Find Familiar
Heindrich
Member, Moderator Posts: 2,959
I have just finished my exploration of the coastline, where I found the Tome of 'Something that gives me +1 Constitution'. When I rolled my EE PC, I deliberately gave him 1 extra Constitution point (16) compared to my Vanilla run, partly because I wanted to minimise the early-game 'Oops 1-shot I'm dead and I need to reload' period, and partly because I want to try out Familiars, and I knew I'd lose 1 Con point when it dies, which will probably be unavoidable. So... now that Charname has that extra Con point, I'm ready to summon my minature dragon. 
I suspect familiars are far from effective from a gaming perspective, but given that I want to summon one for RP purposes, do they actually do anything useful at all? Is there any viable tactics or things you can do with them?
With only 12 hp, it seems a bad idea to bring it anywhere near a serious fight, and the lawful good one does not seem to have any utility value like detecting traps or pick-pocketing.
I suspect familiars are far from effective from a gaming perspective, but given that I want to summon one for RP purposes, do they actually do anything useful at all? Is there any viable tactics or things you can do with them?
With only 12 hp, it seems a bad idea to bring it anywhere near a serious fight, and the lawful good one does not seem to have any utility value like detecting traps or pick-pocketing.
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Comments
Update:
Oh nevermind, I just worked it out! Cool now I got a minature dragon in my pack. lol
So basically, you should never put 18+ in anythig, really. or rather, not something you really dont need 100%. I mean 18 constitution really help in the start etc...
Strength : More damage and better Thac0
Constitution : Gives you more health if you're a fighter, paladin, barbarian or ranger. The other classes stop gaining more health after 16 constituton.
Wisdom : Grants you more divine spells the higher wisdom you have
Dexterity : Getting 19 dexterity doesn't improve your AC (It improves at 18 and 21) but 19 dexterity will still improve your rogue skills and ranged Thac0.
Charisma : Shopping prices and reaction.
Intellect : This one isn't really that important. The difference between 18 and 19 intellect is 2% chanse to learn spells and some lore.
You can go all the way up to 25 in a stat.
But don't worry too much about the min/maxing game. A balanced character can be just effective in the long run as one maxed out in certain areas. And there are items, especially in BG2 that will set certain scores at 18 or higher, no matter what your base score is.
And yes Cons is very useful, as is Dex, but as I mentioned before, my Fighter/Mage is supposed to be a bit fragile compared to a man-mountain-of-a-warrior kinda hero, so I never wanted him to have more than 16 Constitution anyway.
I quite like the balance I have achieved. With -6 AC thanks to good gear and Dex, he avoids alot of incoming attacks and can stand toe to toe against most enemies in melee combat. However if he does get hit, it usually means I need to be careful and possibly retreat, since he is not designed to be a tanky fighter.
Ah, that'd have been useful for the Basilisks and Muntamin... I stumbled into it by accident and only had 1 Stone to Flesh scroll ready. The 'friendly ghoul' also turned on me cos I decided to rest to memorize 2 Protect vs Petri spells... Ended up getting Imoen, Minsc and Khalid turned to stone before I killed Muntamin and his pets. Obviously had to run back to Beregost and return with more scrolls... closest battle I've had where I was not forced to reload.
Also, to see what every familiar has, the spell description has a listing of all them and which alignment gets which...
And Constitution, for non-fighters, anything between 16 and 20 is meaningless, at 20 you gain a little bit of natural regeneration... But pretty much the only way to get 20 Con without cheating pretty much is being a half-orc with 19 normally and using the tome, playing through the game multiple times go get the tome over and over or being a Dragon Desciple Sorcerer who gain +1 to Con at levels 5 and 15 (though it was added in the 1.0.2014 version which may not be on steam...)