?

I think they're fine as long as they don't include a talking, purple dinosaur.

Myrdden