daryen
2014-12-19, 04:27 PM
The Awaken Druid spell seems to open a whole lot of doors to weird shenanigans. I have two general questions and one specific question:
1) The whole plant use is wildly non-specific. Sometimes it refers to "plants", but also specifically mentions "trees". Can it be used on plants other than trees? Also, when converting, what should the resultant stats even look like? With animals, it gives pretty specific guidelines, but with plants it is totally open outside rolling for the "intellect" scores. I figure the intention is to use treants as the baseline (without their special abilities, of course), and then scale up or down depending on the size of the plant. Does that sound reasonable?
2) How do these things reproduce? Let's take a simple example: Awaken a wolf. It is now a magical beast with human level intelligence. Suppose it mates with a normal wolf. What is the pup? I assume normal, but is there any guidance anywhere? More interesting example: Awaken *two* wolves (one male and one female). Have them mate. What is their pup? I would say since both are magical beast wolves with human level intelligence, the pup should also be a magical beast wolf with human level intelligence. But, if you do that, you have effectively created a whole new *species*. Is that the intention?
Back to plants. Let's assume we awaken multiple otherwise similar plants (e.g. all the same type of oak trees), and they reproduce with each other. Will that result in new magical intelligent oak Plant creatures? Again, this is effectively creating a whole new species. And, with the plants, they are *way* more versatile than the animals. (Animals are stuck with their forms. An awakened wolf is still the shape of a wolf with the same physical capabilities. Awakened plants specifically are given human-level capabilities. E.g. an awakened wolf has no hands; an awakened tree specific *does*. That means it can physically do anything a human can.)
Yes, I know it would take some significant "down time" and experience points to do this. So what? This seems far more useful and productive than making a magical sword or something. This allows you to build a whole magical species (that is basically genetically disposed to *like* you automatically). That sounds extremely powerful and awesome.
3) What would you rule if a druid tries to awaken a dryad's tree? A dryad's #1 problem is that they are anchored to their immobile tree. Awaken that tree and now the dryad is no longer anchored to an immobile object *and* they get a super powerful ally to boot. If the dryad *is* the druid doing the awakening, then the resultant intelligent tree is compelled to basically serve the dryad.
Or do you all just ban the spell?
1) The whole plant use is wildly non-specific. Sometimes it refers to "plants", but also specifically mentions "trees". Can it be used on plants other than trees? Also, when converting, what should the resultant stats even look like? With animals, it gives pretty specific guidelines, but with plants it is totally open outside rolling for the "intellect" scores. I figure the intention is to use treants as the baseline (without their special abilities, of course), and then scale up or down depending on the size of the plant. Does that sound reasonable?
2) How do these things reproduce? Let's take a simple example: Awaken a wolf. It is now a magical beast with human level intelligence. Suppose it mates with a normal wolf. What is the pup? I assume normal, but is there any guidance anywhere? More interesting example: Awaken *two* wolves (one male and one female). Have them mate. What is their pup? I would say since both are magical beast wolves with human level intelligence, the pup should also be a magical beast wolf with human level intelligence. But, if you do that, you have effectively created a whole new *species*. Is that the intention?
Back to plants. Let's assume we awaken multiple otherwise similar plants (e.g. all the same type of oak trees), and they reproduce with each other. Will that result in new magical intelligent oak Plant creatures? Again, this is effectively creating a whole new species. And, with the plants, they are *way* more versatile than the animals. (Animals are stuck with their forms. An awakened wolf is still the shape of a wolf with the same physical capabilities. Awakened plants specifically are given human-level capabilities. E.g. an awakened wolf has no hands; an awakened tree specific *does*. That means it can physically do anything a human can.)
Yes, I know it would take some significant "down time" and experience points to do this. So what? This seems far more useful and productive than making a magical sword or something. This allows you to build a whole magical species (that is basically genetically disposed to *like* you automatically). That sounds extremely powerful and awesome.
3) What would you rule if a druid tries to awaken a dryad's tree? A dryad's #1 problem is that they are anchored to their immobile tree. Awaken that tree and now the dryad is no longer anchored to an immobile object *and* they get a super powerful ally to boot. If the dryad *is* the druid doing the awakening, then the resultant intelligent tree is compelled to basically serve the dryad.
Or do you all just ban the spell?