Post/Author/DateTime	Post
tristevoix 08-17-04, 04:26 AM	Oy! I didn't anything like this, so I thought I'd make up one. I just need to know if it holds up ok. Obviously, it's based on the spell. In short, the details are the following: The template can be applied to animals. They become intelligent creatures and change their type to magical beast. These creatures tend to look like their standard counterparts, but their intelligence sets them appart and there is an air of grandeur to them. Basically, a hunter could see the difference just by stalking one. The animal keeps everything it has and gains the following: changes HD to d10, +4 Int, +4 Cha, Alertness (feat), darkvision 60', and some sort of primitive language to allow communication between similar creatures (like Monkey Babbling or Hisses and Signs). CR adjustment would be +1. All in all, this would turn a typical animal into a smart beastie and then one can start applying ranger levels, so that you end up with that speaking white lion I used to watch on TV, or you add another template that requires higher intelligence (yeah, well...). Short and simple, but does it sound fair? Thanks!
Conaill 08-18-04, 04:22 AM	Hi Tristevoix! You may want to have a look at the Awakened Animals thread in my sig. It's got exactly what you want: and Awakened template. The main goal of the thread was to clarify exactly how the Awaken spell is supposed to work, but i figured the clearest way to do that was to write it out explicitly as a template, because that forces you to consider things like Save progression, etc. Like you, I figured the Awaken template is worth about a +1 CR. The (much) harder part however is figuring out the Level Adjustment for awakened animals. Essentially, you need to work them out on a case-by-case basis, because WotC never assigned any LA's to the base animals (they're NOT LA: 0, they're LA: --, meaning "we never bothered to figure it out, because we never though anyone would need it...")
tristevoix 08-18-04, 12:31 PM	Thanks! I'll have a look right away!