<<Not like I have any skin in this game but:

"why don't wizard familiars provide extra flares for all of their ball/bolt spells?" I'm sure there's some well thought out reasoning just like there could be well thought out reasoning for some sort of boost for wizards, but lets face it: when wizard familiars were the only "pets" they were special. Now you can't even get one customized, let alone expect any mechanical benefit from them other than running for help after you're dead.

I'm sure a lot of wizards wish their familiars could do a few more tricks.

Kerl>>


I'd have to agree. Familiars are okay, but they aren't as impressive as they once were. A few suggestions for improvement:

- Duration: The duration would be fine if this spell were stackable or fully refreshable. But for whatever reason, I receive a halved duration upon refresh. Personally, I would prefer that familiars operate more like the floating disk spell in terms of duration.

- Choice of forms: I'm not sure I understand the rationale for requiring runestones just to summon the same familiar each time. It would be nice if we just had functionality to choose between selecting a specific form from a list upon summoning or just allowing a random option as it stands currently.

- GO TO commands: Currently we have "find", which is certainly better than nothing. But it would be nice if we could also set a few geographic locations that our familiars can remember and return to upon command.

- Bonuses: I don't want to get too crazy with this, but maybe an expansion of the familiar bonus for enchanting to cover other wizardly abilities? I'm thinking of charge item and imbed, specifically. Another idea I had in mind would be the addition of an enhancive bonus to MIU/AS while the wizard controls a familiar.

- Rescue: This feature was fairly annoying to begin with and of little practical value, but with widespread use of Lich it's almost totally obsolete at this point. What if we just did away with rescue and allowed wizards to command their familiars while dead? I mean if the link is strong enough to persist through death, then why not be able to communicate your intentions to your familiar as you would while alive? At least it would give you something to occupy your time while waiting for a depart or rescue!

- Emergency combat utility: This might be heaping it on a bit for a class that already benefits from 540, but maybe allow wizards to command their familiars to violently return to their plane of existence (even while stunned/incapacitated!). This would obviously cause the familiar to disappear and I propose a cooldown to resummon another to balance it out. Maybe something like this...

Sensing that you are in dire need, your familiar suddenly disappears in a blinding flash of light and a deafening explosion!

This effect could induce some RT and possibly cause knockdowns and brief stuns. Just the sort of thing that could potentially save you when you really need it. But it would also lock you out of summoning a new familiar for awhile.

~Taverkin

I'd rather see proper descriptions for them. I know what a cat looks like well enough that an unusually intelligent cat means something, but I have no idea what many familiars look like and I ought to be able to tell by looking at one thats following a wizard. Or familiars ought to be limited to RL animals. GS shouldn't have invented creatures wandering about with no description beyond their names.

It gives exactly the same extremely intelligent specimen of something which I have no idea what the basic version looks like whether I use look or describe.

Maybe you know something about the lore behind familiars that I don't, Doug, but I see nothing in the spell description to suggest that this is a normal animal. It simply states that the caster summons a "small animal". It then goes on to state that the type of animal summoned depends upon the natural inhabitants of the area. But it does not explicitly state that the animal is an ordinary animal that responds to the caster's summons. Further, the existence of wyrdlings as summoned familiars and the fact that all familiars are capable of actions that ordinary animals are incapable of performing allow for the possibility that familiars are not animals at all, but something else - likely elemental in nature. The spell description seems to avoid defining the nature of familiars beyond their physical forms as wyrdlings or small animals.

I take that as a license to be creative. As such, my character's familiar has a name (Trevor!) and a personality all its own. In fact, if you care to know, this personality has evolved over time. It began as a rather hostile relationship. Trevor initially didn't respect Taverkin as a wizard and chafed at being summoned. But as Taverkin's skills improved, Trevor gradually became more agreeable. I used the 930 failure rate as a sort of timeline for this process. When I was routinely maiming myself with the spell, Trevor was disagreeable to the point of insulting Tav, refusing his commands, and even insulting Tav's friends and total strangers who happened to observe the argument! Now, as Tav has become skilled enough to regularly make use of familiar gate, Trevor is much more polite and helpful.

The nature of Trevor, in my mind, is that of a very minor elemental from some unnamed elemental plane. This explains why he's always Trevor, yet he appears in a variety of animal or wyrdling forms. From that perspective, Trevor is not committing suicide on my behalf in my "emergency combat" scenario, but simply returning home while utilizing his elemental abilities to save me. In the process, he temporarily drains himself and is unable to return to Tav's plane for a short period of time.

I sort of stole this idea from R.A. Salvatore's novels. For those who aren't familiar with the books, the character Drizzt possesses a magical artifact that summons a creature from some other plane which takes the form of a great cat. The cat must periodically return to its own plane of existence to recover, particularly if she spends too much time on Drizzt's plane or if she is injured.

From a mechanics standpoint, I mentioned 540 for a reason. 540 is a fantastic spell. And one reason for this is that it's passive and will only activate when you need it. If we're to have another emergency ability (and I'm not sure that we need one!), I felt that it would be preferable if it were active. I wanted this ability to require the player to do something, rather than a passive percentage chance of activation (which I'm sure you'll agree, given the proposed penalty for using this ability, would be pretty annoying!). The trouble with that in GS is that when you're in trouble, it's almost always because you're stunned or otherwise incapacitated. Most abilities can't be used during these times, but because the familiar is a separate entity which shares a mental link with the wizard, I thought it would be appropriate if the wizard were still able to communicate his intentions (a cry for help, in this case!) while stunned.

Wow. That was a whole lot of explanation for the idea I was really just throwing in there at the end. Like I said, I'm not sure it would be appropriate to give wizard's yet another form of "Oh sh**!" button when they already have one of the most powerful spells of this nature in the game! But hey, it can't hurt to throw ideas out there!

~Taverkin

Take 525 and flush it, and please give us fighting elementals.

I'd be happy with a simple summon monster spell. It's such a fundamental wizard spell to pretty much every other magic system, ever. That said, Summon Elemental would be an awesome 550 spell.

~ Heathyr and friends

Speaking of familiars, whatever happened to the SUMMON verb where we could try and summon a particular familiar?

All I get now is this:

>prep 920
>
You trace a series of glowing runes while chanting the phrase for Call Familiar...
Your spell is ready.
>summon chameleon
You wait patiently, but to no avail.

~ Methais