D&D 5E Familiars!

dnd4vr said:

What am I talking about? Seriously?

I am talking about exactly what I wrote in my first post of the revised spell description. If you had bothered to actually pay attention when you skimmed my post, you would know the "context or something" you seem to be looking for.



Precisely, everything was in the new spell description in my post on page one.

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5ekyu said:

Well, hang on tho.

"I don't like that the familiar is a spirit rather than a normal creature of its ilk. The spirit thing is neat, but for me it's not as cool as bonding with an actual creature."

See, there is a bit of a thing here. If one wants the find familiar to be a more significant element, like a loving real creature, an actual bond, etc thrm the notion of pick up easy by feature **to me** runs afoul of that.

To me you should have both options available- a quick and easy spirit friend that you can lose and get back **or** a real creature that you gotta do some work to get, not just feature on demand.

In 5e both are available.

But let me give you an alternative perspective - no house rule needed (technically.)

Say that you fo as a find familiar bond to an actual creature- a sharing of spirits. You carry a spark of it with you.

Each time you cast familiar you are calling on the same creature - and when you "call the spirit" into one of its many shapes - you are calling out that spirit essence and shaping it as z manifestation.

So, you have the binding with real creature, the on-demand spirit forms etc, just that that real creature does not rush out to join you in risking it's life when its spirit forms do just fine.

So, somewhere, out there, is a varmint that is your shared beastie. It just cut a deal that gave you a spirit on demand and got for itself... well, that could be an interesting question.

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doctorbadwolf said:

except we took a natural creature and used magic to make magical, and she doesn’t get killed, she gets hurt a bit and bamfs away into the shadowfell.

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Azzy said:

I like that. That's pretty cool.

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doctorbadwolf said:

This is good stuff. With my rogue/wizard, my Familiar is a wolf he had and my wife’s Ranger adopted after killing an undead bear. There was a litter of wolf cubs, so we took them back to her clan, and we each adopted one. Dresden adopted the runt, and sadly she wasn’t doing well. Finally, he performed a ritual that bonded her to him, turning her into a Fey creature. When she gets hurt, she appears in a part of the Feywild, and comes back when I can summon her back.

She’s currently in the form of a hawk, because we are flying around in an airship, but generally I keep her in wolf form.

In essence, it’s similar to what you describe, except we took a natural creature and used magic to make magical, and she doesn’t get killed, she gets hurt a bit and bamfs away into the shadowfell.

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Ralif Redhammer said:

I really like this – if hits to the familiar took away from the character’s HP as a shared total (with the caveat that AOE attacks don’t affect them more than once), I think that would both provide more balance while reducing the amount of re-summoning.

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doctorbadwolf said:

With no reference to that when you quote replied to me.

And yes, I definately skimmed your first post in the thread, but I also didn’t notice who it was posting that post, because I generally don’t bother looking at the tiny little name in the upper left side unless I’m considering replying to a post.

But either way, you were unclear in you reply to me.

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dnd4vr said:

Ok, I have no idea what you are talking about.

How can you not know who was posting it??? You quoted my first post (even edited the quote because it was only a bit of my post) where I detailed the revised variant for Find Familiar that we use so you must have known! And yeah you read it, but then you claim not to bother looking at who you are quoting and actually asking a question of that person. So, since you quoted me, and even asked me a question, how can you not expect to reply?

I also quoted your post, so it was perfectly obvious and clear what I was replying about, but you say there was no reference?

All I can say is it would have been so much easier for you to just write: Oh, yeah, I missed all that stuff or I was wondering if there was more or something else instead of feigning whatever it is you are trying to do.

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