Awaken Animal Companion Question

[Uthragar]

I'll start off by apologizing if the answer to this is lurking somewhere on these boards, but I've spent a bit of time trying to find that answer to no avail.

According to my understanding if I cast the 5th level druid spell on my animal companion, it gains the listed benefits from the spell, 2d6 int, 1d3 cha, 2 1d8 HD, and then ceases to be an animal companion, removing all the benefits it had gained from being that companion and reverting to its base creature.

Now to what I'm unclear on. How complete is this reversion? Do I simply look up the bestiary entry for the creature and apply the bonuses from Awaken? What happens when the bestiary entry contains a creature with significantly higher HD than it had prior to the spell's casting? Does my late companion grow in size to match the normal entry like in the case of a T-Rex or Roc? If I follow the advice listed in the spell entry and take on my old companion as a cohort what sort of CR adjustment (if any) is caused by the spell's effects?

I could go on with the individual questions here, though I suspect any solid answer to one would actually cover quite a few of the others.

Thanks in advance for any answers.

[Uthragar]

No answers or thoughts on this one? Some sort of clarification, even if its to say my assumptions regarding the function of Awaken are wrong would be helpful.

[VRMH]

There is no (canonical) answer to your question that I'm aware of, so just go with whatever works best for the situation or story-line.

[blackbloodtroll]

It's a weird place that has no rules.

[Hendelbolaf]

"An awakened animal can't serve as an animal companion, familiar, or special mount."

That means you take the Bestiary form of that animal and apply the adjustments due to the Awaken spell and that is that. So, yes, at first, it could be way weaker than when it was a companion, but it can now gain class levels and such so it has greater potential.

Just imagine if you let your animal companion go back into the wilderness. Will it be just as powerful as when it was your companion, no, it looses all of the special enhancements and such. It becomes a normal animal of it's type. The same here, just apply the Awaken changes.

[blackbloodtroll]

Indeed, that seems to be the case.

Evidence points to no other conclusion.

[Uthragar]

That's what I personally figured, just was a bit unsure about cases where the normal animal of it's type ended up with higher HD and size. Seemed a bit weird for a large animal to be awakened then suddenly jump to huge or gargantuan. I expect it might instead be better to look at it as the animal companion feature providing an artificial limit on something like size and when that goes it just returns to what it should be.

Still a bit odd, but I guess it's better than having a druid who has permanently stunted the growth of his animal friend.

Thanks for the help.

[blackbloodtroll]

Well, your first mistake was using logic.

Remember, magic.

Actually, the size growth thing kind of makes it epic, if flavored right.

With a Roc, it would be pretty awesome.

[The black raven]

Though the spell states that "An awakened animal can't serve as an animal companion, familiar, or special mount.", it does not say that they lose their previous benefits.

I would rule that you take your companion as is and then add the changes provided by Awaken. Of course, it can gain no further benefits as a companion.

This avoids the nonsense of the awakened Roc companion suddenly growing to its larger size :-)

Alternately, a suggestion on another similar thread was to have the creature lose all companion's benefits (but not its 4th level or 7th level growth spurt) and use that as the basis to which you apply the Awaken changes.

Best check with your GM though

[Are]

Uthragar wrote:

Seemed a bit weird for a large animal to be awakened then suddenly jump to huge or gargantuan. I expect it might instead be better to look at it as the animal companion feature providing an artificial limit on something like size and when that goes it just returns to what it should be.

The bigger paradox is the fact that if you want to gain a new animal companion, you actually go to the place where such animals would live, and attempt to attract one to be your animal companion.

Then, once you do, it will get animal companion statistics in place of its former statistics, which may well cause certain animals to suddenly grow smaller :)