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Favorite (best?) familiars?


Lilette

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I was wondering which familiar(s) everyone like(s) best?

 

I've done Pamela (spirit), Silent Alice (doll), and Coca (faux dragon).

 

I read through parts of others (to see if any got some nice stuff at the end of their quests) and some of them look really fun, like the Muffler's quests. I also liked how the Snake's looked, I'm a fan of love stories.

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I've also done the Faux Dragon, but my current one is a cat, as I like cats. He is pretty overpowered but then I did spend 4 background points on him (the three +2 attributes ones) the high attributes makes it much faster to train him.

 

I think they are mostly equal, but the Platypus gives the player Electrical Awareness which gives awareness and danger sense bonuses. I'm not aware of any other familiars giving significant bonuses to their masters. Aside from actions, but those are all wasteful.

 

So I guess it comes down to which one you prefer based on looks/personality or maybe has high attributes matching the skills you most want help with.

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I don't really have a favourite. For me its either I do a powerful fixed one right from the start similar to Dreamwaver, change to a random one trough the game or keep Pamela/ Mr Pebbles till the end.

With DLC 16 I feel like I don't have the time for a familiar any more so current mostly the last.

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My personal favrite is the Hawk! A huge predatory bird, who's also pretty heroic. What's not to love...

 

The fake-dragon is pretty "cool" and funny aswell!

 

Pamela seems a little anoying, the good thing though is that you can talk to her like a person(without having to mindlink or cast a speach spell). I wonder if I can get my Hawk to talk later on, using magic. Magic worked on that Lizard in the library.

 

If I teach my Hawk Revision and Animalhusbandry it might learn how to cast that animal talk spell on it's own when needed... Maybe....

 

Having a flying familiar with hawkvision could be very useful, imagine if you teach it "lipreading aswell".

 

Hawkes sweeps down with news; Hawkes the Hawk: I saw the legate talking to Briardi on the other side of campus, they said there was an incident of illegal magic in the the Imperial Reserve near the Hollow tree. The place has been littered with magical trinkets, some of them illegal. They have returned to talk to the guards about sealing off that area while they secure the artefacts.

 

 

(Maybe I should go and check if there is anything useful or valuable around the hollow tree before the Guards get there.)

 

Hawk: Also I heard Rui is going to place a prank prepped carpet outside your dormroom.

 

Me: Thanks Hawkes! Keep up the good work.

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It also seems that the udnerstanding shared between the wizard and familiar improves over the years and might make it easier to communicate.

 

Maybe in part as a result of improving the bond, and in part teaching them skills sawell as you, yourself learning skills to communicate with animals.... If my character can talk to snakes and lizards then why not a hawk?

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I don't really have a favourite either, they're all massive timesinks I don't particularly care to, well, sink time in. For that reason though the Platypus is a decent choice, since it's pretty much a +1 luck at character creation complete with decent Familiar, if you do end up caring at one point.

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I do try to put some time into my Familiar, especialy once I get Improved Familiar handling.

 

I think we will be spending more time on our familiars in the comming years. It's understandable if it wasn't the first thing a student would do when they start studying magic and getting prepared for the exams.

 

I wonder if we will get some kind of benefit from having completed the familiar adventures in year 2. Followup adventures or something.

 

Having a little helper could be useful if you train your friend in useful skills. In one of the student adventures there was an option to use the hawk to scout ahead to avoid guards and other people in the imperial reserve.

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The problem is that those Familiar options are A: Few and far between, from what I've seen and B: Hazardous to your health because you Familiar is generally both less talented and far less skilled than you are, unless you sink massive amounts of time in the Familiar that, due to their lack of attribute points, don't give much return.

 

Not to mention, there should be plenty of ways a PC can handle everything themselves. Astrology to determine where the guards are? Negation to levitate and see for yourself? A Glamour to make you invisible and make the point moot? Plain old sneaking around with Move Silently? Seeing where they are with simple Observation? A Familiar can't compete with that. They just lack the attributes to learn skills at a half-decent rate, even with Improved Familiar Handling, unless you burn half your background points on them. In which case you'll end up with a powerful Familiar that, 99% of the time, sits there looking pretty and giving you bonuses to your skills that don't matter because the game cheats with RNG and hidden failure chances (looking at you Match Wits with the Emperor's Sphinx and a black Advanced Marat Reading I check that I failed 10 times in a row :angry:).

 

That said, I really do hope that Y2 makes Familiars both more useful and more worthy of investing time in, maybe have the Familiar be able to do things independently of the PC. Say you train a hawk to have it scout out the area around the Academagia for interesting locations, and it periodically tells you of locations it found like the Explore action? Might be too powerful, since that in effect would give you more turns, but given how many turns it takes to get a Familiar to the point where you have a decent Bond and it has decent skill levels that could make it worth it.

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When I take a familiar I only really raise it's bond and required skills for its solo quest once I get improved familar handiling. I just wish it was easier to get without taking zoology.

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Same here, pretty much, up until my last playthrough where my Familiar managed to botch a red 1 Charm/6 Conversation roll 20 times before I just gave up. Come to think of it I don't know of any good place to train Zoology skills, anyone have any ideas?

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The problem with the Vegetable Garden is that it increases a random Zoology skill, and if you only want Zoology 5 you'd only want to focus on 3 of the 6 sub skills while forgetting the rest, so for training it's of limited use. Good place to get Informed of the skills, though.

 

Speaking of which, the cobblestone path looks nice. Birds is one of the more useful Zoology skills, I want Early Empire 10 for both the Certificate of Imperial Favor and the Expansion Pheme (which is needed for From Novice to Master), and Worms 8 hands out the Regenerate Pheme which I hope actually works for healing the PC through spells. The Healing/Health Pheme work on a targeted spell aimed at yourself, and I have previous few of those, much less ones that have low enough rolls to pump them full of extra Phemes.

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I think the Legate said we would get more out of our Familiars in year 2 I belive.

 

Let's say you are occupied doing something, like castign negations to prtect against a really nasty wizard or something, but then you tell your familiar to lend you a hand with something. Perhaps untie a professor using the familairs knots skill, or escape artist. Or even magic maybe.

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Perhaps familiars could be classified into archetypes.

 

Which would determine their abilities and the descriptions based on stats and archetype.

 

Feathered flying familiars(might include the bat). 4 leged familiars. Fish. Snakes and crawling familiars. Ghosts/shades/pixies.

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Mr. Pebbles could assist in knotmaking, by stating every type (and subtype) of knot in existence. Did you know that the bow knot and granny knot are nearly identical? Well guess what? You do know now!

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I want to make a familiar...

 

Hm...

 

Starveling
Starveling
Starveling

Starveling Kitty...

 

 

(On the other side, I enjoy cats, because cats rule, Pamela, because I don't have to raise her skills, faux dragon and strange doll, because they're adorable, and Elephant, because his one adventure is adorable.)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Mod tools description of the Hawk familiar :)

 

Condotierre is a genuinely handsome predator; look at him and you see huge golden eyes, and plumage of warm browns and cool silvers. He's also made almost entirely of muscle and talon, and - once you really get to know him - there's something in the way he perches that says very clearly that he'd really rather be somewhere in the distant air picking hopeless fights with dragons. He's certainly clever for a bird, and an affectionate friend, but there's a kind of craziness there.

 

I think it needs a special Tallon strike attack or something.

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