So I was wondering if I can use Pest Form to become small enough to ride my raven Familiar?
Since tiny just says under 5 feet, can I make my Raven/Owl/Bat Large enough and my self(A praying mantis)small enough to ride it?Thoughts?
Um kinda. You can get your pet the ability to assume a humanoid form now so in theory if they did they could pick you up and you could be like your familiars familiar.
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Without an ability such as Snatch (Creature Ability from the Bestiary), there is no such RAW support for companions of any kind carrying a Player Character.
Flight is intentionally locked off until higher levels because it is nearly impossible to balance around at lower levels without flat-out requiring puzzles, dungeons, and encounter to be solved with flight in the first place.
I would say don't count on your GM allowing this and if they do, expect them to either start throwing exremely deadly ranged creatures or ones who can fly on their own at your party during every encounter.
I have to say while I like the humanoid transformation option and it is very thematic it is also makes a bit odd the whole master familiar relationship.
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Um kinda. You can get your pet the ability to assume a humanoid form now so in theory if they did they could pick you up and you could be like your familiars familiar.So I was wondering if I can use Pest Form to become small enough to ride my raven Familiar?
Since tiny just says under 5 feet, can I make my Raven/Owl/Bat Large enough and my self(A praying mantis)small enough to ride it?Thoughts?
That would be kinda funny.
The NPC tries casting charm on your humanoid familiar as you ride it.
And you are like wrong target buddy.
That is actually hilarious.
But seriously, I think the devs were looking to make riding a flying animal pretty difficult or impossible. Too many lessons learned the hard way from PF1, no doubt.
Lessons like how to have too much fun?
Not a familiar but you could do this with an animal companion like an eagle.
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Like "How to Break the Game and Ruin Fun For the Rest of the Table"Lessons like how to have too much fun?Um kinda. You can get your pet the ability to assume a humanoid form now so in theory if they did they could pick you up and you could be like your familiars familiar.So I was wondering if I can use Pest Form to become small enough to ride my raven Familiar?
Since tiny just says under 5 feet, can I make my Raven/Owl/Bat Large enough and my self(A praying mantis)small enough to ride it?Thoughts?
That would be kinda funny.
The NPC tries casting charm on your humanoid familiar as you ride it.
And you are like wrong target buddy.
That is actually hilarious.
But seriously, I think the devs were looking to make riding a flying animal pretty difficult or impossible. Too many lessons learned the hard way from PF1, no doubt.
Naw, get everyone riding a bird or something cool.
Naw, get everyone riding a bird or something cool.Like "How to Break the Game and Ruin Fun For the Rest of the Table"Lessons like how to have too much fun?Um kinda. You can get your pet the ability to assume a humanoid form now so in theory if they did they could pick you up and you could be like your familiars familiar.So I was wondering if I can use Pest Form to become small enough to ride my raven Familiar?
Since tiny just says under 5 feet, can I make my Raven/Owl/Bat Large enough and my self(A praying mantis)small enough to ride it?Thoughts?
That would be kinda funny.
The NPC tries casting charm on your humanoid familiar as you ride it.
And you are like wrong target buddy.
That is actually hilarious.
But seriously, I think the devs were looking to make riding a flying animal pretty difficult or impossible. Too many lessons learned the hard way from PF1, no doubt.
Group flight/easy-access flight can work for homebrew, especially if flying's the party norm. But it's awfully difficult to calibrate for APs & PFS Scenarios. I appreciate that many of the fly/teleport spells have been bumped a level. It'd be a shame if the party had to traverse the "Forest of DOOM" only to fly right over it. Same for mountainous adventures, bridges, rappelling into chasms, etc. To have those obstacles drain resources for one party and be trivial for another makes balancing difficult.
"The walls are full of swarms of scarabs!""We fly past them, using zero resources since we're all flying anyway."
"Oh."
"No, wait, we nuke them from orbit w/ Cantrips."
"Mumble, mumble."
Not that this might not eventually occur anyway, but then we're talking high level spells and most opponents being built to tackle flyers (or even teleporters).
One of my prospective PFS PCs would've been riding a small Air Elemental familiar and using Ride-By Attack in the early-mid levels (5th-7th?) I think it'd have been really fun, based on Pecos Bill riding a whirlwind. Except tactically it would've been brutal against published adventures, at least until late game.
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A Jack Chalker scifi novel many decades ago featured a detective going undercover as a duo: a human with a small dragon pet performing on the street (and perhaps setting up a deal?). The criminals got the jump on the pair and blasted the human dead, only for the dragon, who was the actual detective, to get the upper hand on them. The human had only been a facsimile built for his disguise.
It was a helluva an introduction.
Not sure losing one's familiar so often would be worth it.
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Naw, get everyone riding a bird or something cool.Like "How to Break the Game and Ruin Fun For the Rest of the Table"Lessons like how to have too much fun?Um kinda. You can get your pet the ability to assume a humanoid form now so in theory if they did they could pick you up and you could be like your familiars familiar.So I was wondering if I can use Pest Form to become small enough to ride my raven Familiar?
Since tiny just says under 5 feet, can I make my Raven/Owl/Bat Large enough and my self(A praying mantis)small enough to ride it?Thoughts?
That would be kinda funny.
The NPC tries casting charm on your humanoid familiar as you ride it.
And you are like wrong target buddy.
That is actually hilarious.
But seriously, I think the devs were looking to make riding a flying animal pretty difficult or impossible. Too many lessons learned the hard way from PF1, no doubt.
Group flight/easy-access flight can work for homebrew, especially if flying's the party norm. But it's awfully difficult to calibrate for APs & PFS Scenarios. I appreciate that many of the fly/teleport spells have been bumped a level. It'd be a shame if the party had to traverse the "Forest of DOOM" only to fly right over it. Same for mountainous adventures, bridges, rappelling into chasms, etc. To have those obstacles drain resources for one party and be trivial for another makes balancing difficult.
"The walls are full of swarms of scarabs!"
"We fly past them, using zero resources since we're all flying anyway."
"Oh."
"No, wait, we nuke them from orbit w/ Cantrips."
"Mumble, mumble."
Not that this might not eventually occur anyway, but then we're talking high level spells and most opponents being built to tackle flyers (or even teleporters).One of my prospective PFS PCs would've been riding...
I've never found it particularly difficult to calibrate, hallways and ceilings tend to do just fine.
Though I will admit doing Tyranny of Winds from bird back was amazingly fun, mostly because it made the plane fun and not punishing (much to the other players dismay). I really want to see an AP or society season where we free more elemental lords.