Awaken: Go Out and Make Some Friends
Spell Level: 5
School: Transmutation
Casting Time: 8 hours
Range: Touch
Duration: Instantaneous
Components: V, S, M (an agate worth at least 1,000 gp, which the spell consumes)
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.
Review by Sam West, Twitter @CrierKobold
Are you tired of trying to make friends at the local pub? Have you ever looked at your goldfish and thought “I wonder what you’d say to me after all the times I fed you”? Do you just really hate people, and wish plants could talk instead? Do I have the spell for you!
For ten easy payments of 100 gold pieces, you can have an agate to transform any old dog, cat, or fern into a walking, talking comrade! Awaken takes “making friends” to a new level; you’ll never be lonely again!
I love this stupid little spell. Awaken isn’t going to wildly empower your character or break the game in unforeseen ways. At its best you might be able to use it to turn a murder victim’s parakeet into an invaluable witness, or create a sentry that looks exactly like a potted flower.
I don’t care, though; Awaken is everything I want from a spell. It probably could be a little lower level, and the cost might be a bit too steep for what ends up being a largely unimpressive effect, but Awaken literally gives you the tools to build your own best friend and I love that.
Beyond the basic player uses of transforming a beloved pet into a new party member, Awaken can be an excellent DM tool to worldbuild with.
While the agates are expensive now, perhaps in a time long ago they were plentiful, and ancient woodland societies still exist with masses of awakened flora and fauna. Whole societies could exist that were initially created from a druid looking for some plant or animal friends to keep them company, and the lasting effects have made a lot of people’s relationship to that kind of magic complicated.
For plot hooks, a druid or other naturalist could be stealing agates for either nefarious or benevolent Awakenings. Imagine a mystery where the only key witness is a rat fleeing for its life into the sewers, and the party is given a single agate to capture and awaken the rat to clear a wealthy benefactor's name.
Awaken isn’t an invaluable tool that druids can use to dramatically change how their group adventures. Instead, it gives birth to beings such as Stagnar the Stagnificient, an awakened stag who’s whole deal was making stag puns.
Isn’t that really what D&D is all about?
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