Familiar Relationships
Familiars. Henchmen. Animal companions. Hirelings, cohorts, followers, monstrous mounts, and orphans who just won’t stop following you around. There are a million and one ways to pick up hangers-on, and if you’re not careful, you’ll wind up with a million and one of them. That’s all well and good if you’re running a megadungeon. You just park your countless admirers back in town and bring a select few: Alright. We’re fighting demons today, so I’ll take Sister Mary-Channel and Sir. Smitesby. The rest of you guys are on the bench. If you’re running a globetrotting campaign, however, you’re suddenly left wondering what to do with your roster of dudes when it comes time to stealthily infiltrate Castle Evildark.
Here’s the thing though: You want to give all these cool characters a little screen time. You want them to have lives away from licking the PCs’ boots, and when you do fully develop an NPC it can be very rewarding. But how the crap can you do that when the story is about the “main cast” of PCs?
My advice is to pick and choose. Wait to see who the party gloms onto. Which of this veritable cast of thousands is actually a fan favorite? For example, the unicorn Lumberjack Explosion has been hanging around this comic since Page 1. On the other hand, Laurel had to remind me that Goldie was a thing. The same thinking applies in campaigns. Some characters come to the fore, and others recede into the background. The key is in reading your players and figuring out which should be which. (So if you guys are dying for more Scabby comics, let me know.)
So how about the rest of you guys? Have you ever found yourself with too many extra bodies in the party? How did you handle it?
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More hot goth Wizard please. Yum yum.
Anyway, my group tends to realize when the party is becoming too swollen for its own good. You want your NPCs, but you also want your turn to come around eventually. Thus, all good adventurers should seek to establish a base to keep all your excess cool things and valuable allies in.
Of course, Familiars come with their own homes and are the best thing ever, so I have a particular soft spot for them. I think animal companions, Familiar and otherwise, are great group additions that add some personalities that are none too complex. They don’t spend their turn analyzing the field, they bite something or hide or do that one trick they are known for.
Well, except Squeak. He was practically a 2nd Rogue. =)
You know not what you ask! You put Laurel at risk of spiraling back into her emotionally fraught, monochromatic, darkwave-listening high school days!
As for familiars, I tend to agree. Especially in 5e where they are more durable, and therefore more combat-relevant.
Heh, fair enough. Nobody wants to open that chapter of their life again.
I wouldn’t call 1d4-1 HP and 10+Dex AC “durable” by any means (although i’ve shared my Squeak-boosting tricks in this past.) It does suck a lot less when they kick the bucket, though. =)
Thanks for the reminder. My Pact of the Chain warlock just hit 2nd, so I’m eyeing those sweet advanced familiar options. I mean…are imps even proficient with armor?
Not by default, although you might be able to make a case for it. Weapon and armor proficiencies are ill-defined for 5e monsters.
The Imp’s at-will Invisibility helps negate that particular vulnerability, at least. They can also benefit from Mage Armor if someone else in the group has it.
For the record, Squeak wasn’t proficient either. Disadvantage on Strength and Dex attacks/rolls/checks wasn’t a big deal for Squeak because he couldn’t attack, was typically killed by anything regarding a save regardless of success, and mostly used Help rather than making his own skill checks. For an Imp, you could do the same, but as the Imp is more capable on its own, those penalties may be a bigger issue.
My group has a tendency to gain a very large cast of tagalongs. We often upgrade followers into new PCs when there’s a death in the party.
At one point we had a whole army of orcs “loyal” to one of our party members (due to him having acquired a relic of Gruumsh). They caused more burn/pillaging than they did any good, but for some reason our (supposedly Good) party put up with it just in case an army would come in handy.
Well hey, pillaging = free loot. That’s dead useful is what that is.
Did the army ever actually come in hand though?
ok, this is officially my favorite picture of your comic. All the “companions” *including the swords* playing poker together, this is awesome !
You know what? Go ahead and take a +2 flattery bonus to your next action. 😀
To be perfectly honest, I’m rather surprised ( and impressed ) – I didn’t think Mr. Stabby could focus long enough to construct a coherent sentance, let alone play a Children’s Card Game. Last time we heard from him he was essentially a sword-shaped personification of an Honorary Donor Program. Clearly there was some character development going on off screen.
Mr. Stabby speaks much like Discworld trolls count. You just substitute “blood” for “many.” And also all other words.
http://codebyexample.info/2012/04/24/trollcount-count-like-a-troll/
I don’t think an unitary numeral system would work, I’m afraid. That being said, if Mr. Stabby could learn a second word, say “skulls”, then at that point this becomes a viable, if impractical, notation.
Maybe he uses different intonation instead of different letters to mark different meanings?
Exactly! If it’s a blood flat minor followed by a blood sharp, it means he wants to drink the blood of the innocent. Simple!
I would love to see more comics about all of the companions.
I think the whole acquiring a boat load of NPCs only has one real solution. Acquire a boat to put them on. In my 3.5 game we got an airship right around the time everyone picked up Leadership. Worked out nicely.
Also as it happens, just last night I discovered something horrifying about 5E’s Find Familiar spell.
“As an action, you can temporarily dismiss your familiar. It disappears into a pocket dimension where it awaits your summons.”
Think on that a moment.
Your familiar is a celestial, fiend, or fey creature. This means it comes from somewhere. Which your spell abducts it from.
That’s a 1st level spell that creates a pocket dimension as a side effect. That doesn’t leave much spell power for the pocket dimension itself to be very involved. In fact the only thing guaranteed to exist in there is air. Even light is up for questioning.
It’s entirely possible that when you temporarily dismiss a familiar and don’t re-summon it from the pocket dimension until you need it, it’s basically been in solitary confinement in a sensory deprivation chamber. Probably for hours. Hopefully not for days.
*shudder*
To be fair, you pretty much only ever dismiss your familiar if it looks certain that they are going to die. Such an experience would have to be worse than a few hours in the pokeball. Otherwise, why would you dismiss them?
And what if you die while the creature is dismissed? It’s stuck in a blank white room for eternity. This is why you give all familiars…suicide…pills……. Hang on a tick. Can a familiar double as a bag of holding?
Only if it actually manages to hold whatever objects you give it in it’s mouth without swallowing the whole time. Because as we all know, whatever passes in pocket dimension, stays in pocket dimension. =P
What if we give it an adorable little bandoleer?
Our party consists of a paladin with a godly rabbit, a ranger with a lazy cat, a druid with a little blue dog, a druid with a wolf, (the druids are played by the same player), a fighter with a metal bird, an alchemist with a mechanical bug, another fighter, a rogue (who is a DMPC), and currently a creepy NPC who started following us and won’t go away. (Oh, and the paladin’s rabbit is actually the leader of a rabbit army, but that’s currently on a different plane of existence so we don’t need to worry about it.)
I think the key word in that final, parenthetical aside is “currently.” I would be worried. O_O
Despite our Fighter having tons of pets, only 2 players actually have animal companions and regularly take them into battle. Me and Goblin Druid. He has a shadow wyvern. Fighter sometimes brings the Dire Bison and recently has started bringing some kind of dragon-like creature. Not sure what it is exactly though.
“I’m a lizard man actually. My name is Philbert.”
Nice to meet you, Philbert. Would you like some cheese?
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/C7rzSslub6U/maxresdefault.jpg
I’ll take that as a yes.