How do you keep your familiar alive?

[demon_jr]

Once you have a familiar, what steps or precautions, if any, do you take to keep it alive?

Do you get any use out of having a familiar, beyond the Alertness feat, etc.?

In my opinion, familiars that can fly are much easier to manage and keep alive than land-based ones, or if you really wanted one, aquatic familiars.

If you are lucky enough to have a non-standard familiar, such as a dog, wolverine, wolf, etc., how would you go about keeping it out of harms way since it is fairly large size, can't fly out of danger, etc.?

 

[Zulkir of Dartmouth]

I think that the weasel familiar is a great familiar to have.
Think about this. The wizard being captured and the weasel is up his sleave, and during the search of his items the familiar can run all through the wizards robes, untill he is tied up. At that point he can come out of the robes and chew the ropes. Helping the wizard to escape.
And the weasel has the attach SA that would be great for touch attacks spells, the wizard can use
There is all kinds of uses for familiars that make them usefull.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

I currently have a bird so it is no problem, it stays away until I need it. It does go into combat situations occaisionally and I have had to break off from an attack to heal it quickly. Overall though it is well worth it as its useful times far outnumber the number of times it has even been slightly in danger.

My last character had a rat. It mostly hung out on my shoulder. Improved Evasion helps them considerably and with the very good HPs I had it had no problems surviving even when running in to conduct touch attacks for me. Rats also are good at hiding and blending in dungeons and towns so it proved a good scout/spy.

 

[bret]

Most familiars are small enough that even without the skill they can hide pretty well. Tiny size gives a +8 to hide.

At low levels, flying definately helps. At higher levels, there are too many nasty flying creatures.

Most of the land based familiars can climb pretty well. Use it to get into a position where they are hard to spot and even harder to get to.

Do not send your familiar into combat. Make sure that your enemies see you as more of a threat than the familiar and make sure that they have targets other than your familiar to attack.

If the familiar is always riding on your shoulder or something, make sure you take advantage of the Share Spells special ability. That Shield, Protection from Arrows, or Haste spell also makes it harder to hurt the familiar. In addition, they will have partial cover from your body. This may not always be a good thing, since a miss can result in you getting hit.

At higher levels, think about giving them magic items. Tome & Blood has some information about that.

Finally, think about if the familiar would look unusual in a certain setting. A snake would definately look out of place in the middle of the artic tundra. If the familiar would look out of place, then there is a much higher chance of an enemy noticing it.

 

[Zulkir of Dartmouth]

SO true Brown.
I had an NPC wizard that spied on my last group with his familiar b/c they were staying in a cheap inn with lots of rats b/c it was on the waterfront.
They had no idea that they were being spied on and got really pissed b/c they thought there was no way that he could no what they were planning. Makes me laugh thinking about it.

 

[SylverFlame]

When I DM I have an unwritten rule. If the PC is careful with the famialiar and doesn't put it in any nasty situations, all my monsters ignore it.

Scouting familiars are fair-game but in combat, if my option is followed, the famialiar is "convieniently" out of harms way. My little gift to my PC's for taking every opertunity to have a little DM fun.

 

[Li Shenron]

When I DM I have an unwritten rule. If the PC is careful with the famialiar and doesn't put it in any nasty situations, all my monsters ignore it.

Scouting familiars are fair-game but in combat, if my option is followed, the famialiar is "convieniently" out of harms way. My little gift to my PC's for taking every opertunity to have a little DM fun.

Most of the time my monsters and NPCs don't attack a familiar on sight, since a familliar usually looks like an innocuous animal.
If the familiar fights together with the Wiz anyway the foes are definitely going to defend themselves and consider the familiar a threat.

There are sometimes occasions when a monster is simply so savage that basically destroys every living thing around (quite rare in my games), or when a very clever foe who previously had a bad time against a Wiz with familiar decides to drop the familiar first.
Mostly it depends on situations: sending a Wolf to scout downtown is going to provoke a hunt from the townfolks, but a Bat would go unnoticed; a scouting Bat in an Ogre's lair may be caught and eaten, while a Rat is probably going to hide among all the other lair's rats (which although might be eaten as well ).

As a player I really suggest Wiz players to care for the familiar and don't assume that the DM is always saving it; as a DM I suggest instead not to try to stress it too much, for a DM that constantly threaten and tries to spoil a PC's ability is usually going only to push the player to drop that ability alogether.

 

[demon_jr]

After some thought, I think most, if not all the NPC wizards I have encountered in my campaign have not had a familiar.

I'm fortunate where my DM has stated that he will not go out of his way to get familiars killed. In fact, he has at times "pulled some strings" so that familiars are not harmed, at least in my eyes.

However, I don't want to take advantage of my DM's good graces or always put him in situations where he feels that he is forced to keep the familiar alive.

I noticed that a dog is available as a familiar, from one of the Dragon magazines that had an article about familiars, including spells and feats for familiars.

Kinda off topic, but ever played a wizard, cast polymporph self, and have it affect your familiar? If your high enough level, then the spell should last for quite some time. During this time, would you have your familiar stay in it's "true form" or have it polymorph into something else, like say a human, elf, orc, etc.? (or is that even possible?)

 

[0-hr]

How about the opposite side of the coin. If you are a DM and you want to take out a player's familiar, how could you do it short of a fiat?

If it's in a pocket, it has 100% cover and so is pretty much immune to spells and damage (since it's near impossible to destroy a robe that someone is wearing, it's even more impossible to destroy the contents of the pockets of that robe).

 

[Hypersmurf]

If it's in a pocket, it has 100% cover and so is pretty much immune to spells and damage.

I disagree... it has 100% concealment. Do you grant the wizard 9/10 cover for wearing the robe?

The concealment means the familiar can't be targetted by, say, Magic Missile or Finger of Death, but Fireball - or Circle of Doom to sidestep that pesky Improved Evasion - should work just fine...

-Hyp.