Familiars

[Messageboard Golem]

They serve yet most often or not they are forgotten, they are part of their master’s lives as much as the air that they breathe. Yet they are often overlooked, they venture deep into danger – bound to the one they serve, some out of loyalty and love. Others are bound by spells to the will of the one that summoned them, but regardless of the manner in which they are linked – they are always there, the Familiar, is always there to provide an extra pair of eyes, to supplement the senses of the owner.
These unique creatures are often glossed over and ignored, until now. The book provides an in-depth look at these marvelous creatures and providing a new slant on some old favorites, adding to the already established facts and figures. There are the rules for the creation of new familiars and a wealth of information on new types, including clockwork and undead creations.

This is the Familiar book that no Wizard or Sorcerer should do without, illustrated lovingly and providing several extra feats and new ideas, this book has all the wielder of the magical arts needs. It is useful for both players and GMs to add a twist to any campaign or as a resource from which to create their own ideas.

Dweomercraft: Familiars offers new insight unto those companions that are often the unseen and bravest of the adventuring party.

 

[trancejeremy]

When I was a kid, and first started playing AD&D (1st edition), one of the funnest things about making a magic-user character was rolling for your familiar. You always wanted a pseudo-dragon. Usually you'd end up with something lousy.

While 3rd edition D&D made familiars more balanced (and even more so in 3.5, which this book apparently is based on), it also took the magic out of them, somewhat. This book goes a long way to making familiars anything but ordinary. And it covers familiars about as exhaustively as you can cover them.

It's from Dark Quest games, which I honestly had never heard of, though I do recognize some of the authors and people involved with the company. It's available as a PDF (from RPG Now, like just about all PDFs) or in print form, which I have, which you can order from their website or since it has an ISBN, presumably someplace else in the future.

After some introductory fiction, it starts with a nice section on role-playing the familiar. There's a listing of negative personality traits (most of which actually apply to normal cats, like "narcissistic" and "irritating"), though one section, on phobias, seems to refer to an appendix which does not exist. (This is pretty minor, as it apparently must have been just a list of phobias. If you play Call of Cthulhu, there's a pretty extensive list of them in the rulebook for that).

Still, one tricky part is, who plays the role of the familiar? If the player of the owner/master does it, it can be somewhat hard, since you'll basically be talking to yourself. (Not a new problem, it's always been the same for henchmen).

Besides role playing aspects of the familiar, there's a fairly examination of just what a familiar is. Is it a regular critter given special powers? Some sort of ghost? A tulpa (that is, a figment of the master's mind, only real)? It's up to you, there are several explanations.

There's also rules on how to integrate the familiars from this book into your game easily. Basically, there are two options for the improved or exotic familiars - either the casting of a higher level spell, or requiring the use of a feat, either of which is dependent on the type of improve or exotic familiar.

I favor the feat method, as most familiars give the spell-caster a benefit equal to that of a feat, a skill bonus of some sort usually, so it balances back out.

Just about every possible type of familiar is covered. Elementals and other planar critters, undead, constructs (like the mechanical own from "Clash of the Titans"), birds, reptiles, rodents, vermin (bugs and such, not lawyers), oozes, monstrous humanoids, and "exceptional beasts". By a quick count, over 125 different familiars.

Each chapter on a type of familiar starts with a list of familiars and their benefits, a discussion of the type of creatures (often including special rules and role-playing ideas), then ends with stats for each type of critter.

While D&D has always offered "Planar" creatures as familiars, it was pretty much limited to the Imp or the Quasit. The section on planar creatures fills in the gaps for most of the other planes, both "outer" (the planes related to alignment) and "inner" (elemental planes)

The most fascinating familiar in this section is the "Phenix", which is like a little bird shaped ball of fire (named after the legendary "Phoenix"), that changes colors according to its moods.

Undead familiars range from the fairly mundane zombie or skeleton, to the rather cool "flying skull". (There was one in the computer game, Planescape: Torment). Obviously, these are mostly suited for necromancer types and those wanting to impress goth chicks.

There are a whole lot of choices if you want a bird or avian familiar. From just about every bird associated with a sports team to things like loons and toucans and messenger pigeons. And apparently fictional creatures like the "ghost bat".

The reptile chapter is a bit shorter, but it has things like my favorite, the gila monster, to the komodo dragon, to iguanas and such.

Rodents. Lots and lots of rodents. Mostly cute ones, chipmunks, chinchillas, ferrets, weasels, squirrels, mongeese, minks. But also opossums (possibly nature's saddest creature, though surprisingly human like, especially their hands), rats, lemmings, and mice. (Among others).

Want a spider familiar? The vermin chapter covers them pretty well, as well as cockroaches. Also crickets, dragonflies and snails are included.

I love the exotic animals in the exceptional beast chapter There are choices for animals of all sorts, from a koala bear to a wombat to a pot bellied pig to a penguin. (You would have to resist calling it "Opus", but that is made easy thanks to the painfully unfunny comeback cartoon of the same name.) But there is some chance of someone taking a silly familiar, or one that might not fit all campaigns.

Oddly, there are also aquatic familiars in this chapter, things like a trout or an eel or a nurse shark. I guess these are mostly for aquatic spell casters, like merpeople or tritons.

The monstrous humanoid category is mostly small humanoids, like goblins or kobolds. While I'm not sure I'd use this in my game, I'm not sure it's unprecedented, exactly. In 1st edition AD&D, you could get a Brownie (the small faerie, not the food or girl scout) as a familiar, which definitely was sentient. But they were somewhat magical. Things like kobolds or goblins or even tieflings seem fairly ordinary, at least they are in a fantasy world, and so are basically well, people.

I'm not sure what to make of the ooze familiars. Other than "Creepy!". There's not a lot of options here, just the choice between a "Goozaling", which is a typical ooze, only much smaller, and a "Taffinymph", which is a type of goozaling that has been bred to look and smell like taffy (Much like how in real life, poodles have been bred to resemble cotton candy).

There's a small chapter equipment for familiars, including food (and how much they need a day), and a handful of magic items, like bells and collars for them to wear. This is pretty short, and probably could have been expanded on. For instance, there is a cursed collar the causes the familiar to suffer from fleas, but there is no magic collar to prevent them (which would be very useful. Probably for the master, too, not just the familiar)

The last chapter is sort of a grab bag of stuff, though it's mostly on making a familiar tougher, including giving guidelines for allowing familiars to take classes. It also features rules for allowing spell casting classes other than the Wizard or Sorcerer to have a familiar. There's a single prestige class, the "Magebond", which is for Wizards or Sorcerers who want a really special familiar. There's also a handful of familiar related spells.

Also, in an interesting move, they borrow the "Prestige Race" rules from Bastion Press's Oathbound setting. Basically, in exchange for experience points, a character gets special abilities. I'm somewhat iffy about this for characters (because it messes up the challenge rating of characters), but in familiars it actually works pretty well.

While all in all, it's a very impressive effort, there are some downsides to this book. It's sometimes contradictory. For instance, in the chapter on birds, it says a Seagull gives the caster a +2 charisma bonus on skills used on sea-goers. But in in a later chapter, on exceptional beasts, it says a "Gull" (no sea, but presumably the same bird) gives the master a +3 bonus on Profession (Fishing) skill checks. In the description of the Penguin, it says the master gets a +2 on their saving throw vs. cold effects. But in the chart at the beginning of the chapter, it says the master gets a +3 bonus on sleight of hand checks (Penguins being notorious pickpockets, ya know).

I'm not sure all the familiars are balanced, in terms of the benefits they give the spell caster. For instance, several give the caster a +2 charisma score. That is pretty big for a sorcerer, as charisma is what determines their bonus spells. But only a small handful do that, so it's pretty minor.

While it has a lot of animals, a whole lot, it doesn't have my personal favorite, the kangaroo.Though it does have my favorite bird, the sandpiper. And while it has my favorite baseball team's mascot (the cardinal), it doesn't have my favorite football team's (ram), though it does have their coach (loon, or maybe cuckoo).

The layout is quite good. While there is no index, there is an extremely comprehensive table of contents (3 pages long, with lots of entries per chapter) which makes finding things a breeze. There's almost no white space, which makes it a very good value. While there is a fair amount of "fluff", like introductory fiction at the beginning of each chapter, it's fairly enjoyable and does a good job of setting the tone of each chapter.

The art (by someone called "Ceredwyn") is actually quite good. It's mostly comic in tone, and occasionally disgustingly cute, but that pretty much fits the book's style (and much of the fiction).

If you want a book on familiars, you'd be hard pressed to find a better or more comprehensive one. It's also pretty useful as a monster manual of mundane and small-ish critters. I'm very impressed with this. A-




N.B. Yes, I know it's "Mongooses", but I like "Mongeese" better.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Review of Dweomercraft: Familiars, by Steve Creech, et al.
Dark Quest Games/ENWorld Publishing



This review is of a pdf format of this book. The premise of the book is to provide ideas and mechanics for making familiars a more important aspect of any characters life. There are over a 120 pages of such material.

The book has a table of contents and starts off with two stories to presumably illustrate how much richer an adventure and story can be with a fleshed out familiar. Then it leads into what races prefer which creatures as familiars and why. The reasons are sensible, such as elves like creatures of the air and gnomes like creatures that live on or in the ground. However, these preferences are not presented as steadfast rules, they are presented as more like tendencies. An Aasimar will likely have familiars that are also of good alignment and be very unlikely to have neutral or evil familiars is a summation of how these preferences are presented. This chapter goes into a lot of likely PC races, such as Hobgoblin, Medusa, and Minotaurs; to name
a few.

I personally do not like the manner in which this is presented, meaning they listed things as advantages and disadvantages when game wise they aren’t. They are just a why they would pick these as familiars and a why they wouldn’t. I do like that all of these things were thought of for me, which is why I get such products. I also like that the reasoning is much in line with what I personally would have done if I had taken the time to decide the why’s and what’s of familiar selection based on racial preferences.

The next section is on traits. I found this personally amusing as I read through them because I was thinking of how "allergies" could be used as annoying little comic relief tools during a "tense" part of various adventures. Or how playing an obviously "deceitful" familiar while the PC is involved in sensitive diplomatic
negotiations of some type could ruin their credibility. This then goes on to add to this great train of thought by throwing in a variety of allergies and even curses. All on nice tables to allow you to randomly roll such things.

Chapter 2 goes into acquiring different and more powerful familiars. What I really like is that I am of the opinion that spellcasters should not have to use feats to do this. So the authors presented both the "feat path" and the "spell path" of gaining familiars that are more powerful and useful to higher level spellcasters. So now I and the "feat path" DM’s can find this chapter of use.

Another area the authors delve into is where did the familiar come from, anyway? To most this may seem to be obvious. I really like the origin of the spellcasters Avatar, where the familiar is essentially a physical manifestation of a portion of the caster’s psyche. They also cover the construct, undead, other-palanar origins as well. Plus a number of others. This section gave me a lot of ideas, which is my big requirement for buying such products as this, inspiration.

Chapter 3 goes into great depth about why you should and should not summon other planar creatures, how you do it, and the benefits, risks, and drawbacks of summoning the various types of familiars discussed in this chapter. They even break it down to inner and outer planar creatures and even include tables and information about elementals, including improved versions of each.

The one thing that I know I am going to have to give serious consideration is the benefits some of these familiars granted, such as Fast Healing 2 and Fire Immunity. A number of them were essentially skill feats
giving a +3 bonus to this or that skill.

This chapter then goes into diseases familiars can catch, despite or because of their exotic origins, a plot device that could easily hook players into a new adventure of a very personal nature. It also discusses "quirks" that these types of familiars will have just because of them being "alien" to their masters culture.

The authors also gave several examples of familiars statted out and wrote numerous "templates" to use while creating the wide variety of familiars possible.

Chapter 4 goes on to cover undead familiars. Essentially the same format of Chapter 3 is used to discuss the various aspects of having an undead familiar, such as why and why not, where do you get them, what benefits do they give the PC, and so on. I must say that by this point I have become impressed with two things, the thoroughness of the variety of creatures presented and the thoroughness of the consequences, good or bad, that having these familiars cause.

Chapter 5 goes on to give the same treatment to Constructs, Chapter 6 talks about flying types of familiars,Chapter 7 covers reptiles, Chapter 8 covers rodents, chapter 9 presents Vermin, Chapter 10 covers what it calls "Exceptional" familiars which are mostly just very unusual familiars such as eels, scate, penguins, and even the Tasmanian Devil.

Chapter 11 covers large humanoids and using them as a Seneschal and even gives a feat for binding one to your PC. A spell caster alternative to a cohort in my opinion.

Chapter 12 covers the acquiring and use of Oozes as familiars.

Chapter 13 goes into equipment for familiars and their masters. Essentially, this chapter presents common sense equipment that you would want for your familiar, including magical items. Nothing that I thought of as powerful, just useful for keeping a familiar alive, much like magic items for PC’s do.

Chapter 14 goes into making your familiar more powerful either through enhancements or just upgrading to a newer and more powerful one. It even gives a discussion of how and when to add levels to familiars to keep them "in line" with the power level of its master. These levels are gained by the familiar through its master donating their own xp’s. The authors give a very good discussion on the pro’s and con’s of adding character levels and why to allow only classes that make sense for a given familiar to have, as well as why you would
want to.

The Mage Bond PrC is also presented. I do not see many PC’s choosing this PrC because they have to give up five levels of spell casting progression to complete it. However, the benefits to the caster and their familiar are very strong. Which is probably why the authors balanced it by sacrificing so many spell casting levels. However, if a PC really loves their familiar and is a role player, they will be interested in this PrC. Plus it does greatly strengthen the caster and the familiar. So as a "team" they will still be very potent and useful to any party of adventurers and on their own.

Overall opinion. I am surprisingly pleased. Very pleased. The authors seemed to me to give very serious consideration to balance issues, discussing many of them. The new spells are very sensible and not uber
powerful. Even the PrC is a logical kind of class and appears to be well balanced due to the sacrificing of the five levels of casting.

I also like the detail and wide variety of optional familiars given. The art is nothing exceptional, but the format, detail, and obvious thought given to all the issues are far better than I have seen in a lot of D20 books.

In case any of you are like me and also own Troll Lord Games Familiar book, or are also considering it, there is very little overlap between these two books. This book is about what can a Spell Caster do to make their familiar more interesting and viable, while TLG’s book is about how can any class have a familiar or animal companion.

My bottom line opinion of this product is that it is very good, a must buy if you are even moderately interested in its content. It has given me plenty of ideas and inspiration to make me eager to use the
material for any player willing to give it a try. Not to mention making enemy spell casters AND their familiars a threat to be wary of. I also like how thorough the table of contents is and the fact that they have one.

I enjoy it when a product surprises me with how much I like it. Kudos to the team of writers!

Edited for formatting problems.

 

[Crothian]

You might want to edit the review and reformat it.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

I'll do so, but the original format is in notepad and I don't know why it messed up like this.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

I edited it, but there are still a couple of line glitches that don't show up when I attempt to edit it. At least it is much more readable now.

 

[Vanuslux]

I write my reviews in notepad too. I've found that if I cut and paste with the word wrap on, it ends up looking like your review did earlier.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Yes, I do remember activating word wrap, so I guess that was the cause. Thanks!

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Dweomercraft Familiars (Print)

The d20 market has seen book specializing on classes, races, weapons, spells, prestige classes, feats and many other broader categories. This book takes a class feature, the acquisition of the familiar and the familiar itself, and greatly expands upon it. I am not sure how many other class features can be broadened and looked this in-depthly. It would be interesting to see animal companions and the paladins mount dealt with like this book. I feel those are the two obvious choices that lend themselves to this type of product that can take a subject and expand upon it greatly. I would very much like to see Steve Creech, the author of this book, take those class abilities and do with them what he has done with familiars.

Dweomercraft Familiars is the latest book by Dark Quest Games. They have been a solid company when it comes to pdfs having produced some of very good books like In the Saddle: Horses and Other Mounts and Death: Guardian of the Gate. This is one of their first to see both PDF and print release. I imagine those are some titles that people do not know of but they should. However, this review is about one specific book by them. As I said it is written by Steve Creech and a few other people like Michael Hammes, Neal Levin, David Woodrum, Rowan Flowers, James Justice, Shawn Muder, Darren Pearce, and Amanda Woodrum. That is nine people given writing credit on this book and the writing is pretty seamless. I imagine that is not so easy to do to get nine voices to sound as one. That is just the first of the many impressive things about this book.

Familiars is a one hundred and twenty four page book. The book is presented in an easy to read two column format. The layout is very well done making it easy to read. The art is a mixture of pieces that I like and do not like. It is all down by the same person, Ceredywn. The art is very appropriate to the topics of the chapters it is in and of a good consistent style. Some of the pieces are a little too cute looking and I was rather disappointed that neither of the new oozes presented in the book was pictured.

One of the things that Familiars does very well is show what familiars can do. At the beginning of almost every chapter there are stories about familiars. These are well written little tales that give good examples of a familiar in action. They offer the familiars personality and intelligence so that they become more then a scouting tool. Personally, I am rarely a fan of the use of fiction like this. But this shows us that when it is done well in both writing style and content that it just adds so much to the book giving examples and details in practice. The stories do a good job of breaking up the book and helping it flow together making it easier to read all in one sitting.

Okay, on the meat of this book. The first chapter deals with the master and the familiar. What sorts of races choose what sort of familiar? What kind of personality does my familiar have? Why should I curse a player who kills off his familiar? And what sort of curses can I use? These are just a few of the fun questions this first chapter answers. It does start out with what races prefer which familiars it includes many of the common races and even minotaurs and medusa plus many more obscure races. However, it does not include dwarves. I guess this is just an oversight as I cannot imagine how one could purposely include what familiars and Ettin likes but not the ones a dwarf does. The personality of the familiars is done through a table of traits. A player can roll randomly for a few of these traits to help define the familiar. There are thirty two options here but a few of the options are just broad categories like phobias. However the text directs us to appendix five for a list of phobias and there is no appendix five, list of phobias, or even a single appendix. The curses are an optional rule to pester the player who looses his familiar. I really like the idea of having the death of a familiar be just a penalty in experience. It can really add something to a character to try to overcome the death of a familiar and the curse he his left with.

The Players Handbook has a very limited list of familiars available to the Sorcerer and the Wizard. There have been a few books that have feats and options to expand upon this list, but they all pale in comparison to the new familiar types this book offers. In the new origins chapter there are feats for the summoning of vermin familiars to undead familiars to inner planar familiars. Each costs a feat and requires a certain caster level to have such a familiar. Some though seem a little difficult for what one can get with it. From there the chapter goes into detail on what a familiar is. It covers a lot of area even the poltergeist of a former familiar. A lot of thought and intelligence was placed into this section. It defines a familiar and answers many of the questions that the Players Handbook does not. I will consider this a must read for any character that decides to get a familiar.

What type of familiar should a character take? Why some types of familiars are better then others and what can one expect from familiars of a particular type? The next few chapters cover’s these questions and many more. Each familiar type gets its own chapter devoted to it and in that chapter things are fully detailed. There might be new spells, new feats, and new creatures for each familiar type. There are chapters on each of the following: Outer Planar Creatures, Undead, Constructs, Avian and flying creatures, Reptiles, Rodents, Vermin, Exceptional Beasts, Monstrous Humanoids, and Oozes. And yes, my eyes do sparkle when I see a chapter on Ooze familiars.

Each chapter begins with reasons why to choose a familiar of this type and why not to choose a familiar of this type. These sections go into the reasons for and against with a thorough understanding of familiars. It also discusses a bit the types of people that most commonly will have familiars of these types. These are an NPC and a PC concept goldmine. Obviously, that is not the intention of this section but I am always on the look out for good starting ideas for characters. I consider it a good bonus in a book.

There are many, many new types of familiars presented here. Each is also listed with a bonus the wizard or sorcerer gets from having this type of familiar. The division of familiars per chapter though is uneven. As one might expect there are more familiars presented for the Rodent and Exceptional Beasts chapters then the Undead and Ooze chapters. In each chapter there are also ways to upgrade ones familiar. This involves spending experience from the caster and seems like a good way to balance the new powers and abilities of the familiar. Spending experience for things other then item creation seems to be a touchy subject for some gamers. I am of the opinion it is a good thing and enjoy seeing new options one can use their experience for. These chapters cover a lot of information and make choosing the right familiar a pleasant chore.

Magical items are the backbone of many campaigns and characters and a familiar has his needs as well. There are not that many items presented here for the familiar but the ones that are here are solid examples of the possibilities for a familiar. There are even a few cursed items here as well. Then the book goes into class levels for familiars, the possibilities of any class acquire a familiar, and some familiar based prestige classes for a character.

One of my favorite things to do first when I read a d20 book is look at the Open Game License. It might seem like an odd thing to do, but one of the great things the OGL allows is the building and using of other people’s materials. In the OGL it will list any sources that were used in this book. Familiars includes over thirty such sources. As I read through the book I did recognize some of the material from the other books, but the inclusion of them was pretty seamless and not obvious. It would be nice to see a page included that said what specifically was used from each source so that people can then see what they liked and possible seek out the original source for more similar ideas.

Overall this is a great resource for Familiars. I do like it much better then the Mongoose book Familiars: Crouch Monkey, Hidden Toad. Though that book does offer some options that will work well with what is presented here. Troll Lords also has a book on Familiars out, and its focus works surprising well along side this book. They complete each other greatly.