Animal Attention
Folks seemed to like the misplacer beast last time, so he gets a return appearance. It seems that he’s not universally popular though. Like the aurumvorax and the cockatrice before him, something tells me that this tentacular tabby won’t be a permanent addition to Team Bounty Hunter.
When you’ve got an animal companion, NPC cohort, or otherwise keep a roster of hangers-on about, they’re going to take up a bit of screen time. That just comes with the narrative territory. Figuring out how much attention to pay to your groupies (animal and otherwise) is easier said than done though. If you give ’em too little then you risk winding up with a Skitters situation. The character in question fades from reality, disappearing into the weird pocket dimension of oh-hey-are-they-still-here. Give ’em too much attention though and you get a Thuna situation instead. It’s bad enough when you get upstaged by your own familiar. If an overabundance of screen time steals the narrative spotlight from your fellow PCs though, then you’ve got bigger problems. And if by chance you’ve seen Your Highness, you know exactly where I’m coming from (and you also have exceptional taste).
It’s unconventional, but my latest attempt at cracking this conundrum is playing out in my group’s Dungeons and Doggies campaign. Laurel’s chain pact corgi warlock has a pixie familiar, and I’ve taken it upon myself to treat the little guy like a full team member. Being a bossy wanna-be alpha dog, my barbarian cane corso makes it a point to order the little fae about. The corgi gets territorial in turn, an ongoing character conflict develops between the two PCs, and (when everything is working as intended) the familiar becomes an interesting thing to roleplay around rather than a focus of attention in its own right.
And so for today’s discussion, I have a question for you guys: Do you have a relationship with your party members’ familiars and companions? Or are they just kind of there? What kind of interesting dynamic could you form? Maybe the paladin’s horse is always narcing on the rogue. Perhaps the barbarian seeks counsel from the wizard’s raven. What if you actually named the T-rex the summoner keeps summoning and greet it like an old friend? Sound off with options for RPing with all those oft-overlooked party members down in the comments.
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Most cats are territorial about their things. Their food. Their humanoids…
Magus is clearly ready to establish dominance and drive out this adorable interloper. 😉
Cue Inquisitor wanting Displacer kicked out due to being unable to rest all night following a fierce yowling duel between Displacer and Magus.
If Magus knows Hydraulic Push, I suspect it manifests as a giant spray bottle.
Familiars are a bit hit-and-miss. During my favorite Ravenloft game, my character’s bat familiar got a lot of screentime. He was an invaluable scout and could recruit local bats as a source of information. One of my fellow players started using him to carry emergency spells to our colleagues, on the basis he could freely fly around.
My other familiars have not had as much chance to shine, alas. :-/ I tried for them, but not every game and not every DM gives them the opportunity.
It also matters how long a game runs, of course. If there’s barely enough time to establish the main characters’ personalities and backgrounds, our animal friends tend to lose out…
Very true. As always, it’s worth stepping back from my own assumptions. I talk about my 8-year-long megadungeon all the time, but it’s important to remember that not everyone runs in this same lengthy style.
Crazy how our own experience and perceptions color every little aspect of this hobby.
And this is exactly why I dislike familiars, and animal companions even more.
I don’t want to spend time describing what an animal is doing. I’d rather play my character instead. Especially when game balances comes into play and the animal is, at best, dead weight, or an genuine hindrance at worst.
I’m beginning to think of a familiar as an offer (in improv terms). It’s one that nobody but the GM ever seems to pick up. And in that sense, all I’m really suggesting here is adopting the “yes, and” approach to a fellow PC’s interesting character trait. By focusing on somebody else’s familiar as a fellow player, you’re not highlighting the familiar; you’re highlighting your relationship with that PC.
Can’t use the “yes and” approach if there wasn’t a “yes” to begin with. My group just never really pays any special mind to party pets/animals/whatever.
It’s written down on the character sheet. It exists in the context of the game. Why not interact with it?
Because it’s just a dumb animal. Who cares?
My party’s summoner is a weird position here. The PC and eidolon mostly divide roles, with the former doing the bulk of the roleplay and the latter pulling most of the player’s weight in combat. (The eidolon being Large has also led to some logistical issues with either making it squeeze through narrow dungeons or have the summoner ask for a ten minute timeout before they can proceed to a major chamber. Of course, some of that’s on me for not thinking about that during dungeon design…)
It’s a shame, because the eidolon’s catchphrase has become “Indubitably!” and who wouldn’t want to hear more from a dapper electrogriffon?
We did a good bit on eidolons way back here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/waifudolon
They’re interesting to me as a more nebulously defined concept than animal companion or familiar. The nature of the relationship between PC and eidolon is largely undefined, which means you can define it in whatever way you wish.
Imagine a crafter PC using his buddy’s electrogriffon to help out with intricate clockwork projects. That’s a fun bit of business, and inherently involves the summoner in an otherwise solo downtime activity.
This is Pathfinder? I don’t know if the equivalent rule exists there, but 3.5 has “squeezing” rules: a creature can squeeze into a space one size smaller than it in exchange for a reduction in speed and a penalty to AC. Depending on the layout, that could be more efficient (and potentially funnier) than de-/resummoning it.
Pathfinder 1e does have squeezing for these purposes: https://aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Terrain%20and%20Obstacles&Category=Movement,%20Position,%20and%20Distance
Tp summarize the important bits:
I’m not big on familiars, but in an Exalted game set in the western oceans, I had a giant albatross as a companion. Not much of a combatant, but being able to scout far beyond the horizon, and borrow her senses to assess a possible danger… that was invaluable.
My last scouting familiar was the 5e imp:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/imp
A little bastard that con go invisible, share senses, and regenerate itself upon death for the cost of 10 gp and an hour-long ritual is nuts. The first time we had it fly into a dungeon and map the place completely, I entered into a gentleman’s agreement with my GM to never do it again. When you’re too good at scouting, it ruins a lot of the fun of the experience.
So in that sense, I quite like the idea of the albatross. It’s a spy plane rather than a spy, and that makes all the difference. You get a bit of intel without ruining every surprise.
Exactly. I remember, for example, hiking up some volcanic island with the expectation of finding trouble (as you do, when you’re an adventurer).
And while discovering the ruins of some ancient Yozi temple wouldn’t have been much of a surprise anyway, having eyes in the sky gave us a little more warning of what to anticipate… a good idea of the layout, for example. Or at least, the above-ground layout, since albatrosses don’t fly too well in underground dungeon environments (one of the downsides of large familiars, and somewhat negating the “too useful” factor you describe with the imp).
The solution to this dilemma of pets that hog attention: get yourself a pet rock. Bonus points if it’s a magical pet rock, like the Pathfinder 2e Kitsune have.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2622
I should look to see if I can find a magical PF1 pet rock. Or convince my group to try PF2 again (we played once at the start of the playtest and that’s it), but that seems less likely.
I believe Kitsune also got the magical pet rock in 1E.
Casting animate object on a pebble or crafting a tiny-sized construct out of rock (miniature rock golem?) are options for casters and crafters. Eidolons also offer plenty of customization. Certain Kami spirits can possess objects as well and serve as familiars, I believe. An expensive option is to make a ioun stone an intelligent item.
Foxes are silly creatures.
I once read a tale of a PF1 Kineticist who had a set of pet rocks that he talked to and treated like people. After he leveled up, one of them became a familiar with the Elemental Whispers ability, and the rest of the party became convinced that the rocks were, in fact, talking back to him. The new familiar, meanwhile, struggled to convince him that the rest of the rocks were, in fact, just rocks.
I now want to make a magic rock kitsune in PF2. Practical ideas include the Share Senses and Familiar Focus abilities (placing the rock somewhere to spy on things, or using it to get a free Focus Point), but the most fun-looking one is Partner in Crime, where the rock helps you with Thievery and Deception checks. (GM: “How is the rock helping you pick that lock?” Player: “I’m using Rocky to bash it open.”)
My prediction for the next pet(s) that Ranger adopts:
A fey Pooka (who, whilst adorable and animal-like, likely objects to being considered a pet).
A Behir (who’s yet to learn that friends aren’t food).
A Dire Rat (a viable mount, but obvious conflicts with Magus + disease issues). Or any other dire beastie.
A Gryph (who one look at their special ability name is a big NOPE).
A drake (a bad idea even with the archetype, let alone without).
A swarm of any kind (especially a worm-that-walks in animal shape).
taken under advisement
Misread that as “a Skitter situation” and assumed you were talking about just having an amorphous mass of fungible animal companions. Seemed like a really weird comparison, until I noticed the link and the second s.
Anyways. The only notable time I can think of was in a long-running Pathfinder game, where the only characters to survive from end to end were a hunter and his animal companion. (And a few secondary animals who were almost never brought into dangerous situations, because they were just animals.) The tiger was sort of treated as her own character, but only when it was funny; mostly, she was treated as an extension of the hunter.
In discussing what the characters did post-campaign, it was agreed that another party member would eventually convince the hunter to help him with the Test of the Starstone, but something would go wrong and the tiger would be the one who completed it. Because, again, it’s funny.
If you ever read the Malzan series, there are some interesting animal deities. I believe one of them was a primeval tiger:
https://malazan.fandom.com/wiki/Trake
One of my players had, of all the things, a pet displacer beast cub. She went and made some chainmail barding for it, but life forced her to drop from the game before she could really get to use him for more than just flavor on the ship. Its tragic really, because the darn thing had the potential to be a really fun addition to the team if they could figure out how to keep it safe.
Oh man… That sounds like a hell of a tool for a party to use. Much better than the considerably more annoying and less copyright protected misplacer beast kitten seen here stealing Magus’s dinner.
Yeah. That seems like it would be hard to keep track of.
My creepy Fiend-lock really likes the Paladin’s horse, but unfortunately he’s a creep so she doesn’t like the idea of him riding her horse. He just wants the whimsy!
Opposed roll to befriend horse. Your animal handling vs the paladin’s. Paladin is at advantage since it’s her horse. You can negate this advantage by use of KEY ITEM: Apple.
Dunno if it’s in the same vein exactly, but in an online game I had the familiar as the PC and the PC wizard as IT’S familiar…
It was handy that you could ‘possess’ the familiar and speak through it 😉
A young dragon with it’s human, what a touching sight…
We had an awakened lynx archmage with her human familiar back in the day. She had great fun describing how she would groom herself during tense social situations.
“What will you give is on return, wizard?”
“I give em the back leg!”
I think I might’ve mentioned it before, but there’s a build I used with a Kitsune Psychic Bloodline Sorcerer (with Tattooed Sorcerer Archetype) and a Fey-Touched Hare Familiar; her familiar could take on human form, and her casting being changed to Psychic casting meant she could cast spells in Fox Form (bonus feat from alternate racial trait).
The end result is she played the part of her familiar’s ‘familiar’ while her familiar fronted as the spellcaster (in truth using Total Defense and other equipment to compensate for low hp). The Vegepygmy language (which works as a series of rhythmic taps and clicks) was used as a stealthy way to communicate between the two.
The charade fell apart in regards to the rest of the party when her familiar was presented with a wand and a situation she had no excuse not to use it in, but the reactions as the fox ‘familiar’ grumpily hopped out, turned into a irate woman, and magic missile’d a hobgoblin were positive and bemused. “Let’s keep this between us and the corpses, shall we?”
and to correct my mistake of hitting ‘reply’ too early: ‘Harriet’ was happy to assist the party with anything they needed and generally a pleasant ball of energy, but tended to lack some social graces due to having lived the life of a rabbit for some time (and the furious morse code-like tapping from her familiar satchel at every misstep didn’t help the odd air she projected). The game ended for outside reasons before they could develop much, but she acted as sort of the face for her master, with all the foibles of the gap in their charisma score that implied- creating a fun dynamic where she was a sort of filter for her master as much as a character in her own right. Prior to the adventure, she’d made a living fishing, and acquired a taste for meat (aside from one accidental moment of cannibalism and the horrifying realization she’s delicious, but that’s something she and her master agreed never to speak about again).
A similar and less extreme example was my Undine Magus who had a Parrot familiar handle the talking for her… between voicing his own opinions, with little distinction made between the two for the benefits of his master and those around her. The party bard adored him, and he was happy to encourage her plans- to the dismay of his mostly silent wallflower companion. It was a unique case of the familiar having a higher charisma than the master, funny enough.
I’ve always wanted to give the “I’m secretly the familiar” thing a try. This is a rock-solid way to go about it!
Still, it seems like a bit of a juggling act to RP an NPC filtering your PCs actions through another personality. Did it ever feel a bit schizophrenic at the table?
It wound up being pretty simple due to the nature of familiars; the inherent power dynamic meant that the master could overrule them if things were fairly important, and given their nature as effectively smart animals, their personalities were comparatively strong but simple- the parrot being mischievous and arrogant, the hare being unflinchingly polite and energetic.
My Magus would speak up if she needed to stop the parrot from derailing things, her own subdued personality meaning she wasn’t competing with her parrot for screen time unless the situation was serious (at which point the parrot would straighten itself out or leave the talking to her, happy to let her speak when she showed the initiative). My Sorcerer on the other hand was happy to leave the face work to Harriet for the sake of keeping herself hidden, being a criminal on the run, and would simply feed her lines verbatim if needed be.
In these cases the two were pretty much a package deal, two halves of the same character, is how I treated them. It did mean they might’ve been a bit thin when they were speaking alone, but I had details for either for when they needed to be fleshed out further or forced to speak on their own, and it was worth it for being able to have them bounce off of each other briefly in the same scene when one wouldn’t have had much to contribute.
I got the idea, for when we play V5 with Cults of the Blood Gods to give my Hecata, vampires necromancers, a familiar that are two hands united by the wrist that help him to get things and go skittering and climbing into people 🙂
Hope even jaded vampires get the chills for it 😀
Why are the hands crawling? Just have ’em hook the thumbs together and fly!
The DM of my Adventure League group got to play in someone else’s campaign occasionally, and his Paladin based loosely on a Troll Hunter’s Merlin had a horse who we all joked was the real character, and the Paladin was clearly the summon. Mostly because the horse had all of his magic items and was regularly the one breathing various elemental waves of murder out upon his enemies. It was great fun~
The other memorable familiar comes from my pathfinder alchemist, Chalcey, and her abhorable little Tumor Familiar, Lumpy the Squirrel. Given that his master was based on an exaggerated shut-in and socially-anxious to her core, it’s not surprising he was more charismatic than she was, despite the way my GM cringed every time I described his weird, furless, mishappen fleeeeesh. …He ended up running the store she opened through the use of a picture board countertop, so she could just retreat into her lab and never go out side again after the campaign, and has thus become a regular shopkeeper in that GM’s other campaigns since!
You can’t not have a visceral reaction to tumor familiars: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/two-headed-alchemist
I’m currently running two characters with familiars. One, my Agents of Edgewatch wizard, is a neutral good wizard who’s familiar is beginning to form a bond with a powerful caster to teach her druidic magic (through a multiclassing archetype starting at 9) He mostly shares her personality of ‘friendly but will give you shit for being dumb’
The second is a neutral evil witch who’s patron is an immensely powerful evil outsider. When she sent it up to scout and it got one-rounded, it woke back up in her bag and decided to write ‘Failure’ on all her possessions in its own blood.
Other than that, the druid/ranger in my extinction curse game has a bunch of animal companions including a wolf we’ve affectionately named ‘Throatripper’ because he keeps killstealing bosses.
Nice to see a familiar with its own motivation. “I want to become a druid” is, weirdly enough, one that featured in one of my own games not so long ago. Seems to make sense for ambitious woodland critters.
Familiars and animal (or other) companions are a tricky thing because of how easy they are to get in 5e. I’ve wound up in parties with just one and everyone treated it as the group pet. But I’ve also been in others where everyone has one and they get treated pretty much as tools the “actual” characters have rather than characters themselves.
Very true. I know my megadungeon has a couple of intelligent items that are a lot of play, while our wizard’s poor scorpion hardly ever gets mentioned. Funny the way those dynamics spring up (or don’t) on a case by case basis.
In my first campaign, my Magus had a hawk familiar, Elon, to help with her light blindness (since the hawk gives a Perception bonus in bright light). Later she upgraded via a cosmic mail-order catalogue to a nameless paracletus aeon with the Sage archetype that was quickly nicknamed “Knowledge Bot” or “Nobo” because of its +14 to all Knowledge skills. (Sage archetype adds half the master’s class level to Knowledge and being an aeon adds half its hit dice to Knowledge, so it was effectively level + class skill + INT) Elon never really had much characterization (other than his first appearance after Bellona was released from a week of captivity and Elon reappeared by shooting out of the sky and attacking a rabbit), though he did scout effectively sometimes. Nobo was more useful with its Knowledge skills, as well as its ability to cast Calm Emotions (it could also use Commune once a week, but we never took advantage of that). It could still fly and, because my PC had 16 CON and PF1 familiars get half the master’s HP, it was pretty resistant to the stereotypical “familiar popped in one shot” phenomenon. Good familiar, overall.
In my current set of campaigns, there have been a number of companions, some official gameplay elements and some not. One PC is a Spiritualist who has a phantom (his mild-mannered brother), a skeleton made with Animate Dead who wears a disguise and pretends to be a mute, disfigured friend of the PC (we customed some rules so she he can use Animate Dead to level her up rather than having a pile of weak skeletons that we have to manage) and a dead enemy he and another PC secretly used Reincarnate on behind the party’s back before claiming that the “new” character was an old friend of theirs (which was true for the other PC). The phantom has a bit of personality, though we tend to forget about him as a character rather than a gameplay tool. I mostly use him as a mild-mannered conscience to critique the PC’s ludicrous and irresponsible actions. Strangely, the skeleton gets more of an active personality, despite the fact that she can only follow the party around, nod and point. She’s very important to the party composition because she’s the only party member who can use firearms in a campaign filled with laser guns (because she was made out of a firearm-using enemy). The reincarnated foe was controlled by me, but mostly followed the whims of her actual old friend, not the PC with the other companions. Nevertheless led to this recent line: “Just because you control 75% of the party does not mean you are the party leader!” (Which is true – the party uses an Electoral College system.)
In the other ongoing campaign, the Witch has an ioun wyrd familiar that she reflavored as a floating jellyfish made of water. This has been quite relevant because the party keeps finding soap in the ruins of destroyed rooms and they stuff the familiar full of it so he can clean things. The character has also befriended a zoog, which has the potential to be an ally or improved familiar, but for now is a grouchy NPC that lives in the character’s hair, occasionally gives cryptic information or claims magic items for itself and will almost certainly betray the party by the end.
Once upon a time I used a 5e familiar to alleviate actual blindness. I’m still not sure if the Find Familiar spell works that way….
Seeing-eye hawks are underappreciated hard workers outside of certain Assassin’s Creed games and Far Cry Primal.
Mick the boar was treated as a full party member. Just one that couldn’t speak. The group had other battle pets, but they weren’t used as often so they tended to be treated as pets.
I haven’t had the chance to really play my other characters that have animal companions or familiars yet. Although I just got my kitsune into a living world group. He’s gestalted with hunter and I picked out a small cat companion. But I’m flavoring it as a fox instead. He’s just going to be treated as a fox since the idea is more of a scout that a front-liner like Mick was.
I wonder if the ability to participate in battle is really the deciding factor? Mick was more “present” in the game because he did more on the table, while scouting type familiar tend to fall into the background of their scenes.
Maybe. I was in a session today that’s a little more RP focused, and I’ve had my fox try to chase a sentient mouse.