Awakened Shrub Uses

[carrdrivesyou]

So my wizard found a pot that if you plant something in it, after a month, it will break the pot and create an awakened Shrub that is friendly towards me. I'm level 5 and a scribes wizard.
What can I do with this other than have a slightly odd friend at camp?

[ftafp]

So my wizard found a pot that if you plant something in it, after a month, it will break the pot and create an awakened Shrub that is friendly towards me. I'm level 5 and a scribes wizard.
What can I do with this other than have a slightly odd friend at camp?

Unless your DM agrees to let it be a spellcaster sidekick (healer would be best) you're not going to find many uses for it as anything other than a errand shrub. Those things are fragile enough that you can't bring them into battle and with no proficiencies you can't really use them for downtime either

[Unoriginal]

Unless your DM agrees to let it be a spellcaster sidekick (healer would be best) you're not going to find many uses for it as anything other than a errand shrub. Those things are fragile enough that you can't bring them into battle and with no proficiencies you can't really use them for downtime either

Warrior or Expert Sidekick would take care of the 'fragile' and 'no proficiencies' parts.

[quindraco]

So my wizard found a pot that if you plant something in it, after a month, it will break the pot and create an awakened Shrub that is friendly towards me. I'm level 5 and a scribes wizard.
What can I do with this other than have a slightly odd friend at camp?

Unless your DM declares otherwise - and I've had DMs declare otherwise - the shrub should be literate, as all 5E creatures are assumed to be unless stated otherwise. That means you can use it as a personal scribe, if you want to e.g. write a letter and have copies of it made.

But the shrubs are much more useful to an artificer, who can amass an arbitrarily large army of shrubs. One shrub by itself can't do much.

If your DM allows the Xanathar's training rules, having it pick up language or tool proficiencies would make it instantly useful. A shrub with proficiency in cook's utensils would be super neat, and one with proficiency in woodcarver's tools would be incredibly dark.

[Dork_Forge]

Unless you want it to die very quickly, probably not much. Treat it as an assistant/squire and just have fun with it imo.

[KorvinStarmast]

Get a second one, and then create a path with a nice two level effect.
Ni!

[Brookshw]

Unless your DM declares otherwise - and I've had DMs declare otherwise - the shrub should be literate, as all 5E creatures are assumed to be unless stated otherwise. That means you can use it as a personal scribe, if you want to e.g. write a letter and have copies of it made.


I kind of like the idea of it thinking it's literate, but everything it writes for you is just a picture of a shrub as drawn by a 3 year old.

[TaiLiu]

I kind of like the idea of it thinking it's literate, but everything it writes for you is just a picture of a shrub as drawn by a 3 year old.
https://i.ibb.co/fqgmp8p/4-AB0-BAC2-4-D93-410-E-B128-75-CBCC879-B2-E.jpg (https://imgbb.com/)

[da newt]

With INT 10 and WIS 10 it's smarter than many adventurers.

You can think of it as a Familiar as it can take all of the actions that they can - the only down side is it cannot be resummoned, so it's sorta one time use ...

They can scout pretty well - its just a shrub.

They make decent sentries (perception is a little low, but who tries to sneak past a shrub).

They are small so they can ride medium folks and make a nice umbrella.

They can act as a shield (once).

With the dash action, they can move 40' per round.

Maybe it's a blueberry or tea or coffee plant or nightshade or poison oak (that stuff is the worst) ...

[Nerdguy88]

When I played a Spy(Artificer) I had a number of awakened shrubs. While they don't do much on their own and are weak in combat they make perfect spies. The have False Appearance which makes them look exactly like a normal shrub while they stand still. Have them post up around well traveled establishments and come back if they hear anything juicy. They have an intelligence and wisdom of 10 which puts them on par with your average adult in D&D and can speak. On top of that they can do pretty much anything a normal sentient creature in D&D can do.

If your DM allows there are downtime rules for learning skills and gaining proficiencies. Provided you spend any costs and have the downtime I personally see no issue with teaching your intelligent shrubs new fun skills.

If you are playing a high level spy artificer you might also start making common and uncommon magic items for your shrubs since all creatures can attune to magic items. Those shrubs look much scarier with 19 str, 19 con, and a wand of magic missile or two. How about a helm of telepathy? Bushes stationed around town casting detect though reading surface thoughts all over town by day then coming back to you at night to let you know all the town secrets.

In short the sky is the limit with what you can do with them. They are weak so an army of them will still be terrible in combat but get creative. They are fantastic.

[Thunderous Mojo]

What can I do with this other than have a slightly odd friend at camp?

Smoke it !
Cannabis nosce te ipsum...(sorry funky Latin)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_in_Smoke

"Awakened Pots" provide too much fodder for jokes🃏

[ftafp]

Warrior or Expert Sidekick would take care of the 'fragile' and 'no proficiencies' parts.

not really. Even with sidekick levels an awakened shrub would still be fragile in combat and incapable of fighting. The reason I specified the spellcaster sidekick is that the healer subclass has access to the druid spell list and thus doesn't really need a good wisdom to function. Spells like goodberry, aid, pass without trace, conjure animals and plant growth are great contributions to any party and are flavorful as well

[Havlock]

Get a second one, and then create a path with a nice two level effect.
Ni!

Well done sir, well done

[Mitchellnotes]

not really. Even with sidekick levels an awakened shrub would still be fragile in combat and incapable of fighting. The reason I specified the spellcaster sidekick is that the healer subclass has access to the druid spell list and thus doesn't really need a good wisdom to function. Spells like goodberry, aid, pass without trace, conjure animals and plant growth are great contributions to any party and are flavorful as well

Wait... if an awakened shrub is in an area.. can it plant growth itself??

[Sigreid]

I have an artificer that I intend to create some to be helpers/stewards of his home.

[Temperjoke]

As living plants, do Awakened Shrubs need to sleep? If not, then guess who gets permanent watch duty?

[Corvino]

I have an Ancients Paladin with an Artificer in the party. I am planning to ask for a couple of Pots of Awakening when we hit level 10. They'd make very good caretakers of a Sacred Grove or similar, and we'll see what my DM makes of casting Plant Growth on them. Maybe I'll get a couple of Awakened Trees out of it!

[Damon_Tor]

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?603748-2-years-of-downtime-Pot-of-Awakening-Infusions-Business-Empire

Long story short, what began as a thought experiment about using awakened shrubs to generate wealth during an excessive between-campaigns downtime period became a really wonderful part of my character's backstory. They aren't his slaves: they're his sons. And the DM ruled they continue the normal growth of whatever plant species they were created from, which in their case means they do become awakened trees given enough time. Since I wrote that post my artificer died and I play as his awakened-tree-son in that campaign now. However, one of his awakened-tree brothers has also become a regular antagonist after finding work as an enforcer for a regional crime syndicate. Most of his other siblings remain in the capital city of the central kingdom of the story. They're too large to make weapons and armor now, but they've become a large-scale construction crew for major architecture projects instead.

[PattThe]

sell the pot for 1000 gp... that's what someone would pay for the equivalent spell. :smalltongue:

On the spy note, you can have a literal "plant" spy recording device in the room with anything you'd want to get on tape. Just put it under a compulsion to never lie and make it trimmed by a master camoflauger/gardner and you can spend all that work to effectively cast Clairvoyance. If you're starving for that sort of divination.
Also on divination and then "watching the tape" by having the plant tell you afterward, detect thoughts on sentient plants (not even to mention myconids, who already basically give everyone full telepathy in thoughts and feelings) is a strange thought. And on making it never lie and recall information very well, I wonder what a plant would lie about.

[Kurt Kurageous]

No one yet has mentioned the incredible pun enhancement a shurb gives. It's worth an advantage to certain performance and perhaps persuasion rolls.

"We will leaf it at that." "when they asked me what i was doing outside their camp, I just shrubbed."

I like what plant growth (8 hour variety) could do for it.

"It's gruesome!"
"Of course it did, it's a plant."