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At 10th-level, if the witch or her familiar is gravely injured or about to die, the soul of the dying one immediately transfers to the other’s body. The two souls share the surviving body peaceably, can communicate freely, and both retain their ability to think and reason. The host may allow the guest soul to take over the body temporarily or reclaim it as a move action. They can persist in this state indefinitely, or the guest can return to its own body (if available) by touch, transfer into a suitable vessel (such as a clone), or take over another body as if using magic jar (with no receptacle).
Here's how I see it:
Only the actual takeover part references magic jar (and as a Su ability, it bypasses SR and scales saves like all other witch powers, i.e. 10 + 1/2 level + Int mod though it begs to be Ability Focus'd), everything else would revert back to the description of this ability. Ergo:
Duration would not be 1 hr. / level - it would be (as above) until the jar-ing "soul" dies. The entire effect is worded as if an "instantaneous" magic jar. Furthermore with no recepticle, the existing "consciousness" or "soul" will be shunted into the ether and die. (probably at GM's discretion coming back as some variety of ghost or revenant given the circumstances) However, since this is "instantaneous" and you can only jar when you are a guest soul (or force your familiar to jar while it's a guest soul in you) then it's hardly an at-will magic jar as once you take over a body, it's taken over. You have to be pushed back into a guest soul status to be able to jar again.
I would even go so far as to say that so long as either familiar or master is alive, the Twin Soul effect should also prevent death from the Jar ending (due to the body being slain) just as much as by negative levels, con drain, HP damage or any other effect. Basically the only way to kill either one is to kill both. Obviously in this situation, the Witch's first priority would be to find a hardy body for the familiar (likely involving some sort of ritualistic binding of a stronger host like a medium-high level druid's animal companion and several castings of enervation, then killing the existing familiar, and forcing it to jar into the companion, with misfortune, fortune, evil eye and other hexes up - or for the lazy but rich witch, a homonculus as you can create them at most any HD total given enough gold and basically you get a "free" Improved Familiar feat), and then the same for themselves (ideally one with good to great physical stats and a bad will save).
The big draw for getting Improved Familiar is the ability to use "activated" Su-abilities/spell-likes and carry the "mentally" based ones over to it's new host, as well as the ability to start out with higher mental stats. Otherwise, you can use your original familiar and put it in a body with suitable passive (or more accurately non-activated) Su/Ex abilities (such as defenses, vision modes, SR, anything that does not have to be used actively - though it would be debatable whether or not you could suppress SR in a Jar'd body as that isn't really "activating" an ability, and you have the ability to do so from spell-created SR even if you don't have SR naturally so I would generally give this a thumbs up).
I would go so far as to say that you would lose your standard familiar bonus when Jar-ing a familiar into a new body, but that's almost debatable in my mind. I would go so far as to say that it's a connection between familiar and master, not between body and master. Soul being the same, I would want to argue the side of keeping the +4 initiative, +1 to Fort saves, +1 Natural Armor or whatever you chose to take originally. It wouldn't be the most broken thing to come out of this ability. ;)
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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I don't think the magic jar effect is meant to flat out kill the target. Not needing a receptacle for the effect is different from not having a receptacle for the effect. It should probably work like a ghost's or shadow demon's possession effect. I can't really prove that though, so it might be worth a FAQ.
As for killing your familiar so it can possess a powerful body? That's a powerful tactic, but by my reading a dangerous one.
When you possess a body with magic jar, it doesn't become 'your body'. It's a 'host body', a borrowed suit. My reading of Twin Soul is that it lets you hop into your familiar's body or vice versa--NOT "whatever body your familiar is riding around in", but your familiar's body. If that body is already dead, then you're SOL.
So if you want to ride into battle with your familiar possessing a battle-beast, feel free. Just realize that if you get croaked in the fight, you get croaked for real.
At least that's the way I'd rule it, if I were GMing.
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For the first half of this post, I will be addressing RAW (Rules as Written):
I don't think the magic jar effect is meant to flat out kill the target. Not needing a receptacle for the effect is different from not having a receptacle for the effect. It should probably work like a ghost's or shadow demon's possession effect. I can't really prove that though, so it might be worth a FAQ.
It's not that you "don't need" a receptacle, there simply isn't one ("[u]with no receptacle[/u]"), ergo there simply isn't anywhere for the creature's spirit to go (unless they are also a 10th level+ beast bonded witch ~_^ ). Since Twin Soul doesn't tell us what happens here, we have to refer to Magic Jar. Magic Jar in this case tells us that a spirit with nowhere to go dies.
It probably wasn't "meant" to outright kill the original host, but in reality as long as you stick with the above interpretation, it's actually less powerful than if it were actual magic jar. I mean, think about it, a 10th level character literally getting access to no-SR, scaling save DC magic jar at will, versus a once per death, save or die with no SR, that's blocked by Pro vs. Evil, etc. Even replacing it with possession is a significantly more powerful effect than having it be a once per death body snatch. :P
When you possess a body with magic jar, it doesn't become 'your body'. It's a 'host body', a borrowed suit. My reading of Twin Soul is that it lets you hop into your familiar's body or vice versa--NOT "whatever body your familiar is riding around in", but your familiar's body. If that body is already dead, then you're SOL.
So if you want to ride into battle with your familiar possessing a battle-beast, feel free. Just realize that if you get croaked in the fight, you get croaked for real.
At least that's the way I'd rule it, if I were GMing.
Again, this isn't the interpretation I'm championing above. What you're saying would be valid if the ability were worded to be magic jar with some other riders. However, instead the ability is a defined ability, that uses a magic jar-like effect for one of the conditions in which you can cease to be a "guest" spirit. Given that the other two options are de facto instantaneous (i.e. not limited by a set duration), there is no provision for the "take over another body" to be anything other than the same instantaneous, and the only effect that would normally have a duration magic jar is in this case only referenced for the method by which you take over the body, what I'm stating in my original post is that the "take over the body" option makes it your body.
It could be argued that the text is unclear as to what you get out of the body, however, what the ability doesn't give us we can extrapolate from Magic Jar (i.e. no activated Ex or Su, no spellcasting or spell-likes of the body, only your own) for simplicity's sake.
Furthermore, to be perfectly literal, your or your familiar's body is whatever body they happen to be riding around in; that's kind of what possession does (both in the game terms and in the grammatical term). By that extension, being Resurrected, True Resurrected (from a completely destroyed body) or Reincarnated would invalidate the ability completely, as it would be a "different" body. Given that the ability above does not differentiate between current body and original body, we can only go by what the ability tells us that it does. This is different from a "it doesn't say I can't" argument, in that the ability does tell us that you jump into whomever's body still has, in my terminology, an active body (familiar or master). Without another clause in there, this ability is not limited to the body that said familiar or master came into the game world with.
Rules as Intended/Interpreted arguments here:
Honestly, I feel that this ability was designed to do exactly what I'm saying the rules let you do above. I believe the intent was to go even further and allow you over time to be able to potentially get more than a standard Magic Jar out of your new host body, learning to eventually access the additional arms as if they were yours, activate Ex and Su abilities, etc (perhaps after an acclimation period, gaining a level, something along those lines). But obviously none of that is in the text, so that's somewhat irrelevant. Given what you're losing, it does seem very strong, but really it's no stronger than any other "I'd prefer not to die" trick available to arcane casters. Rope Trick + Astral Projection to the Prime Material plane is my favorite (unless you piss off one or more Githyanki in which case, herp derp) and it's not any higher level than this given that the Lesser version lets you project back to your original plane, which is all you were looking to do in the first place. Now, that does give you 2 permanent negative levels for being forced back into your body, but that's also being dragged across planes. I would support a GM giving anyone who "eats" another body to have a permanent negative level for 1 week of game time (as if they had gotten 2 but already had one Restore'd away and had to wait a week for the other). That does heavily discourage body-swapping, but leaves the ability usable.
"In my game" territory below:
And while I absolutely respect your choice to rule it a different way in your game, understand that doing this - killing yourself or your familiar so that you can use that connection with that same familiar to kill other sentient beings to expand your own power by wearing their body like a powered armor suit is the literal Miriam Webster's definition of evil. Any PC doing this would have been killed by the party some time ago ANYWAY because what's to stop them from doing the same thing to one of them? :P
In most cases, Good/Neutral PC Beast-Bonded witches might pull off this trick as a last resort (more likely forcing the familiar to possess another body or a crafted homonculus than being trapped in the familiar body themselves), if killed in combat or something along those lines.
Basically, what you're saying is that once they've used this particular class ability once, they never get to use it again, as whatever body they're taking over (unless it's their own reanimated body or a clone) is temporary. As a GM, I would not be too hasty to do that to a PC unless they're specifically building the character to hop from overpowered NPC body to overpowered NPC body (which is still difficult outside of killing yourself repeatedly, an OBVIOUSLY evil act that would likely draw attention from one or more Maruts very quickly and likely without fail). On the other hand, an NPC/BBEG witch becomes MUCH more interesting with an ability like this, if it works as I wrote above.
Yes our gaming group had caught on to this earlier. A level 10 Beast Bound Witch should never die permently. I also believe there is no distance associated with the soul transfer. If you die your soul will transfer to your familiar even if its on another plane according to the wording.
At level 10 (assuming I am evil) I would get something with the best escapability I could find for my familiar to take over. After that he is going to be locked up like fort knox.
My Fort would have a dozen hidden "host" scattered around my hideout. I would have several random locations scattered threwout major cities. Imagine trying to kill this guy in a crouded city.
Your only real option is to kill the witch and have through divinations the ability to find and kill the familiar that same round or at the very least the next round. The hard part is the fact his familiar can be anyone... it can be joe bob selling apples at the market. You dont know.
Without serious divination and prep you will never get him. Well if he has planned like I would lol.
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Remember that if the witch is in the familiar's body, it's the familiar that's in charge of who's driving. And if the witch is abusing their relationship, it's going to remember.
Psshh.. Not really. Remember the definition of the power specifically states:
{quote]The two souls share the surviving body peaceablyadd to that if you intend to use this tactic then pick the Homonculus as a familiar and enjoy this benefit:
Homunculi are little more than tools designed to carry out assigned tasks. They are extensions of their creators
as constructs with no berserk chance they CAN'T turn on their masters and have to obey every command.
Remember that if the witch is in the familiar's body, it's the familiar that's in charge of who's driving. And if the witch is abusing their relationship, it's going to remember.
A. A witch that is mean or cruel to his familiar is dumb. Its your spell book, and if beast bound your escape route from death.
B. As a beast bound familiar you would be very unlikely to antagonize your master. He makes you smarter. He makes you better. He makes sure your immortal. If you piss him off he can replace you in a week, and you become a normal, mortal version of yourself....
Yeah I dont see the familiar giving a beast bound witch too many issues when it comes to who is in charge when they share a host.
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Remember that if the witch is in the familiar's body, it's the familiar that's in charge of who's driving. And if the witch is abusing their relationship, it's going to remember.A. A witch that is mean or cruel to his familiar is dumb. Its your spell book, and if beast bound your escape route from death.
B. As a beast bound familiar you would be very unlikely to antagonize your master. He makes you smarter. He makes you better. He makes sure your immortal. If you piss him off he can replace you in a week, and you become a normal, mortal version of yourself....
Yeah I dont see the familiar giving a beast bound witch too many issues when it comes to who is in charge when they share a host.
There's a small problem here, which I've realized in attempting to write up a BB witch at 13th level that has already jumped hosts to their familiar. Without a body, the witch has no hitpoints. Which means the familiar uses their own base hit points. >_> Talk about extra-squishy. You really want something invisible in this case.
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There's a small problem here, which I've realized in attempting to write up a BB witch at 13th level that has already jumped hosts to their familiar. Without a body, the witch has no hitpoints. Which means the familiar uses their own base hit points. >_> Talk about extra-squishy. You really want something invisible in this case.Remember that if the witch is in the familiar's body, it's the familiar that's in charge of who's driving. And if the witch is abusing their relationship, it's going to remember.A. A witch that is mean or cruel to his familiar is dumb. Its your spell book, and if beast bound your escape route from death.
B. As a beast bound familiar you would be very unlikely to antagonize your master. He makes you smarter. He makes you better. He makes sure your immortal. If you piss him off he can replace you in a week, and you become a normal, mortal version of yourself....
Yeah I dont see the familiar giving a beast bound witch too many issues when it comes to who is in charge when they share a host.
Your hit points are based on your class level not your body, just because the witch doesn't have a body anymore the familiar still keeps what it earned by being the familiar of a high level master.
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There's a small problem here, which I've realized in attempting to write up a BB witch at 13th level that has already jumped hosts to their familiar. Without a body, the witch has no hitpoints. Which means the familiar uses their own base hit points. >_> Talk about extra-squishy. You really want something invisible in this case.Remember that if the witch is in the familiar's body, it's the familiar that's in charge of who's driving. And if the witch is abusing their relationship, it's going to remember.A. A witch that is mean or cruel to his familiar is dumb. Its your spell book, and if beast bound your escape route from death.
B. As a beast bound familiar you would be very unlikely to antagonize your master. He makes you smarter. He makes you better. He makes sure your immortal. If you piss him off he can replace you in a week, and you become a normal, mortal version of yourself....
Yeah I dont see the familiar giving a beast bound witch too many issues when it comes to who is in charge when they share a host.
Your hit points are based on your class level not your body, just because the witch doesn't have a body anymore the familiar still keeps what it earned by being the familiar of a high level master.
Except if you look at Magic Jar, the hit points depend on the body. RAW you would cease to have hit points when you cease to have one. This gets a little silly, but again the point of the thread was a RAW interpretation that didn't completely break the ability.