Rogue familiars

[Sartain]

So, I had to pick a familiar for an evil character and realized that the Pixie is the only one with rogue skills. Which is a darn shame if you're a spellcaster of a more malicious bent, I think. Would it not be awesome if say, the Imp also had those skills so you could choose a familiar a bit closer to your moral persuasion, if you wanted a rogue familiar?

[Richørd]

Current familiars are extremely lackluster and I am still wondering about how they have never been adjusted on Arelith.

If you want the most out of your familiar simply stick to the pixy or the pseudodragon for now.

One is a pocket-rogue for traps, doors and chests, the other is a permanent truesight machine (even though Pseudodragons have never had TS in DnD)

[Harkath]

They were made mega-OP a while back and then turned back to normal.

[MissEvelyn]

They were made mega-OP a while back and then turned back to normal.

Pretty much this. I remember my Pixie having such high AC that a level 30 warlock had a hard time hitting it with blasts.

[Sartain]

I don't really care much about them power-wise, I just wish that there were more evil choices for utility. Maybe also give the Eyeball True Seeing like the Pseudodragon, so there are evil mirrors for the two useful ones

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

One is a pocket-rogue for traps, doors and chests, the other is a permanent truesight machine (even though Pseudodragons have never had TS in DnD)

Monster True-Seeing in NWN rolls the effects of see invisibility (including the ability to focus into the ethereal plane) with BlindSense, which is what dragons have. Blindsense does, in fact, ignore the fact that you're sneaky and reveal your location, even if you're invisible. It utilizes things like scent, displacement of air currents, and echolocation. A dragon that knows your scent would be able to identify you by your presence alone unless you masked it, but a dragon you'd never encountered would know only the general space where you are.


Pseudodragons do, in fact, have blindsense, like all dragons.

For the purposes of NWN, in all cases where a monster has TS to facilitate blindsense, the fact that stealth doesn't work against them is as it's meant to be. Umberhulks have it because they get an ability called "tremorsense" instead.

[Sartain]

Representing their PnP counterparts isn't really that important to me, I'd just like it if the two hands-down most useful familiars came in evil flavour somehow.

[MissEvelyn]

I don't think anyone would be upset if the Imp was given Rogue skills that mimic the pixie.

[Memelord]

Eyeballs should also be given Pseudodragon Trueseeing, to give evil PCs a more reasonable familiar to pick - psuedodragons are arrogant pricks, but they absolutely abhor evil and evil people and refuse to serve them.

[Sea Shanties]

I don't think anyone would be upset if the Imp was given Rogue skills that mimic the pixie.

I certainly wouldn't be upset though I suspect there are people still upset the pixie has rogue skills to begin with.

True sight really needs to be removed from familiars completely IMO.

[-XXX-]

Why not just give the mage familiars unified stat/skill set (since the "optimal" choices are apparently quite limited when it comes to familiar choices), then let players choose the skin according to their RP preference?

[CptJonas]

Why not just give the mage familiars unified stat/skill set (since the "optimal" choices are apparently quite limited when it comes to familiar choices), then let players choose the skin according to their RP preference?

I am all up for it.....10000000% for this....Please make it happen...So me and my felow power gamers can choose familiar which suits our RP choices XD

[MissEvelyn]

Why not just give the mage familiars unified stat/skill set (since the "optimal" choices are apparently quite limited when it comes to familiar choices), then let players choose the skin according to their RP preference?

I feel like that would defeat the purpose of having different familiars to begin with. It's more fun when you can choose one in favor of the other. But do the existing familiars need balancing? Probably.

[TroubledWaters]

There already isn't much of a point to most familiars, as the pixie is objectively better than the others.

[Sartain]

There already isn't much of a point to most familiars, as the pixie is objectively better than the others.

Definitely my impression as well, I think it's the only familiar I have ever actually seen anybody else have, it's likely simply too useful. And sure you -can- RP it as evil/enslaved/enchanted or whatever but an alternative would be nice

[TroubledWaters]

Yeah, exactly. There's a reason it's so popular, and I think that's because it's so useful that it makes all of the other options look useless.

It also decreases the value of other PCs with open lock/disable trap as one of their primary functions in group play is replaced by someone else's summon.

[Sartain]

Yeah, exactly. There's a reason it's so popular, and I think that's because it's so useful that it makes all of the other options look useless.

It also decreases the value of other PCs with open lock/disable trap as one of their primary functions in group play is replaced by someone else's summon.

Now that you mention it, I would probably just prefer to remove the lockpicking familiar. Arcane spellcasters already have access to Knock and Find Trap anyway, at least they'd have to invest a bit of resources to be opening chests and disabling traps.

The rogue familiar was only meant for the single player campaign anyway

[TroubledWaters]

I think that's a good idea. There are already plenty of ways to get around locks, and changing pixie to some other function (or removing it) would likely increase the diversity of familiars selected by PCs.

[-XXX-]

The locks aren't the issue, the traps are.
...but if the real intent was seeing all chests and shrines perpetually smashed, this line of thinking is not entirely invalid.

[Sartain]

The locks aren't the issue, the traps are.
...but if the real intent was seeing all chests and shrines perpetually smashed, this line of thinking is not entirely invalid.

Well that would be "easily" fixed by not having them smashable

[Nitro]

Runic containers respawn these days anyway, so it's not like it matters if people smash them or not.

[-XXX-]

TBH, I don't believe that the actual intent behind locks and traps on treasure chests is to keep PCs without the necessary skillset from looting them.
I think that the locks and traps on treasure chests and shrines serve primarily to deter players from racing the boss spawn to them, as disarming and unlocking the chest takes some time as opposed to just looting the treasure and running away ignoring the boss entirely.


One way or another, the fairy familiar is in its vanilla NWN form and i think that if the DEVs considered it OP, they'd have altered it long time ago.
The real issue here isn't the fairy being OP, but rather the other alternatives being dreadfully lackluster in comparison. That's why I suggested treating the familiar choice more like a cosmetic option by turning them all into fairies.

[Volograd]

One option is to dial back the trapfinding and lockpicking capabilities of the pixie.

They’ll have some utility, but not enough to crack open every chest or locker they come across.

This, in conjunction with tweaking the other existing familiars to be on par with the supreme utility of the pixie would open things up to a bit of variety.

[CptJonas]

Yeah, exactly. There's a reason it's so popular, and I think that's because it's so useful that it makes all of the other options look useless.

It also decreases the value of other PCs with open lock/disable trap as one of their primary functions in group play is replaced by someone else's summon.

Now that you mention it, I would probably just prefer to remove the lockpicking familiar. Arcane spellcasters already have access to Knock and Find Trap anyway, at least they'd have to invest a bit of resources to be opening chests and disabling traps.

The rogue familiar was only meant for the single player campaign anyway

One option is to dial back the trapfinding and lockpicking capabilities of the pixie.

They’ll have some utility, but not enough to crack open every chest or locker they come across.

This, in conjunction with tweaking the other existing familiars to be on par with the supreme utility of the pixie would open things up to a bit of variety.

To this I will say only one thing...do you think its not ok for mages to have pixie who steals role of rogue....But its totaly ok, and fine, to have nearly every non caster build diped with UMD class to steal party role from mages?

If you want to nerf pixie....you should in same time nerf UMD...to point where you need to invest atleast 10 class levels or so to use basicly every wand and scroll....

[The Kriv]

So, I had to pick a familiar for an evil character and realized that the Pixie is the only one with rogue skills. Which is a darn shame if you're a spellcaster of a more malicious bent, I think. Would it not be awesome if say, the Imp also had those skills so you could choose a familiar a bit closer to your moral persuasion, if you wanted a rogue familiar?

I played a Lawful Evil underdark wizard in the early days of Andunor. And I had a Pixie familiar that I created a couple of emote-hot-keys to RP that the pixie was flying around connected to me by a tiny chain, which she would be constantly tugging at. The pixie was my captive, forced to do my bidding against her will. And on occasion I had to threaten her with violence, which she always reacted to as if the beatings were a regular and constant thing. It was pixie-abuse. And luckily.... the pixie-cops never caught me... cuz whatcha gonna do? whatcha gonna do when they come for you??