Trading in your familiar

[frankthedm]

Plus, unless all wizards and sorcs in a world get bonuses from their staffs, an opponent would still need a reason to sunder the staff... rather than, say, the wizard or sorc.

Yeah, sundering a wizard's staff should not be high on the list of your average non-metagaming opponent.

Do either of you remember the dragon magazine article that had the staff familiar rules in it? The Article's main goal was to represent the staff's role in the rules as it was in fiction, history, myth and legend. That means that the majority of npc’s will know more erroneous and exaggerated myths than the actual effects the loss of the staff will cause.

Knowledge: Local will tell NPCs of legends and let them tell their children old wives tales of spell casters being weakened by the destruction of their staves.
Knowledge: History will tell NPCs of world spanning wars of wizards seeking their staves back
Knowledge: Arcana will tell NPCs how rude breaking a wizards staff is and that doing so is asking for the worst fate that caster can conjure up.

 

[FalcWP]

Knowledge: Arcana will tell NPCs how rude breaking a wizards staff is and that doing so is asking for the worst fate that caster can conjure up.

Yeah, I can just see thugs jumping at the chance to earn the ultimate ire of a powerful wizard.

 

[frankthedm]

Yeah, I can just see thugs jumping at the chance to earn the ultimate ire of a powerful wizard.

An thats the rub, the thugs have little access to arcana. Local; likely, History: remote chance if they have listened to a few bard songs but arcana is simply too esoteric.

So they heard the legends of the Resurrected White Wizard breaking the Rainbow wizard’s staff, but they don’t know the ins and outs of the mechanics of what that did.

 

[FalcWP]

Probably true. So, the only people who are going to be targeting a wizard's staff are...

1) People who have the specific knowledge to know that doing so can cripple the wizard - and are confident that the wizard's most powerful counter won't take them out. Likely a small minority of the general population, and a slightly larger minority among a wizard's foes.

2) Warriors who have made sundering their primary tactic, and see the wizard as enough of a melee threat to make sundering his weapon worth the effort. Again, a reasonably small minority.

3) Thugs who have been ordered to break the staff or have heard enough to know that breaking the staff will hurt the wizard... and have the balls to deliberately risk the wizard's wrath. Because, lets face it... with as much as he has invested in that staff, a wizard is going to really hammer anyone who tries to break it. Yet again, probably a small minority - the most loyal, crazy, fearless, or best paid thugs might do this for their leader, but beyond that...

Plus, some thugs who have an idea that breaking a staff is a good thing might not do so. They might not believe what they've heard, or at least may be unwilling to test it in combat. And then there are going to be the people who hear that this staff is so very powerful... and don't want to destroy it. After all, if a wizard is willing to unleash his most powerful magic to protect his staff (or punish anyone who damages it), it has to be worth some serious coin, right?

So, yes. There are several legitimate reasons where an enemy may attempt to sunder a staff. The majority of combatants won't have a reason to do so; lack of knowledge, or unwillingness to risk whatever a wizard might do to them in retaliation, greed, or the plain fact that it might be quicker to just kill the wizard. Is it a risk? Yes. But it should be, too.

 

[apsuman]

Yeah, sundering a wizard's staff should not be high on the list of your average non-metagaming opponent.

Bye
Thanee

I don't know, at the right level, a low int barbarian could think that sundering the staff would be the way to stop that sorcerer. After all without the staff he could not cast any of those spells...

 

[FalcWP]

I don't know, at the right level, a low int barbarian could think that sundering the staff would be the way to stop that sorcerer. After all without the staff he could not cast any of those spells...

Without his head, he can't cast any of those spells either.

 

[Jhulae]

Uh huh. I know *I'd* be calling shenanigans...

If the PC's opponents haven't *regularly* been trying to sunder the Wizard's 'staff' (assuming that most wizards and sorcerers have been carrying a quarterstaff in the past, since it's so cheap and comes in handy for things other that just beating opponents), to suddenly have everybody trying to sunder the Staff Familiar would be *serious* metagaming on the part of a DM.

In fact, in most games I've seen, the NPCs don't even try to sunder the fighter's weapon, which would be the best way to remove the threat of a *high* HP character who is much more resilient to having her head sundered...

It would honestly be just as 'metagamey' as having nobody provoke attacks of opportunity against the person with Combat Reflexes.. Always throwing undead opponents at the Rogue.. etc, etc, etc.

 

[jayaint]

...insert minor hijack here....

Is there any PRC, feat, etc that allows a divine familiar other than the Magic of Faerun's Mystic Wanderer 2nd level ability?

Is the staff familiar only for arcane casters? I had a character with the two level dip in MW and Improved Familiar feat and it was great fun to have an eyeball beholder float out of my cleric's pack in certain situations.... just curious if that was the only way to get a divine familiar.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

So, yes. There are several legitimate reasons where an enemy may attempt to sunder a staff. The majority of combatants won't have a reason to do so; lack of knowledge, or unwillingness to risk whatever a wizard might do to them in retaliation, greed, or the plain fact that it might be quicker to just kill the wizard. Is it a risk? Yes. But it should be, too.

In the face of the likelihood that the staff is of little or no immediate threat and the likelihood that you could gain some coin for that staff if you are still breathing 2 rounds from now, hitting the staff instead of the wizard is almost always idiotic. It is just a creative way for an NPC to prolong the battle at the cost of his already slim chance at survival.

 

[Storyteller01]

My favorite is the staff familiar, from a while back, in Dragon magazine (#338). It includes several feats you can take to enhance your spellcasting ability that I really liked, to.

Those bonuses were huge with the (albeit short lived) gestalt cleric/sorcerer of war we had in the game.

It's a third party source, but there was a feat called Absorb Familiar. When you took it, you ...well... absorbed your familiar. You gained double the bonus you would have gotten with the familiar (+4 to MS checks for a cat, etc) but you could never again summon another one. Not an unbalanced trade, considering what you lose.