5th Edition Familiar

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Duck One
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5th Edition Familiar

Post by Duck One »

Given the limitations of the game mechanics in NWN, I’d like to suggest that ALFA consider the 5th edition interpretation of what a familiar is: a spirit taking the temporary physical form of a creature that can only aid the caster in non-combat ways. If the familiar is “killed” (reduced to 0 hit points), it loses its physical form and returns to the spirit realm, but can be summoned once more through the find familiar spell. For role playing purposes, this 5th Edition interpretation of a familiar aligns more with the way NWN uses familiars, and would make them actually useful, as messengers, spies, etc., and give a lot of fun role playing options. Thoughts?
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Re: 5th Edition Familiar

Post by Arianna »

Then it should also cost you 10 gp worth of charcoal, incense, and herbs
that must be consumed by fire in a brass brazier. So carry around a brass brazier and collect your component packet to cast it. Not just a 10gp out of your purse. The whole recreate a familiar at will is unbalanced IMO.


Seriously though I would rather not Mix edition concepts
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Re: 5th Edition Familiar

Post by paazin »

Might anyone know what happens currently if your familiar dies? I seem to recall in ALFA1 it wouldn't let you summon it again but not sure how it is in ALFA2.
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Re: 5th Edition Familiar

Post by ayergo »

paazin wrote:
Thu Mar 12, 2020 11:31 am
Might anyone know what happens currently if your familiar dies? I seem to recall in ALFA1 it wouldn't let you summon it again but not sure how it is in ALFA2.

ALFA 1/WD it requires a DM to reset for you via the wand.
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Re: 5th Edition Familiar

Post by Duck One »

Familiars are supposed to be an important part of the mage character class. As implemented in ALFA in combination with the NWN engine, they are largely unusable. They are simply too fragile, hard to control, and seen as a liability, not an asset. In my estimation it is a big reason that the class is avoided.

The 5th edition rules make them usable in ALFA without unbalancing their power for combat.
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Re: 5th Edition Familiar

Post by Rick7475 »

I agree. Familiars as implemented are not usable. In ALFA Wizards die too easy.
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Re: 5th Edition Familiar

Post by ayergo »

Familiar modifications are definite on my to-do list, but I don't want them to be disposable meat shields.

I'm looking at a mix, some combat ish like hell hound, and some that boost your skills when they are out. Having appraisal boost might be significant for some chars.
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Re: 5th Edition Familiar

Post by Ithildur »

Duck One wrote:
Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:36 pm
Familiars are supposed to be an important part of the mage character class. As implemented in ALFA in combination with the NWN engine, they are largely unusable. They are simply too fragile, hard to control, and seen as a liability, not an asset. In my estimation it is a big reason that the class is avoided.

The 5th edition rules make them usable in ALFA without unbalancing their power for combat.
+1

Unfortunately familiars as they are currently really aren't functional a majority of the time in ALFA.

The current familiar mechanics work fine for vanilla nwn2 where you can respawn PCs, rest just about anytime, re-'summon' familiars, feed them to heal them, etc. This is obviously not how alfa works.

Familars need to be tweaked accordingly, either the mechanics/rules of how they function and can be protected, or we need to lighten up on penalties for their death (i.e. RP familar death as being incapacitated/use 5e rules) given how vastly harder it is to protect them in NWN compared to tabletop. It's ridiculous to impose legacy tabletop penalties with vanilla NWN2 mechanics.

This isn't just about mechanics/combat or stat advantage (NWN2 familiars aren't combat buddies) - as Duck stated familiars should be a vital part of most wizards' RP; traditionally a DnD wizard without a familiar is like an athlete missing a hand.


NWN1 probably is a different story, as long as some of the familars that NWN1 comes with (i.e. actually viable and even some overpowered combatants) are allowed.
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Re: 5th Edition Familiar

Post by Veilan »

Can we apply the stabilisation / -6 minimum negative scripts to familiars?

Guess that would come close to "incapacitation", hopefully require only minor scripting, and I do not think many people think that familiars should be treated worse than player characters in that regard.
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Re: 5th Edition Familiar

Post by Ithildur »

I mean, if we're going to be hardcore rulesy about familiars, then yes, they definitely need the same mechanic as PCs as far as bleeding and such. Same with animal companions. (They also should get shared spells. And many other goodies).

The practical reality is that it's nearly impossible to run and protect these guys in current platform the way they would be in PnP (even if you keep them completely out of combat, crazy crap happens; I've seen it multiple times) - it's one thing to control two creatures in turn based gameplay with free/shared spell buffs, partial/total cover from containers/small creature holders, pocket dimensions, etc. - and a completely different ballgame in NWN engines. This is one of those cases where it just doesn't make sense to have the exact same penalties as PnP, when vast majority of the benefits and insurance in PnP are unavailable.

If we're going to insist on hardcore, then we should've hardcored legitimately years ago and taken into account bleeding, shared spells, and cover rules to go with PnP penalties.

I'd just go with what Duck suggested, eliminate penalties and RP their 'death' as not actual death, allow them to be either revived or resummoned - which is what our current mechanics in place actually support. There's no need for extra work - the cost/benefit at this stage doesn't really justify it.
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Re: 5th Edition Familiar

Post by Analogkid »

Given both my PC's have familiars, I as a player never bring them out when we're in a session where theres danger as I know they will get killed asap, and as it is, I know the DM is busy enough dealing with everything going and I'm not going to take out a rat or a bat to slow things down even further. So the only times my familiars ever show up is when its light RP time or the DM has enough time and freedom to RP with the familiar itself, which is a pretty rare thing when you're doing a scheduled session and don't want to slow things down for everyone else.

If familiars could be beefed up a bit at least in concealment and defense, I would love that
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Re: 5th Edition Familiar

Post by paazin »

I've always considered familiars to be nothing more than RP flavor. Not against it otherwise but my mage's familiar is far too precious to have it risk being hurt. :)
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Re: 5th Edition Familiar

Post by Ithildur »

Using NWN2 familiars (which are clearly meant as non combatants unlike nwn1) as actual combatants with a real time game engine, with none of the benefits/protections you can get in tabletop, is asking for hurt (unless you're dealing with foes whose CR is trivial for your level). If someone does this on a regular basis and the familiar hits 0 HP I would eventually adjudicate that the familiar is, in fact, dead.

I don't believe either Duck or I are in favor of wizards getting a free immortal tank or flanking buddy for normal combat useage. The concern is that they effectively don't exist at all when outside of 'safe' areas because if you 'summon' them, any number of freak accidents that kill them can easily happen and then you're completely SoL. They are low HP creatures that current do not have AI that's sophisticated enough to run away or take basic actions to protect themselves (in fact I don't think they have ANY AI currently), and none of the basic protective options of tabletop are available in our game. They also don't progress correctly as far as HPs and AC, etc and general surivability like they do in tabletop.

Animal companions for Rangers/druids etc are a bit different because they're meant to be actually viable in combat in nwn2; however their AI is still just as stupid for real time and they lack stuff like Share Spell. If I were a player with these classes I would be pretty reluctant to have them around in dangerous areas because of the high probably of losing a dear friend permanently. And so a vital, integral part (a character actually) of these PC's stories, bonded friends who often are iconic battlemates, might not see the light of day or sadly get 'sent away' somewhere when things get really serious.

TLDR; nwn2 familiars (and to a lesser extent ACs) are (poorly) designed to be respawnable on death for a reason. That's the mechanics we have in place right now. It makes no sense to try and apply hardcore rules when hardcore viable mechanics are not in place - especially for wizards/familiars the end result is heavily punishing a character for trying to RP a class feature while giving minuscule benefits. Let me put it this way; how many of us would be in favor of permadeath for PCs using vanilla NWN mechanics, i.e. immediate death on zero HPs/no bleedout, potions that can't be targeted on bleeding comrades, etc? These are vital core HCR mechanic changes to the vanilla game that we feature which bring our game closer to tabletop and make permadeath more viable. OTOH, familiars (and Animal Companions) right now mechanically have ZERO changes from vanilla game. It does not make sense to apply HCR penalties without HCR systems in place.

We either put in 3.5ish HCR systems to match 3.5 penalties (more work), or we remove/lighten/5th edition the penalties to match NWN2 mechanics (less work). To do otherwise doesn't make sense and is unfair to these classes.
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