Pets and Familiars

[luguvalium]

Wizards and In The Labyrinth mention that wizard characters can have pets or familiars. Now that I've pulled up some saved character sheets from long ago, I see some players had them, but I don't remember how they used them.

How have you used pets and familiars?

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by luguvalium

Wizards and In The Labyrinth mention that wizard characters can have pets or familiars. Now that I've pulled up some saved character sheets from long ago, I see some players had them, but I don't remember how they used them.

How have you used pets and familiars?

I remember in my games they were used both as a strength battery, and the Wizard could see through their eyes. I’m afraid the details are long lost.

[Skarg]

I had a player who was a would-be thief/animal handler for a while (until he had the Wizard's Guild erase those talents to make room for different talents), who got a pet Slinker and tried training it to pick locks and go steal shiny objects. That was actually pretty fun & interesting.

[Rick_Smith]

Hi all,
Long ago I wrote up familiars based on the D&D tropes. (Gave fatigue ST, mental connection, Wizard lost 2 attributes if it died, etc.)

I struggled for a long time to make them useful, not too fragile, not too overpowered, etc.

They were not popular with my players, and eventually the idea just quietly died away. No one of my more successful efforts. (Maybe I should give this another attempt one of these days.)

Warm regards, Rick.

[luguvalium]

I could see familiars as being magical creatures, that appears to be in the form of a small animal, that as an alternative to a staff, would hold mana, and let a wizard see through its eyes. Maybe a Call Familiar spell would request its appearance for 5ST and if a familiar died it would need to be called again, much like re-creating a staff.

[zot]

Originally Posted by luguvalium

I could see familiars as being magical creatures, that appears to be in the form of a small animal, that as an alternative to a staff, would hold mana, and let a wizard see through its eyes. Maybe a Call Familiar spell would request its appearance for 5ST and if a familiar died it would need to be called again, much like re-creating a staff.

I'd make it completely controllable like a permanent summoned creation and let the wizard draw ST as long as it is within creation range (in the wizard's mega-mega hex).

ITL does say a wizard can "have a cat as a pet or familiar". What about letting the wizard have larger familiars at 1 mana per ST over 4, so a ST 10 wolf would require "investing" 6 mana?

[zot]

Please move to house rules subforum! :)

[TLR]

In our games, we introduced a new spell: Familiarity (12 S) 10/day for 2 weeks. Wizard can store up to IQ-(Familiar's IQ) spells in the familiar's mind; spells so stored don't count against the wizard's own memory-totals.

Our group uses house-rules that allow for skill-levels. Skill-Levels at Familiarity would allow having multiple familiars. Otherwise, you would need a separate version of Familiarity for each new familiar.

This has worked pretty well for us for 35 years. It is definitely useful, not overpowering, and gives an incentive for the magician to care for his/her/its familiar(s).