A ?Familiar? System:

[Wormtail_]

As I said before, perhaps the familiar\'s damage could impact the character. Or a thief could try to steal the familiar, and the character would suffer greatly from that attempt. A familiar might take offense at another character\'s actions/words, and attack that character, and then a brawl erupts, to be ended with the seperation of the combatants and punishment of the character/familiar. Comments?

The ritual could require the slowing down of stat income, like slower stamina/HP/mana intake as you need to maintain contact with your familiar. Something like a 10% decrease, for example.

What abilities should familiars have, outside of combat and casting spells? They might be a hinderance on characters that don\'t need the familiar. While a familiar might provide good company on journeys, the fact that they are limited means they can\'t spy unless you yourself are spying. Of course, advanced senses could prove interesting to see used...

Questions? Comments?

[Zeraph]

Some people didn?t like the idea of the familiar taking damage, so I would think that the animals would only attack the char, I think may be easier to program @ first?
Ack! A thief stealing a familiar? That would be like stealing your soul, but it may be a need quest, if you don?t have a familiar, a wizard does the separating ritual & take it away, you have to go find it or you will suffer for the rest of your chars life, joining ritual could be performed @ the end if you want?

I like the second paragraph because  that would help balance out the non-familiar vs familiar chars?

I wouldn?t think they would be a hindrance, & why would you not need a familiar, & or why would you need one @ all, I think my main Idea was to have the chars with no familiars just as strong as toughs with the double attacks, special classes such as animal trainer may be much better with a familiar?

Oh, do you mean that if a char is an animal trainer then a familiar will help him greatly? But if a char is a blacksmith, a familiar wouldn\'t be a whole lot of help & would probably be just for decoration/company?

[Wormtail_]

I meant that I am not clear on what the use of familiars should be. Should they be limited to combat/animal training, or could they have extra abilities? Do they have their own personalities, or are they merely an empty shell that is an extension of the character? Personally, I believe that familiars should have their own intelligence, and have extra abilities so that all players have to make the decision as to whether to have a familiar or not.

As for your second paragraph, it would be interesting to see used. Ransoming could be done... For example, take a guild war. Two Guild 1 members seperate and steal a Guild 2 member\'s familiar. Then, Guild 2 member suffers - how, I am not sure. Guild 1 offers to return the familiar for a price. Guild 2 has a choice of either paying or rescuing the familiar. Comments?

As for your first paragraph... That takes away the responsiblity of protecting the familiar from most non-magical creatures. If you want something, you need to pay the price. The price doesn\'t necessarily have to be the familiar taking damage to HP, but perhaps \"unique damage\" to mana, armor, weaponry, etc... That would not make too much sense, or would it?

Comments?

[hook]

i\'m pretty sure there\'s going to be a \"pet/familiar\" system in PS in the end run, because actually what good is an Animal Trainer job, if there\'s no animals to train or tame?

there\'s been some discussions already about this ...and i still think there should be a closer binding between the animal and the hu-...erm, player. dumb i\'ll-do-100%-every-idiotic-thing-that-you-say-master familiars are boring