Seeking opinions on changing animal companion and familiar rules for casters


Homebrew and House Rules


As an experiment I'm doing a complete overhaul of the classes, just starting with the core classes for now. This experiment involves throwing out all of the current character classes and remaking them into four new base classes. There will be two full martial classes and two full casting classes. Now to the point where I'm seeking opinions.

I'm finding it a bit redundant to have both animal companions and familiars. The two casting classes will be Holy Mage (cleric, druid, some paladin) and Mystic Mage (wizard, sorcerer, some bard), my questions are this:

Would it make sense to keep only the animal companion feature available to any caster and remove the familiar?
Would it make sense to keep only the familiar feature available to any caster and remove the animal companion?
Would it make sense for the Holy Mage to keep animal companions and the Mystic Mage to keep familiars?

I'm just seeking feedback and am willing to hear all positions/suggestions. I don't want this to turn into a shouting match, it's really just some input on a major house rule.


To me, the major difference (and this is not true in 100% of cases), is that the animal companion is built for combat, while the familiar is not. So, is the difference important enough to your intentions? For your third question, I would give each of your casters a class feature that allows them to choose one of several options that include familiars, animal companions, arcane bond, etc.

Contributor

You should keep familiars and animal companions as-is because they both have drastically different rules. One of the familiar's big advantages is that all of its statistics are based off of its master's (this is one of the reasons that the carnivalist rogue is one of my favorite archetypes). Familiars and Animal Companions are as different as Fighters and Rogues.


Ciaran Barnes wrote:
To me, the major difference (and this is not true in 100% of cases), is that the animal companion is built for combat, while the familiar is not. So, is the difference important enough to your intentions? For your third question, I would give each of your casters a class feature that allows them to choose one of several options that include familiars, animal companions, arcane bond, etc.

This is essentially what led me to these questions. I do plan on giving arcane bond to the mystic caster and divine bond to the holy caster. I guess a fourth option could be to offer both options to the general Mage class and let the players choose which they want, or possibly even both.

Alexander Augunas wrote:
You should keep familiars and animal companions as-is because they both have drastically different rules. One of the familiar's big advantages is that all of its statistics are based off of its master's (this is one of the reasons that the carnivalist rogue is one of my favorite archetypes). Familiars and Animal Companions are as different as Fighters and Rogues.

It's funny that you use that comparison because with the class rewrite the fighter and rogue won't be as totally different as they currently are in the PF rule set. What I don't want is one class having a clear advantage over the others that always gets chosen. Granted a way to make this happen is to make one option cost more than the other.

Thanks for the input.


Just giving this a morning bump. Any other thoughts are appreciated.


I can see how it makes sense to combine familiars and animal companions, because they are rather similar. However, you'll need to make some kind of adjustment (like Pathfinder does for Ranger) because Familiar < Animal Companion and without an adjustment, the classes will be unbalanced. A good place to start might be making the Familiar an Animal Companion with an Effective Level = Current Level-4 (like the Ranger) and see how that looks power-wise.


Mike J wrote:
I can see how it makes sense to combine familiars and animal companions, because they are rather similar. However, you'll need to make some kind of adjustment (like Pathfinder does for Ranger) because Familiar < Animal Companion and without an adjustment, the classes will be unbalanced. A good place to start might be making the Familiar an Animal Companion with an Effective Level = Current Level-4 (like the Ranger) and see how that looks power-wise.

That's an interesting idea to combine the two. It would increase the power of the familiar and decrease the power of the animal companion, that might not be a bad idea.

Thanks.


How much an animal companion is better than a familiar, balance-wise?

Look at sorcerer bloodlines, a sylvan wildblooded sorcerer exchanges his bloodline arcana and 1st level power fro a animal companion with an effective druid level for this ability equal to sorcerer level – 3. So you need to spend the 1st level, or at least level 3, feat on boon companion feat.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Homebrew and House Rules / Seeking opinions on changing animal companion and familiar rules for casters All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Homebrew and House Rules