ACG: Animal Soul feat = Awakened PC's?


Rules Questions


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Animal Soul:

Your close bond with an animal allows you to use magic that targets animals on yourself.
Prerequisite:Animal Companion or Mount Class feature
Benefit: You can allow spells and effects that affect animals, animal companions, and special mounts to affect you, even if the spells do not normally affect creatures of your type. For example, you could cast Animal Growth or Reduce Animal on yourself, even though those spells normally affect only animals. An Ally could cast Raise Animal Companion on you to bring you back from the dead. An opponent could not cast Charm Animal[/] or [i]Dominate Animal on you unless you chose to allow the spell to affect you as if you were an animal.

So yea...I guess with this feat a character is a valid target for the Awaken spell?
If there is anything that stops this please let me know cause that is just silly.


Nope

Quote:
This spell does not function on an animal or plant with an Intelligence greater than 2.

Unless you are feebleminded or otherwise lose intelligence the spell would fail, but since the intent it would likely be errata'd anyway if there was a way to make it happen.

Dark Archive

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I want to cast Pup Shape on someone with that feat now. Cutest. Adventurer. Ever!


I was thinking of 3.5's Awaken so my bad for not fully reading the spell.
Probably more that you can do with this feat though that is weird.


You play a sorcerer, and capture something which can cause int drain/ pay a spellcaster to int drain you down to 2 or less (this is a gamble, you could accidentally become mindless or dead). Then your friendly party druid awakens you, you get 3d6 int (probably close to where your point buy was for it anyway) +1d3 charisma (FOR FREE!) and +2 HD of magical beast! The only thing that sucks is you will level slower and have slower spell progression relative to HD. Maybe it'd be better on a paladin.


dot


Anthropomorphic Animal is also on the table.

Can't see much in the way of practical usage, but if someone loses their limbs and nobody has regeneration, technically it's a stopgap fix.


Googleshng wrote:

Anthropomorphic Animal is also on the table.

Can't see much in the way of practical usage, but if someone loses their limbs and nobody has regeneration, technically it's a stopgap fix.

How about Wartrain Mount if used on a druid who can wild shape into a horse?

Atavism for the advanced simple template?

Altering the duration of Polymorph Any Object?

Share Skin?

Seems to have some uses...


Its very useful for natural attack builds with access to strong jaw/animal growth (i.e. natural attack hunters and rangers).


Wait. Did they just make infinite CHA awakening shenanigans available to... well anyone who wants it. Forget Sacred Geometry, this is the craziest thing I've read. It's even better then Nature Oracle 20, since you always qualify for awakening, even if you shouldn't. Game over man. Game over.


Well, you have to find something willing to int drain you infinite times and not kill you, but if you can pull that off, sure.


Simulacrums of Lorthact were my go-to for Nature Oracle 20 awakening looping.


You can get a cheap res with this off of raise animal companion.

Animal growth +strong jaw on a shape shifted T rex would be sick.

Grand Lodge

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Carry Companion....


Animal Soul: 

Your close bond with an animal allows you to use magic that targets animals on yourself. 
Prerequisite:Animal Companion or Mount Class feature 
Benefit: You can allow spells and effects that affect animals, animal companions, and special mounts to affect you, even if the spells do not normally affect creatures of your type. For example, you could cast Animal Growth or Reduce Animal on yourself, even though those spells normally affect only animals. An Ally could cast Raise Animal Companion on you to bring you back from the dead. An opponent could not cast Charm Animal[/] or [i]Dominate Animal on you unless you chose to allow the spell to affect you as if you were an animal.

Anyone else catch this gem?
Shenanigans for EVERYBODY!¡!¡!

Sovereign Court

Now the cool thing would be a hunter with leadership, a cohort with animal soul and using said cohort as an animal companion...cheese maximus.


Hmm... Could you be someone's animal companion? Could they use you as their mount? Could they use the ride skill to have attacks miss you?

Sovereign Court

Take the also wonderful feat: Undersized mount (get on mounts, your own size) from the ACG as well.

Well you will need to talk with your DM but frankly unless he is anal about it, I wouldn't be against it as you literally count as an animal for all purposes and effects.


Or just have a small character on the medium one. A real Halfling Cavalier of the sword has a Barbarian or a Bloodrager as a mount. Now we're really talking about a str score to add to attacks.


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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I would combine this with Sacred Geometry in order to cast a maximized awaken spell. :D


Sorcerer casts Contingency with a maximized version of Awaken on himself.
Trigger: Int goes below 3. He then gets Int drained sufficiently.
Effect: 18 Int, +3 Cha, 2 HD, and becomes a magical beast.
Problem: You need to make a will save of 10 + HD, which could be a problem. You need a high Wis score.

Note: You still have the feat, so you now can count as animal and magical beast, but not humanoid. Think of the possibilities for Disguise Self!

/cevah


How does extra HD interact with the level cap? If I awaken myself, can I still be a 20th level druid, or do I cap out at 18? Or 20 - the ecl for my magical beast HD? I think the balancing mechanism of this whole ordeal is the player and DM will undergo severe headaches with each cycle of the exploit, plus the looming threat of flying books. Atavism is a much better buff in regards to this.


The extra HD are not class HD, so should not interfere with that progression. The Awaken spell does not mention any cap. The CRB p406-407 has limited rules for post 20th level.

/cevah


BigNorseWolf wrote:

You can get a cheap res with this off of raise animal companion.

Animal growth +strong jaw on a shape shifted T rex would be sick.

SO as a wild shaped druid with a larger form (i'm medium and shape change to a huge animal), I could use Animal growth with strong jaw even though I used a polymorph effect that increased my size and the effect of animal growth is based on a change in size?

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

Current version:

Quote:
Benefit: You can choose not to allow spells and effects to effect you if they would not be capable of affecting both your original creature type and the animal creature type.


They nerfed it due to circumstances... pretty much demonstrated with this thread. Inconvenient rules problems due to the fact that earlier content never expect sudden type changes.

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

lemeres wrote:
They nerfed it due to circumstances

I'd actually wager a dinner on it wasn't nerfed as much as they intended it to work the way it reads now, but flubbed on how to articulate that in the initial writing of the feat to have unintended interpretations.


James Risner wrote:
lemeres wrote:
They nerfed it due to circumstances
I'd actually wager a dinner on it wasn't nerfed as much as they intended it to work the way it reads now, but flubbed on how to articulate that in the initial writing of the feat to have unintended interpretations.

Of course. That is how the story usually goes. They write something up, then someone clever on the forum later finds a way to game the gaps and any hazy language so it works in unintended ways, so they have to clarify themselves

It is mostly a nerf due to the fact that it cuts off the new power that others added onto what they originally intended.

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

lemeres wrote:
It is mostly a nerf due to the fact that it cuts off the new power that others added onto what they originally intended.

Ok from those rose colored classes, it is a nerf.


James Risner wrote:
lemeres wrote:
It is mostly a nerf due to the fact that it cuts off the new power that others added onto what they originally intended.
Ok from those rose colored classes, it is a nerf.

Wow that is a massive nerf. Expected it for PFS but who seriously would want this feat as changed?

The original description made sense and if too powerful could have had specific spells excluded. Too bad. Thanks for the replies


It sounds like it just makes you immune to things like Hold Person.

Grand Lodge

Surtyr wrote:
Wow that is a massive nerf. Expected it for PFS but who seriously would want this feat as changed?
Melkiador wrote:
It sounds like it just makes you immune to things like Hold Person.

I do for spells like this. My PFS hunter has it.


Deadkitten wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

So yea...I guess with this feat a character is a valid target for the Awaken spell?
If there is anything that stops this please let me know cause that is just silly.

Before the errata, yes. After the errata, I don't know. The new version is confusing as heck.

Quote:
"You can choose not to allow spells and effects to effect you if they would not be capable of affecting both your original creature type and the animal creature type."

Wait, I can choose not to allow it? Doesn't that mean I can choose to allow it as well? If I want Awaken or Animal Growth can I still get it? It seems to imply that a character gains the animal type while keeping the original type. The errata makes it more ambiguous.

Grand Lodge

darth_borehd wrote:
Wait, I can choose not to allow it?

Correct.

Quote:
Doesn't that mean I can choose to allow it as well? If I want Awaken or Animal Growth can I still get it?

Of course not. If you'd never seen the original you wouldn't even think you could.

Someone casts Hold Person on you. You can choose not to allow it because Hold Person doesn't work on an animal.

Animal Growth targets an animal. You are not an animal so you aren't a valid target--you don't get far enough along for Animal Soul to even matter because you're not a legal target for the spell.

Quote:
It seems to imply that a character gains the animal type while keeping the original type. The errata makes it more ambiguous.

It implies nothing remotely similar to any of this.

Animal Soul wrote:
You can choose not to allow spells and effects to effect you if they would not be capable of affecting both your original creature type and the animal creature type.

It's ridiculously simple and straight forward. Just forget everything you know about the feat used to be and read it as it is now--that should solve any misconceptions you have about it.


OK, I was reading too much into it.

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