Goonhub
01-13-2017, 05:20 PM
With the advent of Baleful Polymorph leading to much anguish and rejoicing all around, it came up during the IRC that maybe there could be a new wizard spell that functions to summon just one critter, the wizard's familiar. It should be called something like Summon Familiar (unless anyone has a better idea).
The player for the wizard's familiar would either be a ghost selected by the same criteria random event antagonists are (e.g. no suicides allowed), or perhaps an unlucky victim whose spirit is wrenched from their living body and bound into the arcane flesh of a familiar beastie.
While the wizard has a living familiar, the two could potentially communicate over some form of weird freaky magic connection without worries about the mundanes eavesdropping on them, and the Summon Familiar spell functions instead to teleport said familiar directly to the wizard, wherever they may be. Of course, if the familiar gets killed, which is likely, the spell would then function as before to recruit some new hapless sod as the wizard's distraction companion.
The familiar itself would be some randomly selected weaker critter, with access to a single magic spell (some weaker forms of existing wizard spells, like a single magic missile, or a wimpy little fireball, etc.) with an incredibly long cooldown, entirely chosen at random upon creation. They would be bound to the wizard's will in the same way a mindslave is bound to their master; completely loyal in every way to whatever the wizard commands.
Just in case, there should probably also be a Dismiss Familiar spell received for free if the chosen familiar is really absolutely terrible and useless, which should cause the familiar to quietly vaporise in a puff of mystical sparkles or whatever.
My only concerns would be that this might be going too far against the spirit of wizard as a force of loud and flashy destruction, where this might open up a strange approach of a wizard abducting people and then directing them from afar to ineffectually cause chaos in their absence. Or ordering them to steal the captain's spare if the critter can pick up ID cards.
What do you guys think?
The player for the wizard's familiar would either be a ghost selected by the same criteria random event antagonists are (e.g. no suicides allowed), or perhaps an unlucky victim whose spirit is wrenched from their living body and bound into the arcane flesh of a familiar beastie.
While the wizard has a living familiar, the two could potentially communicate over some form of weird freaky magic connection without worries about the mundanes eavesdropping on them, and the Summon Familiar spell functions instead to teleport said familiar directly to the wizard, wherever they may be. Of course, if the familiar gets killed, which is likely, the spell would then function as before to recruit some new hapless sod as the wizard's distraction companion.
The familiar itself would be some randomly selected weaker critter, with access to a single magic spell (some weaker forms of existing wizard spells, like a single magic missile, or a wimpy little fireball, etc.) with an incredibly long cooldown, entirely chosen at random upon creation. They would be bound to the wizard's will in the same way a mindslave is bound to their master; completely loyal in every way to whatever the wizard commands.
Just in case, there should probably also be a Dismiss Familiar spell received for free if the chosen familiar is really absolutely terrible and useless, which should cause the familiar to quietly vaporise in a puff of mystical sparkles or whatever.
My only concerns would be that this might be going too far against the spirit of wizard as a force of loud and flashy destruction, where this might open up a strange approach of a wizard abducting people and then directing them from afar to ineffectually cause chaos in their absence. Or ordering them to steal the captain's spare if the critter can pick up ID cards.
What do you guys think?