4 int is inside the sentient intelligence, but it isn't the same as "Awakened" (which gives 3d6). I play my druid players intelligence boosted animal companion like Lassy. Able to understand common, and reply with barks. As DM I tell her what her animal companion does when not in combat, but she gives it commands in combat.
I have a couple of thoughts. "brutally raping" the daughter is really unnecessary, and in groups i've played in it's way over the line. Very inappropriate. Burning the spell book, making the paladin fall, what are you going for as DM? If you want to have the party fail, they will fail. You set up the scenario. You win. Yay? Are you deliberately setting up a scenario where your players don't enjoy themselves? Are you trying to create a game where they pick the characters they want and then you take it away? I'm not being antagonistic, these are questions you need to ask yourself in setting up this one shot.
I am generally against monster races, and the monster-ier they are, the less I like them. Kobolds are a good example of a monster that I would allow, because the world is full of kobolds. You see them everywhere, they are virtually always evil, but you see them. Human NPCs would likely comment/discriminate against a Kobold in a game I run, but I would make that clear to a player wanting to play a Kobold in character creation so s/he didn't feel punished for the choice after the game started. Talking horses? not so much. An innkeeper aught to be shocked by an Illithid cube wanting to rent a room. Drow are attacked on sight. Dragons cause people to flee in terror. The monster race rules lay out rules in case people want to use them. I don't think races in particular must necessarily be included just because they are stat-ed out. DMs put a lot of work into the game, and we often have an idea of how we want our game to play. Lets turn the question around. Steve finally finds a game he can play his Horse in. Everyone is shocked he can talk. None of the shopkeepers will sell him anything, and he doesn't have pockets anyway since he's a Horse. The Innkeeper tries to stable him. Is it fair for a DM to let someone play a very exotic race and then have a bunch of in game negative consequences? I don't think so. I think that takes away from Steve's fun. Should Horses be stigmatized in Golarian? I think so. I think Horses are weird. I think people should think Horses are weird. I know it's a high fantasy game, but even fantasies have and should have limits. Without any limits on what to expect, you have no way of anticipating how the world works and making rational decisions.
Be sure that his tavern gets giant rats in the basement at least once a month. It's not a penalty for him since wandering adventurers come clean them out.
The question of playing an awakened pony is better than the one of playing a demon. A demon would have level adjustment issues, the pony wouldn't. The real issue comes down to 'I want to play something disruptive/inappropriate to the setting/immersion breaking'. It's possible in games you play that talking ponies are common and it would make a fine addition to your game. In the games I run, the world is very vanilla to classical DnD settings and ponies that speak are entirely out of place. You can justify anything you want in High Fantasy. Talking horses aren't even out of bounds from classic mythology, looking at unicorns and animal lords. What they are though is immersion breaking as player characters if you have classic races represented by the other players with one outlier. You are going to have fun at the expense of other players, and I as a DM am not only allowed to disallow it, but it's my responsibility to ensure a cohesive and fun game environment. Lazy DM'ing is letting you play "My little pony" when everyone else wants to play DnD. If everyone wants to play 'My little pony' then great, but you don't get to play whatever you want just because you can shoe horn some justification based on a Tardis going through a warp gate into the matrix causing a horse to pop into existence who has class levels and is awakened (even if that's entirely possible in a make believe world). |
