Familiar Movement "Stacking"

[Rigglos]

I just started GMing a new game where one of the players has a bat familiar. In the first battle, he ran his full speed with the bat on his shoulder, and then had his bat also fly his full speed, saying it didn't technically use its own movement when just being on a shoulder.

I don't really think this makes a lot of sense. To my understanding, every round takes about 6 seconds as all turns happen at once. But because both characters got their full movement speed, it seems like that particular interaction would have taken more like 12 seconds.

Can anyone back this up? I'm pretty new to GMing and I know there are special rules for familiars, but I'm not sure if this one tracks.

[Brimgoth the Feral]

The movement that the player used is taken off of what the bat can normally move. The bat can only take the remainder of its movement.

[Java Man]

Sounds reasonable, but where is this written in the book?

[dragonhunterq]

mounted combat implies that the bat could take a single move action after the wizard has travelled full speed, but this is not covered explicitly by the rules.

mounted combat wrote:

...If your mount moves more than 5 feet, you can only make a single melee attack. Essentially, you have to wait until the mount gets to your enemy before attacking, so you can't make a full attack.

If your mount (equivalent to the person carrying you?) moves more than 5' you can't take a full round equivalent action, but you can take a standard action.

[Dave Justus]

There are no rules for one character carrying another (including characters carrying familiars.) The mounted combat rules, weak even when dealing with regular mounts, don't cover this well.

Certainly I haven't seen a DM not allow characters to carry their familiar, and there is even the familiar satchel specifically designed for this, but rules wise how it works as far as actions and movement isn't totally clarified (what action is it for a familiar to 'dismount' from a character for example, does it require the ride skill?). Requiring a move equivalent action by the familiar to go from carried to uncarried and vice versa would not be unreasonable and would solve this issue pretty well.

[merpius]

I don't think there is a pure RAW answer to this; there are multiple threads discussing characters carrying characters, with all kidns of theories about the carrying character being treated as a mount, the carried character treated as a carried thing (until its turn), etc, etc.

Given that there's no pure RAW solution here, that leaves it to RAI (houserules) and table variation.

Both of the suggested ideas have merit. But I don't think either is pure RAW; player characters are not mounts, otherwise they can't act/fight properly; they would have to be under the guidance of the "rider." And the idea of subtracting the distance moved by the carrier from the carried creature's movement max sounds good, but there's nothing in any book that I have heard of that supports it (its not like the bat is jumping here; it is sitting still, relative to its perch).

[Brother Fen]

It's really not a big issue. If he wants to run with a bat on his shoulder and then let it fly when he stops moving, just let him. It's all an abstraction of combat anyway.

Treating it the same as mounted combat movement above is a good solution.

[Kiesman]

The real reason why it doesn't work is because a "Round" of combat, specifically, all the individual "turns" that happen during a "Round", all happen concurrently. There isn't really any "Going first", you just moved ever-so-slightly faster than the people after you.

Therefore, the bat can't take off and fly the full amount after you stop moving because that's already a lot of the time of the "round" used up just to get to the point where the PC stopped.

[Anguish]

As has been said, there are no actual rules for this. In fact, I've never bothered to actually dig up a rule that specifically allows a familiar to coexist in its master's square; while Tiny creatures provoke to enter a square to attack, I haven't seen anything that lets them stay there.

So, as long as a house-rule is applied consistently, whatever makes for more fun works.

If the bad guys are also allowed to movement-stack, it's fair. And allowing it can be justified as kind of cool, in a cinematic way. It can also be disallowed as being "too much".

Really, as the GM I'd personally allow it as it's just a familiar, and while it might deliver touch attacks etc, it's also sticking its neck out and remaining vulnerable. But that's just me.