Don't get me wrong, I don't like the minion rules. But I just can't see a way to where you get the minion to perform an exploration activity without the PC spending their action to command them to do so.
Not without some explicit elaboration in the rules.
Yeah, this is pretty much my thought too. I just can't see familiars acting completely different in different modes without them coming out and telling us that. Going from a need to be commanded every 6 seconds to only needing a single command for hours is too big a change to not any mention of it IMO.
It’s not.
PCs don’t have that change.
Could you PLEASE make a quote or reference to what or who you are referring to? I have NO idea what point you are trying to make just like I couldn't fathom your last post either. I'm not even sure if you're posting in the right thread...
It’s not.
PCs don’t have that change.
PCs do go through a big change, it's just explicitly explained by the Exploration rules. How many and the types of actions taken in Exploration are explicitly enumerated, and it's very different from what you can do in combat.
PCs do go through a big change, it's just explicitly explained by the Exploration rules. How many and the types of actions taken in Exploration are explicitly enumerated.It’s not.
PCs don’t have that change.
Is she talking about changing modes? IF so, the PC and minions follow the same rules in exploration: an action "repeated roughly 10 times per minute" is an activity: this equates to the PC commanding and the familiar taking one action every round.
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PCs do go through a big change, it's just explicitly explained by the Exploration rules. How many and the types of actions taken in Exploration are explicitly enumerated, and it's very different from what you can do in combat.It’s not.
PCs don’t have that change.
They have Exploration Mode activities, and so do Familiars.
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Could you PLEASE make a quote or reference to what or who you are referring to? I have NO idea what point you are trying to make just like I couldn't fathom your last post either. I'm not even sure if you're posting in the right thread...It’s not.
PCs don’t have that change.
My posts are getting laconic in regards to the content of this thread.
Familiars aren't permanently locked in Minion mode having to be constantly commanded forever and ever lest they never do anything and starve.
Just the same, PCs aren't forever locked into Combat Mode and have to move in the street from market stall to bar and in 3 action strides and round increments.
Familiars aren't permanently locked in Minion mode having to be constantly commanded forever and ever lest they never do anything and starve.
Nothing about exploration mode removes the minion trait from the familiar. That traits also say that "If left unattended for long enough, typically 1 minute, mindless minions usually don’t act, animals follow their instincts, and sapient minions act how they please." As such, familiars, as animals, will "follow their instincts" making starving a non-point. As familiars are never described as sapient, that doesn't really apply but even if you wanted to apply that, acting as they please doesn't mean following your orders while unattended.
Just the same, PCs aren't forever locked into Combat Mode and have to move in the street from market stall to bar and in 3 action strides and round increments.
Who said they where. They are locked into activities until they switch activities. Someone that uses Defend can't also Investigate and Scout at the same time because the game limits action/activity economy. Command minion would be an activity following the guidelines: it just is. You don't get to ignore the economy just because it's exploration or they wouldn't have activities and guidelines for making more.
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Minion is combat only.
Familiars can gain speech, therefore they are sapient.
"Who said they where"
The logic you're using that Minion mode is permanent and they must be commanded constantly with nothing actually stating as such.
People not being able to use multiple Exploration activities at the same time is not the same thing.
"You don't get to ignore the economy just because it's exploration or they wouldn't have activities and guidelines for making more."
Exploration does have not action/round economy, it has activities.
The fact that there is a rule of what happens after you don't give them orders for 1 minute is what throws a wrench into this separation. Minutes are how you measure time outside of combat, in exploration mode, so you'd think that rule specifically applies outside of combat (basically never gonna happen during combat), a rule that is directly dependent on the "minion" action economy.
Minion is combat only.
Citation please. Sneak is given in combat terms but is used in exploration as Avoid Notice. The fact that an action is presented in combat terms in NO way prevents it from applying in exploration. In fact, all activities based off actions are that way especially with the guidelines.
Familiars can gain speech, therefore they are sapient.
corvids, budgerigars [can have a vocabulary of almost 2,000 words], hill myna, cockatoos, ect can speak without sapience. Does Speak with Animals make an animal sapient because magic allows it to speak?
The logic you're using that Minion mode is permanent and they must be commanded constantly with nothing actually stating as such.
That's correct: nothing turns it off. Nothing changes the fact that they are a minion.
People not being able to use multiple Exploration activities at the same time is not the same thing.
Yes it is as they have to command their minion. If they didn't that PC DOES get 2 activities vs another persons single activity. It's 100% the same. How is a familiar PC that uses Search and has their familiar scout NOT getting 2 activities vs the non familiar PC?
Exploration does have not action/round economy, it has activities.
It has an economy BASED ON ACTIONS: Basic activities are an action "repeated roughly 10 times per minute": it just is. You don't throw out all the economy set out in the guidelines. Activities are based on the number of repeated actions in a minute so you don't get to ignore actions as they still exist as part of the activities and there is a limit on how many you can use.
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Minion calls out “in combat”, nothing states that it carries over for absolutely everything else you’re trying to apply it to.
The familiar ability is literally “it understands and speaks a language you know”, it doesn’t copy a few phrases and sounds, it can communicate and have full conversations with others.
Citation for Minion Mode and restrictions therein being permanent.
PCs with familiars get an extra attempt at certain activities during Exploration, and? That’s a possible boon of having a familiar is that they can scout.
By your “Economy” reasoning no one can attempt any activities unless they remain perfectly still, since Striding is an action. “No one gets to ignore Actions”, remember?
Why is the horse using more than one action?
It isn't? Feet per minutes equates to 1 action a round so overland movement is correct. If a horse moves faster, it gets fatigued in 10 minutes.
Minion calls out “in combat”, nothing states that it carries over for absolutely everything else you’re trying to apply it to.
Meaningless as ALL actions are in combat/encounter mode by use of the three action system. By your reading, I can't swim in encounter mode because it only lists an action and those only happen in encounter mode...
The familiar ability is literally “it understands and speaks a language you know”, it doesn’t copy a few phrases and sounds, it can communicate and have full conversations with others.
You can LITERALLY speak with animals and that doesn't make them sapient. Kinspeech allows your familiar to understand and speak with animals of the same species: does that make all animals sapient. Speech by itself isn't a determiner of sapience. Alexa on my tablet "understands and speaks a language" but that doesn't make it sapient: why would it be different with magic 'technology'?
Citation for Minion Mode and restrictions therein being permanent.
Traits ARE permanent features: that's why they are there. "A trait is a keyword that conveys additional information about a rules element, such as a school of magic or rarity. Often, a trait indicates how other rules interact with an ability, creature, item, or another rules element that has that trait."
PCs with familiars get an extra attempt at certain activities during Exploration, and? That’s a possible boon of having a familiar is that they can scout.
That's as disruptive as a familiar in combat not needing an action to command: If anything it's MORE disruptive as you get double the activities vs an extra action.
By your “Economy” reasoning no one can attempt any activities unless they remain perfectly still, since Striding is an action. “No one gets to ignore Actions”, remember?
"it usually consists of a single action repeated roughly 10 times per minute (such as using the Sneak action 10 times) or an alternation of actions that works out similarly (such as Search, which alternates Stride and Seek)." So if you move and seek, you take seek 5 times a minute and move 5 times a minute [it's why you move 1/2 speed]. It's SUPER, SUPER simple if you actually read the sidebar that covers all of this. So if you want to move while your familiar sits still then command your familiar to do something the next round you can do that: it's not too efficient though but you can do it.
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The minion rules are for handling in encounter mode. Exploration is a lot more flexible.
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@Graystone
“All actions are actions” isn’t really an argument there.
Alexa is a pseudo A.I. (or whatever you would term her) with preset responses and searchs for your questions and orders. A Familiar with the Speech ability is fully autonomous in it’s conversations that it can start and have, that falls under sapience.
Citation for Minion Mode and restrictions therein being permanent. And that Traits are “permanent features” as you claim and then quote the definition that does nothing of the sort for your statement.
A Familiar helping scout is a completely different situation than a Familiar not needing Command Actions in Encounter Mode.
“ It's SUPER, SUPER simple if you actually read the sidebar that covers all of this.”
You’re correct in this regard, but not for your argument, of course you can take Actions outside of Encounter Mode. No “economy” is broken by letting the Familiar as the book allows it.
Though I am not in the camp granting extra exploration activities to familiars or animal companions I am also not in the camp saying minions need constant instruction in exploration mode, even if this is what the rules imply. By doing so you would heavily penalize any character that has a familiar or animal companion, virtually depriving them of any other exploration activity because they need to use the "command minion" exploration activity all the time while simultaneously being reduced to half speed. A Ranger without animal companion travelling overland can use his full speed or any other exploration activity like search, scout or avoid notice while moving at half speed. A Ranger with an animal companion would need to continuosly command his minion to follow him around, already be moving at half speed and becomming even slower and exhausted after 10 minutes if he uses another activity. And going from 1 to 0 or from 1 to 2 exploration activities just for having a familiar or animal companion both feels wrong.
The familiar ability is literally “it understands and speaks a language you know”, it doesn’t copy a few phrases and sounds, it can communicate and have full conversations with others.You can LITERALLY speak with animals and that doesn't make them sapient. Kinspeech allows your familiar to understand and speak with animals of the same species: does that make all animals sapient. Speech by itself isn't a determiner of sapience. Alexa on my tablet "understands and speaks a language" but that doesn't make it sapient: why would it be different with magic 'technology'?
The main problem is the completely lack of information provided by 2e in familiar rules. We even don't know their main stats to know some thing like how intelligent the Familiar is.
Familiars
Familiars are mystically bonded creatures tied to your magic. Most familiars were originally animals, though the ritual of becoming a familiar makes them something more. You can choose a Tiny animal you want as your familiar, such as a bat, cat, raven, or snake. Some familiars are different, usually described in the ability that granted you a familiar; for example, a druid’s leshy familiar is a Tiny plant instead of an animal, formed from a minor nature spirit.
Familiars have the minion trait (page 634), so during an encounter, they gain 2 actions in a round if you spend an action to command them. If your familiar dies, you can spend a week of downtime to replace it at no cost. You can have only one familiar at a time.
Modifiers and AC
Your familiar’s save modifiers and AC are equal to yours before applying circumstance or status bonuses or penalties. Its Perception, Acrobatics, and Stealth modifiers are equal to your level plus your spellcasting ability modifier (Charisma if you don’t have one, unless otherwise specified). If it attempts an attack roll or other skill check, it uses your level as its modifier. It doesn’t have or use its own ability modifiers and can never benefit from item bonuses.
So basically familiars are magic/alchemical created/modified creature that don't have their natural traces anymore (the main example is Leshys) that acts like a magic extension from their masters that uses the magical abilities from it.
But... Some lines after...
Familiar and Master Abilities
Each day, you channel your magic into two abilities, which can be either familiar or master abilities. If your familiar is an animal that naturally has one of these abilities (for instance, an owl has a fly Speed), you must select that ability. Your familiar can’t be an animal that naturally has more familiar abilities than your daily maximum familiar abilities.
So now the familiar abilities matter...
This create a many problems to know the real familiar capacities. We don't know how well they speak because we don't know their main Int, this also can create problems for other things that need more info than saves/ac/hp to work against familiar and so on.
For me this is other thing the needs an errata (to be honest I think we need a entire new explanation of how these familiars works not just a little errata) to at least create some base stats to know how familiar works. Until there do as you wish, if the GMs believes that the familiar has a similar intelligence of his master or if they are based on master cast atribute just do it and allow it to speak normally if they received such ability that day, if not if the GM believes that familiar has more limited animal like abilities, just don't allow it to speak properly.
Personally I like the idea of a familiar can be used for other exploration purposes (and I ignore the minion limitations during exploration for sake of a good gameplay) but seeing the poorly explanation of how they works makes me think if not better just disallow players to have familiars but I know that doing so this will break some of main capacities of many classes. So it's better to create some house rules like saying that familiars use their master stats or cast stat ability, whats worst, to calc their abilities and just allow they work like a familiar on their masters want.
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I just wanted to hop back in and say I'm seeing a lot of ad hominen attacks from both sides, and if we keep this up we're going to get this thread possibly locked, at the very least probably have several posts removed.
It's okay to disagree on this topic, but let's do it more agreeably everyone.
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Just a side note about all this talk about pet rocks...
They are available for Pathfinder 2! Available in Owen K Stevens 52-in-52 programs entry "Mystical Knick Knacks" and it is available now!
So run to the Open Gaming store and pick up your copy now, or even better, send out your familiar to pick up a copy! (Which does not require actions in Exploration mode xD )
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It seems like the hornet nest really didn't settle down on this thread huh?
Quite honestly, I think this topic raises some great points on both sides and highlights the real need for Paizo to officially step forward with some REAL guidelines and clarification on what Familiars are, how they can be controlled, provide some baseline Stats, and provide Errata to make it clear how they're supposed to work.
The Witch Class is going to be in print soon and if these things don't have answers you are going to continue to see a flood of posts here and other places complaining that an entire class is functionally useless, weak, underpowered, or narratively flawed because a huge part of their class is very weakly defined in terms of the mechanical rules of the system.
Heck, I even got called out as being a cheater trying to game the Action economy when we aren't even talking about a mode of play that interacts with the rules in question. Let's just reference the actual rules that guide how this is supposed to work to make is super simple.
Familiars
Familiars are mystically bonded creatures tied to your magic. Most familiars were originally animals, though the ritual of becoming a familiar makes them something more. You can choose a Tiny animal you want as your familiar, such as a bat, cat, raven, or snake. Some familiars are different, usually described in the ability that granted you a familiar; for example, a druid’s leshy familiar is a Tiny plant instead of an animal, formed from a minor nature spirit.
Familiars have the minion trait (page 634), so during an encounter, they gain 2 actions in a round if you spend an action to command them. If your familiar dies, you can spend a week of downtime to replace it at no cost. You can have only one familiar at a time.
There you have it, right there in writing, the first paragraph that defines how Familiars function says it outright, during an Encounter they get 2 actions for the cost of 1 spent by the master. I don't see ANY rules support anywhere in any text that suggests this restriction should apply outside of Encounter mode but if I'm missing something please do point it out.
Long story short, nothing in print prevents, discourages, or punishes a PC from using their Familiar to take Exploration Mode Activities.
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There's no rules that mention that that the restriction should apply outside an encounter. There's also no mention that it doesn't.
In fact, there are no mentions about how an minion should be handled outside an encounter.
And that's the whole problem in a nutshell.
Customer Service & Community Manager
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I just wanted to hop back in and say I'm seeing a lot of ad hominen attacks from both sides, and if we keep this up we're going to get this thread possibly locked, at the very least probably have several posts removed.
It's okay to disagree on this topic, but let's do it more agreeably everyone.
Perhaps the new GM guide provides advice / guidelines on familiars and / or the exploration mode? It isn't a book I have but I think a few do?
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The section on exploration mode is a good read.
• Evoke the setting with sensory details.
• Shift the passage of time to emphasize tension and
uncertainty, and speed past uneventful intervals.
• Get players to add details by asking for their reactions.
• Present small-scale mysteries to intrigue players and
spur investigation.
• When rolls are needed, look for ways to move the
action forward or add interesting wrinkles on a failure.
• Plan effective transitions to encounters
These goals definitely encourage GMs to allow active familiars during exploration, but might lean against over-powerful scouting ability. Scouting with a familiar provides a different option for transitioning to an encounter.
I liked the advice for asking a rogue Avoiding Notice to describe how they are trying to be sneaky and building off that.