What's the point of Familiars?

[Perles75]

Hello,

 

this thread is not a critic to the game or to the idea of a familiar. I put it in a form of a provocative question in order to understand an area of the game which is still quite puzzling to me.

 

OK, Familiars surely have nice things attached to them: they open up a couple of adventures, they are a classic amongst mages, and they are cute.

However, I still fail to see why I should spend many of my precious actions (and at least one background point) to develop them, as for example to raise their skills instead of mine. From what I understood, skill-wise it's not efficient (you have to invest a lot in Bond and anyway they count half). Background-wise, of course you can make a character that is fond of animals and so on, but I don't see many drawbacks if you decide not to put a single point to your familiar.

 

To sum up: why should I care?

[Draigh]

You get in a situation where you need to reach a roll of 20 for success. Good luck with your skill of 10 and that hard spell that gives you a 5 bonus ...

Oh, your familiar is helping you with his strong bond and well trained skill?

(it might just be that bit of bonus that changes it from a chance success to certain victory)

[Schwarzbart]

Familiar add 1/2 of theyr SS/Skill to any rolls you have to take. So at last see them as permanent Buffs to your Characters Skills.

But you usual can gain 2 Attributes from the Questlines assiotaed with them and if you go trough the Familiar Questline it might also unlook some nice Abilitys.

I.e. if you whant to reduce the number of reloads needed for "Match Wits with the Emperor Sphinx" I suggest to train the Wit of your Familiar to at last 4 (roll vs 13 and Char Skill of Wit usual end at 10)

[Mikka]

There are rolls in the game that require you to reach a roll of 28.

 

That's hard! Even if it's something easy- let's say an Intelligence/Revision roll- you'll probably only have 10 Int and 14 or so Revision.

 

But if your Familiar has 10 revision, she or he is adding 5 more to the roll. Very nice of 'em. That gets you on more even ground.

 

 

Point blank: yes, training yourself directly has more advantages then training your familiar (and Cleanse and Remake always wins the day- curse you, easy spell!). But it can be difficult to get through the familiar quest-line without training your familiar, and that quest-line has advantages for the both of you. And we've been told repeatedly that familiars will become even more useful in later years (and considering how easy it is to basically max everything of importance pretty early in the year, this seems like a good year to work on that: there's no clubs or anything to worry about, after all. And four skill steps per one action isn't a that bad of deal, with Improved Familiar Handling. Explore Outside the Fences is pretty good, too, and it seems with each DLC, more and more options to train both yourself and your familiar sneak in.

 

Powergaming, it's certainly more sensible to train yourself to the top first. But once you've maxed out the important things, it makes sense to turn to the familiar and continue to max things out for hard rolls through them.

 

Besides, Bond 10 is supposed to have some nice advantages. >.> I just can't seem to get them.

[cymrean]

I hit Bond 10 with my dog, but as far as i know i didn't get anything. Maybe i'm not looking as hard as I ought to.

 

Also i completed the Dog Bond adventure and comparing to Cat Bond (where my cat gained two abilities) I didn't find any.

[Mikka]

Usually the animal gets the abilities from the adventure they themselves do (as in, Kitty should get them from hunting rats rather than the book and the thief). I think Sprite and Shade actually get four or so abilities (sadly, none of them are that useful- Shade has an ability that gives like, a 40% chance of discovering a common place... which leads to the 'Uh, explore isn't that difficult of a roll, Shadey' feeling). Dog seems to be a rare case, in which there are three versions of Fetch in the modtools- a good, evil, and neutral one that corrospond to the paths you can take when hunting the father of that one family.

 

But you never actually get the Fetch's. I'm not sure if the design team didn't like them, or if it's just an oversight.

 

 

There are like, three things that (according to the modtools) should appear when you get Bond 10, but I haven't been able to get them, either. Legate and the team are working on it, though, and hopefully they'll start working in DLC 13. ...If nothing else, I'm hoping they'll be there at the beginning of year two. /fingers crossed

[cymrean]

I remember getting Scratch and Pet Therapy with my Cat, but i can't remember where exactly. But I thought that the Familiar Kinship Cat Attack option in Cat Bond 02 unlocked Scratch. At least that's how i wrote it down (I try to maintain a log of quests completed and their rewards) If i'm wrong then i'll have another reason to select Kitty again.

 

As for Doggy i followed the Good path to the end (Kitty rewards are better especially if you save/reload before the last part which is a do or die) and got to Dog adventure 07, but no abilities unlocked. Even with improved familiar training i'm running out of time to finish it especially while i still have to help Neta and Rikildis achieve their goals. (Neta at least has Athletics as an option so i'm scheduling her right next to the Athletics final exam)

[Perles75]

thanks, that was informative

I concur with what Mikka says, about starting with the familiar after maxxing your priority skills (even if it seems I never am in shortage of priorities! but I'm sure I can find a compromise)

 

(just a note, with the right spells you can raise temporarily a skill of much more than +5 - of course with familiar the bonus is permanent, but to reach that level you need to spend many more slots than with a couple spells)

[Schwarzbart]

Temp. Boost from Magic is interesting if you need it just for 1 Adventure but keep in mind curent we only play year 1 of 5.

If you need to use the same Buffing Magic a vew time where you didnt get any lasting effect it could be more interesting to increase your familiar instead.

You know that Rolls are Skill + 1/2 Familiar Skill + Random(0-2xAttribute) and so for Actions /Abilitys with high rolls your Familiar comes raly handy instead of buff many times to prefent failures.

[cymrean]

If only i could see the amount of skill steps my familiar needs in something else then the bond skills. Right now I work on 4 skills at a time using Improved Familiar Handling to avoid wasting a part of the action.