Awaken intelligence increase

[mrofmist]

I'm a bit confused about how an awakened animals intelligence changes.

core rulebook wrote:

An awakened animal gets 3d6 Intelligence, +1d3 Charisma, and +2 HD

The crb says the animal gets 3d6 int.

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.

The blurb in the animal archive about awakening animal companion speaks of it an an increase instead.

2 points can be a big difference for an intelligence increase.

[toastedamphibian]

3d6+2 would give a max of 20. 18 is normal starting max, sans racial bonus.

The minimum being 3 (minimum value for 'sapience') and max being 18 (max pc base) seems likely to be intentional to my mind.

[Wolventad]

If it added 3d6, it would state +3d6 Intelligence, as it does with Charisma. Therefore, the awakened animal's Intelligence becomes the result of the 3d6 roll.

[UnArcaneElection]

^Since Animal Companions and Familiars get boosted Intelligence from being companions, this means that (especially for Familiars) a successful casting of Awaken with bad rolls could make them dumber.

The Animal Archive came after the Core Rulebook, so I would lean slightly towards it . . . but then the Animal Archive didn't actually update the spell, which is described in the Core Rulebook, which gives the edge to the Core Rulebook. Probably a mistake in the Animal Archive.

[Wolventad]

Except Animal Companions don't get boosted intelligence, and since all Familiars are magical beasts, and lose the animal type when they become a familiar, they cannot be awakened.

[VRMH]

Since animals have an intelligence of 1 or 2, 3d6 is always an increase. But that's an increase to 3d6, not by 3d6.
So I guess it's just a poor choice of words.

[UnArcaneElection]

Wolventad wrote:

Except Animal Companions don't get boosted intelligence, and since all Familiars are magical beasts, and lose the animal type when they become a familiar, they cannot be awakened.

By the Animal Companion rules, they could get boosted Intelligence if you chose Intelligence when they get their ability score increases at effective Druid levels 4, 9, 14, and 20. The Paizo PRD Core Rulebook entry for Druid doesn't restrict you with respect to what ability score gets increased. Although that is a maximum of 4 points of Intelligence increase (unless you can manage to stack on some other form of increase), so Awaken would have to have some pretty bad rolls to come in under that; on the other hand, Core Rulebook Paladin Bonded Mounts get Intelligence 6 out of the box, and in principle all 4 ability score increases could be stacked on top of that, so Awaken doing worse than the resulting Intelligence 10 is only a bit less than 50% likely.

But you're probably right about Familiars -- I could have sworn to having seen semething somewhere about them having the possibility of getting Awakened, so I thought they counted as both Animals and Magical Beasts, but now I can't find it.

[Wolventad]

Actually I'm wrong — I forgot one of the new Ultimate Wilderness animal companion archetypes gives an Intelligence boost, so my bad on that. It'd be a damn shame if Awaken resulted in less... I'd like it to be +3d6, but RAW, and likely RAI, it is a static 3d6. Shame honestly...

[UnArcaneElection]

Which one is that? I found Precocious (Archives of Nethys doesn't seem to have that part of Ultimate Wilderness yet), that replaces a +2 Dexterity and Constitution advance with a +2 Intelligence increase and a +4 Wisdom and +4 Charisma increase, but not one that gives an out-of-the-box boost.

[Wolventad]

Precocious was the one I meant. Not out of the box, but still an increase to Intelligence outside of the Hit Die based ability score improvements.

[Melkiador]

“This spell does not function on an animal or plant with an Intelligence greater than 2.”

Share spells would let you cast the spell on a familiar, but it still wouldn’t function.

[UnArcaneElection]

^D'oh! Thought I was missing something . . . See -- *I* need a +3d6!

[Azothath]

there are several ways, depending upon the ethical or moral stance of the character.

- A character could release his familiar, if its natural intelligence score is too high cast Feeblemind upon it (lowering INT and CHA to 1) and then cast Awaken on it. Sadly the creature cannot serve as a companion, familiar, or 'special' mount afterwards (see text in Awaken).

- Baleful Polymorph and several failed saves. Retries are the hallmark of this method. As an option to set the form you can (ahem) cast Raise Familiar on your expired familiar.

- for random funzies Reincarnate. Again retries are the hallmark of this method along with a few Restorations.

+ Obviously Wish/Miracle and perhaps Limited Wish would do the trick. These both rely on GM decisions but are safer and more likely to work without harmful side effects of other methods.

+ a standard method (and PFS approved method) is to use a headband of intellect on the familiar (using extra slot feat) IF they have the slot. Consult Animal Archive or (in PFS) a blog post.