Summon Familiar Ritual

[Falling Icicle]

Summon Familiar
Level: 1
Category: Binding
Time: 1 hour
Duration: Permanent
Component Cost: 100g, plus all of your daily healing surges
Market Price: 50g
Key Skill: Arcana (no check)

This ritual lures a tiny animal (your choice from the list below) and binds its soul to yours. This familiar serves you loyally as a companion and servant. The magic of this ritual extends its lifespan to be the same as yours. You can only have one familiar at a time. If your familiar dies or you dismiss it, you can't summon a new one for 1 year. If your familiar dies, the shock to your soul is tremendous. You are stunned until the end of your next turn and thereafter suffer a -1 penalty to all attack rolls, skill checks, saving throws and ability checks. This death penalty fades after you reach three milestones. A dead familiar can be raised to life, just as a character of your level, but at half the cost.

Each type of familiar gives its master a special bonus. This bonus applies only while the familiar is alive and within 1 mile of its master.

Bat: Master gains a +1 bonus to Dungeoneering checks.
Cat: Master gains a +1 bonus to Stealth checks.
Hawk: Master gains a +1 bonus to Perception checks.
Lizard: Master gains a +1 bonus on Athletics checks.
Owl: Master gains a +1 bonus to Nature checks.
Rat: Master gains a +1 bonus to Endurance checks.
Raven: Master gains a +1 bonus on Insight checks.
Snake (tiny viper): Master gains a +1 bonus on Bluff checks.
Toad: Master gains a +1 bonus to Heal checks.
Weasel: Master gains +1 bonus to Acrobatics checks.

Familiar Basics:

Level: Your familiar's level is the same as yours, and it increases in level when you do. Familiars do not get feats or ability score increases, nor can they take a character class, paragon path or epic destiny.

Type: Familiars are treated as magical beasts.

Hit Points: Your familiar has a total number of hit points equal to half your own HP total (not including temporary HP). Keep track of its damage seperately from your own.

Healing Surges: The familiar has no healing surges of its own, but you can use your healing surges on its behalf. If your familiar is within arm's reach when you take a Second Wind, it also heals hit points equal to its healing surge value (1/4 its maximum HP).

Attacks: Familiars use the better of their Str or Dex modifiers when using their natural weapons (bite, claws, etc). They add half their level to their attacks, just as characters do.

Defenses: Familiar's have a +2 natural armor bonus and a +2 racial bonus to their Fortitude and Reflex defenses. They add half their level to their defenses, just as characters do.

Skills: Familiars are considered to be trained in Perception and Stealth and every other skill that you are trained in. Even with this training, the actions a familiar can take are limited by its physical capabilities. Familiar's add half their level to skill bonuses, just as characters do.

Special Abilities: Familiars possess the following special powers, thanks to the magical bond to their master. As you increase in level, the bond between you strengthens and they gain additional special powers.

Empathic Link: You have an empathic link to your familiar out to a distance of 1 mile. You can't see through your familiar's eyes, but you can communicate empathically. Because of this link, you have the same connection to an item or place that your familiar does.

Evasion: Familiars have the Evasion feat (p 202) even if they don't meet the prerequisites.

Share Spells: While within arm's reach of you, any spell you cast upon yourself can also affect your familiar, if desired. Alternatively, any spell you can cast upon yourself can instead target your familiar, even if the spell normally can't affect anyone but the caster. The familiar must spend the appropriate action to sustain the spell (if any) or it ends.

Speak With Master: Starting at 5th level, you can speak verbally with your familiar as if you shared a common language. Other creatures can't understand this communication without magical help.

Speak With Animals of Its Kind: Starting at 7th level, the familiar can communicate with other animals of its general type bats with bats, ravens with birds, rats with rodents, cats with felines, hawks, owls and ravens with birds, lizards and snakes with reptiles, toads with amphibians, weasels with similar creatures in the family Mustelidae (weasels, minks, polecats, ermines, skunks, wolverines and badgers). This communication is limited by the intelligence of the conversing creatures.

Spell Resistance: Starting at 11th level, your familiar gains a +5 bonus to all of its saving throws against spells.

Scry on Familiar: Starting at 13th level, you can magically scry on your familiar, observing it and its surroundings magically from any distance. You can do this once per day for up to 1 hour.

[Edit] Toned down the bonuses from +3 to +1, changed the bonus granted by some of the animals for more balance and variety, removed the Alertness ability and replaced it with Shared Awareness, and decresed the range on the Deliver Spells ability from 10 squares to 5.

[Edit] Removed the Deliver Spells and Shared Awareness abilities. Changed the death penalty for the familiar to be the same as the death penalty if the character dies, to give familiar death a bigger drawback.

 

[Belorin]

I like this.

Bel

 

[Starfox]

I think you should cut back on the mechanics; this is too diverse, too like a 3E familiar. Make it more of a cute animal that can carry messengers, less magical beast and spell-carrier. Take away al combat uses of the familiar. That way, it won't interfere with the economy of actions.

 

[runnerXL]

Since all it takes to perform a ritual is to buy a scroll, this will see every PC collecting a faithful pet which gives him a bonus equilavent to a feat for just 150gp. If it was limited some way to characters who get their power from the arcane power source then it would fit better, flavour wise, with traditional familiers.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Since all it takes to perform a ritual is to buy a scroll, this will see every PC collecting a faithful pet which gives him a bonus equilavent to a feat for just 150gp. If it was limited some way to characters who get their power from the arcane power source then it would fit better, flavour wise, with traditional familiers.

That's true. I hadn't thought of that. I'm still getting used to the idea that anyone can use rituals.

 

[Falling Icicle]

this is too diverse, too like a 3E familiar.

That was my intent, to reproduce the 3.5 familiar as close as possible in the new rules. I may write up an alternative set of familiar rules in the future, though.

Make it more of a cute animal that can carry messengers, less magical beast and spell-carrier. Take away al combat uses of the familiar. That way, it won't interfere with the economy of actions.

Well, when you really look at what this familiar can do, it doesn't infringe on the economy of actions much, if at all. Yeah, it can attack, but it can only do basic attacks for pitiful damage. And considering their low hit points and the consequences if they die, most characters won't send them into melee to begin with.

I also designed the deliver spell and share spell abilities to keep the familiar's actions in check. Casting a spell through it takes an action for both the master and the familiar, for example, and puts it in harm's way. Shared spells also require the familiar to spend the appropriate action types to sustain them.

The main concerns I have right now are not with the actions the familiar can take, but the +3 skill bonus and alertness, each of which is equivalent to a feat. The 3.5 familiar also gave these benefits, but it may be a bit too much now. I am considering removing them. The familiar is plenty useful without granting the equivalent of two free feats.

 

[Nether Mage Ash]

Here is an idea, why not make the base familiar ritual summoning ritual just provide a basic familiar with very few additional bells and whistles. Then, afterward, you could create additional rituals that add new enhancements and stuff to the already created familiar. In addition, if you want, you could make their be a base requirement of a specialized feat - which you could give to Wizards and Paladins - for free. This feat would allow you to have the knoweldge of the ritual,and would have some fluff text explaining why its necessary.

That all said, I think that bringing this back is cool and that this is one area that rituals could come in handy.

 

[Sashi]

Shared Awareness: While within arm's reach of you, you and your familiar share a sense of your surroundings. If your familair notices something due to its Perception, you notice it as well, and vice versa. In order to surprise either of you, an enemy must succeeed in surprising both of you.

Deliver Spells: At 3rd level and higher, you can cast spells through your familiar. You can use your familiar's square as the origin square of your close spells as long as it is within 5 squares of you and within your line of sight. Doing so takes the appropriate action for both you and your familiar.

These are the two abilities that seem too powerful. Either one, by itself, would be worth getting a familiar for, both of them is just too much. How about just +1 to perception rolls for avoiding being surprised, and just remove the deliver spells entirely (seriously, expanding the range of close spells by 5 squares? That's way awesomegood).

 

[Falling Icicle]

These are the two abilities that seem too powerful. Either one, by itself, would be worth getting a familiar for, both of them is just too much. How about just +1 to perception rolls for avoiding being surprised, and just remove the deliver spells entirely (seriously, expanding the range of close spells by 5 squares? That's way awesomegood).

My thinking with these abilities is that they put the familiar in harm's way, so that should serve to discourage their use. But you're probably right, looking at the Arcane Reach feat, deliver spells seems too powerful a benefit.

 

[generalhenry]

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=230122

I like them as feats, since anyone can use a ritual scroll.