Awakend animals? help! need help asap(3.5)

[Froogleyboy]

could someone tell me how to play an awakend animal crunch wise. Is it even possible? what racial adjustments would they have. what about LA?

[monty]

Savage Species has rules for playing anthropomorphic animals. As for awakened animals, I don't know that there are any official rules for playing them as characters, but the details of determining their abilities are in the Awaken (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/awaken.htm) spell.

[Froogleyboy]

well when i asked ppl's fave race some1 said awakend cat

[Chronos]

They don't have any LA, but they do have at least two racial hit dice (and really bad ones, at that), which hurts nearly as much. Even though an awakened animal is a magical beast, they have the augmented animal subtype, which means that their BAB, skills, etc. for those HD are as animals, not as magical beasts, which means only 3/4 BAB (so they're not too great as warrior-types), and of course anything that isn't caster levels hurts a spellcaster.

[Blackfang108]

could someone tell me how to play an awakend animal crunch wise. Is it even possible? what racial adjustments would they have. what about LA?

I believe most animals don't have LA, as the (for the most part) Lack of ability to open doors, use Magical Items, etc, tends to compensate for the bonuses.

for Racial Adjustments: Look up the animal's ability scores.

Animals use the a base array of 11/11/11/10/10/10

So subtract 11 from the odd numbers, and 10 from the even numbers.

Ex: Wolf

Scores: 13/15/15/2/12/6

So, STR +2, Dex +4, Con +4, Wis +2, Cha -4.

Remember, you roll 3d6 for an Awakened animals Int, and you add 1d3 to an awakened animal's Cha.

the Awakened Wolf would have effective base stats of a level 4 Wolf, 4HD, BAB +4(Full), saves (Fort and Reflex +4 = Good, Will +1(Poor)), abilities as above, +1 to one ability for having 4hd, +2 Natural Armor, A bite attack damage 1d6+STR

Also: Track as a bonus Feat, and 2 feats of your choice for the 4 HD from the Race.

Also, the 4 HD are d8s.
Not as terrible as some people say, but not great either. (Could be worse. could be d4.)

Also, you have Scent and Low Light Vision.

[Fhaolan]

could someone tell me how to play an awakend animal crunch wise. Is it even possible? what racial adjustments would they have. what about LA?

As far as I am aware, there isn't a write up anywhere for playing an awakened animal as a PC. However, there is a 3rd-party book for playing animals that happen to be intelligent called The Noble Wild (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=54699) I tend to use this as a basis for creating my own houserules when this topic comes up. There are sections of this book that I haven't playtested myself, but I've not had any problems with the character generation bits yet in the games I've DM'ed.

[newbDM]

I have played a awakened telepath cat. It was one of my two favorite characters of all times, and to this day still makes cameo appearances in my homebrewed setting.

I have also recently stated up an awaken bear as a backup character.


What you need to account for when making an awakened animal is the creatures Racial HD, and the +2 Racial HD it receives from the spell.

Although for normal races you are supposed to subtract 10 from all the creatures, and the result is their racial modifier, I find this works terribly for animals. Instead I find simply using the animals stats as written, and then add the changes made by the awakened spell.

As for an LA, the spell sadly does not list one. I highly suggest asking the DM to sit down with you for a bit, so you both can go over the abilities and such of the animal you want to play, and have him/her set an LA. I have found that some animals do not need one, since the Racial HD balance it out well. However, some animals clearly would.

[Chronos]

Quoth Blackfang108:
the Awakened Wolf would have effective base stats of a level 4 Wolf, 4HD, BAB +4(Full), saves (Fort and Reflex +4 = Good, Will +1(Poor)), abilities as above, +1 to one ability for having 4hd, +2 Natural Armor, A bite attack damage 1d6+STRNo, only 3 BAB. An awakened (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/awaken.htm) animal has the type "Magical beast (augmented animal), and the augmented (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#augmentedSubtype) subtype
has the traits of its current type, but the features of its original type. The features of the animal (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#animalType) type include
# 8-sided Hit Dice.
# Base attack bonus equal to ¾ total Hit Dice (as cleric).On the other hand, you do get the traits of the magical beast (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#magicalBeastType) type, which include darkvision instead of just low-light vision.

Quoth newbDM:
I have found that some animals do not need one [LA], since the Racial HD balance it out well. However, some animals clearly would. What animal would need an LA? Animals mostly don't have any really special abilities, just what they gain from HD (more BAB, more HP, etc.). So the most powerful animal types would also be the ones hit hardest by those RHD.

[Salt_Crow]

Based on Tibbit race from Dragon Compendium, an Awakened Cat could be handled as a Tibbit that can't revert back to humanoid form or something- so LA +0.

[newbDM]

Quoth newbDM:What animal would need an LA? Animals mostly don't have any really special abilities, just what they gain from HD (more BAB, more HP, etc.). So the most powerful animal types would also be the ones hit hardest by those RHD.


Well, I imagine the brown bear would. It is large size, and pretty deadly. From what I understand large size alone requires a minimum of LA+1.

[highkaizer]

Well, I imagine the brown bear would. It is large size, and pretty deadly. From what I understand large size alone requires a minimum of LA+1.

I have an Anthropomorphic bear character, his level adjustment is +1 for being Large sized. Also, I can confirm that he's quite deadly.

[Stephen_E]

for Racial Adjustments: Look up the animal's ability scores.

Animals use the a base array of 11/11/11/10/10/10

So subtract 11 from the odd numbers, and 10 from the even numbers.

Ex: Wolf

Scores: 13/15/15/2/12/6

So, STR +2, Dex +4, Con +4, Wis +2, Cha -4.

Remember, you roll 3d6 for an Awakened animals Int, and you add 1d3 to an awakened animal's Cha.

the Awakened Wolf would have effective base stats of a level 4 Wolf, 4HD, BAB +4(Full), saves (Fort and Reflex +4 = Good, Will +1(Poor)), abilities as above, +1 to one ability for having 4hd, +2 Natural Armor, A bite attack damage 1d6+STR

Also: Track as a bonus Feat, and 2 feats of your choice for the 4 HD from the Race.

Also, the 4 HD are d8s.
Not as terrible as some people say, but not great either. (Could be worse. could be d4.)

Also, you have Scent and Low Light Vision.

AS has been mentioned you have the Magical Beast abilities as well, so Night Vision as well as Low Light (which is better depends on the situation).

Re: Stats.
As mentioned you calculate the racial mods for Str, Con, Dex, Wis and Char.
Int is +0, as indicated by the 3d6 for a NPC Awakened Animal, and add 1d3 to Charisma after stats have been allocated/brought (depending on what system you use for Char Gen).

As for LA, given that they get no iterative attacks, and that size is a situationally advantageous/disadvantageous (the passage is 5' wide, what is your large PC going to do?) any advantage is likely to be temporary, much as the Warforged is worth a LA +1for the 1st 4-5 levels, but not after that. If you are going to give a LA mod I would make it no more than +1 and allow level buy-off (see SRD).

Remember some animals get 3 strong saves, primarily Dire Animals.

Decide how you're going to handle unarmed attacks. This is the one way of getting iterative attacks, and a Monk Awakened Animal with Multiattack is potentially very powerful and very cartoonish. If you don't want KungFu Wolf/Bear/Tiger I suggest you outlaw Imp Unarmed for animals and create a feat called "Improved Natural Fighting" which replaces it and allows the creature to get iterative attacks with it's main attack (note singular, if it has 3 attacks it only get interative attacks with one of those).

Have fun.

Stephen E

[Chronos]

Well, I imagine the brown bear would. It is large size, and pretty deadly. From what I understand large size alone requires a minimum of LA+1.Well, first of all, you'd be stuck with 8 HD that only give 6 BAB, which by itself is almost like LA 2 for a melee character (which I assume an awakened bear would be), and second, the big advantage of large size is increased reach, but a bear (being a quadruped) still only has 5' reach. And you're missing out on at least 4 feats (if you had filled those levels with Fighter instead), or some other appropriate class features. Plus, ECL 8 is starting to get to the point where melee types are starting to fall behind anyway, and you'll be seriously restricted in your gear.

On the other hand, Str +16, Dex +2, and Con +8 are pretty good mods for a warrior. I still don't think it's enough to justify an LA, but it might be enough to make it viable.

[tyckspoon]

Well, I imagine the brown bear would. It is large size, and pretty deadly. From what I understand large size alone requires a minimum of LA+1.

Large size is a strong point toward having LA in the absence of other mitigating factors. An Awakened Brown Bear would be stuck with 8 Animal HD before it gets to start taking real class levels at all, which is roughly approximate to taking 8 levels of Cleric without getting spells. It is also noteworthy that a lot of the advantage of being Large is having natural extended reach, which the Brown Bear doesn't get. That said, the game's original designers probably would still give it an LA- compare it to the Minotaur, which has +2 LA on top of its 6 RHD..

But really, the game's original designers slap LAs on all sorts of things that really don't deserve them. Just compare the value of being any particular sort of animal to the value of being a normal race with the equivalent class levels: Is an Awakened Brown Bear better than an Orc Barbarian 8 (base strength 22, Rage to 26)? How about.. oh, a Dwarf Psychic Warrior 8, which can use powers to do almost everything the Brown Bear does and more? I don't think so, so the Brown Bear doesn't need any extra LA.