Threatening to unmake someone you made because they're not doing as they're told? Sounds a lot like parenting. XD
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I've always seen familiars as magical pseudo-constructs and not literal animals.
I prefer to allow multiple 'sources.'
Some might be special animals answering a magical call (which is purely optional) to serve an arcanist, perhaps part of some ancient treaty between the natural world and some primal arcanist in ages past (with all familiars being descended from specific lines, perhaps?).
Some might be mundane animals just bagged in the wild and brought to a special market and sold for wizards to bind as familiars.
Some might have come into creation when the wizard 'made the pact' and didn't exist before that moment (and won't exist afterwards).
Some might have existed previously, but in the First World (and not necessarily as the type of animal they have been called to become in this world), not a material world animal.
Whatever serves the need of the story / wishes of the player who has the familiar.
If I want to introduce a depressing 'familiar market' in the 'Mage quarter' which has a bunch of bedraggled animals in cages, miles and continents and worlds away from their native environments, perhaps doomed to never see another example of their species again, and fated to have an alien consciousness shoved into their brains and made into a wizard's little animal buddy, I can do that.
If a player wants to have a much less unpleasant option where their familiar is from a long line of those animals who swore a pact 10,000 years ago to 'the first wizard' to always warn them of danger and assist them in their travels, then that's an option too.
Creative Director
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To reiterate here from the stream–a familiar is a companion or friend or mentor (depending on how you want to play that relationship out). It is not a slave.So, could a familiar decide just to ditch you if the more the game proceed the spellcaster changes its habits or simply become something the familiar is no more affine with? Or its alignement is bonded to the caster ( if i go evil, so the familiar does ).
But I guess the same could be said, eventually, for a companion pet.
I've said my piece on this topic and am not interested in debating it or arguing semantics or corner cases.
Feel free to rule things how you want at your table, but the official stance from Pathfinder's Creative Director is that familiars are not slaves. Use common sense and real-world meanings to parse that as you wish in your games if you want to adhere to the official world lore.
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Quick question. Does being fired and easily replaced, ruining your current life in te process, mean that you are a slave to your current boss?
It sounds to me like the argument "familiars have very little power" applies to every job a person takes and dedicates their life to.
Welcome to critical analysis of capitalism. We have delicious tea cakes.
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Yes the very weird and constant debate over Capitalism, Feudalism, and Corporate culture in general.
And the same thing happened in every type of economic system, far worse when the state is deciding. So no idea why anyone considers a feature of the above three entities.
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Welcome to critical analysis of capitalism. We have delicious tea cakes.Quick question. Does being fired and easily replaced, ruining your current life in te process, mean that you are a slave to your current boss?
It sounds to me like the argument "familiars have very little power" applies to every job a person takes and dedicates their life to.
*Cakes are $19.99 per slice, but you have to eat it on your own time, or your are fired. Also, we don't cover dental.
I remember playing with a player that wanted to effectively enslave a Pegasus using Diplomacy. This is PF2. Basically, he felt he could enslave this majestic beast by exploiting the rules using the "Request" action and the "Shameless Request" feat to, essentially, enslave an intelligent flying horse forever and ever (he ignored the last bit about them tiring of the requests or about the thing being intelligent and so on).
Eh, some folks don't think much beyond the crunch or the mechanical advantages.
As far as familiars, I would roleplay that as not so much slavery but as an arrangement. The creature, for some reason, seeks adventure and knowledge that the PC provides. I definitely think that the DM is well within his rights to deny the PC use the familiar to do anything that an intelligent, free thinking creature would be unlikely to do (ie. sacrificing itself, etc). Earlier editions dealt with that by PCs permanently losing a level of con each time a familiar died (if I remember correctly).
The DM could inject himself/herself into the familiar in other ways, as well (possibly pretending to have this be random by throwing some dice once in a while) and have the familiar disobey here and there or prove to be a nuisance on occasion. Doing stuff like that reduces the feeling that the familiar is some poor thing pressed into indentured servitude (which it basically is).
I remember playing with a player that wanted to effectively enslave a Pegasus using Diplomacy. This is PF2. Basically, he felt he could enslave this majestic beast by exploiting the rules using the "Request" action and the "Shameless Request" feat to, essentially, enslave an intelligent flying horse forever and ever (he ignored the last bit about them tiring of the requests or about the thing being intelligent and so on).
Eh, some folks don't think much beyond the crunch or the mechanical advantages.
Let them do it, but remember that these are magical creatures that often live in areas that fey might live (who are well known for shameless requests and magical deals).
So allow them to agree to the conditions, but have the pegasus ask for its own requirements sealed with a magical pact. I am sure there are plenty of places you can have fun with that landmine "story seed".
In urban ghetto "The Dude" voice: "I just wanted to ride a majestic flying pony--a fairly typical fantasy in a fantasy roleplaying game I thought--but rather than make the game, well, fun, my crazy GM accused me of having slaver fantasies and threw me out of his game whilst calling me a racist.
Like, WTH man?"
/tongue-in-cheek
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Guy wants to ride smart fantasy flying horse for an epic battle or something? No problem.
Guy wants to use diplomacy as mind control to turn smart flying horse into perma flying volvo for lions share of campaign? Kind of a problem.
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But it's not a social justice problem insomuch as a playstyle difference problem.
Or a versimilitude problem.
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I once devoted way too much time arguing that Paladins' divine courage in D&D 3.5 was abusive. The core argument being that fear is natural and keeps us from harm. Divine courage removes fear specifically so Paladins throw themselves in harm's way. This demonstrated, I argued, that 'good' deities were actually manipulative and exploitative.
The point - I was putting too much thought into it and so are you.
It's system mechanic. There's a way to interpret it that's dark. There's also a more obvious way to interpret it that's not dark.
Familiars are not slaves... Summons on the other hand...
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Familiars are not slaves... Summons on the other hand...
Per James Jacobs, whose word is controlling for Golarion, the creatures summoned by the 'Summon X' spells aren't real, they're platonic ideals of the creatures summoned created by magic and going through the motions, not real individuals with names and histories. So...not slavery since they're not strictly real.
Planar Binding, on the other hand, can be slavery. Of course, Planar Binding's implications in that regard are really explicit and depend on how you use it...
I think part of the reason some may think of a master/slave relationship is:
1. you get MASTER abilities, and that word can be troublesome.
2. the familiar has the minion trait whose first sentence is :Minions are creatures that directly serve another creature.
so you have a "master' being directly served by another (who is seen as 'less-than' as they only get 2-actions), and some will jump to slavery. I personally prefer to think that mechanics in the game aren't meant to trick you into unintentionally becoming a slave-owner.
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Creative Director
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The use of the word "Master" when talking about familiars is associated with the word's definition of the relationship between a pet and a person, but I 100% agree that the word does have troublesome connotations. We can't change it now, but it's something that we've already been talking about how to fix and when it should be addressed.
Another option is to simply remove from the game all summoning and familiar and companion rules entirely... but I feel like that's an overreaction, and I hope that once we come out of the other side of these times as a more socially conscious society, we can have structures in the game where a character can be assisted by allies without folks interpreting that assistance as slavery.
If we don't recover and fix our society... we're all gonna have more important things to worry about than creating and playing games anyway.
As always with games you play at your table, though, you and your players should ABSOLUTELY talk over what is and isn't appropriate for your game and change those elements so that everyone's comfortable and having fun.
An easy fix would be to replace the word "master" in a summoned creature or familiar or animal companion situation with a word like "ally" or "instructor" or "mentor" or "patron."
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An easy fix would be to replace the word "master" in a summoned creature or familiar or animal companion situation with a word like "ally" or "instructor" or "mentor" or "patron."
The solution taken by most people who see their pets as family members and not as possessions is some variant on the parent child relationship.
That seems like a fine model for familiars and companions to me.
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Back in Al-Qadim, in D&D, there was a class with a type of familiar called Gen, that were kind of tiny genies, and I remember thinking at the time that it would be neat if they were indeed larval 'proto-genies,' and that as they spent time evolving and growing in power and wisdom alongside their Shair PC, they were developing to eventually grow into a full genie.
That would be a neat concept to explore for some types of familiars. They are archetypal animal spirits from some outer plane, gaining power and knowledge and experience as the wizard PC levels up, eventually to return to their home plane (upon the wizard's death in this plane, or their own apparent 'death' as the body they've created here in the material plane dies) as a tougher, smarter, more experienced beastie.
Their time 'serving' as familiar is a short cut to a personal evolution that would otherwise take centuries, on their home plane, and they go on to become powerful 'legendary' creatures back home (retaining the various familiar bonus powers such as HD/higher Int/better Natural Armor that they had as a 'familiar,' despite no longer having a connection to a mortal spellcaster).
*Cakes are $19.99 per slice, but you have to eat it on your own time, or your are fired. Also, we don't cover dental.Welcome to critical analysis of capitalism. We have delicious tea cakes.Quick question. Does being fired and easily replaced, ruining your current life in te process, mean that you are a slave to your current boss?
It sounds to me like the argument "familiars have very little power" applies to every job a person takes and dedicates their life to.
*The state has decided your skills mean you get to work as a postal worker for the rest of your life in Alaska. There is no cake because it has been deemed unnecessary by the state. You can't be fired, but must request re-assignment from your local party leader. They will decide what skills society requires, where they will be used, and whether you are allowed to move somewhere else. We do cover dental, but only those dental procedures we deem necessary for you to fulfill your state-mandated functions.
I'm glad I picked up my books early. Now I'm picturing Paizo completely removing spells like Dominate, Charm, Planar Binding, and Magic Jar out of the game all to comply with modern morality in a fictional fantasy game because there is no way to describe them as anything other than what they are: ways to force compliance using magic aka slavery.
If Paizo as a company can't accept that fantasy tropes include having very dark and evil concepts in them like slavery, genocide,vigilantism, and the like, then they are going to have a hard time producing material for fantasy gamers.
In a fantasy world with good and evil gods, devils, demons, fey, dragons, and competing humanoids, this is part and parcel of a real breathing fantasy world. It is literally the basis for entire campaigns. And players can participate in the same activities as the enemies unless they remove their spells and abilities from the game. And players do participate in this like wiping competing humanoids deemed as evil or the like.
Man, what a rough time to be in the fantasy gaming business.
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Deriven, the very first AP of 2nd edition features explicit depictions of slavery/slavers as the bad guys in three out of six books, and a traumatic instance of mind control is a driving motivation for one of the main villains.
Paizo has no trouble at all tackling difficult/dark themes, nor do they show any indication of stopping doing that.
The sky is not falling. :)
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Creative Director
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We have plenty of sinister and evil concepts in the game. We just have to be careful about presenting "evil" concepts in a way that players can take those options for their characters and claim that they're not being evil—they're just following the rules and have "been given permission by Paizo" to essentially make the game unpleasant for others at the table... be it at a convention or online or wherever.
There's PLENTY of examples of us exploring evil storylines. You see that in every adventure we publish, for example. The adventure I wrote for the first Abomination Vault has some creepy stuff in it, and the adventure I'm writing now for later in 2021 has even more in it. (Putting content warnings on adventures isn't "censorship", by the way, nor is it us watering down our stories. It's us being responsible and helping all gamers out there make the best decisions for what content they want to use at their game tables.)
But you ARE right that it's a rough time to be in the fantasy gaming business.
Or ANY business, for that matter.
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We have plenty of sinister and evil concepts in the game. We just have to be careful about presenting "evil" concepts in a way that players can take those options for their characters and claim that they're not being evil—they're just following the rules and have "been given permission by Paizo" to essentially make the game unpleasant for others at the table... be it at a convention or online or wherever.
There's PLENTY of examples of us exploring evil storylines. You see that in every adventure we publish, for example. The adventure I wrote for the first Abomination Vault has some creepy stuff in it, and the adventure I'm writing now for later in 2021 has even more in it. (Putting content warnings on adventures isn't "censorship", by the way, nor is it us watering down our stories. It's us being responsible and helping all gamers out there make the best decisions for what content they want to use at their game tables.)
But you ARE right that it's a rough time to be in the fantasy gaming business.
Or ANY business, for that matter.
I really like the content warning as an approach as opposed to simple removal, because some people may even want to use roleplaying games to explore things in a very serious way (I know I've helped people work through some things at the table.)
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Can't really wrap my head around the assertion that this is somehow censorship.
This seems like more an issue of Paizo trying to find the best way to convey the story they want to tell without giving people misconceptions about relationships. Notably, the conversation hasn't been about changing the setting at all, just maybe adjusting the language to better convey what the relationship has always been.
Familiars and such have an additional bit of thorniness to them because you have to also consider the best way to portray them mechanically in such a way that they feel fun and useful and not completely outside the player's control at the same time and I think it makes sense that maybe juggling that can lead to some issues in terms of perception.
Also uh, the notion that "slavery is bad and should be portrayed as such" is somehow some sort of wacky modern social justice overreach and not something that we just take as a given is kind of an odd one too.