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View Full Version : Best uses of "Awaken", and lifespans of magical beasties



Waldmarschallin
2018-12-10, 02:02 PM
Awakened animals play a pretty big role in many of my campaigns, campaigns which often have a long time frame. For example, 18 years have passed in game (and 9 out of game) since my current D/D campaign began!

Given how many people have non-humanoid characters/cohorts/companions, we sort of need to establish lifespans for these creatures.

One option in the case of awakened animals is just to look up the average life expectancy of the base animal. Another idea I've been considering is the way the mouse-people were handled in Dahl's "The Witches", namely with a tripled lifespan compared to a mouse because of the mojo that effected the transformation (and cramming a human brain into Mouse neurons takes serious mojo).

Which approach do you think makes the most sense? Leaving an awakened animal with a standard lifespan, or a magically enhanced one of three times the base lifespan, or a human-equivalent one, whichever comes first? Also, do you suppose that two awakened creatures of the same species could have awakened offspring?

Finally, what's the best use of an awakened animal in your history as gamers? My Druid's Dire snake served as acting Prime minister for about two weeks, and currently is Planning Minister.

Geddy2112
2018-12-10, 02:24 PM
I generally just use the average lifespan of the animal. Since the animal is now a character, I factor in the middle age/old age/venerable penalities as well. Since average lifespan is normally a range, I factor in feats, con score, etc to lean towards one or the other. I dislike the idea of awaken adding lifespan to the animal unless they themselves gain such magical abilities through study and such.

Mechanically, I don't see how awaken would transfer to offspring, but I suppose you could rule that being "awakened" does actually cause changes at the genetic level. I still don't see sentience as being linked to longer or shorter life-fantasy races vary greatly in lifespan, with some only hitting their 40's while others can live 1000 years or more.

My group has a gentleman's ban on cohorts and similar things, so nobody has used awaken to make such an ally. I suppose it would be allowed to make an NPC though...Nobody has played one in my group either, but depending on the campaign and DM we would probably allow it. I have always wanted to play Rocket Racoon, as does at least one other player in my group.

The only time I know intelligent animals have seen my table was when I was DM I had an NPC that had two awakened tigers as allies. The party didn't realize they were awakened though.

mucat
2018-12-14, 03:08 AM
Whatever rules you're using might provide some guidance, or at least suggest a range of possibilities.

If it's D&D 3ed, then the creature's type changes from Animal to Magical Beast, which implies that the change goes deeper than just "somehow jamming a sapient brain into that mouse's skull." And a mage's familiar, which is similar but not identical to an awakened animal, is implied to live as long as the mage herself.

In that sort of setting, I would probably let awakened animals live a longer life than their mundane counterparts. Maybe around the geometric mean of the animal's lifespan and a human's. (Which would mean about a year for a mayfly, 15 years for a rat, and about 30-40 years years for a cat or dog.) If the creature would normally outlive a human, leave its lifespan alone. Awakened tortoises and awakened redwood trees should last a long time.

In a setting where awakening is more the province of mad science or alchemy than of magic, I might actually shorten the creature's lifespan due to the stress of overclocking its brain and nervous system. Poor Algernon.

Anonymouswizard
2018-12-15, 06:47 AM
Although it's never come up I do have a standing rule: Awakened animals live their normal lifespans +1d20%, familiars and Animal Companions live as long as their bondmate (+/- 1d10 minutes). The idea for the latter is that the two beings literally share a bond at the soul level, and so their lifespans become linked, but it's mainly to stop campaigns which go on for in-game decades having familiars named 'Dave XXXIV'.

VoxRationis
2018-12-15, 07:17 PM
The best use of awaken is on large clonal colonies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)). A whole geographic region can have sentience all its own.

Beleriphon
2018-12-17, 03:14 PM
In that sort of setting, I would probably let awakened animals live a longer life than their mundane counterparts. Maybe around the geometric mean of the animal's lifespan and a human's. (Which would mean about a year for a mayfly, 15 years for a rat, and about 30-40 years years for a cat or dog.) If the creature would normally outlive a human, leave its lifespan alone. Awakened tortoises and awakened redwood trees should last a long time.

Which is the case in Eberron, the leader of a druid sect is an awakened tree named Olain that was awakened as a sapling. He's already over a thousand years old, but is root in place, but otherwise counts as a 20th level druid.


The best use of awaken is on large clonal colonies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)). A whole geographic region can have sentience all its own.

Kind of like the humungous fungus (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus/), or Pando (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree))?

Kaptin Keen
2018-12-18, 05:23 AM
Mm .. I dunno. Ant queen. It's like the nanotech of fantasy. Right? Of course, are you really sure you want to? It's also like the Tech Singularity of fantasy.

Right?

Maybe just don't use awaken at all. You never know what the end result may be. An ant queen that's awakened could learn to cast awaken.

noob
2018-12-18, 07:25 AM
Mm .. I dunno. Ant queen. It's like the nanotech of fantasy. Right? Of course, are you really sure you want to? It's also like the Tech Singularity of fantasy.

Right?

Maybe just don't use awaken at all. You never know what the end result may be. An ant queen that's awakened could learn to cast awaken.

If the ant queen learns to cast awaken that ant queen would still need one day per casting and to spend tons of xp to make new awakened ants.
And since ants do not live that long it means that queen can not have many awakened ants.

Kaptin Keen
2018-12-18, 09:00 AM
If the ant queen learns to cast awaken that ant queen would still need one day per casting and to spend tons of xp to make new awakened ants.
And since ants do not live that long it means that queen can not have many awakened ants.

She doesn't need any awakened ants - she directly controls a hive full of nano assemblers (ants). And then she can work on making more nano controllers (ant queens). Sure ... she'll need to hurry it up a bit - but a queen can apparently live for up to 30 years.

noob
2018-12-18, 10:36 AM
She doesn't need any awakened ants - she directly controls a hive full of nano assemblers (ants). And then she can work on making more nano controllers (ant queens). Sure ... she'll need to hurry it up a bit - but a queen can apparently live for up to 30 years.

Queens does not have accurate control over worker ants.
So queens can not do that unless awakening a queen make the produced worker ants different but the spell does no indication of such thing.
Unless your table works entirely through the rule of cool it does not works.

Kaptin Keen
2018-12-18, 12:04 PM
Queens does not have accurate control over worker ants.
So queens can not do that unless awakening a queen make the produced worker ants different but the spell does no indication of such thing.
Unless your table works entirely through the rule of cool it does not works.

That's debatable.

Frankly we have no idea what an intelligent being in control of a drone swarm could achieve. It's fantasy. Any RL doubts you have are quite honestly irrelevant.

There's a very definite limit to what information density you could expect future-make-believe-nano-bots to handle ... I see absolutely no reason to believe (fantasy-make-believe-nano-bot) ants cannot grasp the same information density.

So. That's pretty much the end of it. You like the idea of an organic ant nano-bot swarm - or you don't. But keep your real life comparisons out of it.

Edit: I mean ... that sounds way more aggressive than I want it. What I mean is: You're more than welcome to dislike the idea for RL reasons - that discussion just doesn't go anywhere. In fantasy, there are zero limits. If you can accept Awaken, but not this use of it - then, again, that's fine. But your argument just doesn't lead anywhere. There is no conclusion to be reached. It's apples and .. micro processors. They don't mix.

VoxRationis
2018-12-18, 01:24 PM
That's debatable.

Frankly we have no idea what an intelligent being in control of a drone swarm could achieve. It's fantasy. Any RL doubts you have are quite honestly irrelevant.

Circular reasoning. You've put your conclusion (that an awakened ant queen could have direct control over her colony) into your premise ("an intelligent being in control of a drone swarm").


Edit: I mean ... that sounds way more aggressive than I want it. What I mean is: You're more than welcome to dislike the idea for RL reasons - that discussion just doesn't go anywhere. In fantasy, there are zero limits. If you can accept Awaken, but not this use of it - then, again, that's fine. But your argument just doesn't lead anywhere. There is no conclusion to be reached. It's apples and .. micro processors. They don't mix.

There are limits to fantasy, particularly in a game system, and spell descriptions frequently run up against those limits which are not defined in the rest of the book. Awaken modifies an organism to have greater intelligence (and motility, if it didn't have it already). A queen ant is only one animal, and her influence over the actions of the colony is limited, since most of what they do is a result of emergence based on their interactions with each other. The spell description says nothing about changing either of those things, so it's not going to grant the queen precise, immediate, direct control. You'll just end up with a very bored intelligent creature sitting in a hole, wondering what her children are doing up there.

Incidentally, my idea about awakening a clonal colony wouldn't work immediately in 5th edition D&D because the spell has a size limit, though you could cast it on a single tree and then help it to grow into a clonal colony as a sort of druidic magnum opus. 3rd edition has no such limit, however.

Kaptin Keen
2018-12-18, 01:54 PM
Circular reasoning. You've put your conclusion (that an awakened ant queen could have direct control over her colony) into your premise ("an intelligent being in control of a drone swarm").

Are you denying ants are drones? I mean, except for the ones that aren't? Because otherwise, I'm stating an absolute and undeniable fact.

Also, what's your point? I think I just said that any argument based on real life - in a discussion about a magical spell that grants intelligence to animals - isn't going to go anywhere.

VoxRationis
2018-12-18, 03:00 PM
Are you denying ants are drones? I mean, except for the ones that aren't? Because otherwise, I'm stating an absolute and undeniable fact.

Also, what's your point? I think I just said that any argument based on real life - in a discussion about a magical spell that grants intelligence to animals - isn't going to go anywhere.

Firstly, "drone" usually applies, in the context of insects, to male reproductive bees, and certainly does not apply to any of the ants that are relevant to the context of swarming or emergent, pseudo-intelligent behavior. Those are worker ants. Sometimes the larger ones are described as "soldier" ants.

Secondly, I was actually contesting your assertion that the queen was in "control" over the general colony. The queen of any eusocial insect nest exerts only fairly limited influence over the activities undertaken by the nest as a whole, since she cannot directly receive sensory input or issue orders to workers in the field. Certainly, the organized processes of nest building, territory patrolling, and food gathering are not done by her design.

Thirdly, your assertion that real-world facts about ants are in applicable did not go unheard, but it also did not go uncontested. The elements of the situation which do not correspond to the real world are clearly stated already: an entity is casting the awaken spell, which lends magical intelligence to a heretofore nonmagical and ordinary organism. None of those elements have anything to do with how ants function when they are nonmagical and ordinary, which must be assumed to be the same way they function in our world; otherwise, one could assert all sorts of things about them (that they have eight legs instead of six or that they are made from solid pieces of silicate crystal, for instance) based on the logic that the existence of the awaken spell gives you carte blanche to do whatever else you please, until they have essentially nothing to do with ants at all.

LordEntrails
2018-12-18, 03:38 PM
.. and currently is Planning Minister.
Don't you mean Planning Monister?

Anyway, what should the lifespan be? Well, what works best for your story? Sure tripling a mouse lifespan makes sense, after all , they only live about 18 months normally so tripling that to 4.5 years means you can actually have a "long-term" relationship with one.

Tripling a redwood tree lifespan is probably meaningless.

imo, adjusting the lifespans so that they live about as long as the characters is cheapening the experience imo. Let the characters feel the impact of outliving a friend, or perhaps even living through multiple generations of a friend (think Gandalf and the Baggins). "Ah yes, you are so much different than your great grand-sire, she had no sense of humor but was loyal to a fault."

Or, let the characters be the one short human (et al) lifespan. "Impatient you are, just like your father. Always insisting on acting now. What does it matter if we go now or wait until my new leaves emerge this spring? Spring is so much more the time for adventure than just when I am losing all my leaves!"

Kaptin Keen
2018-12-18, 04:13 PM
Firstly, "drone" usually applies

.. to all insects who don't get to participate in the fun process of reproduction. In my language. And you know perfectly well what I mean. But have it your way, we'll call them Joe's.


Secondly, I was actually contesting your assertion that the queen was in "control" over the general colony.

Yes. Very good. Could she do more if sentient? You do not have any idea - but since almost everything works with a sentient mind at the rudder, almost certainly so.

Again, you're perfectly well aware what I mean.


Thirdly, your assertion that real-world facts about ants are in applicable did not go unheard, but it also did not go uncontested.

I'm not having this discussion with you.

I will accept your premise of Awaken, only if you accept mine. So ... there. Either we talk, or we don't. It's absolutely acceptable to me not to talk. There is simply no chance in hell I allow your random invention and then let you disregard mine. That's quite literally that.

VoxRationis
2018-12-19, 01:56 AM
.. to all insects who don't get to participate in the fun process of reproduction. In my language. And you know perfectly well what I mean. But have it your way, we'll call them Joe's.
That's a curious semantic shift between languages, but this website is in English, not Danish (I assume, based on your stated location), so it's not really reasonable to expect me to go by non-English definitions of words.


Yes. Very good. Could she do more if sentient? You do not have any idea - but since almost everything works with a sentient mind at the rudder, almost certainly so.

Again, you're perfectly well aware what I mean.
I am aware of what you mean, and I disagree with it. You assert that I have no idea how much more control a queen ant, if sentient, could exert over her colony, but I have a fairly good idea, because the mechanisms available to her don't really help improve that control. Being intelligent and capable of speech won't help her much, because she can only really act through others, and they're dumb as rocks, acting in largely pre-programmed ways according to a few stimuli produced by others. Moreover, they aren't bringing back detailed information, so her understanding of what action she would even want them to take is going to be limited; she has to personally explore everything she wants to understand. With determination, perhaps she could get them to do something more complicated than they normally would, but it would be a struggle all its own (actually, perhaps an interesting premise for a novel), requiring careful advance planning and enormous amounts of personal effort.


I will accept your premise of Awaken, only if you accept mine. So ... there. Either we talk, or we don't. It's absolutely acceptable to me not to talk. There is simply no chance in hell I allow your random invention and then let you disregard mine. That's quite literally that.
That's not really how concepts work. Whether an idea is viable or an argument valid isn't dependent on the personal history of the people discussing it. If you see an issue with the clonal colony concept, you should point it out regardless of whether I agree with you about the ants.

Kaptin Keen
2018-12-19, 04:08 AM
That's a curious semantic shift between languages, but this website is in English, not Danish (I assume, based on your stated location), so it's not really reasonable to expect me to go by non-English definitions of words.


I am aware of what you mean, and I disagree with it. You assert that I have no idea how much more control a queen ant, if sentient, could exert over her colony, but I have a fairly good idea, because the mechanisms available to her don't really help improve that control. Being intelligent and capable of speech won't help her much, because she can only really act through others, and they're dumb as rocks, acting in largely pre-programmed ways according to a few stimuli produced by others. Moreover, they aren't bringing back detailed information, so her understanding of what action she would even want them to take is going to be limited; she has to personally explore everything she wants to understand. With determination, perhaps she could get them to do something more complicated than they normally would, but it would be a struggle all its own (actually, perhaps an interesting premise for a novel), requiring careful advance planning and enormous amounts of personal effort.


That's not really how concepts work. Whether an idea is viable or an argument valid isn't dependent on the personal history of the people discussing it. If you see an issue with the clonal colony concept, you should point it out regardless of whether I agree with you about the ants.

Conversation ended a couple of posts ago. Thanks for your time and your insights, which I value greatly, of course. And have a wonderful day, merry christmas and happy new year =)

noob
2018-12-19, 05:17 AM
Conversation ended a couple of posts ago. Thanks for your time and your insights, which I value greatly, of course. And have a wonderful day, merry christmas and happy new year =)


Have a wonderful day too.