E6 builds for awakened animals (ideas?)

[veven]

In my E6 campaign there is an artifact that can cast awaken 1/month. My players don't know about it yet but someone has been running around awakening random creatures. They've already met Avery the awakened wolf Wolf-Totem, Whirling Frenzy barbarian. I want to have them encounter a few more awakened animals on their travels, hopefully it will pique their interest and be a fun little mystery to solve.

Anyways, I come to the playground looking for build ideas for awakened animals when limited to only 6 levels and a bucket of feats. The main thing is you really only get 3 or less levels to play with because you have to deal with 3 or more crappy racial hit dice (assuming a fractional die counts as one). The animals need not be amazingly optimized but it would be nice if they didn't suck. I wan't them all to be unique and i know the playground is full of amazing ideas.

My players were in love when they saw Avery use spring-attack guerrilla warfare in a heavily forested area to kill two enemy soldiers. Running in and out of bushes tripping both (yay whirling frenzy!) and getting extra attacks on both. They didn't get to even hit him because he has Karmic Strike and would trip them before they could.

Some animals I might be interested in having as NPC's include rats, cats, birds, lizards, Ferrets (Ferret swashbuckler = adorable), and maybe a badger or something. I am open to any suggestions (have a good 1 level dip for a flesh raker? :P)

Thanks for the help!

[Coidzor]

So are you stripping off the RHD for awakened animals or what? Because an awakened wolf only has 2 levels to take in E6. Kinda boring in terms of room, though, of course, you could use feats to make it better at incarnum than a soulborn.

[RaginChangeling]

Warlock Ravens are fun, 2d6 Eldritch Blast at 250 feet and Shatter at will is just nifty.

Rats with some Swordsage levels can use Tiger Claw maneuvers and things like Underfoot Fighting and Confound the Big Folk to eviscerate things larger than them.

Bard is useful for some birds to grant bonuses by their singing.

If anything has two spare levels, you can graft Totemist onto it for some fun soulmelds. Or just use feats to give them some of the better Incarnate ones.

Anything with one spare level and a melee focus wants Pounce Barbarian or Warblade.

Uh, a Monkey Binder would be really cool. Low level vestiges tend to require hands to make use of their abilities and having a Monkey running around in Full Plate is a hilarious mental image. Or, more seriously, using Paimon and Shadow Blade to cut fools if you have 4 feats to burn.

Making some Spellcasters and Dragonfire Adepts out of the Lizards sounds fun as well.

[veven]

So are you stripping off the RHD for awakened animals or what? Because an awakened wolf only has 2 levels to take in E6. Kinda boring in terms of room, though, of course, you could use feats to make it better at incarnum than a soulborn.

No I leaving the RHD. I don't want to break any rules if my players are not going to be. This is the main reason i came here for help, I don't have a long of room to work with. The wolf is only a level 2 barbarian (enough for whirling frenzy and improved trip). Most of the abilities will probably come from feats.

[RaginChangeling]

No I leaving the RHD. I don't want to break any rules if my players are not going to be. This is the main reason i came here for help, I don't have a long of room to work with. The wolf is only a level 2 barbarian (enough for whirling frenzy and improved trip). Most of the abilities will probably come from feats.

Remember if they only have part of 1 hit die, they only get 2 hit dice total from Awaken. So Rats, Birds, Toads, Lizards etc. will get 4 class levels and more useful features.

Like animal companions!

[Coidzor]

No I leaving the RHD. I don't want to break any rules if my players are not going to be. This is the main reason i came here for help, I don't have a long of room to work with. The wolf is only a level 2 barbarian (enough for whirling frenzy and improved trip). Most of the abilities will probably come from feats.

Well, they shouldn't really be having free access to Awaken which is an awkward, messy corner case anyway since there's no actual rules for making awakened animals into characters. I'm assuming you're going with the 0 LA interpretation.

Maybe homebrew up a feat that lets one turn one RHD into an actual class level.

[veven]

Remember if they only have part of 1 hit die, they only get 2 hit dice total from Awaken. So Rats, Birds, Toads, Lizards etc. will get 4 class levels and more useful features.

Like animal companions!

Really? So the fraction HD just goes away and I have 4 levels to play with? that's awesome!


Well, they shouldn't really be having free access to Awaken which is an awkward, messy corner case anyway since there's no actual rules for making awakened animals into characters. I'm assuming you're going with the 0 LA interpretation.

Maybe homebrew up a feat that lets one turn one RHD into an actual class level.

They players don't have free access to Awaken. Some random dude running around in the wild does. Also, they player's are normal races. These awakened creatures are simply NPC's so LA is really not important to me.

[Coidzor]

They players don't have free access to Awaken. Some random dude running around in the wild does. Also, they player's are normal races. These awakened creatures are simply NPC's so LA is really not important to me.

Then RHD doesn't really need to be either. And if the players aren't playing as awakened animals or awakening animals themselves it's not something where you have to play by the same rules as them because they have no ability to start playing around in that area, thus leaving it entirely within your purview as DM.

[veven]

Then RHD doesn't really need to be either. And if the players aren't playing as awakened animals or awakening animals themselves it's not something where you have to play by the same rules as them because they have no ability to start playing around in that area, thus leaving it entirely within your purview as DM.

Right. Usually, unless there is absolutely no way around something, I try to play by the same rules as my players do. I not saying we don't have a lot of house rules and use home brew stuff, but I like the playing field to be somewhat level. Not the DM Wizard VS the PC Monks.

[Coidzor]

For the least crippled by RHD creatures, reach is generally going to be an issue unless they're just straight-up warlocks as was mentioned or the totemist's manticore belt is accessible with Totemist 4 + Incarnum Feats.

Although I guess you could give them aberrant features to give them +5' of reach so they'd have a base 5' of reach... or have them willingly deform themselves to make up for this disadvantage. Just a set of your choice of 2 feat paths to grab 'em.

As had been mentioned, pouncing barbarian on non-pouncing critters is generally the single most worthwhile thing that they can get if they only have 1-2 levels, and since it's E6 you can work around with adding on Incarnum to them via feats, which is probably the most potent melee combo.

You limiting yourself to keeping the feats of the base creature or picking all of their feats?

And what level of bonus feats past 6th level are you generally thinking of keeping to with them?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

There should be an awakened donkey and an awakened cat with swashbuckler levels, who have made friends with an ogre....

[Dusk Eclipse]

There should be an awakened donkey and an awakened cat with swashbuckler levels, who have made friends with an ogre....

http://www.google.com.mx/imgres?imgurl=http://files.sharenator.com/fry_see_what_you_did_there1_RE_You_see_any_differe nce-s600x731-85949.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.sharenator.com/You_see_any_difference/148856/fry_see_what_you_did_there1-85949.html&h=731&w=600&sz=35&tbnid=9ntoN3GH9nEYuM:&tbnh=141&tbnw=116&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dfry%2Bi%2Bsee%2Bwhat%2Byou%2Bdid%2Bth ere%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=fry+i+see+what+you+did+there&usg=__4xzs-zbWqVFL7wdMJ7zuTXQdhxo=&sa=X&ei=5iHHTdfwDoPAsAP52o3rAQ&ved=0CDwQ9QEwBw

[0Megabyte]

So, assuming these creatures aren't PC characters, why should the racial hit die matter? It isn't like giving them six class levels is a problem. It's the class features that are to be limited in E6. There's no hit die cap for npcs and monsters. Or else even a CR 10 dragon would be out of the question.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

So, assuming these creatures aren't PC characters, why should the racial hit die matter? It isn't like giving them six class levels is a problem. It's the class features that are to be limited in E6. There's no hit die cap for npcs and monsters. Or else even a CR 10 dragon would be out of the question.

Not exactly. There's a hard cap of 6 HD for anything with any class levels in E6. For creatures with no class levels, just racial HD, they can exceed the 6 HD limit, but once they hit 6+ racial HD they cannot ever gain any class levels. Once something takes a class level it cannot gain additional racial HD in excess of the 6 HD limit. For example, a Centaur could only gain two class levels; a Hydra is fine as long as it has nothing but racial HD. A Wyrmling Dragon could take a level in Sorcerer, but after that point its racial HD plus class levels could never exceed six.

[0Megabyte]

I never saw that rule. Silly, as it limits creatures that should be more powerful than humans. I can see capping things like a dragon's magic, but this seems to really limit a lot of races. Gnolls can't ever reach sixth level? Silly, if you ask me.

[Coidzor]

A Wyrmling Dragon could take a level in Sorcerer, but after that point its racial HD plus class levels could never exceed six.

...That's a rule? Wow. So do they just become immortal because they can't age? Or do they become larger dragons but never have their HD go up?

[veven]

You limiting yourself to keeping the feats of the base creature or picking all of their feats?

And what level of bonus feats past 6th level are you generally thinking of keeping to with them?

I've only actually rolled one of them so far and I chose the feats (I don't really need weapon focus: bite). As far as the level of bonus feats goes, I just sort of kept slapping on feats until I felt the creature was done. I think the wolf has about 5 epic feats.

[Gullintanni]

...That's a rule? Wow. So do they just become immortal because they can't age? Or do they become larger dragons but never have their HD go up?

E6 refluffs Dragons a bit, IIRC. Colossal Great Wyrm dragons are abnormalities, rather than the result of an age based progression. Most dragons peak at a certain level and continued aging doesn't yield any greater benefit. In E6, a party should never expect to see, much less encounter in combat, a dragon of a size greater than Large...and so an ancient dragon would be no more dangerous than a young dragon; except in cases such as Bahamut and his seven dragon attendants...advanced age categories might qualify a dragon for additional feats though, despite a lack of size progression.

[true_shinken]

Well, they shouldn't really be having free access to Awaken which is an awkward, messy corner case anyway since there's no actual rules for making awakened animals into characters. I'm assuming you're going with the 0 LA interpretation.
NPCs don't have ECL or LA.

[the clumsy bard]

Monkey paladin.

I repeat.

Monkey paladin.