Familiars Teach You Spells

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Modifying Spell Mastery to be linked to the familiar, and maybe hold more spells, would also be a good solution.

 

[Slife]

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

-Hyp.

"Reddit!"

"Oh, never mind, I have that one."





Of course, this makes it even worse that you have to wait a year when your familiar dies. Maybe reducing the penalty somewhat is a good idea.

 

[Pbartender]

1) treat any given familiar like a Domain, but for wizards & sorcerers.

That's another one I like.

 

[Vocenoctum]

"Reddit!"

"Oh, never mind, I have that one."

I had a familiar toad using Fantasy Flights rules from (IIRC) Path of Mage. He was "cute", glowed, spoke common, had wings and perhaps a few other things. He was quite fun.

Of course, this makes it even worse that you have to wait a year when your familiar dies. Maybe reducing the penalty somewhat is a good idea.

The problem with the lost familiar contributes to the downside of familiars in general. If you want to at some point get a Pseudodragon familiar, you're almost required to not have a familiar until you can "afford" the one you want, rather than making do with one until later.

Druids get it good, they can just grab a new pet the next day and throw him back into the meatgrinder.
(Hey, it's cheaper than rations, just keep getting new hog animal companions!)

 

[GreatLemur]

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

Ah, but if you make it an active choice to feed the familiar, you can have two distinct states for the caster: Sickly, but with a happy familiar and plenty of power; or healthy, but with a weak or uncooperative familiar, and only as much magic as he can manage on his own (if any). It'd be fun if there was more of an impact to keeping the familiar fed than just a little HP loss, too: Attribute damage, save penalties, social penalties, weird magical side effects, etc.

Man, I think I'm starting to dream up Sorcerer d20, here.

 

[Slife]

Needing to feed life force to the familiar would be a great excuse to change his casting stat to constitution. (which is a very nice casting stat, which partially negates the down-powering)

Hmm... how's this for a mechanic(probably way too nerfy, but whatever)
Every day you get spells from your familiar, your constitution receives a penalty equal to the twice the highest level spell you get.

So a level 20 caster has access to 9th level spells, and as such takes a -18 penalty to con for the day if he prepares 9th level spells. That *seems* nasty, but your money and stat boosts are going to be spent on con, so it should balance out.

let's see. If we devote almost all our resources to con, at level 20 we get
18
+5 tome
+5 item
+5 stat boost
=33
-18
=15 final con
this is a difference of 360 hp at level 20


This has the side effect of making dwarves the best sorcerers around, but there's precedent in fantasy for dwarves being powerful spellcasters.

There is, however, the undesireable side effect of making spellcasters incredibly robust if they don't prepare spells. But that isn't anything that couldn't happen already under the rules.

 

[Klaus]

Other options:

Give the familiar more blood (ie, take hp damage) in exchange for additional spells per day.

Give up spell slots to regain hp by reversing the transfer with the familiar.

I am disappointed that arcanists had two Complete books, and not a single one had a PrClass or something of the sort for improving the bond between master and familiar.

 

[Warren Okuma]

If you could talk to a toad, what kind of magic tricks would it teach you?

Carefully screened spells from a third party suppliment.

 

[Hussar]

I used this idea in my World's Largest Dungeon campaign. Since Wizards don't have access to new spells, I simply had the familiar pass along new knowledge as time went along. Worked very well.