Familiars much cooler than I ever realized!

[ForceUser]

Like a lot of 3E gamers, I think, I have disliked the annoying tagalongs called familiars for years now. While great for campaign flavor, they are often shoved to the margins because of their fragility and seeming lack of general utility. Sure, you could send one in to deliver a touch spell, but why risk your little buddy like that (and more importantly for some, why risk the loss of XP?) Typically, then, familiars are stuffed in a bag and forgotten about unless the DM makes it a point to role-play them.

And it's not just my group. The phenomenon of disregarding 3E familiars is ubiquitous enough to be a gag in great 3E comic strips such as Order of the Stick. But upon doing a close reading of the PHB I have discovered something amazingly cool about familiars that I and my entire group have somehow overlooked: Familiars gain their master's skills.

If a wizard has knowledge (the planes), so does his familiar! Each time that wizard makes a knowledge check, his familiar can make the same check if he's observing the same phenomenon! If the familiar can communicate with the master he might be able to relay a useful tidbit of information the master may have overlooked. That's so cool!

Essentially, a character with a familiar would make two knowledge checks instead of one whenever his little buddy is around!

Here's the specific text I'm referring to, from the sidebar on page 52 of the PHB:

Skills: For each skill in which either the master or the familiar has ranks, use either the normal skill ranks for an animal of that type or the master's skill ranks, whichever are better. In either case, the familiar uses its own ability modifiers. Regardless of a familiar's total skill modifiers, some skills (such as Craft) may remain beyond a familiar's ability to use. (emphasis mine)

I've been seriously devaluing familiars. Not anymore, though. This is great! They're actually useful!

 

[Darklone]

What? You couldn't give your raven a command word activated fireball shooting magic item?

Darn. I thought they were already useful.

 

[ForceUser]

What? You couldn't give your raven a command word activated fireball shooting magic item?

Darn. I thought they were already useful.

That...is a really good idea that never occurred to me. Wow.

 

[Darklone]

Ah well, you'd need to have a custom made item for the abovementioned case and DMs are well advised not to allow that. But perhaps a circlet of blasting may work? Or other magic items from the DMG?

This came up more than once in my games and it's not the only reason why ravens are the best familiars ever. Talking is sooo important.

 

[Gort]

I love the Raven as well. My dragonstar soulmech mage had a robotic raven familiar (no change in stats) called CHIRP-13. He was awesome, we still talk about how he ended a tough encounter by delivering a pair of Power Down spells onto some really big robots.

 

[Darklone]

heheheheheh that's nice

Hmm.... gotta get my BBEG with raven familiar a gem of brightness

 

[silentspace]

Even better are Improved Familiar/Celestial Familiar - type feats, if you get a humanish-type familiar and load them up with magic items! I wonder if there's a way to get UMD at a relatively high level...

 

[apsuman]

If you are in need of Hit Points, cast FALSE LIFE for both you and your familiar to gain 1d10+1/caster level (max 10), then cast Vampiric touch and drain 1d6 per two caster levels (max 10d6) from your familiar. Then hide your familiar.

 

[ForceUser]

If you are in need of Hit Points, cast FALSE LIFE for both you and your familiar to gain 1d10+1/caster level (max 10), then cast Vampiric touch and drain 1d6 per two caster levels (max 10d6) from your familiar. Then hide your familiar.

I could see an evil wizard subjecting his familiar to that, but I doubt a PC's familiar would passively let his master suck the life out of him. Sure, false life provides temporary hit points, but vampiric touch deals damage to the victim and probably really hurts! It's a clever trick but smacks of rules abuse. As DM I'd probably role-play a familiar as unwilling to allow the master to do such a thing to him. If the master forced it on him anyway the familiar would probably try to leave the master, or better yet, would appeal to the rest of the party for help!

 

[Nail]

What? You couldn't give your raven a command word activated fireball shooting magic item?

Errr....huh. I'd not thought of that either.

The nub of the problem is speaking the command word, right? Ravens can speak, therefore Ravens can use such items. Cool!

It's also entirely possible to make an item that has a command gesture (somatic component) rather than a command word. That way, you could have an item that your non-raven familiar could activate.

...although, somehow I doubt that a toad familiar would be able to do even that. Yep, that type of familiar is still useless.