Tasha's Cauldron of Everything has the rules for creating entirely new races.
Instead of choosing one of the game’s races for your character at 1st level, you can use the following traits to represent your character’s lineage, giving you full control over how your character’s origin shaped them:
Creature Type. You are a humanoid. You determine your appearance and whether you resemble any of your kin. (only some animals are humanoids)
Size. You are Small or Medium (your choice).
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Ability Score Increase. One ability score of your choice increases by 2.
Feat. You gain one feat of your choice for which you qualify.
Variable Trait. You gain one of the following options of your choice: (a) darkvision with a range of 60 feet or (b) proficiency in one skill of your choice.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for your character.
Now of course, Animals cannot normally speak, but they can most certainly understand at least some of what they get told, but they would probably have to learn Sign Language to effectively communicate, and everyone else would need to learn it too if they want to get beyond basic communication.
or someone could use Comprehend Languages on themselves and be the interpreter
or if they are a caster they could use the spell Tongues, and then everyone who speaks at least one language of any kind would be able to understand them.
I think it would be a huge amount of fun to play a Panda Monk who used Kung-Fu, or any kind of animal speaking in Tongues.
I really should have checked the Awaken spell. dot113 is absolutely correct. It does say you need "an agate worth at least 1,000 gp, which the spell consumes" for each character, but I don't think it would hurt anything to ignore that if you really want to run a game with Awakened Animals as player-characters. It's a spell available to Druids (obviously) and Bards.
Oh, and as far as Rogues go, there are three animals that are notorious for getting out of cages. The raccoon is notorious for being able to get into or out of anything, the Grey Parrot is also, and they are known for being surprisingly bright animals. They really do seem to be able to learn to talk. The last one is the Moose. Their lips are longer and more flexible than you might expect. I'd be wary about using a Moose. They are much bigger than Medium, I am uncertain about the Gorilla, there are no stats for those in the official rules. I think they would be ok. A frog would have to be a very sizable one to be considered "small", but a Frog Of Unusual Size would be pretty amusing, and that's what we are going for here.
I remember a special on animals called "Dangerous to Man" where they talked about animals that were unexpectedly hazardous to corner, and the one I remember best was the Golden Anteater. They come in at about 35 pounds, they have a long snout with a long sticky tongue for getting ants out of their hills and holes in the wood. They are kind of cute and dopey looking. The thing is, that long snout has teeth. They break tree limbs and chew up the wood to get to the ants. Human limbs are actually more fragile than tree limbs of similar thickness. The anteater, like most animals, is considerably stronger than a Human, and they have claws that they use to break things open. They are known from breaking apart termite mounds, which have a consistency much like concrete, and wrapping their arms around trees, sinking their claws into the back, and ripping the tree in half.
They would make great warriors.
It's a good thing that animals in the real world are arguably not as intelligent as humans in the real world, because our brains are really have going for us. We are weaker than almost all animals and we lack any sort of useful natural weapons. The theory is that we evolved our larger brains so that we would have spare brain cells. Brain cells die as part of exertion, so we have lots of those, and it's theorized that this is why we can keep chasing a wounded animal until we catch up with it. We just keep traveling at whatever pace, and sooner or later we outlast almost everything that moves. Intelligence was just a side effect of having larger brains. We have opposable thumbs, which some animals have, though they are almost always more awkward than the ones humans have, and that's about all we've got.
Agreed on the material cost there, someone else paid that part anyways to cast the spell for the animal characters.
I love the idea of anteaters now, for some reason I just picture a laughing barbarian moving towards an anteater, saying something like "I'm no ant, what's it gonna do!" before being ripped apart in two
It's a good thing that animals in the real world are arguably not as intelligent as humans in the real world, because our brains are really have going for us. We are weaker than almost all animals and we lack any sort of useful natural weapons. The theory is that we evolved our larger brains so that we would have spare brain cells. Brain cells die as part of exertion, so we have lots of those, and it's theorized that this is why we can keep chasing a wounded animal until we catch up with it. We just keep traveling at whatever pace, and sooner or later we outlast almost everything that moves. Intelligence was just a side effect of having larger brains. We have opposable thumbs, which some animals have, though they are almost always more awkward than the ones humans have, and that's about all we've got.
Humans are far from 'weaker than almost all animals.' We fall into the top 0.1% of land dwelling animal species for size. There are vastly more types of mice, rabbits, lizards, snakes, birds and fish that are vastly physically weaker than humans. You can probably name all of the ones that are bigger than us, but that's only because we pay attention to them. We don't really think much about gophers, toads and dormice because they pose no threat to us. On a typical farm, the only animals of comparable size and strength to us are cattle and horses, and those are only the size they are now because people have bred them.
We are bipedal; this is far, far more important in 'exhaustion hunting' than having a larger brain. Being bipeds means that we use much less energy to move than quadrapeds.
Brain size is an interesting one, because it doesn't directly dictate intellect. Corvids - crows, magpies, rooks, ravens etc. - are able to demonstrate extremely high levels of problem solving ability. They are capable of seeing a 7 part puzzle, understand that they have to solve puzzles 1-6 out of order to get the stick they need to solve problem 7. They are highly intelligent creatures, but their brains are very small. That said, humans are unique in being born after 3 trimesters instead of 4, which is why human babies are completely unable to do anything for themselves. This is because our craniums can't come out after the third trimester because they're too large. When they're born, other animals have already developed into beings capable of walking in 1 hour of learning outside the womb.
Dolphins are hyper intelligent. You can show one dolphin a shape, it will communicate the shape to another dolphin, and that second dolphin then knows exactly which shape it is from a choice of several.
Opposable thumbs evolved alongside our intelligence. There is no point in having them without it.
Pound for pound, Humans are weak. Make a squirrel the same size as a human and I'm willing to bet it will be stronger. Being bipeds is useful, but I don't know that just being bipedal would make exhaustion hunting easier for humans than any other biped. It's hard to tell, because while bears can walk on two legs and have very nearly the same diet as humans do, they don't need to exhaustion hunt.
Intelligence is very questionable. I said it appeared in humans as a side effect, but I didn't say that things with smaller brains were less intelligent. I said it was "arguable" and I still think so. There are some pretty bright animals, but I haven't seen a whole lot of civilizations run by magpies. I'm pretty sure that Dolphins are smarter than humans are, and if they had hands with opposable thumbs we'd see a great Dolphin civilization under the water.
Real world stuff doesn't translate well into game terms. I'm kind of sorry I brought it up. I thought it was interesting, but the thread is about playing as an Awakened Animal. At least the stuff about the anteater was well received.
I won't rest until I'm able to play an owl who was a wizards familiar who the wizard awakened who after his masters death now summons a commoner as a familiar and uses him to cast spells. I will call him Neal the Undying.
In the Player’s Handbook for 5e read the Awaken Spell. It specifically says, “the target also gains the ability to speak one language you know.” This means that if you play as a creature that had the Awaken spell cast on it then you get the ability to not only understand 1 language but also SPEAK IT. So, yes it is very much possible to play as an animal in dnd and role play as well. Plus I was reading the earlier comments, you definitely can cast spells as an animal if you pick the sorcerer class. At level 1 a sorcerer can learn the cantrip Mage Hand. Which means if your animal has no hands you should use this spell. But you are probably asking, “what about the somatic part of the spell?” That’s also fixable! At level 3 sorcerers get the ability to use meta magic, including Subtle Spell. In the Players Handbook it says, “when you cast a spell, you can spend 1 sorcery point to cast it without any somatic or verbal components.” Now you can basically cast any spell you want at the cost of a sorcery point. The only thing that sucks is that if you start a campaign at level 1, you will need to level up to level 3 to use magic properly. Also, it is possible to play as an animal rouge, you just can’t use a lot of the abilities that are in that class. OR just use the sidekick classes from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and use them instead. Either way playing as an awakened animal is definitely doable, if you have the time to look up the rules from the books. Hope that rant helps! :)
Why can't it have weapons? I mean if we suspended disbelief that it can talk then what's a couple of thumbs.
I have two awakened animals in a party I run for. One is. Druid and one is a wizard. I made a custom race for them based off the animals they are (Badger and Racoon). It's super fun having them walk around with armor on or just looking in windows spying on folks. It really makes for some funs times.
A very belated note that Steamforged Games have excellent third-party content specifically about playing awakened-but-not-humanoid animals as player characters. And the rules are available in free playkits, to promote their setting book(s):
OR Level 3+: Custom Lineage, feat of choice, Rogue (Arcane Trickster)
Level 6+: (Super MAD option) Custom Lineage, feat of choice, Monk 3 (Astral Self) AND Rogue 3 (Arcane Trickster)
Both of these options let you focus on Dexterity instead of Strength, for the most part. Monk requires good Wisdom, Arcane Trickster requires good Intelligence. All characters generally need decent Constitution. None of these require much Charisma, though you could be a beautiful or compelling specimen of awakened fauna, if you could manage a good score there. The Telekinetic feat gives you mage hand for free, allowing most interactions. Arcane Trickster's Mage Hand Legerdemain is even better, giving more options with Mage Hand. Astral Self Monk allows you to use Ki to create arms and, eventually, an entire body that does not "have to" look like the base creature.
OTHER OPTIONS (that I might allow): Anthropomorphic versions of the animals, such as Tortle, Grung, Harengon, Lizardfolk, Kobold, Dragonborn, Minotaur, Tabaxi, Leonin, Kenku, Aaracokra, Owlin, etc. Also, Simic Hybrid. I also love the idea of taking a creature with opposable thumbs/digits and picking the nearest analog race for stats. In my homebrew setting, there are ape-like mountain orcs, for example. Similarly, there are some spider-monkey-like goblins in the jungle. This was meant to diversify the types of humanoids that are out there, but the same application could be used to provide mechanics for your flavor.
Most of all, be sensible, try to make it fun but balanced, and ENJOY!
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything has the rules for creating entirely new races.
Instead of choosing one of the game’s races for your character at 1st level, you can use the following traits to represent your character’s lineage, giving you full control over how your character’s origin shaped them:
Creature Type. You are a humanoid. You determine your appearance and whether you resemble any of your kin. (only some animals are humanoids)
Size. You are Small or Medium (your choice).
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Ability Score Increase. One ability score of your choice increases by 2.
Feat. You gain one feat of your choice for which you qualify.
Variable Trait. You gain one of the following options of your choice: (a) darkvision with a range of 60 feet or (b) proficiency in one skill of your choice.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for your character.
Now of course, Animals cannot normally speak, but they can most certainly understand at least some of what they get told, but they would probably have to learn Sign Language to effectively communicate, and everyone else would need to learn it too if they want to get beyond basic communication.
I think it would be a huge amount of fun to play a Panda Monk who used Kung-Fu, or any kind of animal speaking in Tongues.
<Insert clever signature here>
The awakened spell gives the creature speech, which helps a bit
What about a raccoon or an otter?
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I really should have checked the Awaken spell. dot113 is absolutely correct. It does say you need "an agate worth at least 1,000 gp, which the spell consumes" for each character, but I don't think it would hurt anything to ignore that if you really want to run a game with Awakened Animals as player-characters. It's a spell available to Druids (obviously) and Bards.
Oh, and as far as Rogues go, there are three animals that are notorious for getting out of cages. The raccoon is notorious for being able to get into or out of anything, the Grey Parrot is also, and they are known for being surprisingly bright animals. They really do seem to be able to learn to talk. The last one is the Moose. Their lips are longer and more flexible than you might expect. I'd be wary about using a Moose. They are much bigger than Medium, I am uncertain about the Gorilla, there are no stats for those in the official rules. I think they would be ok. A frog would have to be a very sizable one to be considered "small", but a Frog Of Unusual Size would be pretty amusing, and that's what we are going for here.
I remember a special on animals called "Dangerous to Man" where they talked about animals that were unexpectedly hazardous to corner, and the one I remember best was the Golden Anteater. They come in at about 35 pounds, they have a long snout with a long sticky tongue for getting ants out of their hills and holes in the wood. They are kind of cute and dopey looking. The thing is, that long snout has teeth. They break tree limbs and chew up the wood to get to the ants. Human limbs are actually more fragile than tree limbs of similar thickness. The anteater, like most animals, is considerably stronger than a Human, and they have claws that they use to break things open. They are known from breaking apart termite mounds, which have a consistency much like concrete, and wrapping their arms around trees, sinking their claws into the back, and ripping the tree in half.
They would make great warriors.
It's a good thing that animals in the real world are arguably not as intelligent as humans in the real world, because our brains are really have going for us. We are weaker than almost all animals and we lack any sort of useful natural weapons. The theory is that we evolved our larger brains so that we would have spare brain cells. Brain cells die as part of exertion, so we have lots of those, and it's theorized that this is why we can keep chasing a wounded animal until we catch up with it. We just keep traveling at whatever pace, and sooner or later we outlast almost everything that moves. Intelligence was just a side effect of having larger brains. We have opposable thumbs, which some animals have, though they are almost always more awkward than the ones humans have, and that's about all we've got.
<Insert clever signature here>
Agreed on the material cost there, someone else paid that part anyways to cast the spell for the animal characters.
I love the idea of anteaters now, for some reason I just picture a laughing barbarian moving towards an anteater, saying something like "I'm no ant, what's it gonna do!" before being ripped apart in two
Humans are far from 'weaker than almost all animals.' We fall into the top 0.1% of land dwelling animal species for size. There are vastly more types of mice, rabbits, lizards, snakes, birds and fish that are vastly physically weaker than humans. You can probably name all of the ones that are bigger than us, but that's only because we pay attention to them. We don't really think much about gophers, toads and dormice because they pose no threat to us. On a typical farm, the only animals of comparable size and strength to us are cattle and horses, and those are only the size they are now because people have bred them.
We are bipedal; this is far, far more important in 'exhaustion hunting' than having a larger brain. Being bipeds means that we use much less energy to move than quadrapeds.
Brain size is an interesting one, because it doesn't directly dictate intellect. Corvids - crows, magpies, rooks, ravens etc. - are able to demonstrate extremely high levels of problem solving ability. They are capable of seeing a 7 part puzzle, understand that they have to solve puzzles 1-6 out of order to get the stick they need to solve problem 7. They are highly intelligent creatures, but their brains are very small. That said, humans are unique in being born after 3 trimesters instead of 4, which is why human babies are completely unable to do anything for themselves. This is because our craniums can't come out after the third trimester because they're too large. When they're born, other animals have already developed into beings capable of walking in 1 hour of learning outside the womb.
Dolphins are hyper intelligent. You can show one dolphin a shape, it will communicate the shape to another dolphin, and that second dolphin then knows exactly which shape it is from a choice of several.
Opposable thumbs evolved alongside our intelligence. There is no point in having them without it.
Pound for pound, Humans are weak. Make a squirrel the same size as a human and I'm willing to bet it will be stronger. Being bipeds is useful, but I don't know that just being bipedal would make exhaustion hunting easier for humans than any other biped. It's hard to tell, because while bears can walk on two legs and have very nearly the same diet as humans do, they don't need to exhaustion hunt.
Intelligence is very questionable. I said it appeared in humans as a side effect, but I didn't say that things with smaller brains were less intelligent. I said it was "arguable" and I still think so. There are some pretty bright animals, but I haven't seen a whole lot of civilizations run by magpies. I'm pretty sure that Dolphins are smarter than humans are, and if they had hands with opposable thumbs we'd see a great Dolphin civilization under the water.
Real world stuff doesn't translate well into game terms. I'm kind of sorry I brought it up. I thought it was interesting, but the thread is about playing as an Awakened Animal. At least the stuff about the anteater was well received.
<Insert clever signature here>
I won't rest until I'm able to play an owl who was a wizards familiar who the wizard awakened who after his masters death now summons a commoner as a familiar and uses him to cast spells. I will call him Neal the Undying.
Matt Mercer played a low hp awakened mouse companion in the planes of hell.
The set-up seems rigged to add value to the mouse's movement potentials but it all seems fun.
At the other extreme, bad horse was an ultimate boss:
In the middle ground, scooby doo was an equal member of Mystery Incorporated.
There are a wide range of beast options. I just hope they facilitate a sufficient variety of play.
In the Player’s Handbook for 5e read the Awaken Spell. It specifically says, “the target also gains the ability to speak one language you know.” This means that if you play as a creature that had the Awaken spell cast on it then you get the ability to not only understand 1 language but also SPEAK IT. So, yes it is very much possible to play as an animal in dnd and role play as well. Plus I was reading the earlier comments, you definitely can cast spells as an animal if you pick the sorcerer class. At level 1 a sorcerer can learn the cantrip Mage Hand. Which means if your animal has no hands you should use this spell. But you are probably asking, “what about the somatic part of the spell?” That’s also fixable! At level 3 sorcerers get the ability to use meta magic, including Subtle Spell. In the Players Handbook it says, “when you cast a spell, you can spend 1 sorcery point to cast it without any somatic or verbal components.” Now you can basically cast any spell you want at the cost of a sorcery point. The only thing that sucks is that if you start a campaign at level 1, you will need to level up to level 3 to use magic properly. Also, it is possible to play as an animal rouge, you just can’t use a lot of the abilities that are in that class. OR just use the sidekick classes from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and use them instead. Either way playing as an awakened animal is definitely doable, if you have the time to look up the rules from the books. Hope that rant helps! :)
Why can't it have weapons? I mean if we suspended disbelief that it can talk then what's a couple of thumbs.
I have two awakened animals in a party I run for. One is. Druid and one is a wizard. I made a custom race for them based off the animals they are (Badger and Racoon). It's super fun having them walk around with armor on or just looking in windows spying on folks. It really makes for some funs times.
A very belated note that Steamforged Games have excellent third-party content specifically about playing awakened-but-not-humanoid animals as player characters. And the rules are available in free playkits, to promote their setting book(s):
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0602/0156/6449/files/AA-DD-Rules-Companion.pdf?v=3047929172010971562 - dogs
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0602/0156/6449/files/AA-CC-Rules-Companion.pdf?v=6603382758982943968 - cats
They should make a good base for including other animal forms as well, based on the wide variety of cats and dogs available.
Shift+CTRL+V removes formatting, usually
Options I like:
1st level: Custom Lineage, Telekinetic feat
Level 3+: Custom Lineage, Telekinetic feat, Monk (Astral Self)
OR Level 3+: Custom Lineage, feat of choice, Rogue (Arcane Trickster)
Level 6+: (Super MAD option) Custom Lineage, feat of choice, Monk 3 (Astral Self) AND Rogue 3 (Arcane Trickster)
Both of these options let you focus on Dexterity instead of Strength, for the most part. Monk requires good Wisdom, Arcane Trickster requires good Intelligence. All characters generally need decent Constitution. None of these require much Charisma, though you could be a beautiful or compelling specimen of awakened fauna, if you could manage a good score there. The Telekinetic feat gives you mage hand for free, allowing most interactions. Arcane Trickster's Mage Hand Legerdemain is even better, giving more options with Mage Hand. Astral Self Monk allows you to use Ki to create arms and, eventually, an entire body that does not "have to" look like the base creature.
OTHER OPTIONS (that I might allow): Anthropomorphic versions of the animals, such as Tortle, Grung, Harengon, Lizardfolk, Kobold, Dragonborn, Minotaur, Tabaxi, Leonin, Kenku, Aaracokra, Owlin, etc. Also, Simic Hybrid. I also love the idea of taking a creature with opposable thumbs/digits and picking the nearest analog race for stats. In my homebrew setting, there are ape-like mountain orcs, for example. Similarly, there are some spider-monkey-like goblins in the jungle. This was meant to diversify the types of humanoids that are out there, but the same application could be used to provide mechanics for your flavor.
Most of all, be sensible, try to make it fun but balanced, and ENJOY!
Reflavoring works too. I once played a halfling monk reflavored as awakened dog.