Here's a thought to make familiars more magical without making them too unbalanced: Give them nine lives. If your cat is killed, it can come back a total of eight times. After that, it's gone, short of doing some reasonably expensive spell to get it back: I'd suggest Limited Wish.
If the familiar dies, it comes back in a manner akin to Reincarnation, but in its same body but at the location of the master, not wherever it was killed, so the BBEG can't just keep skinning the cat until it stops coming back.
There may be more discussion about this post, but I read it and just had to say... Darn! You beat me to it! I like this. It's a simple change, and a fun idea that keeps in line with Witch flavor.
Would it make the familiar too powerful to give it the feature just called "Nine Lives" (regardless of type of animal), but have it always show back up in a certain amount of time? Or, it could come back only a number of times based on Witch (or familiar) level? Or the the ability could be a low level hex? Or what if it always came back, but with a random selection of spells (I know this could be inconvenient)? But, that way the Witch could always be slightly random/changing.
Just some thoughts.
Here's a thought to make familiars more magical without making them too unbalanced: Give them nine lives. If your cat is killed, it can come back a total of eight times. After that, it's gone, short of doing some reasonably expensive spell to get it back: I'd suggest Limited Wish.
If the familiar dies, it comes back in a manner akin to Reincarnation, but in its same body but at the location of the master, not wherever it was killed, so the BBEG can't just keep skinning the cat until it stops coming back.
There may be more discussion about this post, but I read it and just had to say... Darn! You beat me to it! I like this. It's a simple change, and a fun idea that keeps in line with Witch flavor.
Would it make the familiar too powerful to give it the feature just called "Nine Lives" (regardless of type of animal), but have it always show back up in a certain amount of time? Or, it could come back only a number of times based on Witch (or familiar) level? Or the the ability could be a low level hex? Or what if it always came back, but with a random selection of spells (I know this could be inconvenient)? But, that way the Witch could always be slightly random/changing.
Just some thoughts.
Well, there needs to be some downside/detriment to the familiar dying apart from just being without your familiar for a few hours, apart from just being out some spells, otherwise there are certain sorts of players who'll have their characters strap bombs to kitty and send it on suicide missions. Limiting it to nine lives after which something on the order of a Wish or Limited Wish must be used, however, keeps it from being this sort of problem, aside from the case of convention munchkins who treat characters as disposable anyway.
If kitty has a tendency to forget its extra spells due to PTSD when the cat comes back, this would also make witches unfond of kitty dying. And also increase their chances of wanting to form a coven as a support group and back-up system for their familiar's spells.
The Nine Lives idea is Fing phenomenal. You, sir, are a genius.
If kitty has a tendency to forget its extra spells due to PTSD when the cat comes back, this would also make witches unfond of kitty dying. And also increase their chances of wanting to form a coven as a support...
LOL. Awesome.
I personally like the idea someone mentioned of allowing a spellcraft check to remember the spells. It fits the feel of what the familiar and witch relationship, and doesn't automatically hurt the player. The nine lives thing is cool thematically, but would be difficult to pull off in any kind of organized play. To me, the best way to handle death is that the familiar is a generic spirit that has chosen to take the form of a particular animal to aid the witch. This makes it reasonable that it could come back after 24 hrs, but needs a spellcraft check to refocus its attention on any nonautomatically learned spells. If some kind of cost is needed, require a small offering, the equivalent of a small but increasing amount of gold, appropriate to the form the spirit has chosen to take. This wouldn't have to be a ritual necessarily, although that might be appropriate for some advanced familiars; it could be a certain amount of the animal's favorite food or a special toy given to the familiar upon its return.
I personally like the idea someone mentioned of allowing a spellcraft check to remember the spells. It fits the feel of what the familiar and witch relationship, and doesn't automatically hurt the player. The nine lives thing is cool thematically, but would be difficult to pull off in any kind of organized play. To me, the best way to handle death is that the familiar is a generic spirit that has chosen to take the form of a particular animal to aid the witch. This makes it reasonable that it could come back after 24 hrs, but needs a spellcraft check to refocus its attention on any nonautomatically learned spells. If some kind of cost is needed, require a small offering, the equivalent of a small but increasing amount of gold, appropriate to the form the spirit has chosen to take. This wouldn't have to be a ritual necessarily, although that might be appropriate for some advanced familiars; it could be a certain amount of the animal's favorite food or a special toy given to the familiar upon its return.
I think rather than a spellcraft check, it should be a diplomacy check. Kitty should be pissed at dying due to Witchy-Poo's carelessness, and while it very well may still know all those spells, it's not going to give them to her unless she sucks up mightily in the form of quest items that will either cost her X GP at MageMart (and serve her right to blow her budget) or else she'll have to go questing for or pull strings to get.
A witch's familiar should be more than just a fashion accessory or unquestioning servant.
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I personally like the idea someone mentioned of allowing a spellcraft check to remember the spells. It fits the feel of what the familiar and witch relationship, and doesn't automatically hurt the player. The nine lives thing is cool thematically, but would be difficult to pull off in any kind of organized play. To me, the best way to handle death is that the familiar is a generic spirit that has chosen to take the form of a particular animal to aid the witch. This makes it reasonable that it could come back after 24 hrs, but needs a spellcraft check to refocus its attention on any nonautomatically learned spells. If some kind of cost is needed, require a small offering, the equivalent of a small but increasing amount of gold, appropriate to the form the spirit has chosen to take. This wouldn't have to be a ritual necessarily, although that might be appropriate for some advanced familiars; it could be a certain amount of the animal's favorite food or a special toy given to the familiar upon its return.I think rather than a spellcraft check, it should be a diplomacy check. Kitty should be pissed at dying due to Witchy-Poo's carelessness, and while it very well may still know all those spells, it's not going to give them to her unless she sucks up mightily in the form of quest items that will either cost her X GP at MageMart (and serve her right to blow her budget) or else she'll have to go questing for or pull strings to get.
A witch's familiar should be more than just a fashion accessory or unquestioning servant.
1dx units of time + y units of time per previous kitty death. The more you kill kitty the longer you go with out spells. Seems a scalable, fair punishment, with no arbitrary cap.
I think rather than a spellcraft check, it should be a diplomacy check. Kitty should be pissed at dying due to Witchy-Poo's carelessness...
I don't necessarily see the need for this specific approach, but in this scenario making it Diplo. instead of Spellcraft is JUST the sort of differentiator of Witches vs. Wizards I think is needed. Sortof in-line with the casting stat debate, perhaps a WIS-based Witch WOULDN'T have the best Spellcraft necessarily.
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1dx units of time + y units of time per previous kitty death. The more you kill kitty the longer you go with out spells. Seems a scalable, fair punishment, with no arbitrary cap.No-go for PFS. I get what you're trying to say, but things aren't tracked that closely for the OP campaign, or really for most home campaigns. The punishment has to be consistent for every time you lose kitty, can't scale.
My understanding is anything for PFS is if the duration is Over 1/week then it is considered 1/session.
I think that is right and proper, if the witch lets his familiar die, its gone for the session and comes back next session
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1dx units of time + y units of time per previous kitty death. The more you kill kitty the longer you go with out spells. Seems a scalable, fair punishment, with no arbitrary cap.No-go for PFS. I get what you're trying to say, but things aren't tracked that closely for the OP campaign, or really for most home campaigns. The punishment has to be consistent for every time you lose kitty, can't scale.
That and loss of some random number of spells, or a fixed number of lives are also pretty non-linear penalties. For loss of spells, you could loose a dozen spells of your could lose none, just random. For the lives each death is equal until the last death and then your boned.
The penalty doen't have to start in days. It could start out 1d8 hours +1d4 hours per death. If you can track familiar deaths for a number of lives scenario, then you can do so here as well. We are trying to encourage people to use their familiars, while discouraging them from being reckless. If it is a gold sync every time it dies, then you will only send your familiar into combat in the most dire situations, and even then only if you have no other choice. The familiar will become an absent aspect of the character, no more interesting then a spell book with feet.
If it is a set number of lives, then you might use it more often, but once you get to life 8, your familiar goes away, never to be seen or heard from again.
If allow infinite lives with no penalty to the witch that really is unbalanced against the wizard, and kitty car bomb as some have suggested will be true.
At a minimum the witch must suffer a reasonable penalty for losing a familiar, maybe it is just a couple days non-scaling (1d4 days), so that you basically always loose at least 1 days worth of spell preparation. That is probably on par with a wizards loss of spell book to go back to town and get his back up, or a priest who looses his holy symbol. A couple days without spell preparation is a "fair" trade off, as you still have the spells currently memorized, and your hexes. So you won't risk your familiar unnecessarily, but you also won't completely ignore him.
I think the ritual in the playtest for summoning a familiar should amended to be used to basically transforming your familiar. So same spirit, same spells you have taught it, but transforms the bonus known spells and the bonuses it gives the player. If you want a improved familiar, you take the feat, and do the ritual, burn some seriously expensive incense and boom your familiar is transmogrified.
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Here's a thought for a possible approach:
Keep the cost to replace a familiar at 500 GP/level.
Keep the new familiar starting with all 0-level and 2/level the witch can cast spells + bonus spells by type and level.
The rest of the familiar's spells come back 1 x level of witch days later. Alternately
The rest of the familiar's spells come back one at a time 1 starting with the lowest at 1 x Spell level days intervals. (ex. Witch gets new familiar as written. The next day the familiar adds an additional 1st level spell from the previous familiar. Repeat until all 1st level spells the previous familiar had are restored. Begin adding 2nd level spells at 2 day interval, etc.)
Familiar death is expensive and inconvenient, but not cripplingly so.
I agree that familiar's death must have a cost, but it shouldn't be crippling compared to replacing a wizard's spellbook.
Another thought on the limited number of free resets (9 lives) - a witch is likely to use many of them while they have few low level spells to gain back, but easily be on their last life when they have many high level (and therefore costly) spells to restore, resulting in the familiar being stored safely away in stead of being an active class feature.
Yikes, that's a long time
My reasonably learned 10th level witch has:
10 L1
9 L2
8 L3
8 L4
6 L5
So I'm going to assume you also meant the witch can keep the 1st level bonus spells they learned at level 1.
So (9-3) * 2 days for level 2 + (8-3)*3 days for level 3 + (8-3)*4 days for level 4 + (6-3) * 5 days for level 5.
So 62 days.
That's a whole lot of witching that isn't happening.
I'm not sure the events of the adventure path I'm running have even spanned that number of days yet.
Some options for making the witch's familiar better able to survive in combat:
* Familiar Heart: The witch and the familiar share the same pool of hit points when within 30' of each other. Damage to one subtracts from the communal pool. Healing magic cast on one adds to the pool.
* Familiar Ferocity: The familiar's natural weapons increase in damage by one die type. Later levels could add Magic, Elemental, or Alignment-based damage bonuses.
* Familiar Shapes: The familiar has a druid-like ability to transform itself into any natural animal of the same size category as itself. At higher levels, it can transform into a humanoid as well.
* Familiar Curse: Killing a witch's familiar casts Bestow Curse on the one who landed the killing blow. The nature of the curse is up to the witch and is treated as if the witch casted it herself for determining DC, spell resistance, and caster level. {this makes opponents think twice before offing a witch's familiar first as a tactic}
* Familiar Curse: Killing a witch's familiar casts Bestow Curse on the one who landed the killing blow. The nature of the curse is up to the witch and is treated as if the witch casted it herself for determining DC, spell resistance, and caster level. {this makes opponents think twice before offing a witch's familiar first as a tactic}
Good enough idea, but I don't think the problem is really enemy's targetting the familiar specifically to screw over the witch - if they know about witch familiars at all, they know it doesn't effect the witch's power level until the next day anyways... The issue is more just if you don't keep your familiar stashed away like a spellbook, or away from the action entirely (i.e. don't use it), that it is vulnerable to AoE's, Cleaves, and just attacks from low-INT creatures not even aware of it's role to the Witch, but it just seems like an annoying diminutive ally of the PCs.
They DO have a decent # of HPs considering there's normally no reason to attack them, so I think just some sort of resurrection system/ 9 Lives is probably a good way to go. The survivability is no different than the Wizazd's Familiar, it just is an issue of the acquired spells disappearing (which the Familiar 'Soul' reincarnating would address).
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AlternatelyThe rest of the familiar's spells come back one at a time 1 starting with the lowest at 1 x Spell level days intervals. (ex. Witch gets new familiar as written. The next day the familiar adds an additional 1st level spell from the previous familiar. Repeat until all 1st level spells the previous familiar had are restored. Begin adding 2nd level spells at 2 day interval, etc.)
Yikes, that's a long time
My reasonably learned 10th level witch has:
10 L1
9 L2
8 L3
8 L4
6 L5So I'm going to assume you also meant the witch can keep the 1st level bonus spells they learned at level 1.
So (9-3) * 2 days for level 2 + (8-3)*3 days for level 3 + (8-3)*4 days for level 4 + (6-3) * 5 days for level 5.
So 62 days.
Ok, that alternately part was off the top of my head and I hadn't run the numbers. It is way too long. Let's just scrap that part and forget I mentioned it. However 1 day per spell starting with the lowest level is simpler and based on your example is 19 days. (remember you are getting 1 spell back each day as the familiar pieces the information together)
As for keeping the bonus spells they learned at level 1, I would prefer this, but as currently written (according to the pdf) you don't.
Slightly less painful just get back your spells at a progression of one spell level per day?
After 1 day you have all your level 1's, on the second day your 2s, on the third day your 3s and so on. So worst case level 9 spells on the 9th day?