Since I think the old pet/familiar topics have fallen off this board, I will try and simplify a few things and hope it will give you guys/gals something to think about.
Familiars have been talked about and in the talking about them it has been thought that to create a familiar it would be done at character creation. When you create your character, you sacrafice a few stats to be placed into what ever type of familiar you choose. this will help ballance the issue of two players created at the same time, one with and the other without a familiar. The one without the familiar will be stronger, faster, and have more hit points than a person that has a familiar. This equals out though cause the person with a familar has a partner to rely on that fills those gaps.
There has also been some thought into the area of at higher levels a character could summon a pet of some kind. The brown way of magic is listed as not only nature element but a conjuring magic. Conjuring is creating something or can be considered summoning something into existance. So in theory if you combine the brown way magic with another of the ways you could conjure a creature set to the specific way you combined it with. For example if you used the cunjure ability of brown with something of the blue way you could possibly summon an elemental of water. If you used the brown way with something of the dark way you could possibly conjure a necromatic type pet say like a goul or skeleton of some kind.
There is one other thing that a player character could consider a pet and that would be mounts. Currently there are two mounts that have been mentioned publicly and those are the Pterasaur and the Megora. Both are winged creatures of varying ability and status. It would be like comparing a thoroughbred(sp) with a clidesdale(sp). The pterasaur is a very expensive animal and mostly used for basic transpirtation. The Megora is a very strong animal and used mainly by farmers like a pack mule to haul heavy loads from level to level. Both animal could be fought from like mounted steads but one is considered a rich man\'s ride while the other is a more afordable one.
Now don\'t take any of this as, this is how it is and will be, but as this is what has been talked about in the other forum threads a while back. These are things you fans have come up with in the different familiar and pet topics. The things about the megoras and pterasaurs is simply my interpitation of what is writen on the main site. With all this now said, maybe this thread can continue with some more pet/familiar ideas and abilities.
