What do you think of the new Imbued Staff Article in Dragon?

[Archade]

Hey all,

One of my players came to me with the newest Dragon magazine asking if he could use the rules for the Imbued Staff (sans Familiar) rules.

I read them over, and they don't seem too unbalanced ... getting a magical double weapon at +1 at third level is a little much, but hey, when is the wizard going to enter combat?

What are your impressions? I'm inclined to allow it, but I'd like to collect everyone else's impressions first ...

 

[Pyrex]

Looks good to me. Lots of nice little bonuses in there that make it a fair trade for a familiar.

Especially if you take a couple of the related feats.

 

[frankthedm]

It depends, in a normal game wizards FEAR bringing thier familiars with them because foes with knowledge of what familiars are will take advantage of that. Items are a lot harder to harm than a creature in this ruleset. So unless you as DM ignore attacking familiars, or the staff is a lot more fragile than normal magical objects then, no it is not a fair trade off.

 

[farscapesg1]

It depends, in a normal game wizards FEAR bringing thier familiars with them because foes with knowledge of what familiars are will take advantage of that. Items are a lot harder to harm than a creature in this ruleset. So unless you as DM ignore attacking familiars, or the staff is a lot more fragile than normal magical objects then, no it is not a fair trade off.

And this is the reason that I haven't seen a single wizard (including my own characters) even bother with a familiar for years After too many years of gaming with DMs that focused their attacks on familiars just to kill it off, I suffer through the loss of not making use of one of the wizard's "supposed" benefits.

Of course, I haven't gotten a chance to read the article yet, but anything that can replace the normal familiar "benefit" is good in my opinion

 

[Plane Sailing]

In my experience most familiars end up looking like this

http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=3

 

[Mouseferatu]

Not only do I intend to allow it, I intend to allow wizards to choose the staff-related feats presented in that article as bonus feats at 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th levels, as if they were metamagic or item creation feats.

 

[Mouseferatu]

It depends, in a normal game wizards FEAR bringing thier familiars with them because foes with knowledge of what familiars are will take advantage of that. Items are a lot harder to harm than a creature in this ruleset. So unless you as DM ignore attacking familiars, or the staff is a lot more fragile than normal magical objects then, no it is not a fair trade off.

AFAIAC, this is a good reason to allow the change. In the RAW, familiars are often more of a weakness than a benefit, and that's not a good thing. As with other posters, my experience suggests that most casters don't bother with familiars, or else rarely use them, for precisely this reason.

 

[UltimaGabe]

I'm definitely using it in my campaigns. In one campaign I'm currently playing in, I'm taking it immediately- in all of our campaigns, we let casters give up their familiar in place of a feat if they wish, which (so far) more or less always happens, since familiars are such a liability. Finally (since my current Sorcerer was already gonna have a staff closely tied to his backstory) I have a reason to not give up on the whole concept.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Frankly - a DM who has critters concentrate attacks on a familiar to the exclusion of some other activity is a jerk. There's rarely a sizeable benefit to doing so: most of the time targeting the wizard himself will be at least as good.

The exception, of course, is if the familiar is off scouting alone. A wizard would be well advised not to use his familiar as the party scout, unless said wizard is also the party rogue...

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Frankly - a DM who has critters concentrate attacks on a familiar to the exclusion of some other activity is a jerk. There's rarely a sizeable benefit to doing so: most of the time targeting the wizard himself will be at least as good.

It's situational.

In general, unintelligent critters shouldn't attack a familiar unless there's a good reason. Like, say, it's hungry and there's nothing else appetizing nearby.

Intelligent opponents who have an idea of class abilities ("arcane casters often have a little animal that hangs out with them and killing it hurts them"), on the other hand, can attack familiars. They shouldn't often, because it really is petty and vindictive. For the amount of hurt you're piling into the familiar to drop it, that should get halfway to dropping the caster, who's actually doing something to hurt or inconvenience you. On the other hand, longtime foes could conceivably be just that petty and vindictive to screw over the PC caster. Though that shouldn't be often, as it gets unfun fast, and makes it really hard to surrender to the PCs.

"Hey, Mialee, he had his hands up!"
"Sorry, the tears in my eyes from losing Fluffy made it hard to see that."
"But you hit him with an Empowered Maximized Disintegrate!"
"Yeah, him standing still and us being out of rounds meant that he lost his Dex bonus and...crap. Okay, he didn't surrender fast enough, okay?"

Brad