Animal Soul uses


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


Animal Soul:
d20pfsrd wrote:

Your close bond with an animal allows you to use magic that targets animals on yourself.

Prerequisite(s): 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 dominate animal on you unless you chose to allow the spell to affect you as if you were an animal.

I see a lot of potential in this for characters who can qualify for this, either through the class levels or taking the Animal Ally feat.

One potentially game changing use would be casting Awaken on a PC. This would require draining the PC's INT to 2 or less, which is risky, though it could definitely pay off, especially if Awaken were maximized and empowered. 3d6 INT becomes 27. +1d3 CHA and +2 HD (d8s) becomes +4 CHA and +24 HP. The text of Awaken says nothing about not being able to be awakened again (probably not RAI) so if you can continue to drain INT you could infinitely gain CHA and HP til you run out of gold (or abuse blood money?).

More obvious uses are
-Animal Growth
-Strong Jaw
-Raise Animal Companion
-Share Skin might have some uses
-Carry Companion
-Pup Shape just sounds adorable

What other (ab)uses can you think of for this feat?


Buy a ring of revelation: friend to animals, and give it to the party's charisma based caster to wear - stay within 30' of him/her and gain a significant Untyped bonus to all saves.

Silver Crusade Contributor

Oddman80 wrote:
Buy a ring of revelation: friend to animals, and give it to the party's charisma based caster to wear - stay within 30' of him/her and gain a significant Untyped bonus to all saves.

Reading the ring, you would need an actual nature oracle.

If you have one, though, good times. :)

My Serpent's Skull group's hunter will probably be casting this on Sasha Nevah.


Icyblaze13 wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

I see a lot of potential in this for characters who can qualify for this, either through the class levels or taking the Animal Ally feat.

One potentially game changing use would be casting Awaken on a PC. This would require draining the PC's INT to 2 or less, which is risky, though it could definitely pay off, especially if Awaken were maximized and empowered. 3d6 INT becomes 27. +1d3 CHA and +2 HD (d8s) becomes +4 CHA and +24 HP. The text of Awaken says nothing about not being able to be awakened again (probably not RAI) so if you can continue to drain INT you could infinitely gain CHA and HP til you run out of gold (or abuse blood money?).

More obvious uses are
-Animal Growth
-Strong Jaw
-Raise Animal Companion
-Share Skin might have some uses
-Carry Companion
-Pup Shape just sounds adorable

What other (ab)uses can you think of for this feat?

Yeah the awaken bug was one I found quickly, it's pretty easy to have yourself get infinite HD as well as the other things you gain. I posted it on the forums before but I try not to give it much attention.


I Think it gives the wildshape less druid a fair shot at Fame after level 9. Not with the Awakend stuff but animal growth.
Strong jaw dosent benefit from the feat i Think.


Would Strong Jaw not work because of the target being "creature" rather than "animal"?

Also I can't believe I overlooked Atavism!


Animal souls seems like a no brainer for nature fang druids or hunters.

Basically, if you do not have any important transmutation effects to use (like beast shape in wildshape), then you can pick some pretty good spells.

I like atavism. It applies the advanced template to you, which gives +2 natural armor and +4 to ALL STATS. That is rather..huge.

More damage and attack, more dodging, more health, better saves all around, better skills all around, and your spells get a boost to their DCs.

At least, that is one reading. It is a bit confusing, since it says 'apply the advanced template, and you get these effects'. One could read it either as a limit of what you actually get (to the listed effects), or realize that the listed effects are just the differences caused by the template that apply to animals, and you get to use a lot more. I would lean towards the latter, but check with more knowledgable forumites...

Anyway, it can be a huge buff either way. Well on par with animal growth, and at a lower level.


Icyblaze13 wrote:

Would Strong Jaw not work because of the target being "creature" rather than "animal"?

Also I can't believe I overlooked Atavism!

Strong jaw works without the feat.


Cap. Darling wrote:
Strong jaw works without the feat.

Well now I just feel silly.


Icyblaze13 wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

I see a lot of potential in this for characters who can qualify for this, either through the class levels or taking the Animal Ally feat.

One potentially game changing use would be casting Awaken on a PC. This would require draining the PC's INT to 2 or less, which is risky, though it could definitely pay off, especially if Awaken were maximized and empowered. 3d6 INT becomes 27. +1d3 CHA and +2 HD (d8s) becomes +4 CHA and +24 HP. The text of Awaken says nothing about not being able to be awakened again (probably not RAI) so if you can continue to drain INT you could infinitely gain CHA and HP til you run out of gold (or abuse blood money?).

The reason Awaken doesn't say anything about not being able to be Awakened again is that normally you *can't*, because the target will no longer be an animal but a magical beast and therefore not a legal target for the spell. The original work around for this was level 20 Nature Oracle. Obviously using Animal Soul is superior since you don't have a wait time between uses and because thanks to Paragon Surge you never even have to actually take Animal Soul to (ab)use Awaken.


Another thought in regards to awaken. If you are playing a mythic campaign then mythic maximize and empower would give you a whopping 47 INT.


Icyblaze13 wrote:
Another thought in regards to awaken. If you are playing a mythic campaign then mythic maximize and empower would give you a whopping 47 INT.

The only "issue" with that is the high int might prevent continued use.

Though I feel one of the best uses is to actually use it on a familiar or companion. Just have to get the feat onto your familiar so you can abuse it there.


What would be the safest way to drain INT down that low? The best I've come up with is Id moss.


Icyblaze13 wrote:
What would be the safest way to drain INT down that low? The best I've come up with is Id moss.

Simulacrum of Lorthact.


A contingent awaken would work as far as i know.

I noticed something while looking at the Awaken spell.

Awaken wrote:
An awakened animal gets 3d6 Intelligence, +1d3 Charisma, and +2 HD. Its type becomes magical beast (augmented animal).

All the other changes have plusses next to them, and so they clearly increase the relevant statistic. Does "gets 3d6 Intelligence" mean the animal gets their intelligence score set to 3d6, or does it mean the animal gets 3d6 added to their intelligence. The fact that Charisma also involves a dice roll and has a + symbol but Intelligence doesn't makes me suspect that the intelligence score gets set to 3d6(and thus multiple castings don't do anything but allow a reroll on Int). Hence this trick wouldn't work very well for a wizard type. Hilarious for a Cha caster though.


Animal Archive wrote:
The moment the spell takes effect, an animal companion ceases to be a class feature, and instead becomes a person—an NPC whose Intelligence has increased by 3d6 (potentially making it as smart as or smarter than the caster), and who has an increased Charisma score and knows at least one spoken language.

I agree with what you said Snowblind, but when checking again I saw this. The two seem to contradict each other. Also, I wouldn't say it's useless for int based casters. 27 int is nothing to sneeze at.

Sovereign Court

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Mostly a dm shenanigans but can possibly work:

Call Animal is probably one if not the best druid spells out there, now imagine that you can use call animal to call on druids who took the animal soul feat.

Shadow Lodge

Icyblaze13 wrote:
Animal Archive wrote:
The moment the spell takes effect, an animal companion ceases to be a class feature, and instead becomes a person—an NPC whose Intelligence has increased by 3d6 (potentially making it as smart as or smarter than the caster), and who has an increased Charisma score and knows at least one spoken language.
I agree with what you said Snowblind, but when checking again I saw this. The two seem to contradict each other. Also, I wouldn't say it's useless for int based casters. 27 int is nothing to sneeze at.

I think "by" is a mistake here, and they meant "to." I would not take this as sufficient evidence to contradict the CRB.


Anzyr wrote:
Icyblaze13 wrote:
What would be the safest way to drain INT down that low? The best I've come up with is Id moss.
Simulacrum of Lorthact.

That would definitely work if you have a sorcerer/wizard or summoner. What options do other classes have?

Silver Crusade Contributor

Icyblaze13 wrote:
Anzyr wrote:
Icyblaze13 wrote:
What would be the safest way to drain INT down that low? The best I've come up with is Id moss.
Simulacrum of Lorthact.
That would definitely work if you have a sorcerer/wizard or summoner. What options do other classes have?

On top of that, I think it might be best to find a more... reliable... example.

I'm not saying you'll never find a GM willing to allow you to access a simulacrum of a virtually-unknown former lord of Hell; I have no doubt several people here will immediately tell me that they'd allow it.

But even if you think you can get your maximized awaken on, and even if your GM is okay with that, I feel like most GMs would draw the line well before simulacra of Lorthact. (Plus, if you can get away with simulacra like that, why bother with awaken? You can get an "I win" button without jumping through half as many hoops.)

Would an Int-draining poison work? A cleric could cast bestow curse. Perhaps you could buy a casting of feeblemind.


Kalindlara wrote:

On top of that, I think it might be best to find a more... reliable... example.

I'm not saying you'll never find a GM willing to allow you to access a simulacrum of a virtually-unknown former lord of Hell; I have no doubt several people here will immediately tell me that they'd allow it.

But even if you think you can get your maximized awaken on, and even if your GM is okay with that, I feel like most GMs would draw the line well before simulacra of Lorthact. (Plus, if you can get away with simulacra like that, why bother with awaken? You can get an "I win" button without jumping through half as many hoops.)

Would an Int-draining poison work? A cleric could cast bestow curse. Perhaps you could buy a casting of feeblemind.

My first thought was to use Id Moss which is an ingested poison. It's 1d3 Int damage once a minute for 6 minutes. It only costs 125gp per dose. Feeblemind would be more reliable as long as you have access to heal to fix the Cha damage.

Surprisingly enough I am in a party in which another player playing a multiclassed Druid/Winter Witch (going into Mystic Theurge) is planning on using Awaken on himself. The DM has already approved it. He is most likely going to use Blood Money to pay for it followed by a Lesser Restoration.


Icyblaze13 wrote:
Anzyr wrote:
Icyblaze13 wrote:
What would be the safest way to drain INT down that low? The best I've come up with is Id moss.
Simulacrum of Lorthact.
That would definitely work if you have a sorcerer/wizard or summoner. What options do other classes have?

Miracle covers Clerics and Oracles (albeit only at 9th level spells). And Shamans/Witches can of course just hack the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list.

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