Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 masteraaron Jun 15, 2008 23:42:11	One complaint I've heard about 4E is that it does not include familiars. Given their iconic role in D&D, this came as something of a shock to me as well. Fortunately, with my marvelous brain (thanks, Wizard!), I have thought up some new material to fix this rather glaring hole. Feedback is strongly appreciated; I have not playtested this at all, so another viewpoint would be ideal. Familiar Feats Summon Familiar Prerequisites: Access to Arcane power source, trained in Arcana Benefit: You learn the summon familiar ritual. This feat does not grant you the ability to learn other rituals if you could not otherwise do so. You are still required to obtain a ritual book and pay normal costs to scribe and learn the ritual. Deep Bond Prerequisites: Paragon tier, Summon Familiar Benefit: Your bond with your familiar deepens, granting you telepathic communication at a distance of up to one mile. The familiar can now communicate with words. Further, once per day you may transfer an at-will or encounter power to the familiar as a minor action. You must touch the familiar to do this. It can hold this power for 24 hours or until your next extended rest, whichever comes first. If you transfer an encounter power, you lose access to that power until it is discharged (see below) or you choose to end this effect (a minor action). You may command the familiar to activate the power at any time, using the normal action required to activate it. (You must use the action, not the familiar.) Treat the power as originating from the familiar for the purpose of determining range and area of effect. Familiar Awareness Prerequisites: Summon Familiar Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus to Perception while your familiar is within line of sight. In addition, you also gain a bonus based on your familiar. This bonus is listed in its entry. [u]Ritual: Summon Familiar[/u] Level: 1 Category: Binding Component Cost: 10 gp Market Price: N/A (see text) Time: 8 hours Duration: Permanent Key Skill: Arcana (no check) During this extensive ritual, you send out a call through the world for a companion to aid you. You may select this creature from the list below. At the end of the ritual, it appears before you instantly, fully bonded with you. A familiar is a basic animal, distinctive only for its abnormally great intelligence and its sensitivity to arcane magic. These capabilities let you bind it to your mind, creating an emotional and physical link. You can communicate with it through your bond, transmitting emotions and images. In game terms, you have control over the familiar's actions. However, they are also individuals, albeit highly devoted and loyal, with personalities that may be role-played by the DM or by you. This ritual may only be learned through the Summon Familiar feat. It cannot be taught or learned from a discovered ritual book, though you may avoid the scribing costs by finding such a book. It cannot be written into a scroll. Other ritual casters cannot perform this ritual for you, as it is not possible to transfer the familiar bond once the ritual is complete. You cannot have more than one familiar at any time. Familiar Capabilities Familiars are extraordinary examples of animals. They may be the descendants of lab animals subjected to magical alteration, or they might have come into contact with some sort of magical field during their lives. In any case, the results are spectacular: animals with humanoid intelligence, vastly extended lifespans, and powerful intrinsic magical energies that permit the familiar bond. In game terms, assume that a familiar has 10 Intelligence; in other words, they are as intelligent as the average human. Physically, a familiar is assumed to have one-half the master's hit points and to share his defenses. You may spend your own healing surges to heal your familiar, although you may not use your second wind in this manner. In combat, a familiar acts during your turn, and is effectively under your control. Communicating with it through your bond during combat is roughly as difficult as talking, and thus a free action. The death of a familiar causes the bond to lash back at its master, snapping with its death. The caster takes a -1 penalty to all attack rolls, skill checks, saving throws, and ability checks until he reaches three milestones. If the familiar is later resurrected, the bond is reestablished without need for another ritual. (For the purposes of the raise dead ritual, a familiar always counts as a Heroic tier character). Otherwise, you are free to use this ritual again to summon a new familiar. The bond may also be severed voluntarily by either the master or the familiar, though cases of the familiar prompting the separation are extremely rare. In this case, neither suffers penalties, and the master is again free to use this ritual to find a new companion. Types of Familiars A variety of animals may become familiars; these are merely the most common ones. If a player wants a different animal, determine whether it is reasonable (animals larger than Tiny should not become familiars, nor should magical or otherwise altered creatures) and what sort of skill bonus that creature should provide through the Familiar Awareness feat. Bat (+2 Dungeoneering) Cat (+2 Athletics) Hawk (+2 Nature) Lizard (+2 Sneak) Owl (+2 Arcana) Rat (+2 Streetwise) Raven (+2 Insight) Snake (+2 Bluff) Toad (+2 Endurance) Weasel (+2 Acrobatics) Design Notes A couple of explanations that I want to make, to give others some insight into my thought process. First, I have always thought that obtaining a familiar should require an extended summoning and binding ritual. I may actually make this more complicated when I play with it, and restrict it to animals native to the terrain the ritual is cast in, but a more general version was better suited for review. This is why I have a feat teach a ritual, rather than simply provide the familiar. If you would rather not dick around with the ritual aspect, it wouldn't change anything to just ignore that part and make it entirely feat-based. Second, **** around with familiar statistics was always tedious in 3E, and rarely served much purpose. We always ended up assuming that familiars would never be attacked and always succeeded on skill checks so that we didn't have to record that kind of information. Thus, the simplified hit points and defenses of familiars found above, and no mention of skills. If you want to add species-specific statistics, please feel free to do so, but I certainly won't.
#2 ubermensch1972 Jun 16, 2008 0:57:46	Interesting concept. You could easily translate this framework to animal companions too. It would be interesting to hear reviews of how this plays out.