[4e] Familiars and the Suckitude Thereof

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 3:05 am

Some information I've managed to glean on familiars in 4e.

1. You take a feat to get a familiar. I believe it's open to every class.
2. Familiars give bonuses, similar to 3e, but more combat applicable.
3. Familiars are divided by tiers (heroic, paragon, epic).
4. Familiars have an "active" and "passive" mode. In "active" mode, they're out doing things. In "passive" mode, they can't be targeted or injured. You still get the bonuses
5. Familiars die in one hit, but they come back to life during a short rest.
6. Familiars can't manipulate objects unless the rules state otherwise (and there's at least one familiar, the disembodied hand, that can manipulate objects to a degree).
7. Familiars can't go beyond 100 ft. from you.

Summary: Familiars are fucking stupid. While they were open to abuse in 3e (UMD, polymorph into awesome), curbstomping any creative thinkers in the group with hard-coded rules that don't make sense is not the solution. Oh, I'm sure there's some bullshit about how they're spirit-fragments or something, but eat me--if my cat familiar wants to play with a ball of yarn, it's going to play with a ball of yarn, fuck you very much. (Wait for NoobCrusher to say, "Just role-play it (even though it goes against the rules and stuff)! Use your imagination!")

The DM of my Pathfail game let the rogue have a familiar. It occasionally feeds her CLW potions. It also uses Aid Another to help her with some tasks.

IS THE GAME BROKEN YET?

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 3:52 am

Honestly, I didn't even know they had familiars in 4e. What do they do?

-Crissa

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 3:54 am

They're in Arcane Power. They give minor bonuses; I can't think of any specifics off the top of my head.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:06 am

So... How do they compare to what you're supposedly giving up for them?

-Crissa

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:30 am

They're probably fine--remember, feats suck in 4e. You also have a million of them.

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:58 am

So do you not get the bonuses when it's in "active" mode? Since feats are only ever supposed to give minor bonuses and inconsequential crap in 4e, it would be just like them to make you choose, especially since the action economy is sacred. Either way, the familiar feat is probably a pretty good deal for a 4e feat. In fact, everybody might end up having a pet just because...well, what else were they going to blow their feat on?

sake · Post by **sake** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:56 am

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:In fact, everybody might end up having a pet just because...well, what else were they going to blow their feat on?

One of the other feats that do things that should've probably just been free in the first place?

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:08 am

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:In fact, everybody might end up having a pet just because...well, what else were they going to blow their feat on?

Yeah, pretty much I never found many useful things to burn feats on, especially in heroic tier.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 3:17 pm

Active and Passive familiars? Wait, how are they explaining an actual living being being able to be turned on and off at will?

I'm curious as to whether the bonus given by a familiar is better than a different feat would get.

Then, does one feat allow you to change familiar, or do you have to spend one feat for a heroic familiar, one for a paragon familiar and one for epic?

Just... terrible really.

What exactly should a familiar do though? From what I remember in fantasy, most familiars don't give any direct benefits to the person, but are either:

- like having a third nipple, just a sign of being magical

- a magical being themselves who can do magic- sort of like a Paladin's mount

- an animal that has more intelligence than normal that is another character

All in all, either useless or about the same as having another party member. The nearest in game would be having an NPC helping you out.

Except of course Daemons from Northen Lights. Now they were fucking awesome. I'd love one of those.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 3:28 pm

Parthenon wrote:Active and Passive familiars? Wait, how are they explaining an actual living being being able to be turned on and off at will?

Easy.

World of Warcraft wiki wrote:Combat pets have their own abilities. Once a pet is summoned, its action bar appears above the player's action bar. All combat pets share six commands; they are Attack, Follow, Stay, Aggressive, Defensive, and Passive.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 3:42 pm

Win.

Funny thing is, when I pulled a 4.Fail = WoW on someone, they tried to counter by saying that no, it wasn't all about grinding on the MOBs, it was about flailing for piddly shit on the raid bosses... Except oh wait, SOLOs. FAIL.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 3:45 pm

Merlin's Archimedes is basically just a bird that can talk. And pass secret messages long distances, and spy, and beat up a dog.

Fitz's Nighteyes is a bad-ass super-dog that uses shared senses to give Fitz a sort of "always flanking" deal in combat and it is personally good enough to take a low-level mook.

Hans Hedgehog's riding chicken is basically just a badass chicken. While it can specifically outrun a horse, I don't think it's that impressive in a fight.

Wotan's Hugen can scry and tell the future. Also it can talk and scout and do all the other stuff that Archimedes can do. Honestly, in combat I think it's just a Raven, or at least not much more.

-Username17

MartinHarper · Post by **MartinHarper** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:14 pm

I assumed that active/passive familiars was because of this:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0003.html

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:48 pm

Roy wrote: Funny thing is, when I pulled a 4.Fail = WoW on someone, they tried to counter by saying that no, it wasn't all about grinding on the MOBs, it was about flailing for piddly shit on the raid bosses... Except oh wait, SOLOs. FAIL.

I never really minded all the so called MMORPG elements of 4E. The only thing that really bothered me about 4E (and made it fail in my mind) is simply that it wasn't a very interesting combat game. To make matters worse, the combats were long and drawn out for no real good reason.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:56 pm

I agree. Adapting MassMOG elements isn't inherently a problem, as long as they're elements that work. I think there are a number of lessons that tabletop gaming could learn from desktop gaming.

Of course, the other problem when doing this sort of thing is adaptation decay. Some things are ideally suited to their original medium and do not transition well. Frank had a thing about how in WoW, the math is free and the graphics are expensive, while in D&D the opposite is true, which is a good example.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:14 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote: Of course, the other problem when doing this sort of thing is adaptation decay. Some things are ideally suited to their original medium and do not transition well. Frank had a thing about how in WoW, the math is free and the graphics are expensive, while in D&D the opposite is true, which is a good example.

Yeah, though in many ways, I think 4E was a bit better than 3E as far as math goes. high level NPC construction is one area where that really shows. Doing that is trivial for a computer, but very difficult for a person.

A lot of the concepts of 4E were good, but the actual implementation sucked. The powers were just too bland, the rituals sucked, and combat is too slow paced and boring. It's just all about focus fire, and that sucks.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:33 pm

The thing is, any argument based on computers do math faster is more applicable to 4.Fail, as you're stuck tracking lots of trivial bullshit. The 3.5 math requires actual DECISIONS, something computers are very poor at. Likewise, having a game all about combat is best done on a computer, due to hardware limitations for the other stuff. Said computer would do it faster, thus making it a better combat game.

After all, if getting through a round was as simple as flipping through a few menus, and watching some attack animations it'd also be much shorter. Likewise, if you had to roll dice for Quadra Magic Ultima, your game is bad and you should feel bad.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:20 pm

No, you misunderstand; it's not that the ability to manipulate or not manipulate objects is itself a balance issue, it's that the familiars need to be on even footing with each other. If your raven has all the awesomeness of a raven AND all the awesomeness of a rat, then nobody would ever take the rat familiar, and you'd end up with a situation where everyone just takes the (just for instance, and totally not a reference to any other edition) the owl or hawk familiar, because they're simply the best all-around.

Exactly as with the druid's Skittering Sneak wild shape, the point is to keep a familiar from being the be-all end-all of the party's sneaking around. The rule 'cannot manipulate objects' is there to provide the GM backing for that; it's already clear in the book that RAI is that familiars can interact with the world around them, just not (by intent) in a mechanically relevant way. Suggestions for how to roleplay a familiar include: that your falcom leaves rodent corpses in your sleeping bag, that your raven knocks its beak on things, that your spider spins webs that your crafter homonculus maks statues.... these are all forms of interaction and in many cases manipulation of the environment around them. From the book.

So, a raven can't throw a switch. Whatever, cry yourself to sleep over it.

Much more likely is that many DMs whined about how one person could simply have a small flying NPC they could control just solve all their problems for them. "Locked in jail? My familiar's gonna take care of that for me." "Trapped hallway? Nah, I'll have my familiar check for the switch." "Ambush? Yeah, right. My familiar's already found them and told me about it, obviously." Blech.

Sigh. This is why 4e sucks.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:41 pm

Lols. Using Familiars as trap bait makes you lose more XP than using yourself (who is twice as hard to kill) and dying.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:41 pm

So the fundamental problem which most people on this board have with 4e is the idea that 'unique = bad'?

Kind of an ironic problem for EBD.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 9:00 pm

CatharzGodfoot wrote:So the fundamental problem which most people on this board have with 4e is the idea that 'unique = bad'?

Kind of an ironic problem for EBD.

4.Fail does fake uniqueness. Where they basically do it just to fuck with you (Evil Eye) or just to appear different (Leader/Defender) while being functionally identical.

Put another way, imagine a typical round pizza... except instead of being cut into pie like slices, they chop it up like onions, remove the actual sauce and cheese and toppings and such, then toss it like a salad, toss their own salad into it, and offer it to you.

In other words, they're Doing It Wrong, and because of this they fucked it up. Had they just made the goddamn pizza right, you wouldn't have any issue.

...Fuck, now I'm hungry.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 4:55 pm

No, shut up. It isn't a matter of doing it wrong in that sense. Thats just a preferences. What makes 4e bad isn't that it just isn't appealing because it has too many elves/ninjas/whatever. That may not make a game you like, but it doesn't make it a bad game.

Its a bad game because on a mechanical level, shit just doesn't work. On top of that, they *also* did what you just did, and decreed that playing a different way is somehow inherently wrong.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 5:03 pm

Voss wrote:No, shut up. It isn't a matter of doing it wrong in that sense. Thats just a preferences. What makes 4e bad isn't that it just isn't appealing because it has too many elves/ninjas/whatever. That may not make a game you like, but it doesn't make it a bad game.

Its a bad game because on a mechanical level, shit just doesn't work. On top of that, they *also* did what you just did, and decreed that playing a different way is somehow inherently wrong.

Pizza is not Salad. Don't fucking treat it as such. If you do, you are objectively Wrong.

What 4.Fail did is say you're going to do it this way because Giant Frog, it isn't the best way, and there isn't even anything to support doing it this way since there is no hardware to be limited by sprite limitations. The difference is between someone saying 'Don't fucking use Power Lines as a fucking tightrope' and someone saying 'touch the steering wheel three times before starting your car'. One is the right way of doing things, and one is pointless bullshit that might be a sign of OCD.

You can flail and commit Paizil Fail all you want, but in the end you will be just as Horrifically Wrong as when you started, and will also be tired and shamed from being mocked by your betters.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 5:46 pm

Roy wrote:The thing is, any argument based on computers do math faster is more applicable to 4.Fail, as you're stuck tracking lots of trivial bullshit. The 3.5 math requires actual DECISIONS, something computers are very poor at. Likewise, having a game all about combat is best done on a computer, due to hardware limitations for the other stuff. Said computer would do it faster, thus making it a better combat game.

Well 3.5 and 4E both have problems. In 3.5 it's the massive amount of time it takes to create NPCs and other characters before combat. Creating a character, even a PC, is a terrible exercise in dumpster diving. and massive fail. Tracking things during combat tends to be not as big an issue because it's a binary state game. If something affects you during combat, it generally takes you out of combat entirely with the exception of HP damage.

In 4E, the tracking issues are all during combat, where you've got to worry about who marked who this round, and on whose turn the "until end of turn" daze effect actually ends on and what status effects everyone has active for this turn. And if you get into aftereffects, it gets even more confusing.