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Familiars, what for?
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<blockquote data-quote="Lyxen" data-source="post: 8577231" data-attributes="member: 7032025"><p>I don't disagree in general, but while good, it's not always crazy good, it really depends on the circumstances.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The thing is that, they are not. They are just spirits embodied in a magical form, not really living things. As for their "feelings", well it's also that of a spirit with a low intelligence, and one that cannot die...</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Which, for me, is dealt in another fashion, like all these sort of elements that are annoying mostly if they are repetitive, other examples include things like the shield master effect. They will basically work once per adversary/combat at most. </p><p></p><p>So yes, the cat might distract the ogre once, and the shield might push a fighter around once, but after that, as a DM, I will use my circumstantial modifiers to negate further attempts, since they will be watching for it. Depending on the adversary (his battle savviness, intelligence, etc.) and the length of the fight, they might be surprised by it being used again (Even Eric falls for Corwin's sword trick twice, so... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ), but players in our campaigns know that using the same trick twice in a row does not work on adversaries any more than it works on them. This is a heroic and epic game, and heroes are not fools.</p><p></p><p>It's also one way to deal with rogues hiding all the time in the same place and insisting that they get a sneak attack every time, etc. And it's one of the beauties of 5e, and something often ignored by DMs, but it's easy for the DM and the players to have nice fights that look like those of the genre by cleverly using circumstantial modifiers, and granting adv/dis based on logic like that.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lyxen, post: 8577231, member: 7032025"] I don't disagree in general, but while good, it's not always crazy good, it really depends on the circumstances. The thing is that, they are not. They are just spirits embodied in a magical form, not really living things. As for their "feelings", well it's also that of a spirit with a low intelligence, and one that cannot die... Which, for me, is dealt in another fashion, like all these sort of elements that are annoying mostly if they are repetitive, other examples include things like the shield master effect. They will basically work once per adversary/combat at most. So yes, the cat might distract the ogre once, and the shield might push a fighter around once, but after that, as a DM, I will use my circumstantial modifiers to negate further attempts, since they will be watching for it. Depending on the adversary (his battle savviness, intelligence, etc.) and the length of the fight, they might be surprised by it being used again (Even Eric falls for Corwin's sword trick twice, so... :) ), but players in our campaigns know that using the same trick twice in a row does not work on adversaries any more than it works on them. This is a heroic and epic game, and heroes are not fools. It's also one way to deal with rogues hiding all the time in the same place and insisting that they get a sneak attack every time, etc. And it's one of the beauties of 5e, and something often ignored by DMs, but it's easy for the DM and the players to have nice fights that look like those of the genre by cleverly using circumstantial modifiers, and granting adv/dis based on logic like that. [/QUOTE]
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