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Okay, so a few things have come up in my guide that I'd like to get some clarification for. Now first of all there's a few important pieces of text in the Tumor Familiar discovery that I'd like to bring up.
An alchemist’s extracts and mutagens are considered spells for the purposes of familiar abilities like share spells and deliver touch spells.
Now from there we go to the selection on delivering touch spells.
Deliver Touch Spells (Su): If the master is 3rd level or higher, a familiar can deliver touch spells for him. If the master and the familiar are in contact at the time the master casts a touch spell, he can designate his familiar as the “toucher.” The familiar can then deliver the touch spell just as the master would. As usual, if the master casts another spell before the touch is delivered, the touch spell dissipates.
Now something that came up was what counts as the act of casting, but in the Alchemy class feature description, the following text is given.
In effect, an alchemist prepares his spells by mixing ingredients into a number of extracts, and then “casts” his spells by drinking the extract
Now the question I'm asking here is the following:
If your familiar (Assuming a monkey with hands, which can manipulate objects) drinks an extract, can it then deliver the extract to either its master or another character via touch?
The other possible way of seeing this (which was discussed in the thread) is the following:
If you drink an extract, is your familiar able to deliver this to another party member, and if so, how long is the "charge" for this extract held?
It seems odd that this part about Share Spells and Deliver Touch Spells was left in without thinking about how it could interact with other abilities, so that's what I'm hoping to discover right now.
And as a secondary, this is more of an aside to the first though, but:
Can a familiar on your person (assuming it has hands to do so) feed someone an extract?
The closest thing I've come to this is the rules for administering a potion to an unconscious character, which states that it takes a full round, making me wonder if also using a full round action for a familiar to administer a potion to their master or others would be possible.
your questions mostly seem to be can a familiar with hands carry a potion to another Preston.the answer its yes. For the most part extracts work exactly like potions. Forever you seem to be misunderstanding what shared spells does.
If you have a shield extract and drink it the monkey can get the shield. If you don't have the discovery that let's others dink you're extracts three monkey cannot drink them unless Ann exceptions made.
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your questions mostly seem to be can a familiar with hands carry a potion to another Preston.the answer its yes. For the most part extracts work exactly like potions. Forever you seem to be misunderstanding what shared spells does.
If you have a shield extract and drink it the monkey can get the shield. If you don't have the discovery that let's others dink you're extracts three monkey cannot drink them unless Ann exceptions made.
...where did I bring up Shared Spell? I'm pretty sure I didn't. I brought up Deliver Touch Spell, which is an entirely different ability.
You've not really enlightened me on how Deliver Touch Spell works for an extract, which is the crux of the matter here.
I want to know how Deliver Touch Spell, which is called out as being something that our Tumor Familiar gets, interacts with Extracts/Infusions.
Since share spells and deliver touch spells are intertwined for standard casters, I beleive the idea would remain the same for the alchemist.
So, much like a standard wizard could cast chill touch then share the spell to his familiar and finally have the familiar run off and deliver the chill touch, an alchemist could drink an extract of elemental touch, share the effect to his tumor familiar, which could then scamper off to touch an enemy.
Since extracts operate like potions, they follow the "target = drinker" rule. So spells with targets of touch, like cure light wounds, only effect the drinker. But spells with targets of personal, like elemental touch, can be shared to the familiar, who then touches targets as normal.
Like any other held charge, it can be held indefinitely if it has an instantaneous duration, unless the spell itself has a specific duration (elemental touch), or the user casts/drinks another spell/extract.
And yes, a creature with hands can administer a potion to another. For unconcious characters that is a full round action. Beyond that is houserule territory, but in my games I allow the spending of a move action that provokes to "hold out" an item to be taken, which allows the receiving creature to take it as a free action that does not provoke. Likewise, I allow a character to apply a potion to another character, but doing so is a standard action that provokes as normal, and the receiving character likewise provokes because he still has to hold relatively still to drink it, even if his hands are not occupied.
I have also allowed creatures like winter wolves to apply cure potions to unconcious allys, but it took a full round action to retreive the potion, and two full round actions to apply it. I used the rules for coup-de-graceing an invisible enemy as a basis for the houserule. Hands make many tasks easier, to some degree incredibly so, but I don't think not having them makes an intelligent creature automatically unable to do many things, just highly restricted. Personal opinion though, your mileage may vary.
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Since share spells and deliver touch spells are intertwined for standard casters, I believe the idea would remain the same for the alchemist.
The only issue I have with this statement is that both abilities are gained at different levels (1st and 3rd respectively), and have separate entries. I can understand flavor wise they're intended to be similar, but mechanically they are separate and don't interact with each other, so "Deliver Touch spells could have been taken out.
So, much like a standard wizard could cast chill touch then share the spell to his familiar and finally have the familiar run off and deliver the chill touch, an alchemist could drink an extract of elemental touch, share the effect to his tumor familiar, which could then scamper off to touch an enemy.
Since extracts operate like potions, they follow the "target = drinker" rule. So spells with targets of touch, like cure light wounds, only effect the drinker. But spells with targets of personal, like elemental touch, can be shared to the familiar, who then touches targets as normal.
Like any other held charge, it can be held indefinitely if it has an instantaneous duration, unless the spell itself has a specific duration (elemental touch), or the user casts/drinks another spell/extract.
Okay, so we do agree on the first point, since that was one I was working with on another thread. The main idea I had for this was Alchemist drinks extract, stores it in familiar, on familiar's turn it disperses it into Alchemist, saving them the action from having to drink it themselves. That's why the duration that the "charge" as it was would be held.
I suppose now the idea is what would happen if the familiar drank it. I'm starting to see the argument that if anyone but the Alch drinks it, party's over, no other options aside from Share Spell with the monkey.
And yes, a creature with hands can administer a potion to another. For unconcious characters that is a full round action. Beyond that is houserule territory, but in my games I allow the spending of a move action that provokes to "hold out" an item to be taken, which allows the receiving creature to take it as a free action that does not provoke. Likewise, I allow a character to apply a potion to another character, but doing so is a standard action that provokes as normal, and the receiving character likewise provokes because he still has to hold relatively still to drink it, even if his hands are not occupied.
I have also allowed creatures like winter wolves to apply cure potions to unconcious allys, but it took a full round action to retreive the potion, and two full round actions to apply it. I used the rules for coup-de-graceing an invisible enemy as a basis for the houserule. Hands make many tasks easier, to some degree incredibly so, but I don't think not having them makes an intelligent creature automatically unable to do many things, just highly restricted....
I'm hoping to get more official of a ruling since this is for my Alch guide, but this is a good way of adjudicating it.
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1.Your familiar does not drink the extract to cast it, you do.
, and then “casts” his spells by drinking the extract.If the master and the familiar are in contact at the time a touch spell, he can designate his familiar as the “toucher.”2."Sharing" your extracts.
The PRD makes it pretty clear that extracts can't effect other creatures without the Infusion discovery.A Note on Alchemists: Dispensing communal formulae to creatures requires that the alchemist have the infusion discovery. Without it, the alchemist cannot use communal spells as formulae.
However, extracts are intended to function like potions, so the "touch range" spell thing is kind of questionable anyway... (meaning "Deliver Touch Spells" is likely (mostly) useless to an Alchemist)
When the alchemist creates an extract, he can infuse it with an extra bit of his own magical power. The extract created now persists even after the alchemist sets it down. As long as the extract exists, it continues to occupy one of the alchemist's daily extract slots. An infused extract can be by a non-alchemist to gain its effects.
This means a CLW extract can't be used to harm undead unless it is convinced to imbibe it, and the alchemist has Infusion.
Likewise, any other touch spell should consider the imbiber the target. (This literal reading obviously causes a few issues with certain spells.)Outside of that, held charges should work as normal. If you drink another extract, the charge should dissipate (even if held by your familiar).
See, I get the extract/infusion issue, that's not the root here (anything I'm proposing here is implied to have Infusion taken as well, although that's my fault for not stating that)
Although that bit about Communal Spells is actually really helpful, I didn't know about that. I'm going to add that to the guide ASAPossible.
It does feel like Deliver Spells was left in needlessly, but at this point I'm just trying to find a point for it to have been included, since it seems like it should have some reason.
