Familiars Teach You Spells

[GreatLemur]

In the DC Comics miniseries Klarion The Witch Boy, Klarion comes from the underground pilgrim-looking feytouched village of Limbo Town. There, every inhabitant has a familiar (called a draaga), which they can talk to (even telepathically) and see through the eyes of.

Yeah. Cool little series, but Grant Morrison was biting His Dark Materials hard, here.

But oh, man, calling them "feytouched" fits perfectly, while completely disguising how deeply bizarre and creepy their origins really are.

In Limbo Town the deceased elders are brought back in a zombie-like state (a "grundy", as in Solomon Grundy) to do the chores of the living.

...And that bit bugged me, because I thought of something similar a while before. Ah, well. I'm finally getting to use it, now, and (thankfully) none of my players are really big mainstream comics readers.

 

[fuindordm]

I wrote up an article on orcish magic a few years ago that used the concept of familiars as teachers. It was for SkeletonKey Games, back when they though about publishing supplements. I'm still rather proud of it, but it's hard to find. It eventually got published in Gaming Frontiers no. 5.

In essence, every orc had a totem spirit--usually something suitable to a warrior. Orcs who were chosen by a 'cunning totem' (say it with all the disdain you can muster) were trained as arcane casters by their totem spirit/familiar (one of toad, snake, spider, or raven), and learned their first spells from an associated domain. The article had the mandatory new feats and spells, but most of those ideas have since appeared in other forms in 3.5 sourcebooks.

One spell which I'm quite proud of, though, was a signature of the toad totem: "Carbuncle" allowed the caster to transform a large item into a gem and hide it within an extradimensional space in their own forehead.

I really like the idea, and I've been toying with other ways of making familiars more interesting recently. I'll definitely keep an eye on this thread.

 

[Wik]

Howzabout we just make it a feat?

SPELLBOOK FAMILIAR (General)
Prerequisites: Must be able to summon a familiar.
Benefits: Your familiar is an outsider that has assumed animal form. It gains all the normal abilities of a familiar, although it has intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of at least 10.
Your familiar teaches you your magical spells, and is the font of your magical power. Each time you gain a level, you gain one additional spell that is revealed to you by your familiar.
In addition, your familiar is a limited-size spellbook that can hold many of your spells for you. Consider your familiar to be the equivalent of a 100-page spellbook, although there is no cost in "Scribing" spells to it. All spells revealed to you by your familiar through level gains must be put in this spellbook, although they take up no "page" space.

All in all, it's a good idea. I think I might yoink it for my Drasconis campaign.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Howzabout we just make it a feat?

SPELLBOOK FAMILIAR (General)
Prerequisites: Must be able to summon a familiar.
Benefits: Your familiar is an outsider that has assumed animal form. It gains all the normal abilities of a familiar, although it has intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of at least 10.
Your familiar teaches you your magical spells, and is the font of your magical power. Each time you gain a level, you gain one additional spell that is revealed to you by your familiar.
In addition, your familiar is a limited-size spellbook that can hold many of your spells for you. Consider your familiar to be the equivalent of a 100-page spellbook, although there is no cost in "Scribing" spells to it. All spells revealed to you by your familiar through level gains must be put in this spellbook, although they take up no "page" space.

All in all, it's a good idea. I think I might yoink it for my Drasconis campaign.

That's not bad. Pity there's no Dragon to submit an entire article based around this idea to.

 

[Pbartender]

But what do the familiars get out of the deal? Old witchcraft lore often has them suckling their familiars on their own blood (or other fluids). Maybe it's less about selling your soul in one go than trading off some kind of life essence at a rate that keeps the supply renewable (bump the caster's HD up to the next die, but require them to pay 1 HP per level every night to keep the familiar happy).

Simply put, it would explain why wizards only get d4 hit dice.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Consider your familiar to be the equivalent of a 100-page spellbook, although there is no cost in "Scribing" spells to it.

"Hey, an arcane scroll! Wizzy, you want it?"
"I never learned to read. Pass it to the frog."

-Hyp.

 

[Wik]

"Hey, an arcane scroll! Wizzy, you want it?"
"I never learned to read. Pass it to the frog."

-Hyp.

....ribbbbiiiiiiiit! *burp*

 

[Pbartender]

"Hey, an arcane scroll! Wizzy, you want it?"
"I never learned to read. Pass it to the frog."

-Hyp.

I see this as the definitive image of a wizard poring over an ancient scroll, while the familiar sits on his shoulder an looks on. It's the familiar who's actually learning the spell and who will explain ti to the wizard later. The wizard is just putting on a good show for his friends.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The only niggler I have about the Familiar Spellbook is that Sorcs don't have a spellbook...so would this *also* give them one? (because that's kind of powerful).

Plus, I have this concept of a wizard's spellbook being his "written soul," taking on various traits of the wizard himself...but that's a lot less fleshed out.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I like this idea, a lot. My variations;

1) treat any given familiar like a Domain, but for wizards & sorcerers.
2) In addition, the familiar acts like Spell Mastery for Wizard while it's present (so you can memorize those spells from him) and those spells count as Spells Known for a Sorcerer while it's present.

Alternately, a Familiar acting as a Runestaff would be UberNeat.