Dire Eagle will saves

[noce]

Dire Eagle from Races of Stone has 5HD and base saves Fort 4, Ref 4, Will 1.

In the SRD, however, dire animals are said to have three good saves. Under Animal traits:


Good Fortitude and Reflex saves (certain animals have different good saves, for instance dire animals have good Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saves).

Does Dire Eagle count as an exception to the general rule?
Or is it just a mistake and it should have three good saves as every other dire animal, as described in the SRD?

[Fizban]

I'm pretty sure there's a line somewhere that mentions stuff like that, and says that if a specific monster is breaking a general rule for monsters of it's type, it's still a specific monster so that's how it works.

That said, I highly doubt anyone was making a point of giving Dire Eagles low will saves- I'd be all but certain they were working off memory of what Animal base saves are, forgetting that the Dire variants are supposed to have all good saves so there's at least some reason to mark them out.

[BowStreetRunner]

The Dire Animal entry on page 74 of MM2 states "A dire animal has all good saves." So there's that.

[Seharvepernfan]

Pretty sure it was a mistake. I see lots of skill bonus mistakes on monsters, personally.

[Fizban]

Just trying to reverse engineer animals to figure out where their skill points are results in almost every animal having either undocumented racial bonuses or missing skill points. This is not surprising, as 3.0 animals were written to just have whatever they wanted (3.0 monsters used different feat and skill progressions), and attempts to update and then errata them would absolutely miss all sorts of things depending on what point they started at and what the goal was.

[noce]

Thank you all.
I asked this question to my DM and fellow players, and we all agree it was a mistake, so I'll enjoy my dire eagle animal companion with high will saves.

[Thurbane]

Yeah, stat blocks are notoriously fraught with error: animal stat-block doubly so.

You have two options: take the stat block "as is"; or recalculate them using RAW.

Glad your DM let you take the more favourable ruling. :smallsmile: