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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Find Familiar, the Alert feat, and the loss of the fly-by Owl.
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<blockquote data-quote="FitzTheRuke" data-source="post: 9227123" data-attributes="member: 59816"><p>I admit, one of the things that I don't enjoy about familiars is the idea one of the solutions to familiar over-reliance is to kill the familiar off. Even with all the "your familiar is an immortal celestial/fey/fiend spirit and not, you know, a cute little animal", it still <em>feels</em> murdering someone's pet. That the pet-owner doesn't seem to <em>mind</em> sending their pet in to be murdered, and will just bring 'em back, does nothing to offset the guilt experienced by a kind-hearted DM like myself.</p><p></p><p>It's not a big deal, it's just (a tiny bit) upsetting. I like to make jokes that the classes that apparently love animals the most (Druids, Rangers, Wizards with a familiar) wind up, by the rules as they are, being RECKLESS ANIMAL ENDAGERERS. Which seems like a bad fit to me? Rather than having your "pet" die but be super easy to bring back, wouldn't it be better if you just made them tougher, yet more limited in scope?</p><p></p><p>I mean, obviously it's easy enough to just fluff it that the familiar really IS immortal and just teleports back to its pocket dimension when threatened (IE takes any damage) - I've done it with beastmasters, too, by saying that when they run out of HP they really have twice the HP but run away when they're "bloodied". </p><p></p><p>At any rate, I think there's room for mechanical (and fluff vs crunch) improvements to "pets", whatever their sort.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FitzTheRuke, post: 9227123, member: 59816"] I admit, one of the things that I don't enjoy about familiars is the idea one of the solutions to familiar over-reliance is to kill the familiar off. Even with all the "your familiar is an immortal celestial/fey/fiend spirit and not, you know, a cute little animal", it still [I]feels[/I] murdering someone's pet. That the pet-owner doesn't seem to [I]mind[/I] sending their pet in to be murdered, and will just bring 'em back, does nothing to offset the guilt experienced by a kind-hearted DM like myself. It's not a big deal, it's just (a tiny bit) upsetting. I like to make jokes that the classes that apparently love animals the most (Druids, Rangers, Wizards with a familiar) wind up, by the rules as they are, being RECKLESS ANIMAL ENDAGERERS. Which seems like a bad fit to me? Rather than having your "pet" die but be super easy to bring back, wouldn't it be better if you just made them tougher, yet more limited in scope? I mean, obviously it's easy enough to just fluff it that the familiar really IS immortal and just teleports back to its pocket dimension when threatened (IE takes any damage) - I've done it with beastmasters, too, by saying that when they run out of HP they really have twice the HP but run away when they're "bloodied". At any rate, I think there's room for mechanical (and fluff vs crunch) improvements to "pets", whatever their sort. [/QUOTE]
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Find Familiar, the Alert feat, and the loss of the fly-by Owl.
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