Edit: I am going to put the last line first so that people know exactly what I am looking for
So I would really like to know first, if there is a hole in my logic and, more importantly, how are other DMs and players using this spell at their table, because I can see the potential for even a CR2 creature to seriously unbalance the game.
I am NOT looking for a reiteration of the rules of this spell. I feel that I understand them pretty well UNLESS there is something that I am clearly missing about the spell. I am also not looking for examples of how a DM could mess with a player using this spell, along the lines of "Well a Wish spell could really turn out bad..." I know my DM can do this, he probably won't if he does, I'm ok with it. I want to know "how are other DMs and players using this spell at their tables."
Ok. My DM and I are trying to figure out what this spell means for my 9th level Druid, what its limits are and how other DMs and players are using it in their campaigns. I searched the forums and I couldn't find this specific issue, but if a thread already exists please direct me to it. Here is the text of the spell:
LEVEL
5th
CASTING TIME
8 Hours
RANGE/AREA
Touch
COMPONENTS
V, S, M *
DURATION
Instantaneous
SCHOOL
Transmutation
ATTACK/SAVE
None
DAMAGE/EFFECT
Charmed
After spending the casting time tracing magical pathways within a precious gemstone, you touch a Huge or smaller beast or plant. The target must have either no Intelligence score or an Intelligence of 3 or less. The target gains an Intelligence of 10. The target also gains the ability to speak one language you know. If the target is a plant, it gains the ability to move its limbs, roots, vines, creepers, and so forth, and it gains senses similar to a human's. Your GM chooses statistics appropriate for the awakened plant, such as the statistics for the awakened shrub or the awakened tree.
The awakened beast or plant is charmed by you for 30 days or until you or your companions do anything harmful to it. When the charmed condition ends, the awakened creature chooses whether to remain friendly to you, based on how you treated it while it was charmed.
So, the animal is clearly NOT an animal companion since spells and abilities like find familiar and companion's bond explicitly tell you that either the creature obeys your commands or you command it directly. So it seems like Awaken, while it charms the animal or plant, does not give you direct control over it. However, since it has an intelligence of 10 you could reason that you could make this agreement with it, i.e. "you follow me and do as I say and I will make sure you are well fed and taken care of."
If you allow the last bit it creates a world of possibilities that are potentially super unbalancing. A mammoth for instance is a CR 6 creature that meets all the criteria for the spell and could reasonably agree to serve you. My DM limited me to a CR 2 creature and I chose a Cave Bear and it was tearing stuff apart for a whole session. I essentially had a 3rd level spell in effect at all times as if I had cast Conjure Animals. It's a good thing our party ranger wasn't at the table because they would have been going "WTH! My wolf is nothing compared to that monster!" I hadn't even started buffing it and it was ridiculously effective.
So I would really like to know first, if there is a hole in my logic and, more importantly, how are other DMs and players using this spell at their table, because I can see the potential for even a CR2 creature to seriously unbalance the game.
Ok so, it cost 1000gp and takes 8 hours to cast on a target, then only lasts 30 days. That takes a lot of preparation that potentially has to be repeated.
Also, a companion obey all your commands. Awaken does not have that effect. Charmed creatures only view you as a friend, not a master. You would still have to RP with the awakened creature like any NPC ally.
Well, for the first 30 days, it’s charmed by you. Which isn’t as all powerful as that. It won’t attack you, and you have advantage on your checks to ask it to attack someone else (or do other things). But that’s not a guarantee that it will actually do it. And since rolls should only be made if there is a chance for success, your DM can always rule it just says “no” and there is no roll to be made. You want it to charge at that ancient dragon? No amount of persuasion roll will get it to.
But let’s say the 30 days are over and it decides it really likes you as a friend and wants to stick around. That cave bear has a 12 AC, its really easy to hit. It’s not a PC, so it doesn’t get death saves (unless the DM wants to be generous). So it gets torn up in combat. Do you really want the cleric, or you, to spend your actions healing it, instead of fighting the enemy? The thing is really pretty fragile.
And then there’s the spell itself. First off, if the DM doesn’t want you to have a specific creature, they simply don’t put one in the campaign. (If it’s not clear, you don’t summon one, you need to find it in the wild.) If you never meet a mammoth, you’ll never be able to cast awaken on one. Second, it has an 8-hour casting time. What was a wild cave bear doing for eight hours while you cast the spell on it? If you knocked it out and tied it up, I doubt it would be very excited about helping you. That’s no way to start a relationship.
"After spending the casting time tracing magical pathways within a precious gemstone, you touch a Huge or smaller beast or plant. "
Nothing that says the beast or plant needs to be in my presence while tracing the pathways on the gemstone. I could trace them and then just walk up to the thing, or I could follow it while I am tracing, or I could wait until it sleeps. Not an issue.
"After spending the casting time tracing magical pathways within a precious gemstone, you touch a Huge or smaller beast or plant. "
Nothing that says the beast or plant needs to be in my presence while tracing the pathways on the gemstone. I could trace them and then just walk up to the thing, or I could follow it while I am tracing, or I could wait until it sleeps. Not an issue.
You arent wrong, but still requires precise timing, which is hard to do without having the animal captured some way.
Between that and the 1000gp that gets consumed every time, etc. It is pretty fair. Getting an NPC ally for a month for that cost.
“When the charmed condition ends, the awakened creature chooses whether to remain friendly to you, based on how you treated it while it was charmed.”
Also, the creature may remain friendly after the charm effect ends so we be could rule that it chooses to remain at your side. I bought the bear barding and am in the process of making it an alcoholic, so it might want to stick around.
As others have said, there's a wide gulf between "is friendly towards you" and "will lay down their life for you in combat." So there's several ways you can mitigate this:
It likes you but hates the rest of the party, and will not travel with them.
It doesn't need you to "feed it and take care of it." It was doing fine before and is now even more capable. It may develop its own goals and have its own motivations that take it on a different path than the party.
It won't fight at all, but will stay with the party and carry gear, stand guard at night, etc. Still helps out, just not in combat.
It will fight, but retreats the first time it's injured.
It will fight, but leaves the party after the first time it is seriously injured.
You can also do any combination of these, i.e. it fights with the party for one session and then leaves to pursue its own goals. The spell is very flexible, the challenge is to try to meet the player's expectations of the spell without it overshadowing the other players - and sometimes that means readjusting the player's expectations of the spell. But by any means the spell is not "you get a slave for 30 days."
This is how you become a king. You go to an abandoned Area/country that has an Agate mine. You cast this spell ten times and have the animals/plants start mining agate. Simulatneously you begin turning the area into a garden spot with canals and other work to make it a paradise. They end up calling you the Druid King.
I once had a player create a needle blight, I think. Some tiny guy with blindsense, who could sit on his shoulder and tell him if there was invisible stuff around. Not hugely powerful, but neat.
The material cost of it is a shame, because it's already pretty hard to use, and it's not hugely influential imo. I got a Pot of Awakening once, and all it did was allow me to have a wandering druid's grove sort of thing in the post-campaign wrap-up. Which is sweet, but it didn't do anything during the game lol.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Edit: I am going to put the last line first so that people know exactly what I am looking for
I am NOT looking for a reiteration of the rules of this spell. I feel that I understand them pretty well UNLESS there is something that I am clearly missing about the spell. I am also not looking for examples of how a DM could mess with a player using this spell, along the lines of "Well a Wish spell could really turn out bad..." I know my DM can do this, he probably won't if he does, I'm ok with it. I want to know "how are other DMs and players using this spell at their tables."
Thanks.
........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Ok. My DM and I are trying to figure out what this spell means for my 9th level Druid, what its limits are and how other DMs and players are using it in their campaigns. I searched the forums and I couldn't find this specific issue, but if a thread already exists please direct me to it. Here is the text of the spell:
So, the animal is clearly NOT an animal companion since spells and abilities like find familiar and companion's bond explicitly tell you that either the creature obeys your commands or you command it directly. So it seems like Awaken, while it charms the animal or plant, does not give you direct control over it. However, since it has an intelligence of 10 you could reason that you could make this agreement with it, i.e. "you follow me and do as I say and I will make sure you are well fed and taken care of."
If you allow the last bit it creates a world of possibilities that are potentially super unbalancing. A mammoth for instance is a CR 6 creature that meets all the criteria for the spell and could reasonably agree to serve you. My DM limited me to a CR 2 creature and I chose a Cave Bear and it was tearing stuff apart for a whole session. I essentially had a 3rd level spell in effect at all times as if I had cast Conjure Animals. It's a good thing our party ranger wasn't at the table because they would have been going "WTH! My wolf is nothing compared to that monster!" I hadn't even started buffing it and it was ridiculously effective.
So I would really like to know first, if there is a hole in my logic and, more importantly, how are other DMs and players using this spell at their table, because I can see the potential for even a CR2 creature to seriously unbalance the game.
Ok so, it cost 1000gp and takes 8 hours to cast on a target, then only lasts 30 days. That takes a lot of preparation that potentially has to be repeated.
Also, a companion obey all your commands. Awaken does not have that effect. Charmed creatures only view you as a friend, not a master. You would still have to RP with the awakened creature like any NPC ally.
Well, for the first 30 days, it’s charmed by you. Which isn’t as all powerful as that. It won’t attack you, and you have advantage on your checks to ask it to attack someone else (or do other things). But that’s not a guarantee that it will actually do it. And since rolls should only be made if there is a chance for success, your DM can always rule it just says “no” and there is no roll to be made. You want it to charge at that ancient dragon? No amount of persuasion roll will get it to.
But let’s say the 30 days are over and it decides it really likes you as a friend and wants to stick around. That cave bear has a 12 AC, its really easy to hit. It’s not a PC, so it doesn’t get death saves (unless the DM wants to be generous). So it gets torn up in combat. Do you really want the cleric, or you, to spend your actions healing it, instead of fighting the enemy? The thing is really pretty fragile.
And then there’s the spell itself. First off, if the DM doesn’t want you to have a specific creature, they simply don’t put one in the campaign. (If it’s not clear, you don’t summon one, you need to find it in the wild.) If you never meet a mammoth, you’ll never be able to cast awaken on one. Second, it has an 8-hour casting time. What was a wild cave bear doing for eight hours while you cast the spell on it? If you knocked it out and tied it up, I doubt it would be very excited about helping you. That’s no way to start a relationship.
"After spending the casting time tracing magical pathways within a precious gemstone, you touch a Huge or smaller beast or plant. "
Nothing that says the beast or plant needs to be in my presence while tracing the pathways on the gemstone. I could trace them and then just walk up to the thing, or I could follow it while I am tracing, or I could wait until it sleeps. Not an issue.
You arent wrong, but still requires precise timing, which is hard to do without having the animal captured some way.
Between that and the 1000gp that gets consumed every time, etc. It is pretty fair. Getting an NPC ally for a month for that cost.
“When the charmed condition ends, the awakened creature chooses whether to remain friendly to you, based on how you treated it while it was charmed.”
Also, the creature may remain friendly after the charm effect ends so we be could rule that it chooses to remain at your side. I bought the bear barding and am in the process of making it an alcoholic, so it might want to stick around.
As others have said, there's a wide gulf between "is friendly towards you" and "will lay down their life for you in combat." So there's several ways you can mitigate this:
You can also do any combination of these, i.e. it fights with the party for one session and then leaves to pursue its own goals. The spell is very flexible, the challenge is to try to meet the player's expectations of the spell without it overshadowing the other players - and sometimes that means readjusting the player's expectations of the spell. But by any means the spell is not "you get a slave for 30 days."
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
This is how you become a king. You go to an abandoned Area/country that has an Agate mine. You cast this spell ten times and have the animals/plants start mining agate. Simulatneously you begin turning the area into a garden spot with canals and other work to make it a paradise. They end up calling you the Druid King.
I once had a player create a needle blight, I think. Some tiny guy with blindsense, who could sit on his shoulder and tell him if there was invisible stuff around. Not hugely powerful, but neat.
The material cost of it is a shame, because it's already pretty hard to use, and it's not hugely influential imo. I got a Pot of Awakening once, and all it did was allow me to have a wandering druid's grove sort of thing in the post-campaign wrap-up. Which is sweet, but it didn't do anything during the game lol.