Familiars = Equipment?

[0-hr]

Like most wizards out there, I have a toad-equivalent familiar that spends 99.8% of it's life in an unspecified pocked of my coat (right next to the live spiders and bat guano). My question is "how could this little critter ever possibly be put in danger"?

It seems to me that people treat familiars as something that is half way between beast and equipment, and suffers the hardships of neither.

If they are beasts that just happen to be in the same square as you, then they should be making saves against every fireball or such that hits you. But most people say that the familiar is in their pocket instead (and we all know that even the thinnest scrap of cloth is proof vs all damage while being worn by a PC).

But then, shouldn't a familiar be treated like a piece of equipment? If the character rolls a 1 on a save, the familiar should appear somewhere in that list of items that might take damage.

So anyway, it looks to me like a familiar is a piece of equipment; but one that does not ever appear on the "Failed Save" list. Thus it will never suffer any harm so long as it remains out of sight.

Is that the way it is supposed to work? (and can a familiar really aid your Alertness when it's completely hidden out of sight?)

 

[Drawmack]

I would rule no on the alertness because you get that from being psychically linked to the familiar essentially giving you two sets of eyes instead of one.

I do not have to worry about this because here is how I rule. A familiar is not going to simply sit idly in someone's pocket during battle. They might be a magical animal but they are still an animal or a beast. They will have one of two reaction fight or flight. Either way they are coming out of the pocket. This being the case my spellcasters usually have their familiar go hide somewhere or sit somewhere with a tactical view of the battle. This is a much better alternative then the familiar deciding to go one on one with a troll. Although something really fun is have a wizard opposing your group and have a familiar battle going on as well.

 

[Storm Raven]

If they are beasts that just happen to be in the same square as you, then they should be making saves against every fireball or such that hits you. But most people say that the familiar is in their pocket instead (and we all know that even the thinnest scrap of cloth is proof vs all damage while being worn by a PC).

Yes, they should be making those saves. That is why they have Improved Evasion.

 

[Rel]

Like most wizards out there, I have a toad-equivalent familiar that spends 99.8% of it's life in an unspecified pocked of my coat (right next to the live spiders and bat guano). My question is "how could this little critter ever possibly be put in danger"?

I realize that you are posting this a bit tongue in cheek, Ki Ryn, but I felt the need to make a comment. Any wizard who is doing this is really missing out on one of the most incredibly useful aspects of a familar: Scouting Capability. In the last two campaigns we've run, the aerial recon provided by the Wizard's familiar (a bat and a raven respectively) has been astoundingly useful. FAR moreso than an extra hit point per level.

In our present campaign, we are sneaking around an enemy occupied ruined city and without the Raven scouting to keep us away from enemy patrols, we would be SCREWED.

Given that information on which to base their spell preparation is better than gold to the average Wizard, keeping that familiar in your pocket seems like a waste of an incredible resource. Even the lowly toad could be put up on a tree branch to provide an extra pair of eyes while camping.

 

[Archer]

With improved evasion and the cover bonus your familiar gets for being in your square/pocket and sharing your saves what are the odds the familiar is going to take damage? Don't you have any elemental resistance you are sharing with your familair? Familiars in familiar pockets are clearly safe in their extra dimensional space.

 

[Speaks With Stone]

I'm certainly with Rel on this one. A raven in a tree is worth way more than a toad in the pocket. I'll go so far as to state that I'd almost never put a toad in my pocket. (I never quite grasped that Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn kind of schtick - it's just going to get squished the first time you trip or even if you sit down a little uncarefully.

 

[candidus_cogitens]

There is a spell in Tome and Blood that creates an extradimensional space in your cloak that protects your familiar from danger. Unless you have such an extradimensional pocket, your toad in your pocket has to be vulnerable, at least to some degree, although it will be fairly well protected by the cover you provide, which gives it a bonus to its own reflex save. So, if it's in your pocket, its reflex save will be higher than your own.

The difference between a familiar and equipment is that equipment does not get a reflex save.

 

[candidus_cogitens]

A familiar is not going to simply sit idly in someone's pocket during battle. They might be a magical animal but they are still an animal or a beast. They will have one of two reaction fight or flight. Either way they are coming out of the pocket.

My familiar does what I tell it to do!

 

[Speaks With Stone]

<<My familiar does what I tell it to do!>>

Then your GM is much more kindly than mine. Our GM assigns the role of the familiar to another character. Most of the time the familiar does what you tell it to do. If you ask it to do something extreme or otherwise too out there, the GM will look at the other character and say, "Does the familiar obey? If not, what does he say."

This started with animal companions, but branched into familiars. Most of the time they do what they're told, but they often have a lot of feedback about what they want in exchange later for taking additional risks.

 

[candidus_cogitens]

<<My familiar does what I tell it to do!>>

Then your GM is much more kindly than mine. Our GM assigns the role of the familiar to another character. Most of the time the familiar does what you tell it to do. If you ask it to do something extreme or otherwise too out there, the GM will look at the other character and say, "Does the familiar obey? If not, what does he say."

This started with animal companions, but branched into familiars. Most of the time they do what they're told, but they often have a lot of feedback about what they want in exchange later for taking additional risks.

I like this approach for animal companions, but familiars are much more intimately bound to their masters. In my understanding, they know the master's thoughts and wishes, unlike animal companions who can only follow the signals or commands that they are given.

It seems to me that only in very extreme cases would a familiar knowingly go against its master's wishes. Unless of course the familiar is out of range, or the master is not giving it any direction at all, by simply ignoring it, or blocking off any empathic signals. In those cases, I think the DM (or another player, if the DM allowed) would take over playing the familiar.