Familiars Left Alone

[roguerouge]

There's been either a WotC or Paizo adventure with ex-familiars retaining their abilities as its hook, IIRC.

 

[Shoe]

I have always imagined that familliars retain all of thier abilities upon a wizard's death. the wizard looses a bunch of XP if the familliar dies, which to me seems that the familliar and the wizard are forver bonded even after death. I am REALLY intreigued as uising a Familliar as a BBEG fora campaing. Even without loosing his abilities slowly, A tiny furry genius for a BBEG would be pretty funny/cool. Makes me want to start planning another game.....

Now, how to figure out the CR of JUST a familliar :/

 

[WanderingMonster]

From now on, I'm going to rule that every time a wizard dies it's because the familiar forgot about her wizard.

 

[MarkB]

I think these should be a special class of creature: Unfamiliars.

And it should be expanded to include ex animal companions, forsaken constructs and other such abandoned sentient sidekicks.

 

[Moorcrys]

I'd let the player do it... using the companion rules to make something semi-viable seems like a good idea. And also a potentially cool storyline to follow - the familiar should have dissolved into the ether with the caster's death... why hasn't it?

 

[Nifft]

I'm envisioning a place at the Wizards' Guild for "severed" familiars; dozens of old, intelligent animals getting together, some exceptionally bitter after trying to get their master raised and discover that he refused to come back. Others just want to re-live their glory days and tell stories that are increasingly outrageous each time.

I had a bar like that in my old 3e campaign, back when reincarnation had something like a 30% chance to bring you back as a bear -- so it was Familiars, Awakened animals who'd lost their homes, and unhappy reincarnation targets.

The bar's name was The Menagerie. Every table was enchanted with an unlimited use mage hand spell so the animal-people could eat like the civilized beings they were.

Cheers, -- N