Any good alternate familiar rules out there?

[Kunimatyu]

I'm looking for good options for casters to replace their familiar -- do old issues of DRAGON contain anything that might be useful to me?

In the setting I'm using ("Dictionary of Mu"), spellcasters make pacts with "demons" -- the spirits of dead individuals/ideas/locations. For example, a ruined city could manifest as a "demon", and so could an ancestor of the PC.

It'd be great if I could find rules that give a PC a range of themed abilities instead of a famiilar, ideally with some of them working like an incorporeal/ethereal creature that they can move around.

Thanks!

 

[SavageRobby]

Well, these are older, but might help:

Dragon #84 - A cast of strange familiars
Dragon #86 - Familiars with a special use

 

[DItheringFool]

There is a very good article in Dragon #338 (Staffing Issues by Ben Vandgrift) that details using a wizards staff instead of a familiar. Excellent stuff...cool flavor, comparative progression, lots of feats.

 

[Stormborn]

You can check out a list of all Dragon articles related to familiars by going here:
DragonDex: "F"

Don't know if there is really anything there that can help you.

To me there are some different ways you could go with this.

You could delay getting a familiar until around 5th level, but the get Improved Familar for free. All familiars would then have a modified ghosttemplate to simulate the feel you want. Or you could simply use the Quasit or Imp as your base creature and then alter the flavor of what they were and change their supernatural and spelllike abilites for somehting more thematically appropriate.

Instead of a familiar you could grant them an Akashik like ability that would allow them to tap into the "collective memory" to get boosts in ceratin skills based on the type of place they were from or in. Check out Arcana Evolved/Unearthed for ideas on making that work.

Various books out from WotC in the last few years have had substitution levels that eliminated the familar for something else, you might try giving those (Like the PHB2) a look and see if they could be adapted.

From what you seem to be describing I dont know if simply altering the familiar is going to balance against the powers you want them to have. Perhaps if you described what you were doing a little further we could be of more help.

 

[Voadam]

In Unearthed Arcana each of the variant specialist wizards has an option to trade in their familiars for a themed power in return. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/specialistWizardVariants.htm

 

[jdrakeh]

Being somewhat familiar with The Dicitonary of Mu and Sorcerer (the system that it's based on), I think that what you need is not a way of getting rid of a familiars but, rather, a system of demon-summoning magic. That said, I know of no d20 product that handles the summoning, binding, and pact-making part of such magic with anything resembling competency.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Being somewhat familiar with The Dicitonary of Mu and Sorcerer (the system that it's based on), I think that what you need is not a way of getting rid of a familiars but, rather, a system of demon-summoning magic. That said, I know of no d20 product that handles the summoning, binding, and pact-making part of such magic with anything resembling competency.

A system like this would rock, but I don't have the time to make one right now, and I think I can get the general "feel" of it without actually focusing on a new mechanics for a magic system. Binders from Tome of Magic get the closest, but they'd require a major power boost.

 

[Stormborn]

Being somewhat familiar with The Dicitonary of Mu and Sorcerer (the system that it's based on), I think that what you need is not a way of getting rid of a familiars but, rather, a system of demon-summoning magic. That said, I know of no d20 product that handles the summoning, binding, and pact-making part of such magic with anything resembling competency.

Try SFX Skills: Diabloism. Its a skill based magic system for d20 Modern but its all about that sort of stuff. Enworld's own HeapThaumaturgist wrote it. I know nothing about the setting you describe, but that product fits what you are talking about.

 

[jdrakeh]

Try SFX Skills: Diabloism. Its a skill based magic system for d20 Modern but its all about that sort of stuff. Enworld's own HeapThaumaturgist wrote it. I know nothing about the setting you describe, but that product fits what you are talking about.

First I've heard of it, though I've always thought that HeapThaumaturgist was a decent guy on the forums, so I'll be certain to give it a look when I get a few weeks at the new job under my belt.

 

[jdrakeh]

A system like this would rock, but I don't have the time to make one right now, and I think I can get the general "feel" of it without actually focusing on a new mechanics for a magic system. Binders from Tome of Magic get the closest, but they'd require a major power boost.

Yeah, like I said, the pitfall here is that (again, so far as I know) nothing like this exists for standard D&D. There's the d20 Modern supplement recommended above, though that's technically for a system other than D&D. I think that you may have your work cut out for you in trying to get D&D to feel like Sorcerer. I understand your reasons for the attempt, though I'm afraid that I lack your ambition