Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Sarlax 08-15-05, 10:56 PM	The Awaken spell grants the target animal or tree 3d6 Intelligence. With increased intelligence, animals become able to gain more skill points while trees can gain skills and make take feats. Two questions follow from this. First, is the skill potential retroactive? That is, does the animal gain extra skill points immediately or must it first gain hit dice to benefit? I'm inclined to the latter because it follows the PC rules for increasing intelligence and gaining skills. However, I see a possible argument that the gains are retroactive if the awakened animal has a mind that is "brand new" and entirely different from the original. Second, the tree should gain its skill points (and feats) immediately since it didn't have any before. You're changing it from an object to a creature. But how much control does the caster have over the awakened tree's skill and feat selection? Every time he casts, can he come up with a new list of feats, or should there be some guidelines for which feats the awakened tree gains?
runestar 08-15-05, 11:47 PM	Normally, it is non-retroactive, but sometimes, when calculating the total sk of a character, I tend to fudge a little and just multiply the lv and int bonus together, instead of counting lv by lv, to speed things up. Assuming the discrepancy is not too great, my dm tends to close one eye regarding such things. No guideline that I am aware of whatsoever, but I feel that the dm will ultimately be in charge of determining the feat/skills, not the caster.