# Awakened Animals: A template to make your own "Balanced" animal PCs. ___ > Give or take. Okay, they might be a little... umm... Odd. > > The goal for this is for them to be roughly on par with a normal PC, not be too advantaged over them, but not be so weak it's noticeable either. <div style='margin-top:-7px;'></div> ### Creature Type You can choose any medium or smaller Beast of CR 1/2 or lower. You lose access to the Flyby, Web Sense, and Multiattack features, if your chosen type of creature has them, and gain other features as described below. If your creature had any modifications to their Sight, such as Blindsight or Tremorsense, they lose that unless a feature below says they regain it. <div style='margin-top:-7px;'></div> #### Ability Score Increase Your stats are generated in much the same manner as any other PC, depending on the campaign. To figure out which stats you improve in place of a normal race, take your chosen beast's two best stats, give a +2 to the highest and +1 to the second highest. In cases of ties, you choose the order between the tied stats. <div style='margin-top:-7px;'></div> #### Alignment Will depend on how recently you were Awakened. Most animals right after Awakening will usually be neutral, with no nuanced opinion on morality due to how new the entire concept is to them. More experienced animals may well have developed more extreme views on the world, though. <div style='margin-top:-7px;'></div> #### Speeds All animals to be used as awakened PCs gain a 30' land movement speed and the ability to breathe air. If you chose to play a fish, you're just weird, but figure out how your character does this yourself. Maybe they crafted a wheelchair or something. <div style='margin-top:-7px;'></div> #### Background & Skills. Unless you have a Background in mind, use the following feature along with two of the proficiencies the beast had. (Taking Survival and Athletics if the beast has no skills of it's own, and choosing one of those two if the beast had one.) <div style='margin-top:-7px;'></div> ##### Bestial Empathy As an animal, you can instinctively communicate with others of your original kind, as if under the effects of a "Speak with Animals" spell. While you have no such benefit with other creatures, familiarities with certain similar tells and body language gives you Advantage on Insight checks to determine an animal's intent and mood. <div style='margin-top:-7px;'></div> #### Languages You know common and one other language. #### Weapons You can use any starting weapon normally, which replaces your natural weapon attack. By spending gold equal to the gold cost of a melee weapon, you can have your natural weapons modified to resemble those weapons. By spending a Short Rest with a magic melee weapon and attuning to it if necessary, you can learn to channel it's powers into your natural weapons, though, by doing so, they also end up inheriting the same damage dice and other properties, almost as if it works exactly the same as actually wielding the thing. Ranged weapons, on the other hand, are a bit more difficult. You can get a ranged weapon which works with your physique custom built by paying twice the GP price usually required for that item. #### Armor With your increased intelligence, it's far easier to make Barding for you, with it only costing the base price of the armor, plus an additional half of that price. The armor's weight is not increased. ### Other Animal's abilities. Most non-attack abilities available in a creature's stat blocks can be directly translated to your creature if not mentioned in the Creature Type section, but there are some exceptions. #### Keen Senses If your basic beast form has any variant of Keen Senses, this instead translates into a proficiency in the Perception skill #### Darkvision IF your basic beast form has darkvision, you have it to 60' #### Poison damage If your basic beast form dealt additional poison damage, an amount of your natural weapon's damage is replaced depending on the type of damage dice you are using. * d4/d6/d10: Your ability score modifier's additional damage is poison type. * d8: You instead deal 1d4 + your ability score modifier of your original type and 1d4 additional poison * d12/2d6: You instead deal 1d4 + your ability score modifier of your original type and 2d4 additional poison If you use a magic weapon, or your natural weapons count as magical for some reason, the poison damage added to your attacks through this change ignores resistance to poison, and deals half damage to creatures immune to poison. #### Other movements If your basic beast form has an additional movement speed greater than 30', that speed is instead 30' for you.