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Why can Giant Eagles, Giant Elk, and Giant Owls speak?
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<blockquote data-quote="JiffyPopTart" data-source="post: 8040240" data-attributes="member: 4881"><p>Your comment made me think about this topic a bit more and it helped me arrive at a possible answer.</p><p></p><p>In 5e a Giant Animal is usually just a scaled up version of a Normal Animal. Both have the same template type, and that implies that other than the different stats between the two, they are essentially the same creature at heart.</p><p></p><p>In 1e a Giant Animal wasn't necessarily just a larger version of a Normal Animal. There was no such thing as "creature type" or keywords used in that edition of the game, so it was up to the text of the creature to explain what it was and how it fit into the world. This way a Giant Eagle isn't just some alternate species of Normal Eagle, but instead a completely different creature (which may be able to speak somehow).</p><p></p><p>The disconnect is that it really doesn't make sense in 5e for any "Beast" subtype of animal to "speak common" if beast is used to echo a real world animal. In the real world most corvids and parrots can mimic speech, and even show a limited capacity for conversation, however they wouldn't be considered to actually be speaking a language as it is understood in game terms "speaks common", but rather mimicking noises they have heard and sometimes using those noised to get an expected response from a person. There are many other real world examples of animals who can communicate with humans (apes, dolphins, dogs) but you wouldn't say that they can "speak common".</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="JiffyPopTart, post: 8040240, member: 4881"] Your comment made me think about this topic a bit more and it helped me arrive at a possible answer. In 5e a Giant Animal is usually just a scaled up version of a Normal Animal. Both have the same template type, and that implies that other than the different stats between the two, they are essentially the same creature at heart. In 1e a Giant Animal wasn't necessarily just a larger version of a Normal Animal. There was no such thing as "creature type" or keywords used in that edition of the game, so it was up to the text of the creature to explain what it was and how it fit into the world. This way a Giant Eagle isn't just some alternate species of Normal Eagle, but instead a completely different creature (which may be able to speak somehow). The disconnect is that it really doesn't make sense in 5e for any "Beast" subtype of animal to "speak common" if beast is used to echo a real world animal. In the real world most corvids and parrots can mimic speech, and even show a limited capacity for conversation, however they wouldn't be considered to actually be speaking a language as it is understood in game terms "speaks common", but rather mimicking noises they have heard and sometimes using those noised to get an expected response from a person. There are many other real world examples of animals who can communicate with humans (apes, dolphins, dogs) but you wouldn't say that they can "speak common". [/QUOTE]
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Community
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Why can Giant Eagles, Giant Elk, and Giant Owls speak?
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