Thank goodness for wide angle vision!...

Rechan · Dec 29, 2009

Stormonu said:
the elf who had a owl...who swore it could "detect virginity".

Was it detecting everyone at the table?

Holy Bovine · Dec 30, 2009

We had a rather obnoxious player in one group years ago who played a (Scottish-accented) dwarf sorcerer with a toad familiar. His PC and my paladin got into an altercation on more than one occasion (irl we are neighbours but not friends) until he decided to cast an attack spell at me out of frustration (I wouldn't let him kill prisoners we already had secured or something). The table got really quiet for about a minute and I asked his PC to leave. Now. The PC begged forgiveness and we let him stay for a little while but the obnoxious behaviour got even worse. Finally, in a crucial battle, my paladin decided to heal the party ranger rather than him (both were at -9 and I could only reach one before the end). He was mighty pissed and said I wasn't being 'realisitic' in healing the ranger. His PC died and he left the group (I felt bad about that). The player of the ranger PC took the dwarf PCs toad familiar and, er... sort of made a coin purse out of it. To this day we merely have to 'ribbit' to get a good chuckle.

Rechan · Dec 30, 2009

In a 4e game, one of the PCs was a druid testing out the druid summoning rules. So, his daily - summoning a giant toad - was his little buddy. It sat in his pack and whispered nothings into his ear, and was apparently his muse to Melora (as he had multi-classed into Invoker). He would have long conversations with the toad.

Dausuul · Dec 30, 2009

No toads, but I once made the mistake of rolling on the expanded familiar table in the Complete Wizard's Handbook (word to the wise for those still playing 2E: never do this), and ended up with a rooster. Man, that was humiliating. The instant I hit 7th level, I grabbed polymorph other for my 4th-level spell, just so I could turn the damn rooster into a hawk and have a halfway respectable familiar.

Wik · Dec 30, 2009

Dausuul said:
No toads, but I once made the mistake of rolling on the expanded familiar table in the Complete Wizard's Handbook (word to the wise for those still playing 2E: never do this), and ended up with a rooster. Man, that was humiliating. The instant I hit 7th level, I grabbed polymorph other for my 4th-level spell, just so I could turn the damn rooster into a hawk and have a halfway respectable familiar.

Henh henh henh.

DM: Okay. roll for your familiar.
YOU: Uh.... 34. That's, um.... a.... a rooster.
DM: A rooster?
YOU: Yeah. Can I reroll?
DM: No, I couldn't let you do that.
YOU: Why not?
DM: because bros don't c*** block other bros.

Plane Sailing · Dec 30, 2009

Dausuul said:
No toads, but I once made the mistake of rolling on the expanded familiar table in the Complete Wizard's Handbook (word to the wise for those still playing 2E: never do this), and ended up with a rooster. Man, that was humiliating. The instant I hit 7th level, I grabbed polymorph other for my 4th-level spell, just so I could turn the damn rooster into a hawk and have a halfway respectable familiar.

Rooster is a great familiar! Should have called him Legba!

http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Legba

David Howery · Dec 31, 2009

Stormonu said:
However, back in 1E/2E the only familiars in our group were a psuedodragon owned by the human wizard and the elf who had a owl...who swore it could "detect virginity".

um.... was that a 'useful' skill in your DM's games?

Ambrus · Dec 31, 2009

Plane Sailing said:
Rooster is a great familiar! Should have called him Legba!

I concur. Even discounting all of the great "my magical cock" jokes keep in mind that the epic hag Baba Yaga turned her old chicken familiar into a chicken-legged dancing hut of myth and legend. Really, with a rooster, your imagination is the only limit.

Bullgrit · Dec 31, 2009

The only familiar I remember in any campaign before D&D3 was a cat. In a D&D3.0 campaign, my gnome wizard had a toad familiar, named "Lucky."

The campaign world was such that at night, characters without darkvision could only see 5'. Since my gnome didn't have darkvision, but his toad familiar did, he used the toad as his stand in for taking watch. This was known and accepted by the party. If the toad saw/heard something in the night, it'd wake up its master.

Well, one night while camped on an open grass plains, we got surrounded by a squad of 12 kobold elite commandos (3rd-level sorcerers; we were 3rd-4th-level ourselves). Lucky spotted them when they got within his 60' darkvision.

Lucky alerted my wizard. When my wizard awoke, he couldn't see what was going on -- only that Lucky was scared. My wizard tossed Lucky over to the party half-orc barbarian (with darkvision) to wake him up. Then the kobolds attacked.

The fight saw the death of the half-orc, a special something elf NPC (was essentially a DMPC that we were forced to accept among our group even though we hated her and she hated us). Only my wizard, the party human cleric, and Lucky survived the ambush.

Later, the half-orc and DMPC elf were raised. We were again forced to accept the DMPC elf, but she hated my gnome and especially my toad familiar because she blamed us for her death.

The DM even said her anger was justified because the toad was a dumb choice to serve as watch. No amount of explanation that my gnome wizard -- who could only see 5' -- would have been even worse.

I even bought a shiny stuffed toy frog to sit on my shoulder during our games. I loved Lucky.

I hated that DM and campaign.

Bullgrit