Dear Grejuva and Javac,

Would you consider granting war mages the ability to issue commands to an already summoned familiar with out having to hold a talisman?

Familiars have such great potential for RP and practical communication, but using talismans is a serious hindrance. Many war mages use off hand weapons, bows or shields in combat, or find themselves with food in one hand and a stout drink in the other, or an instrument and a bow to play it.

From an RP perspective, it also really sucks having to reach into a container to get a talisman to issue commands. It cripples the ability to RP an interesting character/familiar dynamic, and gives the impression of the familiar as nothing more than a puppet.

I would also hope that this would allow a dead war mage to issue commands to a familiar, as it seems that they should at least have the option of searching for and communicating with friends of its master should he fall.

At the risk of sounding like a moron for speaking on matters I know nothing about, I'd like to offer three solutions on how this might be achieved:
1. Eliminate the code that checks to see if a talisman is being held when using "tell fam" commands.
2. Create a wearable container that can hold talismans, and eliminate the need to actually hold it in one's hand (this could even be a microtrans item if that would increase the likelihood of this actually happening ;).
3. Create an aether elemental ability (similar to elemental weapon infusions) that eliminates the need for a talisman when issuing commands.

Thanks for considering it!

Thirded

Make it a perk of summoning. Since you can only have one, maybe the system can do a check.
If Summoning > ### && HasFamiliar:
command familiar, give player RT
Else:
Message: You have difficulty reaching out to your familiar.

You could even make RT something that could be worked down.

I vaguely remember a similar conversation with Rottclor.. its still a good idea.

I thought he had some plan for making them worn, and needing a skill check to use them while worn, vs. in hand, and having all your fams keyed to a single talisman that you continued to carve and make more powerful as your skills grew.