Familiars - Advantage or Disadvantage?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You make good points about BAB and hit points. I had missed that when I read about familiars in the PHB. It certainly makes them a little more hardy. However 1 good spell is still enough to take a lot of them out. Of course that is one good spell that isn't used on the party.

Any spellcaster dumb enough to leave his familiar in the direct line of fire deserves the XP loss.

Even before all the familiar-centered spells in the Complete books, there were always options for protecting them, starting with having a flying familiar just STAY OUT OF THE WAY.

DMs may chortle at the idea of NPCs randomly shooting at birds in the sky, but unless these particular NPCs are firing arrows off willy-nilly (they're not), it doesn't make any sense for them to magically guess which birds to shoot at.

Picking the right familiar is key, of course, but a familiar can be buffed up and otherwise protected.

And at the level where they're 5 hit points, that's probably more than their master has.

 

[Slife]

I think it's stupid that a wizard losing a familar has so much of a penalty compared to a paladin losing his mount or a druid losing his animal companion.

 

[Agent Oracle]

I think it's stupid that a wizard losing a familiar has so much of a penalty compared to a paladin losing his mount or a druid losing his animal companion.

Frankly, the reason the paladin looses less from loosing his mount, is that so few Game Masters think to include the mount in the first place. I mean, 4 out of 5 of my game masters have either disallowed the paladin's horse (halfheartedly attempting to replace it with a useless home brewed power) or killing it right out with everything from a T-Rex to a mind flayer.

As for animal companions: Druids kinda treat them like pokemon anyway. "Wolf I choose you!" *Growl Yipe-* "Oohh... Okay, I'll Summon Nature's Ally IV: Monkies of Doom: I choose you!"

 

[Klaus]

Something to keep in mind: your familiar has 1/2 your hit points, regardless of how many hit dice it has. You have 60 hp, your familiar has 30.

It's not exactly tough, but at least it's not stuck at 5hp forever.

AND the HP and BAB aren't based on your class level. So if you're a Sorcerer 1/Barbarian 19 with 18 Con, you have 1d4+4 + 19d12+76 hp, averaging 196, and your familiar has 98hp, and you both have +19 BAB. Share an Enlarge Person spell with it and even a Tiny familiar no longer provokes AoO from entering an enemy square (since it's now Small and has a reach of 5ft.).

 

[EyeontheMountain]

I really dislike familiars, for a simple reason.

They can be useful, and a good source of role-playing potential AS LONG AS the DM leaves them alone. And only as long as the DM does so.

Basically they are a bit of a mother-may-I feature. If the DM is kind, they are great, but if not, they are a millstone around the character's neck.

I prefer not to play with abilities like that.

 

[Gold Roger]

They are balanced. But they simply are not for everybody and shouldn't be a fixed class feature.

 

[Ranes]

In the game I'm running, there came a moment when the second level mage was stabbed twice in the same round by two lizardmen with spears (incidentally, the mage was being exceptionally brave, deliberately distracting two lizardmen by making himself a target, thereby enabling another PC to make a vital action unobstructed).

When eleven points of damage were calculated, the player scribbled something on his sheet and said, "Whew!"

A moment of mental arithmetic flashed between myself and the players, one of whom asked the question on everybody's lips, "You're still standing?"

"Just," replied the mage's player.

"How?" Asked the other, knowing the mage PC's con bonus and feats could not account for this miracle.

"My familiar," replied the player.

"Er," said I, "you don't have one. You spent all your starting gold wisely but not on summoning a familiar."

"Ah." He tipped over his mini, groaning, "Minus two!"

The party slew their adversaries and the cleric reached him at minus seven. The PC has just reached level three and should be summoning his familiar at the beginning of the next session.

Coincidentally, I'm playing in another game with the same group. In this game, just begun, I'm playing one of two PC wizards. Neither of us have familiars just yet but I'm thinking I might just try surviving a couple of levels and then summon one.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

They are balanced. But they simply are not for everybody and shouldn't be a fixed class feature.

Exactly. I'd rather Wizards had some options to choose at first level other than familiar. I don't like 'em, but I wouldn't disallow them just because of that.

Sorcerers OTOH, shouldn't have them at all. I just don't think it represents what the class is about. They should instead get to choose something like a bloodline power at first level and then gain bonus powers as they level up, sort of like bonus feats. But that's another topic.

 

[Cor Azer]

I don't get to play wizards or sorcerors very often, but I almost always tend to take familiars when I do... there's just so many things I can do with them - primarily scouting and the like (1).

Off the top of my head, I can only think of 2-3 wizards (multiclassed or no) in all my years of Dming that haven't take a familiar... some don't take fully advantage of them, but only one has ever really seen threats against his familiar (2).

(1). When third edition came out, I started playing in Living Greyhawk. Our usual crew had a wizard (toad familiar) and a sorceror (raven familiar), and they routinely teamed-up to deliver "long-range" touch spells by having the raven dive-bomb and drop the toad on unsuspecting enemies. Fun times...

(2). The party's wizard was really good at making his familiar (a ferret) useful in combat. Later, when one of the party members was brainwashed and turned evil, he specifically targeted the wizard's familiar because he had first-hand knowledge of how useful and important it was to the character.

 

[frankthedm]

DMs may chortle at the idea of NPCs randomly shooting at birds in the sky, but unless these particular NPCs are firing arrows off willy-nilly (they're not), it doesn't make any sense for them to magically guess which birds to shoot at.

Most birds fly by at an impressive height, not do a low flyby for the “bird’s eye view” of secured location. The animal that behaves oddly in a world where magic can turn your foes into animals has just put a bull’s eye on itself. If a caster does not bother to have the familiar hide while it scouts, then it gets spotted sure as anything else. And maybe I am just a cruel person, but target practice on tiny animals I spot while on guard duty sounds like a fun time waster and a good idea if I am getting sick of iron rations and turnip stew.

And if you want to get RAW, it takes;

A knowledge Nature check DC 11 to recognize the familiar is not a normal 1HD animal.
A knowledge Arcana DC 10+ owner’s caster level [the familiar’s effective HD] to recognize a familiar as such.