A ?Familiar? System:

[Zeraph]

The reason I created this post is to make a ?Familiar? system that the devs can use when they make this part of the game: (If they haven?t already done this?, didn?t find on forum search...) This is simplified for briefness:

:diamond: Please, No ?Pets are annoying? Replies! (If you don?t Want one you Wont get one!)

The fallowing is an adaptation of the 3nd reply of This Post?

Here is the current Outline of the ?familiars? system, feel free to reply & get your say in, This was roughly based on ?His Dark Materials Trilogy?:

1) Everyone is born with a ?familiar? as a part of you (Hidden):
1.1) You need to perform some sort of magical separation ritual for you to see your familiar.

2) Your familiar is a part of you, if it gets hurt or dies, so do you:
2.1) You & your familiar have the same amount of HP, & maybe The same resistance/armor.

3) You can?t be more then 10-15ft away from your familiar, (you will feel like your soul is getting ripped from your body)?
3.1) Some exceptions to this may apply for flying familiars, we will see?
3.I) In-game hard to implement, maybe if it gets that far from you it re-spawns nearby / other suggestions?

4) When you first get a familiar, it can change into any animal shape (real or mythical) depending on what Way you have it fallow (Crystal, Blue, etc..)
4.1) When you reach a certain level (??) you choose for it to be one form only depending on what way it fallows / or it will only change into animals of one Way of your choose (depending on what you like best)
4.2) A familiar?s look reflects what kind of person you are, ie. Great for the role-playing aspect!
4.3) you can also choice to have it fallow a unnamed ?Fighting Way? that does not use magic, but uses attacks similar to weapons ie. Porcupines shoot quills like ranged weapons or something like this?
4.I) Multiple forms hard to Implement, limited forms may be available. Probably use already made animal models (animals found commonly in game, maybe different textures?)

5) Your familiar is the opposite sex of it?s owner except for rare occasions:
5.I) Maybe familiars don?t having a sex it?s easier for the dev team & Kran??

6) A ?hide? feature may be implemented later were you carry or have you familiar rest on your shoulders?
6.I) Implementation: something like when you pick up an item?


I) Balance issues between familiar & non-familiar chars:
I.1) Skills & Exp, chars with familiars will have skills/exp divided amongst you & your familiar, attacks with a familiar will not be about the same as if you had no familiar (some advantages/disadvantages apply?)
I2) Maybe Chars can choose to re-merge with there familiar & gain the skills/exp & also re-separate @ special temples with some sort of exp/skill sacrifice done mathematically, balance calculations later?


Update history:
May 3, 2004: None (First Version)

 :] Thanks for Reading; Please feel free to contribute, sorry, tried to make this as brief as possible?

[Keung Darosyl]

Hmmm...sounds interesting.  But it would be unfair for people who don\'t have them since you\'d be against (or at least competeing for monster exp) somebody with effectivley twice the firepower.  And how would you order it around and such?  Or would it mirror your motions?

Also, if it dies, you die?  That could be hard to deal with.  What if you just take a lot of damage (something like in DnD when a familiar dies, only with much more damage taken).

[Zeraph]

Ok, first I am thinking up balance info, your firepower is cut in half or something for people with familiars,

Also: 2.1) You & your familiar have the same amount of HP, & maybe The same resistance/armor.

So you wont get get killed from an attack on familiar etc. some disadvantage is that you can be attacked from 2 places?.

[Toadhead]

hm.... more interesting would be two worlds.

Everybody will live in the normal world, but there is an \"dark world\", in the dark world everything is exactly the same only everything is dark and gray (no colors).

If you\'re born in the normal world you can\'t stay long in the dark world, like 30 minutes and after that you will explode.

When your in the dark world all people you see there will exactly do the same movements as they do in the real worlds. When you kill someone here he will die in the normal world. When you go to the dark world everybody in the normal world would see you completely \"black\", you don\'t have any colors, so they know that your from the dark world. When your in the dark world your own player in the dark world would not longer do the same movements, you will be able to use him to attack others but note that when this player dies you will die too! You can also take this dark player to the normal world but he also needs to return after 30 minutes.

To get in the dark world you need to use a portal, and this is ofcourse not an easey task, you\'ll need to use a very powerfull spell. You can only do this when your very good in magic AND you\'ll need to cast this spell with 4 others, only with 5 people you can open a portal.

[Draklar]

Wish List
anyway, this idea kinda gives me hack&slash feeling... :/

[Moogie]

Toad: What relevance to familiars does your post have... at all... anywhere?

It doesn\'t sound like a good idea anyways.


Zeraph: You\'re quickly becoming quite a respected member of the community from the quality of your posts. :] Let me challenge a few of your points:


1. Why would everyone be born with a familiar? If these creatures were infact seperated from your soul by arcane rituals, shouldn\'t they be somewhat limited to spellcasting characters? (A hulking barbarian Kran with a magical little faerie doesn\'t look good in my mind, that\'s all...)

2. I think it would be unfair to kill the player just because his weakling creature got picked on by a few trolls. And for those who might reply \"it wouldn\'t be weak if you trained it\", not everyone will be combat-orientated characters, so not everyone will be training their familiars to be vicious killing machines.

3. Perhaps... I don\'t know whether I like this idea or not. But it would be kinda cool to be able to \'lose\' your pet, and then have to journey back into dangerous territory to rescue it (or abandon it there if you really didn\'t care, evil so-and-so\'s!).

4. I like this. As the familiars are magical and controlled by you, it seems reasonable to give you the choice of how it looks. If we were talking about tamed animals I\'d say no... but familiars/summons, go for it.

5. This should be left to choice. Why force the familiar to be the opposite sex? ...any particular reason? *is female and would prefer a female familiar if she could have one*

6. Yeah, if it\'s small enough... Can\'t imagine a dire tiger sitting on somebody\'s shoulders though... 8o



Any thoughts/comments?

[Ineluke]

how about having the familiar always follow you  and it wont do anything until you use a spell or item where you project your will into the familiar. You then go into a trance and are completly vernerable but you now are the familiar and able to use all of the attacks and skills of the familiar until you release the hold. After a high level it will occasionally attack but only to defend you.

The more you take care of your familiar by feeding and playing withg it the more of a chance it will take damage or attack  for you but it will never attack more than once for every 20 of your attacks and never defend more than 1 for every 10 times you take damage. It should have its own hp magic and skill meters and if it is killed it should like you less for letting it die thus reducing the amount of times it will atack or defend for you. You can change out familiars as often as you like but you lose and ground gained with that familiar.

Skills that you can use while possesing the familiar will vary depending on the familiar.

[Zeraph]

Mogura: This roughly based on ?His Dark Materials? & I though we will probably change many things in it, it is a basic outline,

I personally would like to choose male or familiar, this is only according to the books, but I think for now we may just have one sex like the Kran, I would like to maybe see animals made of rocks for the Kran familiar or something.

Again the thing about everyone having one, based on the books, but we can definitely change that if anyone isn?t comfortable with it?

I would like to se a more active role though, because this way your familiar is a part of you, it has the same armor/HP so if 20 monsters gang up on it, you would die, just as if 20 of them ganged up on a non-familiar char. There isn?t any weakness difference between char & familiar?

What do you think?

[Syzerian]

the way i think of fimiliars:
by syzerian aralos

small and usually cute (exception to draklars perfect one) animals that sit on your shoulder and have almost no benefit if any. if of any benefit will usually cast very weak spells or increase a stat determined by the type of fimiliar. usually given to people as a reward.
i like fimiliars because they add a nice touch to the game
also, if they werent permanently mounted on your shoulder it would be nice for them to follow you like in morrowind how they will take the exact same path you had taken (pitty they cant jump though)

[Kuiper7986]

I think those are all good ideas, not really developed, but how can they? There aren\'t any real monsters yet. Point is they\'re still good ideas.

[Wormtail_]

In the His Dark Materials trilogy, the reason that the familiar (can\'t remember what they were called there) were the opposite gender was something like a yin-yang relationship. Or saidin/saidar in the WoT series, where the completely opposite forces worked together to \"turn the wheel of time.\"

If the familiar is killed, perhaps the main character feels a great shock, and is uncontrollable and motionless for a long while. If the main character is killed, the familiar dies, as the person whom the familiar came into existence with dies, and the familiar, losing its ties to existence, fades away. Maybe somewhat vague, but worth a try. I\'m basing this off my poor memory of the HDM series.

Syzerian, I believe you were describing what I think of as a symbiotic creature. Symbiotes are not as important to the main character as familiars, or not as attached. Familiars are companions and friends, in my view, that help you in your time of need. And even might offer useful advice if you can communicate.

[Vengeance]

I\'m personally in favor of certain wizard classes or certain races having familiars.   They are very, very hard to code though and have them be cool.

- venge

[Zeraph]

I think that all characters should have the right to have a familiar, since they are hard to code, we might as well make it for everyone?s benefit, if they want it.
I?d say have familiars @ least use magical spells & if you have empathy, maybe they can talk to you using a NPC script?maybe recording the chars movement & then fallowing it exactly would be best, or just @ first have it attached to the character (like item) & then maybe make a familiar walking script, would that be the most difficult aspect of programming one?

It would probably be more of an extension of the character so I guess you wouldn?t need a separate HP bar, how about familiars are invincible but the monsters do not attack them, but if you die then your familiar dies?much easier to implement with a simple re-spawn script? With familiars not doing stuff more then 10 ft. away then abuse of this invincibility wouldn?t be possible. & if your familiar attacks something, the monster will just go strait to the char, as if the char shot a arrow @ it or something.

Would that make it simpler?

[Wormtail_]

I think that even if the character and familiar are limited in distance, there would still be abuse of the invincibility. A mage could just have the familiar in front of him/her/it, in a surrounding with rocks. Then they\'ll use magical spells that just pop up, explode, and fade. Or someone could use a mortar-like weapon. Only if such weapons and spells are implemented, of course.

Perhaps damage to the familiar could be damage to the character as well. It would give a cost to having a familiar, for the beneficial advantages. A character that doesn\'t want that responsibilty could simply not go through the ritual that allows for \"familiar contact.\" Assuming that it\'s implemented, of course. All characters should have the right, I agree, but not be required to have a familiar. It might be more difficult to implement, though, but I have no knowledge of programming, so I wouldn\'t know.

Comments?

[Zeraph]

There probably will not be a contact avoidance put on them since they only interact with chars, familiars would have a very limited attack range, that is it would be the same as casting a ranged spell by a non familiar char? They could be client controlled with customizable & downloadable ai scripts with some limitations that could be set by the server? this will get the user to program & or download AI scripts & or make a little settings wind about it? we will have advantages to having one, but also disadvantages as well? anyone have ideas?