Ever kill a familiar? I did.

[CalicoDave]

I had my rat familiar killed by a cone of cold from an Ogre Mage. Oops.

I think that most of the time we actually forget about familiars when area of effect spells go off. Unfortunately they are usually just used for the bonus, with the drawbacks forgotten.

We have a wizard/cleric with an owl familiar who uses it to deliver healing to the party. The owl's been clocked a few times, but not enough to kill it.

D.

 

[FungiMuncher]

In either case, why try to penalize (terrorize) the player for using his familiar in one of the few useful ways he can? Seems pretty mean-spirited.

I thought I emphasized that the walled off area was where the sorcerers were holed up, and was the most dangerous place of the town. There were no animals of any kind near there.

Well, I did feel pretty bad about how the player reacted. The raven never went on another mission, even though I was OK with it scouting in other situations. That was a while ago, hopefully I'm not as much of a jackass now. :\

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

Like JDragon, we have an understanding in our group that familiars who get into combat are fair game; keep them out of combat and out of your enemies' faces, and no one is actively going to hunt them down.

But back when I was in high school, playing our ridiculous AD&D game, I saw our GM deliberately assassinate a familiar. Basically, the party's wizard was being played by my friend Chris, who was a hilariously offensive guy. His wizard had a black cat familiar, which he immediately named "Fabrice." Fabrice the kitty.

Our GM said "That's a stupid name for a cat." Chris fired back with "Yes. Yes, it is. Fabrice the kitty it is, then!" And for the next half-dozen game sessions, Chris would find a way to name-drop Fabrice, our GM would fume over what a stupid name it was, and Chris would gloat over the name and make up little songs in an exaggerated French accent all about the wonders of Fabrice the kitty.

One day, the sentence was passed: "Chris," our GM said, "you either rename the cat, or I'm going to kill it." Chris refused to rename Fabrice.

And the next session, we got nailed with a fireball that left everyone injured but alive...except for one very small, very crispy, very unfortunately-named cat. And you might be saying to yourself, "But why did Fabrice have to make a save?" I'm afraid the answer to that is "Because the GM is always right, even when he's deliberately breaking a rule just so he can kill the cat who for some reason he is really upset by."

Chris took the xp hit and had a touching in-character funeral for poor little Fabrice, but he never was interested in getting another familiar after that. By that point, he'd worked his way up to using Charm Person and a real talent for leaving NPCs with irreparable emotional scars as his primary method for making our GM uncomfortable.

--
no more dysfunctional than your typical teenage hack-and-slash game, really
ryan

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

The Druid/sorcerer and his wolverine animal companion/familiar decide to sneak up on a giant ... poorly. First blow: squish, no more familiar.

The wizard's cat was later eaten by an ogre, and it's pelt worn as a trophy.

Familiars == definitely not safe.

 

[Vigwyn the Unruly]

Didn't Want To...

During battle, a PC sent his toad familiar in to deliver /shocking grasp/ to an ogre. However, the ogre got an attack of opportunity...

 

[Rassilon]

That reminds me . . .

Not of a familiar that I killed, but an animal companion of mine.

My Druid back in 2e - and I need to emphasise how special this character was to me, he has never been surpassed in my mind - was hanging around with his eagle animal companion being so druidy when the inevitable fireball arrived.

The insult was not that the eagle died, it was that my companions ate him, and due to the high quality of the fare still occasionally joke about opening a chain of stores selling KFE - Kentucky Fried Eagle.

Oh the pain.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Haven't had a familiar since Unearthed Araca came out....mwahahahaha...

 

[Zappo]

And the next session, we got nailed with a fireball that left everyone injured but alive...except for one very small, very crispy, very unfortunately-named cat. And you might be saying to yourself, "But why did Fabrice have to make a save?" I'm afraid the answer to that is "Because the GM is always right, even when he's deliberately breaking a rule just so he can kill the cat who for some reason he is really upset by."

Heh. I would have had the character mention "his poor Fabrice" every hour or so in any casual conversation from then on.

 

[rushlight]

As a DM I wouldn't specifically target a familiar, unless the PCs presented it as a threat (delivering touch attacks or the like). However, the wizard of my party did lose his familar though.

He lost it to a draw from a Deck of Many Things. Unfortunatly, he drew the "Rogue" card - which states that one of your closest friends turns against you. The wizard in question had only 5 friends - and 4 of them were the other PCs. The fifth was his toad familiar - who spat at him and hopped away! That was really the only logical result, as having the PCs hate each other would have presented some difficulty in resolving the story.

He eventually replaced the toad with an Ice Mephit - but lost her when he was imprisioned in the earth for over a thousand years. (That was a campaign-to-campaign segue.) Now he has a raven, which he guards carefully. I've never really worried much about it in combat because he's never used it for that, or even let it come into harm's way. Unless he starts using it against the enemies, I can't forsee taking any action against it.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I remember when a party wizard of ours flew his owl familiar into a cavern as a scout... the cavern was a monster spider lair... it blew its spot check and flew into the web.

However, the spider was a couple of CRs over us and would normally have been left alone. But we couldn't let 'Owly' die. We couldn't even torch the web. One of the nastiest fights I can remember.

Pretty sure the GM wasn't trying to kill it... just the way it worked out.