Familiars and Teleportation

[Aashua]

This is a topic that I brought up in some places during the playtest but never really saw addressed but was really hoping it would be addressed by the the full release.

Specifically my main complaint/concern is with dimension door, it's very tightly sealed as far as moving about with other creatures, making sure you aren't finagling your friends around somehow, and I understand why, but it seems really strange that it essentially forces you to abandon your familiar should you attempt to use it to flee. This is especially rough for familiar focus wizards and, when they arrive, witches. Could familiars get some sort of clause that includes them with you due to their magical bond or something, or at the vary least a familiar or master ability at absolute worst that includes them as a part of your person for effects like these?

Teleport technically doesn't have this issue but it means you can only bring 3 other people if you bring you familiar, this also creates issues if your other pcs have creatures as part of their class features, which while this irritates me I can accept much more reasonably that wizards wouldn't have bothered sorting out problems of teleporting their ranger friends and their pets together.

As an aside the teleport spell mentions that you can take up to 4 creature sized objects, I'm assuming this means medium or large, but it doesn't say. Are these objects mouse sized, tarrasque sized or somewhere in between? I know the writers and designers have been working really hard so some things were bound slip through, but a clarification would be nice.

Overall though It's been an interesting read and thanks for the hard work, not sure I'll be making a hard convert as my main game, but the system certainly seems compelling enough to run through a few games ^_^

[Doktor Weasel]

This bothers me as well, and is one of the biggest irritants to another member of my group. Removing the ability to take your whole party is an understandable choice. It seems that the intent of the spell was as a quick escape route, but instead became a way to move all your melee characters up to the big bad to absolutely murder them. But the "any creature" thing is a bit restrictive when it comes to familiars. A familiar that mostly just lives in your pocket or on your shoulder is pretty common, and I expect to see it be more so in PF2 due to how bare-bones familiars are, and that a lot of the benefit from them is now in the Master Abilities. I'm thinking it might be beneficial for there to be some ruling that because of their personal attunement to the caster, familiars you are carrying count as gear carried and not independent creatures for the purposes of spells like Dimension Door and teleport. Or something with the size categories saying that one tiny creature can accompany a small or larger one without taking up an additional 'creature' slot.

The hard cap at 4 creatures does also penalize larger than usual parties as well as anyone with familiars and animal companions. Also causes problems for transporting rescued NPCs and the like. My group generally have 5 or 6 pcs in a party. So a teleport will never take the whole group. Spell slots are more precious now, so 3 castings (if you only have one teleporter) to get the whole party is kind of rough.

[Aashua]

Doktor Weasel wrote:

The hard cap at 4 creatures does also penalize larger than usual parties as well as anyone with familiars and animal companions. Also causes problems for transporting rescued NPCs and the like. My group generally have 5 or 6 pcs in a party. So a teleport will never take the whole group. Spell slots are more precious now, so 3 castings (if you only have one teleporter) to get the whole party is kind of rough.

3 Castings is also very possibly a hard split of the party seeing as it can send you up to 10 miles off target which can be quite the adventure on its own potentially, especially with overland fight being gone, Gods help your poor wizard if he needs every slot to move the party and has to walk 10 miles alone XD.

[Eltacolibre]

Party teleportation in this edition for large party, you are better off using Shadow Walk(Supports up to 9 people). It can be very dangerous of course...but well, for a large party, it's a better solution.

Gate is of course, the other option but considering Gate is 10th level slot, won't really expect many to have it.

Most likely what will happen, I imagine by APG or maybe even the character guide, we will probably get a ritual for large party teleport.

Teleportation circle is definitely ritual material for the future.

[Aashua]

Eltacolibre wrote:

Party teleportation in this edition for large party, you are better off using Shadow Walk(Supports up to 9 people). It can be very dangerous of course...but well, for a large party, it's a better solution.

Gate is of course, the other option but considering Gate is 10th level slot, won't really expect many to have it.

Most likely what will happen, I imagine by APG or maybe even the character guide, we will probably get a ritual for large party teleport.

Teleportation circle is definitely ritual material for the future.

Ah very interesting, I was reading through the spell list when I noticed dimension door was unchanged which prompted me to give a look at teleport, Shadow Walk seem to be a new addition since the playtest and looks quite fun.

[Draco18s]

Doktor Weasel wrote:

The hard cap at 4 creatures does also penalize larger than usual parties as well as anyone with familiars and animal companions. Also causes problems for transporting rescued NPCs and the like.

Thoughts: rephrase "max 4" to "whatever your typical table size is because things are supposed to be balanced at 4 players, if you have five, whatever just go with it" and "animal companion and familiars come along free free."

[David knott 242]

Or just set a size limit on who can come with you when you cast Dimension Door. Allowing familiars and/or creatures two size categories smaller than the caster wouldn't break anything.

[Wheldrake]

This thread could've been entitled "the trouble with PF2's Dimension Door".

I suspect that the change in Dimension Door was to avoid the DimDoor assault paradox, where the caster can't act after DimDooring, but his pals with later initiative numbers can do full attacks when brought along. Still, it's disappointing, since it's now just treated as a lesser form of teleport.

For me, the concept of having a Dimension Door should include opening the door and letting others go through to the other side. But our pals at Paizo don't seem to share this view. Perhaps a future book will have a Mass version of the spell that more closely corresponds to the concept.

This said, it would be worth scouring the section on familiars to be sure there isn't some exception that could be found.

[David knott 242]

It looks like they specifically worded the spell to exclude taking a familiar with you. Without the language to exclude other creatures, you would still be limited to bringing along creatures that you could somehow carry.

[Aashua]

David knott 242 wrote:

It looks like they specifically worded the spell to exclude taking a familiar with you. Without the language to exclude other creatures, you would still be limited to bringing along creatures that you could somehow carry.

You can carry a small or medium sized creature on your back or theoretically in a large enough portable planer space. which i image are the main reason for all the lawyer text in this spell, it would seem very strange to me if they actively wanted this spell to read "if you use this to flee you leave a class feature to die or to somehow figure out how the heck to return to you.

If I'm very honest the only thing in 5e that i can say I drastically prefer over this system is how familiars work, where you have a stable consistent and relatively safe partner that should problems arise you can canonically and in the rules very easily bring back to you, but that's really not what this topic is about.