Familiar hp?

[Dingleberry]

Actually, I don't agree. Endurance doesn't have any hit die effect-it increases the target's Constitution. This will affect the familiar's natural hit points, usually by +1 or +2; and if this total is higher than half its master's hit points, it will temporarily have that higher amount.

You're probably right - certainly by letter, but I'm torn on spirit. Your example makes perfect sense for a 2nd-level wizard, but it doesn't sit right when I think about my campaign's 10th-level sorcerer/rogue with 50 hit points with a toad familiar.

It certainly doesn't make sense for familiar with half of the master's hit points to gain just as many hit points as the master from a casting of endurance. Then again, I also don't want a high-level caster's familiar to be so relatively unaffected by Con-draining stirges or poison or whatever (until they hit 0 Con, of course).

Out of curiousity, Christian, how would you handle the hit point effect of Con loss to a familiar?

 

[Christian]

Well, it does seem rather odd. But (this being the Rules Forum and all) I have to say the rules seem clear ... And frankly, I can't think of a good general rule that works better anyway.

If you want a justification-well, the best I can think of is this: A familiar's life force is intimately bound with its master's. As long as the master has strength, the familiar can use it, however faint the familiar would otherwise be. (You need something like this anyway, to explain how a stinkin' cat can have 25 hit points ...)

Frankly, there are enough weirdnesses with Con damage/drain that one more doesn't bother me. The familiar cat showing no effects from Con damage is odd-the normal cat doing the same is somewhere beyond odd. A normal cat has 2 hit points and a 10 Con. The first point of Con damage reduces it to one hit point, the next 8 do nothing but reduce its Fort save, and the tenth kills it. So, a cat has just as good a chance of surviving a rattlesnake bite as an average man. This is an artifact of the design decision that size reductions below Medium do not add Con penalties the way they do Strength penalties. It might be better to do this rather than introducing fractional hit dice-a cat with 1d8 hit die and -4 (average 6) Con would probably make sense. But then the halflings get shafted, I suppose.