A note on familiars.

Anduin

I wrote this in another thread. Thought it may be useful here. Please feel free to add to the info.

Each familiar has a perk. But these perks are usually negated by your need to face more and more powerful enemies as you progress. For reasons unfathomable. Familiars do not progress with you until you reach ToB, and even then the progression they make is poor and not worth the effort to take them out your backpack...

Pseudo Dragon can actually be used in a fight, in BG1 certainly, it is dangerous and can keep a group going. It also heals itself. But after awhile in BG2 sending in your dragon could be suicide and a recipe for losing 1 constitution point. Quasit and Dust Mephit are fighting familiars also but even though they have good resistances and heal as well, the sleep effect of the dragon is just BETTER.

Your thieving animals i.e. Rabbit, Cat, Ferret, are poor thieves. They cannot drink potions of master thievery so you stuck at the levels they come with. Not bad at the start of BG1, absolutely a waste of time by BG2. They can pickpocket and hold an item for you I suppose... But that is that.

A lot of talk is wasted on the resistances of all the familiars. Lets face it, none are 100%. and due to pitiful hp it only means they survive a couple of more rounds out in the open before dying a pointless death.

However...

Imp can turn into a slime and become 100% magic resistant. Very useful send one in against a wizard or lich, let it cast all it's spells. Wait for said wizard to get frustrated and wade in with dagger... You make an appearance and end the sorry mage. Perfect. So powerful they nerfed the hp of the Imp. It's other polymorphous traits ain't bad either, although the hp thing is an issue later on, and not very useful after chapter 4 or 5 in BG1. The slime however is useful all the way through to ToB.

The best for me is the fairy dragon. Useless in a fight. No thieving skills. Resistance ain't that good either.
BUT IT CAN CAST Invisibility 10" Sphere. Solid gold. Rest. Cast. Send out with a real thief and disarm those traps. You can use it through ToB as well, just chuck a non-detection spell on them first. A true scout. However it was so solid gold in BG2 it did not get many extra benefits in ToB...

So my list of familiars in rank are...

Gold Medal = Fairy Dragon Chaotic Good
Silver Medal = Imp Lawful Evil
Bronze Medal = Pseudo Dragon Lawful / Neutral Good
Fourth = Dust Mephit Neutral Evil
Fifth = Quasit Chaotic Evil
Sixth = Ferret Lawful Neutral
Seventh = Rabbit True Neutral
Eighth = Cat Chaotic Neutral

Why can't you have a Tressym or a Wolf? A Neutral Good could be a winter wolf or some kind of good aligned dog type... The natural antithesis of the cat..

EDIT: LadyRhian picked up on my spelling mistake... Tresset indeed...

LadyRhian

@Anduin You mean a Tressym? (winged cat). In Pen and Paper, Lawful Good could get a Brownie who could cast spells for/on you. They also had familiars like a toad and owl. Still wishing for those. A wolf would be too big for the spell, if I remember correctly.

Anduin

@LadyRhian. Great stuff! I would have loved a Brownie, Toad or Owl. Although realistically there is only space for one more familiar, due to alignment restrictions, without dropping a familiar that is already in game... I have a sudden urge to write a feature request...

MartySilverblade

Anduin said:

A Neutral Good could be a winter wolf or some kind of good aligned dog type...

Fyi, Winter Wolves are generally evil aligned. See here: http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Winter_wolf_(creature)

Luge

Modders: There's an opening here for a "More useful familiars mod".

There are threeI know of already, but neither really do familiars justice. Cbisson's Familiar Pack is a few years old and not updated for BG:EE. I don't think it really keeps with the spirit of the world, though; giving you bear familiars and things that don't really fit.
http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/137-cbissons-familiar-pack/

StrixO's "Choose your familiar mod" lets you pick which one you want, instead of giving you the one for your alignment. It doesn't improve them, though.
http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/890-bg-cast-find-familiar-and-choose-any/

JOG made one to enhance the fairy dragon (but only that one, and I think it's overpowered).
http://mods.jo-ge.net/bg/index.htm

L.

Anduin

@Luge Played with them all. I love the fairy dragon. It was a useful companion on a huge BGT megamod.

@MartySilverblade Yes aware of the alignment. Do the celestial planes have wolves? Maybe just a dog then!

Luge

@Anduin As have I. Although the fairy mod makes that one much more useful, in the vanilla game I generally found the ferret (75% pickpockets) or rabbit (50% detect traps, stealth) more useful. Would be great if you could choose each time you levelled up to add 25% to a thief skill or add a level 1 spell.

L.

Anduin

@Luge Genius idea! I have already made one feature request involving familiars. This I think could be easier to implement as you would just have a spell progression on the spell... i.e. you would cast the spell at lvl 2 and would get a) Cast at lvl 4 and get b) etc...

syllog

Really, they don't need to *do* more they just need to be less of a liability so you don't always keep them in your pack. Just walking around with one and very rarely using its ability is fun.

Allowing:
(a) a way to recoup lost CON (e.g. remove the lost CON effect every 2/3 levels - so it's still a long term penalty, but not permanent)
(b) defense spells cast by the mage on the mage to affect the familiar (e.g. stoneskin, shield, spell deflection, invisibility, etc.)

As they are just defense spells it shouldn't be unbalancing, but makes the familiar something other than an exposed, disembodied organ for enemies to skewer...