Enran
2015-09-17, 03:23 PM
A Treant has the Animate Trees abilities, which notes some qualifiers and then says that it works in all other ways as the Liveoak spell, a Druid spell which animates trees.
But Liveoak says that the animated trees have stats identical to Treants without any additional qualifiers, so aside from the qualifiers on the Treant's own ability (which as far as I can tell don't do anything except reduce the creature's speed to 10 ft., since they would already be vulnerable to fire and fight as Treants) there really aren't any limiting factors on the animated trees...
Including whether or not they can go on to animate their own trees.
Sure, it takes a full-round action for the trees to animate, though note that the ability is targeted at-will, so the Treant can animate two trees simultaneously. Those trees, after uprooting themselves, animate two more each...
And within a single minute, there are 1+2+4+8+16+32+64+128+256+512+1024=2047 Treants, assuming there are at least that many trees in the forest and they're animated in a sensible order (yes, just sensible, we don't need to assume that the Treants are mathematically charting out their animation path in any perfect way, just that the main Treant starts in the middle and they don't all push the animation in one direction). This continues to grow exponentially if they decide to keep going, mind you. As long as they move cohesively from that point on (not hard, since they just have to stay within 180 feet of their creators and all of them except the main one only move 10 feet in a round) they'll pretty much be a whole Treant army raised in a minute or so through the starting power of a single Treant.
The obvious question would be how Treants haven't taken over the world, but they're Usually Neutral Good so that kind of answers itself. On the other hand, it does quickly become relevant to question how any large-scale Evil threatens a world, because it would pretty quickly be opposed by Treant armies composed of whole forests.
What are you guys' thoughts on this? Are the dwarves right, are we underestimating the power of the trees?
But Liveoak says that the animated trees have stats identical to Treants without any additional qualifiers, so aside from the qualifiers on the Treant's own ability (which as far as I can tell don't do anything except reduce the creature's speed to 10 ft., since they would already be vulnerable to fire and fight as Treants) there really aren't any limiting factors on the animated trees...
Including whether or not they can go on to animate their own trees.
Sure, it takes a full-round action for the trees to animate, though note that the ability is targeted at-will, so the Treant can animate two trees simultaneously. Those trees, after uprooting themselves, animate two more each...
And within a single minute, there are 1+2+4+8+16+32+64+128+256+512+1024=2047 Treants, assuming there are at least that many trees in the forest and they're animated in a sensible order (yes, just sensible, we don't need to assume that the Treants are mathematically charting out their animation path in any perfect way, just that the main Treant starts in the middle and they don't all push the animation in one direction). This continues to grow exponentially if they decide to keep going, mind you. As long as they move cohesively from that point on (not hard, since they just have to stay within 180 feet of their creators and all of them except the main one only move 10 feet in a round) they'll pretty much be a whole Treant army raised in a minute or so through the starting power of a single Treant.
The obvious question would be how Treants haven't taken over the world, but they're Usually Neutral Good so that kind of answers itself. On the other hand, it does quickly become relevant to question how any large-scale Evil threatens a world, because it would pretty quickly be opposed by Treant armies composed of whole forests.
What are you guys' thoughts on this? Are the dwarves right, are we underestimating the power of the trees?