Familiars linked to hitpoints?

ladyblack · Post by **ladyblack** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 5:23 am

Hello

I'm playing through the game again, using a Wizard with her Pixie familiar. I've obviously conecnetrated most of her skill points on Intelligence, but I was fed up with the way that she died frequently, whenever attacked directly. So I put quite a few points into her strength, her dexterity (for shooting arrows from a distance) and a couple on her Constitution. At the time, I didn't realise about Const being important to prevent spell disruption, but it is not at a minus value. Her only low score is her Wisdom.

I've played Wizard before, using the Pixie, but I think I took the recommended stats that time. Anyway, everytime my Familiar dies, she knocks a couple of hit pioints off me. I don't remember this happening before. It was a real pain in the beginning, as my Wizard only had 12 hp whilst running around Beggar's nest; Charmane the Pixie would charge off to engage one zombie, the Wizard would get surrounded by zombies who would knock off a point at a time, Charmane would then die and that would usually be enough to ensure the Wizard died too! My first thought was that it may have been due to my Scores on Const. etc.

I just can't understand why this happening, although I have noticed that now my NWN actually works, things like the Lenton Bug seem to have been smoothed out. It's as if now I've put this onto a pretty good machine, I've gotten some tweaks to my game without my having installed a patch or changed the game or anything. Has anyone else had experience of Familiars causing them pain? Is this another drawback of using them?

Ripe · Post by **Ripe** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 5:41 am

When I play as a wizard as a low level character my familiar (panther) died frequently as well but I don't remember loosing HP because of it. I checked 3ed rulebook and it states that when familiar dies wizard loses 200 XP per level but not HP (unles XP loss would actualy reduce wizard's lvl) but I think they didn't use that.

Fiberfar · Post by **Fiberfar** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 11:37 am

The Manual says that every time the familiar dies, you loose 1d6 hp. Not a big problem once you hit the big levels, but in the beginning, this sucks.

JackOfClubs · Post by **JackOfClubs** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 5:45 pm

Yes, you lose d6 HP whenever your familiar dies. It is not advisable to use the familiar in combat at low levels, especially if you chose the pixie. I usually use the Panther or the Hellhound but I also send in a Summoned creature first so that the attacks fall on them and the familiar can be used as a backup. This works especially well with the Panther since it gets a Rogue's Sneak Attack bonus.

ladyblack · Post by **ladyblack** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 5:09 am

Thanks for that. I don't know why I didn't notice it before. I must have assumed that I was being hit by a fairly incompetant archer!

I tried the Panther familiar, mostly because he looked so good, but I desperately need the Pixie for lock picking and trap finding skills. I know you can have Knock and Find Trap but I find I need all my spell slots for aggressive spells - Empowered fireballs are failing to take out groups of Orcs and Goblins! They have just enough hit points to rush over and mash me! I always seem to need Cannon fodder until my Wizard gets up to about level 19.

JackOfClubs · Post by **JackOfClubs** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 6:28 pm

Yeah, I know the feeling. I usually use a summoned boar for cannon fodder (since there are few interesting 2nd level spells).

I wasn't suggesting, by the way, that you shouldn't use the pixie; just don't let it get into combat. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to get hench-creatures to get out of the way, since you are limited to stay put or follow me type commands and neither of those is useful for telling the thing to get behind you. This is probably especially true if you are using the pixie to detect traps, which will always put it a little bit ahead.