This is an anecdote about strange cohort creations because when you play an epic game, you don't just have to be strange in creating your level 42 character, you have to be strange in creating your cohort too. And, this fellow RPPR fans, is how Fluffy was born.
When Ross proposed running the second epic D&D game (the first one featured level 21 characters), I knew I had to be up to the task of making the game extra special. Although I ended up playing a pirate queen with an armada of ships as opposed to a fortress, my first character concept was a court jester type of character that had an elephant of a cohort. Why an elephant? Because Ross had recently pointed out a thread on RPG.net that explicitly outlined that because elephants possess such great strength, then by D&D rules elephants make excellent climbers. Over dinner, at Braum's Ice Cream where Karee and I typically had pregame dinners with Ross, I sketched out Fluffy. Because elephants make such great climbers, then they would be excellent Rogue / Shadowdancers with Boots of Spiderclimb (3.5 rules). I had played an elven rogue / shadowdancer in a one-shot D&D game and had a good idea how I wanted to run Fluffy. One of the strategies I had employed with the elf was to jump into a shadow and then hang from the ceiling firing arrows down at the floor below me. The same strategy would have worked with Fluffy except substituting his trunk for bow and arrows.
The trick is how to give an elephants ranks in any skill let alone give it a class. And that is where the awaken spell comes in. The awaken spell raises an animal's or plant's intelligence up to human level. From there it would have been a simple matter of properly training Fluffy and equipping him with appropriate elephant-sized equipment. Though I never played Fluffy, I still have fond memories for the cohort he could have been.
