Familiars much cooler than I ever realized!

[Thanee]

Geez, ForceUser, you need to put more thought into this. You have only started to see the light!

Yes, familiars are HIGHLY useful!

You can do so much cool stuff with familiars...

One of the characters I like the most in 3E is the Arcane Trickster. Consider what kind of skills are opened up with that class (combination)! If for nothing else, they could help searching a room, for example (tho, they are not as good at searching traps unless you can somehow give them the cleric spell Find Trap (magic item maybe?)).

Also, with the 3.5 Polymorph (NO size restriction!!) you can turn your familiar into a grappling monster (but be wary of their low hit point, if doing so)!

I'm currently wondering, what happens, if you Polymorph your familiar into some huge grappling monster (preferably some magical beast) and (while its in 5') cast Enlarge Person on yourself, sharing it with your familiar, because you can ignore the familiar's type according to the share spell description!

Familiars can fly around with an Antimagic Field or Silence spell and ready to fly near spellcasters to ruin their day.

Familiars can be used as some sort of lame contingency with touch spells (i.e. Invisibility). Pluck your weasel into the pockets of the rogue and cast Invisibility on it (don't deliver the spell yet). The familiar can hold the charge indefinitely, as long as you do not cast another spell.

Raven familiars are superb scouts.

With magic items (i.e. wands) and the Use Magic Device skill, they could do some fun stuff, too.

Imbue Familiar with Spell-like Ability is another great thing to throw around some extra spells.

You only need to keep in mind, how fragile familiars are!

Bye
Thanee

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Dragon's Breath (Complete Divine) is a pretty nice spell to share with or simply cast on your familiar too.

 

[Darklone]

Hmm. Circlet of Blasting and the Gem of Brightness are the only magic wondrous DMG items I found yet that your familiar can activate while you're doing something useful.

As a DM I would be very careful about allowing any custommade items

 

[Bill Muench]

Familiars are great. My Transmuter/Loremaster has a pseudodragon familiar who routinely carries around a couple of wands. While the familiar has a pretty low chance of activating them since my Loremaster only has 2 ranks in UMD so far (only a 1st level Loremaster), often she spends every round attempting to activate the wand of magic missle. If the master goes down, she can use the wand of CLW to stablize him. Etc, etc.

 

[Thanee]

Heh. With only 2 ranks, I would rather let her give you a potion instead!

Good chance to have something go wrong there still!

Bye
Thanee

 

[Joshua Randall]

There's a fairly good spell in Complete Warrior for buffing up your familiar - I think it's called augment familiar.

Tome & Blood also has familiar pocket, which hides your familiar in an extradimensional space in your garments. (Deeppockets, anyone?)

Maybe I'm crazy, but my PCs send their familiar into battle all the time. Getting an extra action is worth the risk of the familiar getting killed. And it keeps your low level spells from being useless: touch of fatigue, shocking grasp, etc.

Edit: familiars are also great for delivering messages. By 5th level your familiar has Int 8 (probably smarter than most half-orcs), so he can certainly understand simple directions like "Go to the Temple of Pelor and give this scroll to the Head Priest there." And of course if you have a raven familiar, it can talk. Woot.

 

[Shin Okada]

Familiars are useful especially for multiclassed ranger or rogue types. A Rogue x/Wizard 1 in my previous campaign were using a raven familiar as a very useful scout/messenger. A Wizard/Ranger cohort of my PC is using a bat familiar which is almost impossible to be found because he is diminutive and using his master's Hide ranks. He also has blindsight of 120 ft. and this is very useful.

 

[Terath Ninir]

When you're a 1st level sorcerer (for true strike, of course; and don't forget the two lesser quicken metamagic rods!)/ xth level fighter, your familiar does *not* have low hit points. He's dumb as a stump, but he's good a hell of a lot of hit points!

 

[kigmatzomat]

I had a summoner-sorcerer in a short-lived campaign with 2 familiars (from Dragon Magazine). IIRC, he had a cat and a bat. Combined with the "widen familiar spell" feat (from same dragon) that lets those shared spells continue to work if the familiar flies out to ~1mile.

The bat made us darned near impossible to be snuck up on while the cat is a creature that most people ignore. Toss a "body of the sun" on us all for combat and invisibility for stealth. I carried a Bag of Tricks which had about a 1/6 chance of pulling out another bat, adding to the confusion.

I wish I would've noticed the skill check aspect so I could've gotten 3 checks!

 

[Thanee]

...and don't forget the two lesser quicken metamagic rods!

To borrow them to the wizard?

Bye
Thanee