PDA

View Full Version : Conflicting rules regarding the spell Awaken.



overduegalaxy
2008-09-08, 04:55 PM
Masters of the Wild states that Awakening an animal companion is a good strategy for making your companion stronger, smarter, and generally more effective.

The spell description (taken from the SRD) says: An awakened animal can’t serve as an animal companion, familiar, or special mount.

Is this just something that was changed from 3.0 to 3.5? If not, and it is just two rules in conflict, which rule 'wins'?

RTGoodman
2008-09-08, 04:57 PM
The one in the SRD/3.5 PHB takes precedence. It's the official 3.5 version, which supercedes the (3.0) Masters of the Wild awaken. When in doubt, the general rule on rule conflicts is that you should use the newest version.

Gorbash
2008-09-08, 04:58 PM
Just don't use 3.0 and you'll be okay.

Flickerdart
2008-09-08, 05:09 PM
You can probably just Leadership it into serving anyways.

Chronos
2008-09-08, 06:30 PM
The mechanics of the druid's animal companion was drastically changed from 3.0 to 3.5. In 3.0, a druid could have many animal companions, but their total HD could be no greater than twice his caster level (it was based on a spell). The individual animals never got any better; as you leveled up you either got more, or dismissed the old ones to replace them with bigger animals (wolf to bear, say). So if you wanted to boost the animals you had, Awaken was one option.

In 3.5, the animal companion automatically advances in power as you level up, so allowing another means to permanently boost it was considered too powerful. So they put in a specific rule that you can't awaken a companion.