Awakened Animal? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Awakened Animal? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Callista
04-29-05, 03:39 PM I've heard of people playing an Awakened animal, and I think it would be kind of cool to try. But I'm not sure how to go about it.

First of all, how do I do the stats for, say, an awakened cat? What changes, what doesn't? Would I roll the mental stats normally and without any adjustment, as for a human PC, or do they adjust downwards if I'm not using 3d6 to generate them?

What's the level adjustment? I can't see any (of course), since animals are not supposed to be player characters...

And how do I take advantage of what the animal has got, and minimize the disadvantages? I'm thinking, with most animal being unable to manipulate things with their paws, that it would be advantageous to do something like a raccoon or monkey...

So, yeah, some advice would be needed, before I can figure out if this even works! It would be a very unusual PC, in any event.
Sir Ringe
04-29-05, 04:37 PM I've played an awakened assassin vine before in a one shot, it was loads of fun :D

This is what I did when I created that PC:
For stat generation, just use the base animal from MM, and apply the modifiers as per spell description.
No LA, just use the use HD from MM, then advance as normal.
Part-Human2
04-30-05, 12:51 AM Hey, I was just thinking along similar lines a few days ago. Here's what I considered...

The WotC site had some articles called Savage Progressions (Here's a sample (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20030912a)). They broke up Lycanthropy into a Template class (2-3 levels) + an animal class. It's pretty obvious that a non-lycanthropy, awakened animal is not LA+2. One could easily argue that just taking the Animal class would give you full benefits with LA+0 (the trade-off is losing class abilities and getting Animal HD and the animal's racial abilities instead).
EldritchEvos
05-05-05, 08:23 AM I played an awakened monkey..with 10 lvls monk and VoP he rocked the house..(and got drunk alot!) :rolleyes:

Edited to say that My DM took the monkey stats and devisied the Stat adjustments himself...and since a monkey had like a fraction of a hitdice I got it with no level adjustment. I rolled my stats like if I made a normal PC.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Callista 04-29-05, 03:39 PM	I've heard of people playing an Awakened animal, and I think it would be kind of cool to try. But I'm not sure how to go about it. First of all, how do I do the stats for, say, an awakened cat? What changes, what doesn't? Would I roll the mental stats normally and without any adjustment, as for a human PC, or do they adjust downwards if I'm not using 3d6 to generate them? What's the level adjustment? I can't see any (of course), since animals are not supposed to be player characters... And how do I take advantage of what the animal has got, and minimize the disadvantages? I'm thinking, with most animal being unable to manipulate things with their paws, that it would be advantageous to do something like a raccoon or monkey... So, yeah, some advice would be needed, before I can figure out if this even works! It would be a very unusual PC, in any event.
Sir Ringe 04-29-05, 04:37 PM	I've played an awakened assassin vine before in a one shot, it was loads of fun :D This is what I did when I created that PC: For stat generation, just use the base animal from MM, and apply the modifiers as per spell description. No LA, just use the use HD from MM, then advance as normal.
Part-Human2 04-30-05, 12:51 AM	Hey, I was just thinking along similar lines a few days ago. Here's what I considered... The WotC site had some articles called Savage Progressions (Here's a sample (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20030912a)). They broke up Lycanthropy into a Template class (2-3 levels) + an animal class. It's pretty obvious that a non-lycanthropy, awakened animal is not LA+2. One could easily argue that just taking the Animal class would give you full benefits with LA+0 (the trade-off is losing class abilities and getting Animal HD and the animal's racial abilities instead).
EldritchEvos 05-05-05, 08:23 AM	I played an awakened monkey..with 10 lvls monk and VoP he rocked the house..(and got drunk alot!) :rolleyes: Edited to say that My DM took the monkey stats and devisied the Stat adjustments himself...and since a monkey had like a fraction of a hitdice I got it with no level adjustment. I rolled my stats like if I made a normal PC.