Familiars improved and otherwise equal good

[clockworkjoe]

While normal familiars are a little fragile to be incredibly useful, I'm beginning to think that improved familiars from FRCS and Tome and Blood are pretty decent.

Case in point. I started a gnome illusionist 7 tonight with a pseudo dragon familiar. Our party began exploring the first level of an abandoned silver mine we were hired to clear out. My familiar was a great scout and had the highest AC of the party

AC 22 + 4 natural armor from me being level 7, +4 mage armor from shared spell, +7 shared shield spell = AC 37. Of course the shield didn't last long, but the dragon was still pretty hard to hit. It was only damaged once by an errant sonic wave from our psionicist.

He also had endurance and stoneskin and improved invisibility for the last battle. But the greatest part came in that last battle when the dragon stung a bugbear warrior/rogue type attacking our rogue. The bugbear failed its fort save and went to sleep and was coup de graced by the dragon the next round.

Who says familiars have to stay hidden in a wizard's pockets?

 

[Kaji]

I'm with you! My evil "I'm going to take over the world!" wizard has an Imp, and he makes a great scout for us. He's usually invisible, can fly away if things get bad, and I got him with 4HD, which allows for an extra feat. I gave him FlyBy Attack, so he delivers touch spells for me and just flys on by. I don't typically use more than 1 touch attack in an encounter, so the bad guys don't get the bright idea to ready an action to take out my familiar. It's all good.

 

[clockworkjoe]

Wait so does that mean my 7 HD familiar gets an extra feat?

 

[Ravellion]

Technically, no. When you level up, the dragon gains extra abilities and HP, but not actual HD (though it does gain effective HD I believe for the purposes of spells and such?)


Kaji just acquired an advanced Imp, so he probably has a Nice DM (TM)


Rav

 

[Storm Raven]

AC 22 + 4 natural armor from me being level 7, +4 mage armor from shared spell, +7 shared shield spell = AC 37. Of course the shield didn't last long, but the dragon was still pretty hard to hit. It was only damaged once by an errant sonic wave from our psionicist.

Just a note: if the familiar moves more than 5 feet away from you, the shared spells no longer affect it. They also don't come back if the familiar moves back to you. Buffing a familiar up with shared spells is not very useful if you intend to use it for scouting.

 

[Xeriar]

Re: Re: Familiars improved and otherwise equal good

Just a note: if the familiar moves more than 5 feet away from you, the shared spells no longer affect it. They also don't come back if the familiar moves back to you. Buffing a familiar up with shared spells is not very useful if you intend to use it for scouting.

I believe, though, that you can have it be the target of the spell rather than yourself.