@Graystone: I don't know exactly where you want to go. I consider this ability as absolutely excellent due to its range and the type of senses it brings. It seems that you don't, which is fine. But it looks like you are opposing rules to its functioning. It's always possible, there is one rule the GM can use to prevent the Familiar from detecting anything which is to consider that creatures in the dungeon are never moving. But besides that, it roughly works: The Familiar will detect the creatures on the ground as long as you use a Hex periodically (which is covered by Exploration Activities). There's not much to add.
It can be used in combat, even if I doubt it'll be extremely useful considering that the Familiar can just pinpoint an enemy who's Hidden (and only if the enemy has a scent or is moving). It's rather niche and not helping much as you still suffer from the 50% miss chance.
So a familiar given no commands during an exploration scene or outside of combat play, being a sapient minion, acts as they please.
As presented in the rules, they are never described as sapient nor do they have a quantifiable intelligence as they have NO score [or bonus now]. I mean Crawling Hands use the same base rules for familiars and they are -4 int and have a "crude sentience".
Which probably does not mean standing still in a forest letting it's witch hike further and further away. Or other "I refuse to do anything except stand here, unless ordered" silliness. Unless there's some in-game reason to play the familiar as hostile to the witch, the most rational way to use the "acts as it pleases" WRITTEN RULE is to have the familiar act as the witch's friendly companion. I.e. tag along with the witch helping in inconsequential ways.
What's reasonable varies from person to person. A cat familiar might take a nap if you can't be bothered to command it, a dog might go chase a squirrel, an imp might just tell you off and find some mischief, ect.. Base familiars ARE animals after all and the rules say "animals follow their instincts". NOTHING in the rules states that by default familiars [or AC's] follow you when not commanded: an individual DM might allow it to do so.
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...given they have no stats (they use your skills) they are hardly sapient.
The two are not really connected.
@Graystone: I don't know exactly where you want to go. I consider this ability as absolutely excellent due to its range and the type of senses it brings. It seems that you don't, which is fine.
It's a great ability tied to a familiar and it's the familiar part that I have issue with: I find the juggling required for use onerous.
It's rather niche and not helping much as you still suffer from the 50% miss chance.
You can use something like Glitterdust to move invisibility to concealed for instance. For myself, if I run into 1 invisible enemy, I'll run into a lot more of them.
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We know for a fact they are not mindless since they lack said trait.
False equivalency. no one said they are mindless, just ha hey had no intelligence.
As for RAI, even in the streams for the reveal of pf2, the creators of the game played them as fully sapient btw.
*shrug* they have not followed their own rules before in streams so I'm not sure his proves anything.
I must disagree with you. The rules for the witches familiar describe a being that teaches you and that communes with you. Rocks don't do that. Regular cats don't do that.
inanimate objects can teach you things: you can learn things from a book and a familiar is a fancy spellbook with legs. Your quote works just fine as you learning from your patron through your familiar. Try his substitution with an inanimate object:
"Your patron has sent you a familiar, a mystical creature that computer teaches you and facilitates your spells. This familiar computer follows the rules here, though as it's a direct conduit between you and your patron, it's more powerful than other familiars. Your familiar gains an extra familiar ability, and gains another extra ability at 6th, 12th, and 18th levels.
Your familiar computer is the source and repository of the spells your patron has bestowed upon you, and you must commune with your familiar use your computer to prepare your spells each day using your witch spellcasting."
Does this mean the computer is sapient?
You might want to reread the quote I provided. I've even bolded the bit that covers this: a witch's familiar is not a base familiar.
You MAY wan o reread your own quote hen: where does it say it's NOT an animal? It's "it's more powerful than other familiars" is covered by the extra familiar/master ability: unless noted otherwise, it follows the basic rules for familiars and nothing in the actual rules gives them any extra intelligence over other familiars.
But IMO a GM who *imposes* a "zero action unless directly ordered" relationship on a witch-familiar couple - by treating this agent of a higher power which teaches the witch spells, as if it is a robot that does nothing unless ordered - is IMO not reading the rules description of witch familiars for comprehension.
I mean, how dare a DM actually follow the rules... for shame! :P
PS: I'm ending the familiar sidetrack here. #1 it's not directly what the threads about and #2 the remaster might make all this moot. #3 we're saring to go in circles as has happened before and I don't foresee getting any traction on changing viewpoints here.
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PS: I'm ending the familiar sidetrack here. #1 it's not directly what the threads about and #2 the remaster might make all this moot. #3 we're saring to go in circles as has happened before and I don't foresee getting any traction on changing viewpoints here.
Your ruling is not only affecting Familiars but also Animal Companions and any kind of minions. You roughly consider than any pet user (but the Summoner) loses the ability to use an Exploration Activity because they need to constantly Command their minion.
Dogs follow their master without constant supervision. So you'd need a bit more than an implication to justify such an extreme and illogical ruling. A reading that would allow dogs to follow their master is certainly way closer to RAI.| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Idk if you have noticed but dogs tend to run away a lot. This is why you put them on leash or a pet case.
Man, it must be hard for all those shepherds running alongside their sheepdogs with leashes.
Idk if you have noticed but dogs tend to run away a lot.
Dogs do run away and if that's what you want to play that's fine. But dogs also follow their master and the GM should not step in and say you can't play that because they want all dogs to run away.
The whole thing is that you choose your relationship with your Familiar/Animal Companion. If the relationship you choose makes sense, there's no reason for the GM to forbid it unless the rules strictly say so. And the rules are not strict in that case, they are quite loose actually.
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I'm just finding it amusing that people are posting these arguments about familiars and action economy as though graystone and I haven't gone over every possibility of the current rules three times already.
Ahaha. Murksight is still incredibly bad for a level 8 feat, it's entirely unchanged
Seriously, why?
Yeah it's already being printed. I suggest not playing it if you don't like it. I do that a lot. For instance, with half the cleric domains in the game. Or any ancestry besides human. Or the entire investigator class.
But yes, murksight is garbage.
I'll never understand Paizo's hard on for keeping these kinds of sight-based feats locked behind a "natural" clause. These abilities would've been far more attractive (including Storm Druid's) if they either enabled seeing through spell effects or granted a benefit against them on top of their current benefits.
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Storm born works on spells. Same with ancestral options, like Cloud gazer. Its just Murksight that's weird and bad.I'll never understand Paizo's hard on for keeping these kinds of sight-based feats locked behind a "natural" clause. These abilities would've been far more attractive (including Storm Druid's) if they either enabled seeing through spell effects or granted a benefit against them on top of their current benefits.Ahaha. Murksight is still incredibly bad for a level 8 feat, it's entirely unchanged
Seriously, why?
Yeah it's already being printed. I suggest not playing it if you don't like it. I do that a lot. For instance, with half the cleric domains in the game. Or any ancestry besides human. Or the entire investigator class.
But yes, murksight is garbage.
Relevant quote from Storm Born:
You do not take circumstance penalties to ranged spell attacks or Perception checks caused by weather, and your targeted spells don’t require a flat check to succeed against a target concealed by weather (such as fog).
I have always interpreted the "Weather" reference to mean natural effects (like natural fog from environment). Otherwise, it would've called out magical effects. It is only written more ambiguously than Murksight, but I think Paizo wouldn't give this benefit to a level 1 feat compared to Murksight, something they evaluated (for whatever reason) to be worth of an 8th level feat.
Sadly, I think I'm on the right on this one, although I hope I'm not.
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Yeah that feat is written more vaguely but nothing about it says it works on magical weather.
It doesn't need to.
Murksight doesn't work on magic fog because it explicitly says it doesn't. Stormborn just says it works in fog.
The only reason anyone is even calling it ambiguous is because murksight is so egregiously bad, but nerfing storm born wouldn't make it any better.
I'm just finding it amusing that people are posting these arguments about familiars and action economy as though graystone and I haven't gone over every possibility of the current rules three times already.
People keep bringing it up with you two because none of them can believe just how wrong you are. :P
(or victimize nature…despite your patron being a defender of nature…)
As a side note: You can cast a spell without a valid target. It also goes around the 1 minute immunity of Hexes.
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I have got to stop reading threads about game balance for character options I'm interested in. I was excited for the remastered Witch and now I've gone back to not wanting to play one in case my character ends up being bad.
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That's understandable. If the familiar abilities are the only change to the witch and a few feats, probably not good enough to make them competitive.
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Especially not for the Rune Witch. Paizo better be making familiars outright immortal if we're supposed to be putting them in melee range.
That's understandable. If the familiar abilities are the only change to the witch and a few feats, probably not good enough to make them competitive.I strongly object to the characterization of Spirit/Stitched Familiar and Ceremonial Knife as "just a few feats."
The damage on Spirit/Stitched Familiar is straight-up the same as 3rd level fireball , and scales exactly as well. It also has side benefits. It recharges every 10 minutes, meaning it's best compared to a focus spell...that gets around focus point caps and doesn't cost a focus point to cast.
And it takes one action on your part to use. No other focus spell in the game is that damaging to a single target for that cheap of a cost - it's the same damage as pulverizing cascade and the other druid blaster spells against one target while costing, and I will bold this again, half the actions to use . That is completely OBSCENE damage.
Likewise, ceremonial knife is giving you two bonus spells roughly equal to the max spell rank you can cast - 2 (so 2nd rank spells at level 8, 5th rank spells at level 14, etc).
These two features vastly increase spell slot sustainability relative to the closest comparable classes (which also get only 3 spells per level): druid, cleric, and bard. Obviously, bard is still likely the strongest caster in the game after the remaster, but at the very least I would argue this puts witch in strong competition with druid and cleric. Not in the same niche, of course, but certainly up there in terms of raw power.
Those do sound like good feats.
I'm waiting to see the whole thing before I freak out too much. I hope I can write even fewer house rules after the remaster. I'd love for Paizo or WotC to put out a game I didn't have to house rule at all to feel good playing.
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That's understandable. If the familiar abilities are the only change to the witch and a few feats, probably not good enough to make them competitive.I strongly object to the characterization of Spirit/Stitched Familiar and Ceremonial Knife as "just a few feats."
The damage on Spirit/Stitched Familiar is straight-up the same as 3rd level fireball , and scales exactly as well. It also has side benefits. It recharges every 10 minutes, meaning it's best compared to a focus spell...that gets around focus point caps and doesn't cost a focus point to cast.
And it takes one action on your part to use. No other focus spell in the game is that damaging to a single target for that cheap of a cost - it's the same damage as pulverizing cascade and the other druid blaster spells against one target while costing, and I will bold this again, half the actions to use . That is completely OBSCENE damage.
Likewise, ceremonial knife is giving you two bonus spells roughly equal to the max spell rank you can cast - 2 (so 2nd rank spells at level 8, 5th rank spells at level 14, etc).
These two features vastly increase spell slot sustainability relative to the closest comparable classes (which also get only 3 spells per level): druid, cleric, and bard. Obviously, bard is still likely the strongest caster in the game after the remaster, but at the very least I would argue this puts witch in strong competition with druid and cleric. Not in the same niche, of course, but certainly up there in terms of raw power.
Hard agree. Spirit/stitched familiar are insane. They are so good I'm a little miffed they compete with Improved Familiar at the same level, because I like Improved Familiar and will never, ever take it over those two.
Also worth noting that wilding and rune are at the low end of the new familiar abilities. The Resentment may become the single best debuffer in the game, Starless Shadow is budget Dirge of Doom, and Fate and Flame's Faithful are both really solid buffs to your front line.
Survivability of the familiar is a concern, but probably an overblown one given the number of defensive options familiars already had and the very likely possibility we will get more.
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I have got to stop reading threads about game balance for character options I'm interested in. I was excited for the remastered Witch and now I've gone back to not wanting to play one in case my character ends up being bad.
I play Witch currently. Yes it is bottom tier class. Yes, that is a bad thing for it to be there.
But even being a bad class, the characters are still just fine and playable. I have a lot of fun with my Witch character. Even if the focus cantrips don't change, the improvements that I have seen would be a solid improvement over what we currently have.
And as was pointed out way back at the beginning of this thread - we haven't seen the new Hex cantrips. I expect that those have been improved too.
I have got to stop reading threads about game balance for character options I'm interested in. I was excited for the remastered Witch and now I've gone back to not wanting to play one in case my character ends up being bad.
It is weird that the Witch was identified as a class that needed to be remastered, but the remaster has many of the same problems as the original.
Makes me feel better for skipping this.
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I have got to stop reading threads about game balance for character options I'm interested in. I was excited for the remastered Witch and now I've gone back to not wanting to play one in case my character ends up being bad.It is weird that the Witch was identified as a class that needed to be remastered, but the remaster has many of the same problems as the original.
Makes me feel better for skipping this.
This is a weird take when we don't actually know the full extent of the remaster.
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This is a weird take when we don't actually know the full extent of the remaster.I have got to stop reading threads about game balance for character options I'm interested in. I was excited for the remastered Witch and now I've gone back to not wanting to play one in case my character ends up being bad.It is weird that the Witch was identified as a class that needed to be remastered, but the remaster has many of the same problems as the original.
Makes me feel better for skipping this.
We know murksight still sucks. So no matter what else may improve, that's one thing we can be sure of.
I strongly object to the characterization of Spirit/Stitched Familiar and Ceremonial Knife as "just a few feats."
I don't agree for Ceremonial Knife (but everyone knows my position on Wands) but I must admit Spirit and Stitched Familiar really change the Witch. These feats are no-brainers as much as Debilitating Dichotomy is for the Oracle, and they happen to be of the same level. So I have an Oracle feel out of the Witch now.
They still raise the question of the position of the Familiar on the battlefield, though, as they both have a rather limited range.