PC character ideas: Awakened Sea creatures?


Advice


A PC brought up the idea of awakened animals to me, as potential PC characters. Specifically a Giant Squid Paladin and a Whale Bard.

Does anyone have experience with these, and how to make them work?


[Animal] gains two racial d8 hitdice, 3d6 intelligence, +1d3 charisma and becomes a magical beast (but its racial hitdice, and etc, are considered that of an animal). This increases its CR by 1 step.

Now, we need to apply level adjustment to the [animal] to that of the lowest CR fellow awakened animal (or that of a normal race). For a normal race (CR¼ humanoids, like a human or elf), this means a human in this strange party would be 11 levels ahead of the awakened common whale, and 10 levels ahead of the awakened giant squid. Luckily for the whale and squid, (assuming the human is 12th level) they only need enough XP to get to level 2 and 3 respectively (so they level faster than the human). When the human reaches level 20, the whale will be 220 000 XP off 20 (still on 19).

I don't think there is a good way to make most animals work, particularly the grasperless ones. I think gorillas and monkeys fit in about as well as orcs in a party.


We've done this a load of times in my groups, and I have to say the RAW doesn't really get things done in this area. Generally we roll stats for the animal's mental score, and use best judgement on re-rolling physical ones (they need to be similar) Throw that racial hit dice business out the window, it's never fun and doesn't generally end well. The animal specifically maintains all of its natural attacks/size/ect.
You've got two paths to take as far as leveling goes:

1. Treat the awakened familiar/animal companion as a leadership cohort. You'll likely need the feet, but maybe not? This leads to the animal companion having just class levels, which is hopefully just two below the rest of the characters.

2. Treat the awakened creature as though it were a character. This can be especially helpful if one of your pcs experiences permadeath, and needs a new char.

In either case, the animal will need its own sheet, and generally to be treated like a pc. You can choose to rebuild the race inside pathfinder's advanced race guide, gaining 8 points for not having any arms, giving a total 18 for base (having to select naturals subtracts from this) Alternatively, you can eyeball it.

Not all classes benefit all creatures, and its your/your dm's job to spot broken combinations. It is also helpful to decide what house rules on natural weapons are, i.e. go with the catfolk example (see the advanced race guide) and have masterwork claw/tooth attachments that cost 305 gp each, and transform the attack from natural to lite/normal/twohanded as appropriate. It may also be helpful to let animals gain some additional bonus from stacking natural weapon sources, i.e. the barbarian can gain natural attacks while rageing; the animal should gain SOME benefit from this.

While this isn't exactly helpful if you have a giant squid and a whale, it holds true for most animals, more so the medium and smaller ones. Large size breaks the game if you min/max.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / PC character ideas: Awakened Sea creatures? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Advice