It's an issue I've been a bit confused about. It might even be a total non-issue.

As a Watchman it has come up that at times I've had to tell wizards/sorcerors/etc to send away their familiar. Each time I've told them to send it away or that I would kill said familiar. But it's a confusing situation for me, not just because I really don't want to kill some new player's familiar and hit him with that XP penalty, but also because I don't know whether or not to hostile the wizard.

If I do, the wizard might fight back, but the familiar definitely will. And in a situation where the familiar In characterly wouldn't is the situation that bothers me. I don't always have time to ask the player behind the wizard and familiar whether I should ask or not, so a ruling would be great.

The alternative is to remain unhostile and kill the familiar, giving it no opportunity to fight back unless the battle lasts and the player manages to get the hostile off in time.

Another issue that confuses me, wouldn't the familiar automatically attack me if I turned the owner to hostile, without actually provoking it first?

So in brief: 1.) If I have to kill a wizard's familiar, what should I do? Hostile first? Ask the player if his familiar will fight back? 2.) If I do hostile, wouldn't that make the familiar attack me on sight?

It would make it attack you on sight, yes (unless the owner was savvy enough to have it on 'follow only' mode). It's not something that should come up often though, but why would you kill it anyway, people remove them eventually if you press them about it.

The best thing to do in a situation of this kind is to send a tell, "Hi there, welcome to EfU. I'm roleplaying a guard of the town, and IC you're bringing a dangerous beast into a populated area. Just so you know my character will try to kill it, and you'll lose some XP, if you keep it out."

Often times the player is just totally OOC confused about what's going on, doesn't understand why their Fairy Dragon turned into some sort of hideous mephit or their pixie into an intellect devourer, and maybe has never even RP'ed before.

If you really need to kill it, and the person isn't responding to the tell or doesn't care, then I would probably just attack and kill the familiar without setting them hostile. I'm pretty sure the familiar does attack anything it sees as red, which may not be fair if it really is a peaceful widdle intellect devourer.

I wouldn't worry too much about giving the familiar a chance to fight back, since especially at the low levels they have like 2 hitpoints.

Sounds good. I always try to give them tons of chances before finally killing the familiar. It actually hasn't come up yet that I have had to, but it certainly has come very close.

So what happens when the familier is an Icky EVIL intellect devourer/Imp/what have you, and said Familier master knows this but is hamming up the "It's Not Evil It's Misunderstood How Dare you threaten the Poor Scared Thing!" ?

Sometimes you just got to Smite First and let the Gods Sort it out. Still. Last time this occured, all the NPC's Freaked out and immeadiatly responded as if said Intellect Devourer/Imp/Evil what have you, was one of "them".

That alone could be a relativly nasty faction bug considering the AB of some of the NPC's.

Hate to see Cail killed by the private in the Rock Bottom 'cause he spaked an Imp or some such.

~Rex

Read the forum rules.

There was a bug that NPCs would defend attacked familiars, I am nearly certain this bug has long since been removed.