I have a DM that says if you bring your familiar out I will kill it.
That being said, I am leaning toward no longer playing the game. It is creating an argument and a situation where I feel like this is becoming house rules. I agree with some rules being bent but this is outright telling you that you cannot use your abilities that you have.
His reasoning behind this is because it is a sorcerer and it is not a battle familiar and he thinks the character should not be able to use the familiar to its fullest potential in this regard. So it seems he wants to target it dead unfairly.
Here is the argument we are having and I would like a specific answer if possible.
With a "small" familiar you can get a flank bonus if it has the ability to threaten another square.
He says if it does not have the creatures "attention" as in not attacking then you may not gain the flank bonus.
Is this true?
Another question is if you or your familiar stealth behind someone with weapons "drawn" and are directly behind someone can you get a flank bonus when not attacking?
Next he says if your familiar is behind the target I am going to turn and attack that. This makes no sense to me.. If it is behind you only providing a flank and the real threat is the half orc smashing your face in are you seriously going to turn and randomly attack a small familiar? I find this extremely unlikely.
No offence but that GM sounds like a self-centered child with power issues...
K177Y C47 wrote: No offence but that GM sounds like a self-centered child with power issues... In this regard he is being that way a bit. He is being a pretty good DM. Problem is that this has him on an extreme defensive for some reason. And it turns me off to playing the game…
I am a tough person to play with because I cause quite a bit of theatrics with my bard and overall play style. Do not get me wrong. But this is not about me arguing for the sake of arguing. It honestly is not even my character it is my friends that plays with us. I just found this unfair and I want to make sure I am not in the wrong in the rules before I say anything further.
To address the question, "attention" isn't required. There's no facing in Pathfinder so the whole flanking thing is an abstraction to begin with; it's a standard bonus that's right in the Combat rules and creatures are not given an option such as to be flat-footed against a creature in order to deny them giving a flanking bonus to an ally. If you and any other ally, even a familiar, an animal companion, a mount, etc. are in the proper positions and you both threaten, you both gain flanking bonuses which represent the inability of the flanked creature to keep an eye on both of you at the same time.
If he's going to throw a fit about something so small, then he doesn't fit the meaning of the phrase, "He is being a pretty good DM." He's actually being a very bad DM and needs to realize that the position is one of responsibility, not one to be abused for petty reasons.
These are the pertinent parts of the flanking rule, from page 197 of Core:
Only a creature or character that threatens the defender can help an attacker get a flanking bonus. Creatures with a reach of 0 feet can’t flank an opponent.
A Small creature has a reach of more than 0 feet. So, so long as your familiar is actually threatening the defender, you get the bonus. However, I don't think you can be behind a defender without his knowing it and get a flanking bonus. This is because flanking works by causing a defender to fight on two fronts, both in front of, and behind himself.
So I think your opponent needs to know your familiar is behind him, and he needs to see the familiar as a threat. The easiest way to achieve this, is to have your familiar attack. I think your GM is anchoring his argument to an interpretation of "threatening" as being synonymous with "attacking," and he may have some wiggle room there.
As to the issue of your familiar irking him, well that seems silly. If your character has gained the familiar via the rules, and the familiar is built fairly and by the rules, the GM should not have a problem with it.
Having the familiar just be non-invisible is fine. It need not attack. "Threatening" isn't being used in a generic manner here, it's a defined mechanical term in the system. Another thing to keep in mind is that all the turns in a given round are happening simultaneously. They're only adjudicated in sequence for the sake of human players but from the characters' perspectives, it's not turn-based. You don't sit there and spend 6 seconds on your turn while everyone else in the fight waits patiently for their turn to come.
To illustrate, say your Sorc got the initiative to go first and moves up to attack a goblin with his morningstar. Then, his small familiar moves into flanking position, but just sits there. From the perspective of the goblin, the two arrived in the same 6 second interval, but the sorcerer got there just a little bit ahead so the goblin was able to put his full attention on the Sorc just for that split second of the attack before the familiar moved into position. By contrast, if the Sorc delayed and let his familiar go first, get into position, and sit there, and then the Sorc moved into flanking position, he'd get the flanking bonus. From the goblin's perspective, the familiar moved in to one side and the Sorc moved in on the other and the goblin didn't know which was going to attack first. It seemed like the Sorc was faster on the ball, but the familiar moved in ahead of him and they were both on either side before any attack came. He's not going to completely ignore the familiar; he doesn't even have an option in the game to do that. If he puts all his attention on one, he opens himself completely to the other. Even if you did allow the goblin to completely turn his back on the familiar, that is a procedure that definitely "lets your guard down" and I'd say it provokes an AoO from the familiar and the goblin loses Dex to AC against the AoO.
To put it another way, if the familiar gets into flanking position, and the goblin tries to move away with a normal Move action, both the Sorc and the familiar can take an AoO against the goblin.
Bruunwald wrote: These are the pertinent parts of the flanking rule, from page 197 of Core:
Only a creature or character that threatens the defender can help an attacker get a flanking bonus. Creatures with a reach of 0 feet can’t flank an opponent.
A Small creature has a reach of more than 0 feet. So, so long as your familiar is actually threatening the defender, you get the bonus. However, I don't think you can be behind a defender without his knowing it and get a flanking bonus. This is because flanking works by causing a defender to fight on two fronts, both in front of, and behind himself.
So I think your opponent needs to know your familiar is behind him, and he needs to see the familiar as a threat. The easiest way to achieve this, is to have your familiar attack. I think your GM is anchoring his argument to an interpretation of "threatening" as being synonymous with "attacking," and he may have some wiggle room there.
As to the issue of your familiar irking him, well that seems silly. If your character has gained the familiar via the rules, and the familiar is built fairly and by the rules, the GM should not have a problem with it.
I have read that even while being invisible that flanking bonus is applied. It is simply the "ability" to threaten the square that causes this. Maybe I am wrong on that? Perhaps by the familiar being there and the assumption that he has a 360 degree view of the field means that he knows he can't step back or risk losing his footing etc.. I believe in the rules it says you do not even have to attack.
Below is threatened squares defined:
Threatened Squares
You threaten all squares into which you can make a melee attack, even when it is not your turn. Generally, that means everything in all squares adjacent to your space (including diagonally). An enemy that takes certain actions while in a threatened square provokes an attack of opportunity from you. If you're unarmed, you don't normally threaten any squares and thus can't make attacks of opportunity.
So my thought is, even if the familiar is there and choosing not to attack it is still a threat. And logically an intelligent creature is going to try and kill his biggest threat or step away from the flank. Not turn and attack a relatively harmless beast.
I believe this answers me thanks.
Skythen wrote: And logically an intelligent creature is going to try and kill his biggest threat or step away from the flank. While I'm not trying to excuse what the DM is doing (Targeting the familiar exclusively), that's not quite true. If I have a guy in front of me wanting to hurt me, and a pig (a small sized familiar) tripping me up from behind, I may very well turn and gut the pig, to get it out of my way. If I can figure out that the pig is actually benefiting the guy in front of me, then I may decide to outright focus on the pig. It's not going to be as difficult to kill as the fellow with the morning star, but it will help me defend myself against the bruiser.
The point there is, different intelligent creatures will behave differently. So, were I in the DM's place, I would occasionally target the familiar since various intelligent creatures may. I wouldn't target it exclusively, because that seems silly, but while the hulking barbarian may want to crush your skull, the battle savy duelist may try to gut the familiar. This is also in a world where killing a person's familiar does actually hamper them.
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