Thank goodness for wide angle vision!...

[Ambrus]

Before 3rd edition the lowly toad familiar offered no benefit to its master aside from it's "wide angle vision". I imagine the poor game designer who's job it was to stat up the various familiars back then really had to scratch his head to come up with even that paltry "benefit".

But now I'm curious. With all of the wizard characters that have been played since the game's inception I'm certain there must be a quietly embarrassed/disgruntled bunch of players out there who ended up saddled with a toad familiar back before they were made desirable. What I want to know is, did the lowly toad's wide-angle vision ever actually prove useful to anyone during game play? Did it ever somehow save somebody's bacon? Anyone? Anyone?

Failing that, I'd love to read some amusing toad familiar related anecdotes. Did a toad familiar ever figure prominently in a game? Does anyone have a secret soft spot for the lowly toad familiar?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've only played one PC with a Toad familiar.

He was a Sorcerer who wore Scale Male, used a Maul, and channeled his spell-energy into his Draconic breath rather than casting spells 75% of the time.

Those extra 3 HP came in handy more than once.

 

[Stormonu]

Back when the game had facing (front/shield side/right side/rear), the toad has some benefit.

However, back in 1E/2E the only familiars in our group were a psuedodragon owned by the human wizard and the elf who had a owl...who swore it could "detect virginity".

 

[mach1.9pants]

My Wizard PC used to lick his toad familiar, not so much wide-angle vision but far out visions!

 

[Plane Sailing]

In 3e I had a paladin/sorcerer with a toad familiar.

There was one time that some people were buried in a collapsed building, and my toad worked his way through the rubble to find alive but buried people who we then rescued.

No toad familiars in the 'wide angle vision' days though!

 

[Richards]

We had an elf sorceress with a toad familiar in our first 3E campaign. She had crafted a little potion harness for the toad, and it carried around two potions of cure light wounds. It was trained to pop the cork on a potion and pour it in her mouth if she ever fell in combat, and it saved her life more than once. It also saved the life of a different player's PC (a cleric), who was a bit dismayed that he "owed his life to the damn toad."

In our current campaign, we had a human sorcerer PC with a toad familiar. He was a failed experiment (Can I turn a sorcerer into a greatsword-wielding front-line fighter if I choose the right spells? -- Answer: yes, a particularly sucky one with low hit points and none of the extra feats a fighter of your level would have) who took a toad familiar just because he desperately needed the extra 3 hp. After having been discarded as a PC, I, as DM, took him over as a traitorous NPC (he freed a famous tiefling thief the PCs had captured and she took him on as an apprentice thief). Adding some rogue levels helped him as a character, and he even "upgraded" his toad familiar into a pigeontoad (by adding pigeon wings in a magical crossbreeding procedure). Didn't help either one last any longer once the PCs eventually caught up with them, though.

Johnathan

 

[ExploderWizard]

The toad familliar was funny enough to get featured in Yamara.

 

[Dragonbait]

I don't think that any character ever had a familiar in any 2ed game I ever played outside of mounts..

In 3ed, we had a gnome wizard who used a toad familiar (+2 Con, baybeeee) and focussed on Con boosts... Constitution rather than Intelligence..

 

[The Shaman]

One of my house rules for the toad familiar in 1e AD&D was that it made the magic-users skin taste bad to predators that used a bite attack.

The toad-licking thing came up in our games a few times as well.

 

[catsclaw227]

I had a toad familar once, but there is nothing more exciting to say about it. He did occasionally get forgotten and we had to pull an OotS familiar reminder trick.

I had a PC in my game with a chicken familiar though, and the sorcerer/priest (I think) was a bit far-realmsy, so the chicken eventually transmogrified into a chicken with tentacles instead of chicken legs.