So we had a wizard die who left behind a magic hat that grants an int bonus. One of the other players has a character who's extremely eccentric and wants to put the hat on his donkey. This would give the donkey a total intelligence score of 5, which while low is still as high as some players could feasibly be. At this level of intelligence can the donkey speak? I had thought I would house-rule that after 24 hours the donkey would be able to talk and would lose the ability if the hat came off. Thoughts?
So we had a wizard die who left behind a magic hat that grants an int bonus. One of the other players has a character who's extremely eccentric and wants to put the hat on his donkey. This would give the donkey a total intelligence score of 5, which while low is still as high as some players could feasibly be. At this level of intelligence can the donkey speak? I had thought I would house-rule that after 24 hours the donkey would be able to talk and would lose the ability if the hat came off. Thoughts?
Depends on how silly you want to get. In THEORY (meaning this would all be GM Fiat) if the int increase brings them to 3 or more and it gives the donkey a skill point at the same time, it could learn the common language. That said, it still has the biological structure of a donkey. It more than likely would not be able to talk since the donkey is not built that way and even with the magic hat it is still an animal, not a magical beast.
So it would be able to UNDERSTAND common (but still be dumb as a box of rocks since it is INT 5) but probably unable to speak itself.
Now, with that said, if you and your group think it is fun and you don't see an abuse of a talking animal in the game, go for it and let it talk. Just remember, it IS stupid and a donkey. It's speach, needs and wants should reflect that.
For additional fun, is this donkey combat trained?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don know nobody who don like parfaits
Show the player this blog post.
Ruyan.
Show the player this blog post.
Ruyan.
I saw that. I think we'll allow the donkey to talk but because he can only speak in braying noises the closest anyone can get is a strangely accented draconic :)
|
I agree, if it does not stop the game, then I see no problems with it.
Now, having said that, a Wizards familiar that starts with an INT of 6 and goes up from there, cannot speak any "normal" language unless it is a raven, and then it gets one
(from the PRD)
*A raven familiar can speak one language of its master's choice as a supernatural ability.
To me this points that an increase in INT, does not = speaking a language. Only understanding it.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Int 5 is still quite low. Words should be from a limited list, like:
hello
goodbye
water
oats
hungry/feed me
happy
sad
stop
tired
sleepy
brush/comb
danger
apple
carrot
hot
cold
Master/PC name
New words can be taught over time.
Let the donkey take an NPC class, commoner or expert, and put ranks in Linguistics. Donkey can learn to say "feed me" in six different languages.
Technically... it's only an animal if its int is below 3. As soon as it pops above that threshold its a magic beast.
3 is the threshold for effective sentience.
Put the hat on, it's just a somewhat clever donkey for 24 hours. After that, it's effectively a magical beast... a crude Awakening. 3 int is the minimum to understand languages, and learn a single one.
Doesn't teach the donkey anything. Except: the int bonus also grants skill ranks. If the skill ranks taught a language, the donkey gets it. Since the wizard probably doesn't learn common with his hat... it's probably funny but the donkey might be learning draconic, or knowledge arcana.
Still can't speak the language... I don't think. But maybe it can crudely communicate if it did learn a language.
even a parrot/raven familiar can speak 1 language properly, but I have no idea if the donkey would physically be able to form word like humans