Awaken
You guys remember the scroll-over text from “Exceptional Mount“? In the admittedly unlikely event that you’ve forgotten a single syllable from any of my precious word-gifts, here’s the recap:
So just to review, this comic has now collected Vincenzo the miniature Shetland pony, Luigi the cat gangster, and now Jameson the jackass. Who the crap is casting ‘awaken’ on all these guys?
Looks like we’ve got our answer. It also looks like we can add Oli and Obie the pigeons to our ever-expanding list of talking animals.
Any dang way, what do you say we get to the subject at hand? On the surface, awaken seems like one of those spells designed to waste your money. Same deal with niche offerings like half-blood extraction, mind swap, major, or renovation. As a GM I can imagine any number of plots that work around this kind of magical weirdness. As a player, however, I’m left to wonder how I’m supposed to use these bizarre (and expensive!) options. The duration offers a clue.
Any time you get a permanent magical effect, you’re no longer a player. You’re suddenly promoted to the rank “sub-GM,” and invested with the awesome power of changing the setting according to your whim. Awaken invents a new NPC. Renovation creates a dungeon. Malarkey like mind swap, major or reincarnate gives you a re-roll on your character. These effects give you the power to affect setting in a material, well-defined, and long-lasting way. We’re talking about the power to change the world.
If you’re the kind of player who thinks like Arcane Archer, then that’s not going to be your cup of tea. You want the cool new weapons and the flashiest magic tricks, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There are combats to fight, and money is a means to efficiently solve the combat equation. But if you’re more like Druid, and if you’re slowly amassing a population of intelligent animals in a bid to create environmental awareness, then you’re playing the game for a fundamentally different reason. You’re world-building just as surely as any GM, and in my book that’s money well-spent.
Question of the day then! Have you ever gone all-in on an expensive non-combat purchase? Was it a spell? Funding for a new orphanage? A partial stake in a small business? Sound off with your favorite major purchases down in the comments.
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Ignoring the number of times I’ve done this in World of Darkness and similar games where it is super expected, I did have fun with a character I have mentioned on her before. I was an assassin by trade who traveled with my cover as an adventurer. The party was unaware of what I got up to in my spare time for the most part, but a few times the number of important merchants and politicians who turned up dead when we entered town was brought up. My bluff was up to the task though, and that’s mostly an aside. The option was the orphanage i financed so that other kids wouldn’t have my “trained from birth” backstory; because Midnight Mai recognized that she was not a well adjusted individual no matter how good she was at pretending to be one. Her conversations with the party cleric had been played out often, and though it ended up costing her a quarter of her adventuring shares, most of her extra gold gained from assassinations, and one gratas job on a noble who thought he would try to muscle in on “her children”, it was fun to roleplay the barely tacked down Shadowdancer. I made up for the “loot progression” through interesting use of potions and copious use of Strength Damage.
I’ve always been a bit confused by money in World of Darkness. What’s to keep you from ghouling the local bank manager and instantly gaining resources 5?
XP! But seriously, the main thing is it’s not really viable long term. If you do that, the IRS hunts you down and, to quote the joker, “I’m crazy enough to take on Batman, but the IRS? No thank you!”
What you’d do is have them supply you with their own accounts a bit at a time (in game this shows as you spend XP on Resources) and keep the masquerade alive.
Plus, higher resources indicates not just how much money you have but how much you make. Me stealing $500 from the ventrue’s wallet does not mean I have resources 1, it means I have $500 dollars.
Forget the bank then. Ghoul a celebrity. Or a millionaire. Or a stockbroker. Their accounts are now yours, right?
Yes and no? It’s like this. If you spent XP on it, its yours and the ST isn’t really supposed to give you a lot of flak about using it. You ghoul Jeff Bezos, the ST is supposed to give you a little bit of trouble accessing his millions. Maybe his wife gets concerned over his new “man-crush”. Maybe his business accounts are actually tied up in red tape. Maybe there are a couple of different reasons why you can’t get the money quickly or easily. The ST has narrative privilege on anything you didn’t spend XP on.
I bought a ship.
It wasn’t a naval campaign at all, or even a coastal one, but my character was raised by pirates and wanted to eventually be a captain of her own ship, so I bought a ship.
The GM was at least kind enough to say that popping over to the coast, sailing along it to the nearest port to our destination, and then going from there to the destination was often faster than going overland. So my baby, Ori’s Axe, got to see some use.
So um… Out of curiosity, what was Ori’s race?
She was a half orc barbarian.
I dunno… That’s a half-pigeon name if I’ve ever heard one. 😛
It was short for Oriana.
Captain Oriana Tem was the first D&D character I ever played, actually! It’s about time I got the opportunity to mention her in one of these comments!
…Frankly I’m surprised it took me this long.
Irlana bought a baby Thunderbird. We were at an animal auction and Tyr the fighter was trying to bid on it. When he got outbid by an NPC, Irlana stepped in and bought it instead. That was really close to the end of the campaign so it never really came up again.
What does one do with a baby thunderbird anyway?
Keep it in the fenced-in backyard until it grows up. I’m not entirely sure what Tyr was planning to do. He had SO many animals at his house. Griffin, Dire Buffalo, wyvern, etc.
What setting is this, cause my mind keeps trying to imagine an Exalted Thunderbird which would be akin to keeping a small spirit child who throws lightning and thirsts for combat.
The campaign was called The Forgotten Dragon. I think it was his own world rather than an AP. But the pantheon had Bahamut and Tiamat.
Awhile back, my Half-Orc Barbarian got a Cool Sword ( https://connors-personal-dnd-5e.fandom.com/wiki/Blade_of_the_Medusa ). In it’s initial battle, I christened it by critting a Rhemoraz and petrifying him just before the party landed the killing blow. I am currently in a bid with my GM to spend my (very limited in AL) gold to hire a team to excavate it from the icy mountain fortress we encountered it in, and drag it down to the remains of his former tribe, where he plans to rebuild.
…Because every future chieftain needs a proper throne.
Being a Str-based character with a thing for statuary seems like a good combination.
Two of four of my party members bought a rather infamous clock tower in Return of the Runelords and renovated it into their arcane caster tower. Personally, I think they picked a horrendous spot (derelict neighborhood, bad mojo, always in the shade…). Besides, as a Wizard, I have better options via permanency, magnificent mansions and demiplanes! Can’t go wrong with a timeless, bountiful, minor positive aligned demiplane to craft, live and heal inside of in luxury. He’ll make his own tower! With mazes and laboratories!
Other purchases on him include way too many spells for his spellbook, an adorable Jerboa mount (currently rather unused, but it’s still adorable), and a Field Scrivener Desk.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/e-g/field-scrivener-s-desk/
Other non-combat favorites include a dojo (as ninja), a dire bat mount (died along with it’s owner in a tornado), marriage rings (PC dorf and his non-adventuring wife)
The demiplane spells are definitely the kind of thing I’m talking about.
Do you get any mechanical benefits from all these shenanigans, or is it purely about the in-character creature comforts? Like, can you leverage a diplomacy bonus by treating VIP NPCs to resort weekends at your demiplane? Do young ninja disciples ever show up randomly to bail you out of trouble?
Mechanically, the ‘time doesn’t pass for thins outside your plane’ effect you can put on a demiplane is a monstrously useful boon to any crafter. At those levels, even with every craft-speed-enhancing trick you can muster (see Dave the Commoner for examples), it can takes weeks if not months to make an expensive item (and don’t get me started on the horrible mundane crafting rules, which demand YEARS of work to make plate armor). Time which you usually don’t have when the world is being thrown into chaos by a BBEG. So pop a ring of sustenance, achieve immortality (yay arcane discoveries) and hole up in your demiplane (preferably with a measurable time cycle so you don’t lose track of time like Roy did in OOTS) to craft those high-end items in peace as time remains stopped for anything outside of your plane – coming into the plane to craft and exiting a second later with the finished product. Also, bring someone along, so you don’t go full abridged Vegeta.
Of course, if you aren’t immortal or have a Mantle of Immortality, it’s a good idea to also set up the time rules to demand food/drink or that creatures age normally within it – so that they don’t get hit by aging or not eating/drinking for months all at once once they exit.
The magnificent mansion is useful as a mobile / dungeon-accessible emergency escape area or resting/healing zone, or a fully-stocked lab or crafting area that lets you avoid the ‘crafting on the go’ rules since you can have them fully equipped to your desires. It’s also great for collecting/hoarding/rescuing NPCs in cataclysmic situations – you can later port them to a demiplane for further safety – even if the material plane gets nuked, your demiplane remains a safe and isolated shelter. In theory, you can also use it as an ambush, allowing creatures to enter it, where they get met with several cannons aimed at the entrance, ready to fire once something steps through (the rules of the mansion technically allow for this).
Dojo-wise, no mechanics. It was just flavor and a post-game epilogue thing. It does help justify how a random halfing in Varisia learns so many ninja skills, though.
The desk can be used in combat as any tiny hut can be, but mostly it’s for easy mid-adventure (even in terrible conditions) spell scribing or similar book-work, or on-the-go crafting.
I imagine in a game like Kingmaker, or leadership-focused games or games that run much like the Industrious Rogue one, these all features can have wonderful benefit. Just relies on whether the overarching plot allows for such trivialities (time limits to save the world suck), or if the DM is willing to put up with this spontaneous world-building you’re doing.
And yes, I probably could use magnificent mansion casts as a vacation resort for the obscenely rich.
Demiplanes can also be used as prisons or inescapable execution areas. Make them negative aligned and dead magic, with a very carefully hidden or secured exit via portal, or a connection to an adjacent demiplane that you later collapse. Anything that is sent to this isolated demiplane (via plane shift or a treacherous teleport) ends up slowly dying off from infinite negative energy damage, with no access to magic to whisk themselves out again.
That’s not quite how the timeless quality functions, it actually only makes it so that spells with duration last forever.
Careful there druid. It starts off with Awakening animals. Then you start looking at spells like anthropomorphic animal and permanency… Then you start raising their mental stats… Before you know it, you’re playing a Lunar Exalted. Or accidentally a core/featured/exotic race, like Dave Lister did in Red Dwarf.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/anthropomorphic-animal/
All hail Druid, First of Her Class, Breaker of Wealth-by-Level, Mother of Furries.
Funded many orphanages
Spent a thousand or so gold on getting copies of a dictionary written with a party members portrait under the definition of Stupid
Made a magic belt for the parties horse turned celestial griffon, so that he could speak Common. His name was (Duke) Bourbon. We dubbed him Bourbon Freeman and decided that was his new voice
Calling him Duke Bourbon was initially a cute joke, but I did later get him made a Duke, even if it meant making a new tiny Dukedom just for him
One time I discovered rumours that due to the fact I’d built one of my orphanages in the rich people district, the neighbours were complaining that it lowered the look of the area.
I converted the orphanage into a mansion. I gold plated that orphanage. I spent a ton of gold to make that the most extravagant orphanage there ever was. Never did hear how happy they must have been at me raising the tone of the area
Was a kingdom building game, and my character was very petty when it came to certain things
I hope you called it FluffySquirrel’s School for Gifted Youngsters and invited only sorcerer kids to attend.
An old character but Nuden, Paladin of No God, once visited the wretched prisoners of the city he lived in. By law, these prison ships were their home and their condition was miserable. Seasickness, disease, cramped quarters and only barely adequate food made it a hellish location. The city also had a burgeoning industrial center and he watched as protest for fair wages were met with violence. As a police officer himself, he scrupulously checked the law and realized by the books he could do nothing without breaking his oath of service or quitting, which would make it hard to continue the campaign. He began to make regular trips to the boats and would spend all of his lay on hands mercies to ease the prisoner’s difficulties before going to bed himself.
At the end of that story arch, we were now level 6 and had gotten several thousand gold. We had pooled some money to get a base of operation, a small inn we were converting. I took all the rest of my share and… bought a building, hired staff and founded a lawyer’s guild. I hired people with a fire for civil reform and one individual with a strong grounding in law. That person then began to train the rest of my staff. I then used the rest of my money to get a second house and made an adventurer’s guild to act as a neighborhood watch and explicitly worked to hire those off the boats (after being vetted by me of course). All this took several thousand gold and my Leadership feat.
We tackled the industrial issues first, working hard to rally grass-root movements and kept strictly to the law on protests. Decent wages, a more reasonable work schedule, and a minimum age to work. We hadn’t gotten far before the downtime ended, but we were making waves.
I was hounded by the press, yelled at by my boss and got several religious figures a bit angry (being an agnostic paladin sometimes does that) but I kept at it. Probably took up too much game time honestly but it felt right.
It actually mattered later in the game when we were taking on the crime gang of the city. My adventurers guild could provide bodies to help with seizing locations and if we could clear the way, my lawyers could do devastating damage to their financials.
My paladin died shortly after that, but his ghost made sure that the guilds were running smoothly before… well joining the antagonists after they revealed a greater good. I decided he needed to confirm this, which meant I had to get a new character until the module would let us learn naturally. He’s still out there somewhere, probably working to redeem the evil organization and trusting his subordinates to keep up the fight for those downtrodden.
Ah man… I wish Moist von Lipwig got the chance to give prison reform a try before Sir. Terry died. You make it sound like a good plot.
Sadly, the prisons are still horrible. I decided I’d need the support of the dockers first and that meant dealing with the factories. Plus I needed money to get more prisons to house them in the short term. The true way to win would have been dealing with the root cause of why they were arrested, which would be changing laws. better to deal with the violence right now I thought. Sadly, the campaign was focusing on the world spanning conspiracy involving the the Bleak Gate and ultimate war forms, etc.
This wasn’t the Zeitgeist adventure path was it? My group are part way through that (though we’re taking a break) and it sounds very familiar.
A friend of mine once played a paladin who through his adventures had received an over abundance of coin, but nothing to spend it on.
After much pondering, the heroic but prideful paladin came upon a solution. He paid every town dweller ample gold to be his groupies! Their job, was to shout accolades and huzzahs when they saw him about town. And to ask him for autographs and for impromptu speeches.
But even that wasn’t enough to please his ego or to truly tap his wealth. So he then commissioned an artist to create a large statue of him in the center of town!
He would eventually become the stuff of legends… even if no one could remember why.
He’s a job creator! Huzzah!
While not related to the question, at one point when I DMed my first time (3.5), I wanted an encounter that the PCs couldn’t easily talk their way out of. They were carrying an evil artifact with them, so I decided a paladin trying to smite the evil might work. But they were in the middle of the wilderness and I really didn’t want to have someone just wandering when there was a civil war just to the north of their location.
So as they were moving, suddenly an ursan roar began and a bear charged the PCs. thinking this a small bit of fluff, one of the PCs tried charm animal, which failed. The Smite Evil clued them in something was up, along with the sudden hail of sling stones from the monkeys as they moved in.
The PCs did talk it out, since the paladin could tell his smite hadn’t worked for some reason, and they were escorted to the High Druid of the forest… a tortoise. This was before kung fu panda btw, so no jokes about that. The tortoise carefully examined the artifact and gave some helpful plot information on something he recognized as similar. When they asked wtf this all was, the tortoise explained that a druid wanted to drive away the elves of the region and called upon animals to do so. He awakened several of them, who went on to study druidic magic. For the last 500 years, these awakened animals have strived to get a strong enough connection to nature to awaken the next generation, preferring animals that would actually live a long time… thus a tortoise. He is the oldest and the bear guards him as they adventure through the woods, dealing with the worst threats so as to give him the connection he needs to awaken more of them.
Cause in 3.5 it just cost 250XP
That is adorable and I love it.
Why didn’t the animals/druids like the elves though? Those things generally go together like rogues and PVP.
It had to do with the main plot; 1000+ years previously, the humans of the continent were in the middle, the elves to the south and the dwarves to the north. The savage orcs lived to the far north and occasionally would raid into the human lands. The human nations fought each other until the mageocracy began to get stronger. They codified the magical spells still used today and began to use their battle process to win war after war. Finally, they mapped the ley lines and built 9 towers on the continent in a great wheel; 8 spokes and 1 center tower. Each was a university dedicated to a school of magic and empowered their spells on the ley lines. The elves in particular were driven farther and farther back.
Finally, ~600 years ago, the wizards grew arrogant and learned secret knowledge. How to kill a god, whispered to them by Vecna. They learned that Boccob, God of Magic, was hoarding away vast magical energies and spells unknown to mortals. They grew more and more powerful and, in Boccob’s moment of weakness, they slew him, transforming his power into 9 artifacts, one for each school of magic.
The druids served the god of the wilds and he was one of Boccob’s few friends. They knew how to fix him but could not act directly. So they prepared and attacked the towers to get the artifacts. The druids recruited the elves and the dwarves to help, using fear of the humans as motivators.
The problem is that the artifacts are a huge source of power. The elves secured the artifact but then refused to give it to the druids, seeing only the chance to regain their homeland. When they tried to use it though, the Transmutation artifact began to warp everything. The Druid who awakened them needed the animals because he had no one else and the elves were fleeing nature maddened, save for the ones who were corrupted by it.
Now, you might note there are 8 schools of magic. This is technically untrue, as Universal spells do exist.
The artifact the party had at the time was the Necromancy artifact, fyi.
I’m not sure that’s a school. That’s more like the Full Sail University of magic. 😛
the most i had ever spent on non combat stuff was with elliot the unlucky. From levels 1-16, he amassed around 20 k gold. Of that around 4 k went to combat stuff, 3k went to his old bard college in silverlight, 2k to his merchant fiance to help her really get going on forming a trading empire, 1k to his parents, 500 to just himself, and the remaining around 10k to the relief efforts to help rebuilding after everything ended. It was something like that atleast. Because of that and his general goodness besides that, especially relative to his neutral and evil party, my guy ended up being seen as a bit of saint which was pretty cool. The other guys spent their money on stealing and renovating a wizard tower for the wizard, gaining majority ownership of a potion store for the often low health barbarian, and forming a couple hundred strong mercenary group for the fighter and ranger.
I like the image of an increasingly-fat but extraordinarily healthy barbarian performing taste tests at his own potion store.
In 5e if you’ve been adventuring for more than a few levels you’ll quickly run out of things that are useful to purchase until you hit the much much higher levels where spell component costs can be very pricey. So you’ll inevitably start buying ships, homes, etc.
I was just wondering the other day when you would bring up the subject of Awaken again. Because something occurred to me.
Awaken is either a moral obligation or an evil spell with basically no room in-between in terms of morality. Either it’s inherently good for beings to be sapient* and actively choosing to not make as many sapient as you can is basically knowingly inflicting a sort of slavery by ignorance upon them and therefore you’re evil.
Or making animals sapient is terrible because this consigns them to a torturous life where they can think like humans but lack a great many of the humanoid traits that allow them to meaningfully enjoy/participate in that experience.
Immediately upon this realization I laughed because it’s so far beyond the scope of how you’re supposed to think about the spell and because it’s such a horrible “no right answer” philosophical conundrum.
As a note here, people use sentient when they should be saying sapient most of the time. Almost all animals are *sentient since they can perceive and feel things.
Naw. They can always choose to return to ignorance via feeble mind:
See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMcZ7_MeAjA
How does a pigeon wind up being a high level caster though?
Or do you suggest that they just go poop on wizards as they demand to be feebleminded? In which case Awaken is certainly an evil act. =p
Feeblemind should be a publicly funded option for awakened animals.
And honestly, I want to see that protest in a game-world. A bunch of long-suffering warthogs and cows and such that just want to return to their natural state, all demanding the right to petition the royal wizard.
Currently in a gritty realistic rest 5e campaign that has us trudging around the elemental planes trying to fix interplanar travel and possibly stop the end of the universe. After accruing a huge sum of gold in our journeys and spending months on the road eating nothing but dry rations and with nothing for entertainment but the occasional nonsense that fell out of the Cleric’s mouth, Augustus Trimble, gnome warlock and gluttonous bastard with proficiency in cook’s utensils, spent literally all his gold and downtime creating extravagant meals and storing them in the bag of holding so he could eat like a king on the road. The party also invested nearly 400 gold buying out every bookshop they could find to create a portable library, so they’d have something to talk about on the journey.
I love the idea of a intra-party book club.
What all has your party read?
My dmpc oracle eventually spent over 60k on a luxury flying yacht (airship) and customizing the interior with the rooms and buildings rules from ultimate campaign. Bar, bedrooms, minispa, the works.
Got a holodeck on that bad boy?
I have already said this, but since is the topic of yesterday i will keep writhing about it.
A time ago i played a Necromancer kinda obsessed with the Whispering Path, he was the kind of “Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior Tar-Baphon?!?!?!?!?” guy. So with this pc i got the idea to establish an orphanage since he himself got orphan when a pair of zombies eat his parents after he learned Animate Dead for the first time. Using his easily earned fortune he build the orphanage just in time for the mysterious death of several young parents in the village. He then took care of the children teaching them necromancy and the ways of the Whispering Way. The ones who didn’t got magical talents serving as teaching material so their more gifted companions could hone their abilities. The children also got food, shelter and indoctrination. More or less the boys childhood was the kind of grimdark you could expect of an Abyssal running an orphanage while using Hardened Killer Training Style. But still my character really look after the children and took care of his little apprentices. Later i used that as background for other character who was one of that orphans and got a complicated parental relationship with my former pc 😀
Since i wasn’t derailing the campaign and utilized the opportunity for roleplaying and plothooks my DM didn’t complain. Also he like the idea of using that as background for other characters 🙂
And now you’ve got an infinite supply of necromancer PCs. Nice!
Tell Fighter he will surely like the idea, specially the hammer-violence-as-the-only-answer-into-the-kids-minds part. But in the case of my guy it was hammer-necromancy-as-the-only-answer-into-the-kids-minds 🙂
In a recent 5e campaign we ended up ‘inheriting’ some kobolds from a dragon. And since we where planning on killing a couple more dragons, we also expected to get more kobolds, so we set out to organizing them. Soon enough we where practically in charge of the kobolds of an entire mountain region, and the blue ancient dragon we killed had been nice enough to also leave us a city and pre-existing income source.
So we invested somewhere between 50 and 100k in ‘our’ kobolds, primarily on outfitting our roman style legion. We knew the final chapter of the campaign would likely be a siege, so having some actual troops along was really helpful.
The kobolds themselves actually saw very little combat, but their presence alone gave us significantly more clout with the leadership of the heavily depleted army that was already besieging the BBEG’s city, and the trebuchets they’d brought along meant we where ready to take the city about a week after our troops had arrived.
Then the BBEG agreed to a duel, tried to cheat by sending a simulacrum, but we found and the beat him anyway before he could complete his plan, all without the help of our army. Still, they sure looked nice, lined up and ready to storm the walls at our command XD
On one level that’s a great visual, but on another it’s such a waste! How do you get a full army and never use it? That’s Chekhov’s kobold army right there!
The campaign didn’t get to this point, but I had a Druid whose long term plan was to awaken plants (trees of various sizes and large bushes) and immediately free them. While that prevents any direct control, they’d still have his alignment (Good) and be favorably predisposed to him. He would then convince as many as possible to also become druids. The long term goal would have been to create a self-perpetuating defense force for “his” forest.
He would choose plants, instead of animals, because an awakened animal is just the same animal. It is smart and can talk, but has no hands or anything else. A plant, on the other hand, effectively becomes all of the capabilities of a humanoid, and so can use weapons, build things, and such.
Alas, I never had the opportunity to put it into action.
Is “create ent” a spell? I feel like “create ent” should be a spell.
The modron cleric I’m playing in a play by post is planning to save 10% of his adventuring earnings, and keep them in an alms box until he can return them to his temple. Unfortunately due to the pace of PbP I’ve not yet had a scene where I can put any money in the box, so only I know I’m planning it!
Spent a couple hundred thousand nuyen and several months of down time making about ten thousand hard copies (read: data chips) of The Universal Brotherhood file and the Brotherhood’s current UCAS membership list and mailed them anonymously to Everyone Who’s Anyone and Also Not on the List – Heads of State, Governors, Mayors, Congressmen, Media Moguls, Reporters, CEOs, Clergy – you get the idea.
First we cleaned out the Brotherhood’s Redmond chapter house and set up a bunch of charges to demolish the front wall of the building, granting easy access to any who might care to investigate. We passed a KSAF news van going the other way as we left, about 5 minutes prior to detonation (at 3 am).
Didn’t get any recognition, but we did clean out their finances before revealing their secrets.
One of my players, an alchemist, is currently spending large amounts of our down time in War For The Crown turning a small town in the middle of nowhere into a center of learning and knowledge- going from a town of ~40 digging-through-mud farmers just praying wolves decide to look elsewhere to a fully fledged university, walls, and a town guard protecting a population of a few hundred is quite the change.
You’ll need a head shop. It’s not a proper university town until you’ve got crystals, zen bells, and the whiff of patchouli. 😛
Another semidick move of the DM for my Arcane Trickster. I had acquired a Hyena companion during the course of our 3rd-5th levels. I even managed to find a ring of animal friendship and used it primarily to talk to him. It was decided that he contributed enough to “level up” offering to boost some stats and gain a spell or two. I specifically chose to NOT boost his intelligence.
Despite this, I later find the NPC sheet now had his intelligence raised to 4, the DM claiming that this is what we had agreed on.
This was not what I had agreed to. I had been holding out with the intent to eventually find a party member or just pay an NPC druid to Awaken him. I still wonder if the DM had done that to deliberately prevent him from being awakened, or if that was a purely coincidental aspect to his failure. His staunch refusal to rework the stats the way I had wanted left the former impression.