Alas, poor Rex! I knew him, Horatio

[scrappayeti]

(29) Unsummoning familiars or companions to avoid the exp penalty, when they are in combat or in brink of death is not allowed. Companions are not magical creatures that can be summoned at will and anywhere, and should be roleplayed as -Companions-, allies and friends to the character. Unsummoning familiar likewise a moment before death is abusal of mechanics, unless said otherwise.

I didn’t know this rule, or if I did, I forgot it years ago. I didn’t realise my error until I read LiAlH4 mentioned it in a recent DM question. This is my own fault, I completely acknowledge, but a genuine mistake. I have unsummoned them during combat, when in danger scouting, after harassing PCs etc etc. I am a veritable Al Capone of pet mechanics abuse! If xp is docked for this abuse, I probably should have the xp of my last three characters moved to zero, so often have I broken this rule.

The thing is, even if like me you thought they could be unsummoned in combat, they are still usually not worth it. The AI is finicky and inconsistent, and they often run in counter-intuitive paths into terrible danger. “No Rex, when I said attack the umber hulk, I kind of meant the one next to you, not run in a wide circle past the pack, generating thirty-seven auto attacks.” My pets die regularly, even when I thought I could pull them out. I cannot fathom what possible use they would have if you couldn’t.

It isn’t really that I would object to the occasional xp loss, that is neither here nor there in the long run, but it is the continuity errors and role playing confusion that has to follow.

If familiars and animal companions are real animals (imps, bears etc) of this world, but are considered to be just off camera when not summoned, this breaks suspension of disbelief in all sorts of ways. If I walk through town, then summon my familiar in a locked room for a bit of RP, where did it come from? The floating eye snuck past all the guards into the tavern? If Bessie, my loyal cave bear, is just waiting in the wings for the right moment, how the hell did she get past the ten thousand Chosen we ran from, to appear without having stealth, in the heart of the Dunwarren, just in time for the end boss fight? This issue is lampooned here: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0154.html

Does this mean this is a role playing consideration? Should I, in the name of logic and continuity, not summon my imp in the locked room of the tavern, or bring my bear out except in the forest?

Finally, what happens when they die? Mine die not infrequently with my hand on the unsummon button, they would die much more frequently if I didn’t. If Rex is really your true animal companion, then his death deserves some role playing, right? I mean, the character was bonded heart and soul to Rex, they will be distraught. Pulling of hair, gnashing of teeth, railing at the injustice of the universe. Its all there, waiting to be RPed…. Except Rex will come back after the mid afternoon nap. We know it’s Rex, because it has his name written above his head. Should death of a familiar be something you can only tolerate once per character level, and you have to rename your pet if it dies?

Either way, you are going to look silly. If your ranger is down on his knees, his tears lost in the rain, as he beats his chest over the fallen corpse of Rex, it will be awesome exactly once. If he does it every time you spam kobolds, it’s going to be awkward for everyone. “There, there, Ted, I’m sure Rex will be… err… up and about in no time… again”. If you rename and respawn the pet only on levelling up, you still look like some sort of animal abuser. “You know that’s Ted’s sixth dog this year? Rex, then Shasha, then Fido, then Rocky, then Missy and now Coco. Honestly, I think we should petition the Directorate for harsher laws on animal abuse.”  

So I know some of you will be saying, Scrappyeti, all you have done is bitch and moan for seven paragraphs, were you actually going to make a suggestion? Fair enough.

My suggestion is this. That within the EfU non-cannon Forgotten Realm setting, that animal companions and familiars are specially bonded creatures summoned from another plane. Imps from the Nine Hells, bears from Jotunheim, pseudo-dragons from Dragon Eyrie, Wolves from House of Nature and so on and so forth. They form a genuine connection to the PC, but like summons, when killed in this plane they return to rest and chill out with the divine - drinking infant blood or chasing never ending lame rabbits or whatever is appropriate for the species and afterlife. This fits better with the NwN mechanics (the dead companion/familiar actually disappears with the unsummon sprite, there is no corpse), and it prevents several different types of continuity breakage. PCs can risk their pets in combat and suck up the penalty if they die (which trust me, will still happen), but they don’t have to deal with any of the above mentioned problems. Druids, rangers, sorcs and wizards can all cast magical summons spells, so there is no break in continuity there.

There are a few potential problems, sure. If we are worried about PC harassment without repercussions, perhaps the courtesy rule should be you cannot unsummon a pet in any PvP situation? If rangers, sorcs et.al. are now too powerful, the companion stats could be tweaked, or just the xp loss increased, to weigh risk to reward. All in all it seems to me to be a better option. It fixes several clumsy in game issues, it’s easier for new players to understand and distracts less from the normal ebb and flow of the game.

[gravekeeper]

What about if we got instead of XP loss a more permanent sort of curse? Some crippling penalty to stats or even fall victim of a malady or suddenly be addicted to some drug? Like the guy that starts drinking because of poor Rex's brain being terribly devoured in the last illithid's dinner.

[Knight Of Pentacles]

Morale drop.  Large penalties, spell failure.  People would still be afraid of losing their familiars/companions yet it wouldn't be to the point they'd not use them.  As it is they're not really worth bringing out unless it's maybe a few of the animal companions and you can buff them to high heaven.

[Nuclear Catastrophe]

As you say, the issue is with harassing pc's.  If you, for example, buff ratty the rat, send him into upper and then start attacking pc's -and then unsummon your familiar to escape the consequences then it is no fun for the pc's you attacked as essentially it was risk free pvp.  And I think there should definitely be a DM present for such engagements.  I personally have no problem with people unsummoning their pets during quests or in the wilds if a random hostile pc appears and the familar starts to charge because the a.i. can be difficult to control at times.

Still, some DM's don't like it.  So I guess try to do things as stylishly as possible and use common sense and you won't draw too much flak.

[HerDarkMajesties]

I do agree quite strongly with the statement about the finicky nature of the AI path finding, and the buggy companion control in general. AoE cloud spells for instance almost instantly wreck your ability to proper control your companion, in much the same way as it does for other summons.

When the penalty is XP loss, and the rules on unsummoning your companion in combat can be enforced very strictly, the prospect of losing them to a niggling bug in the NWN engine makes you very rarely want to use them.

I wouldn't mind at all if the rule were relaxed a bit without needing to get into re-classifying them as extra-planar entities. It can just as easily be understood as your companions fight or flight reflex kicking in when it realizes it's bitten off more than it can chew.

Whether or not we have the rule won't change how much effort a druid, ranger or arcane class puts into portraying the close relationship between them and their familiars / companions, in my opinion.

[Howlando]

To clarify, it's fine to unsummon most of the time (i.e. due to having trouble with AI). What we don't like is when you summon up a companion in a place where it doesn't make sense right before PvP, or unsummon it in a PvP situation or right before it dies.

And it dies, it's probably fine to RP it as being wounded and dragging itself off unless a PC or NPC makes a point of wanting to kill it.

Some day, I'd like to more or less redo our entire familiar/companion system though.

[gravekeeper]

I've seen some scripts where Ranged attackers are stuck on place while on combat for a moment before they are allowed to run and we know that you cannot change armors during combat.

Maybe it would be feasible if the companion weren't able to be unsummoned during combat if it's really an issue.

Still, I don't find it interesting at all that the familiar death and consequent XP penalty is often used as punishment for the actions brought by the familiar possession. I have been worked with familiar RP in several characters and I guess I only was rewarded once for possessing them. Most of the time I lost XP in an easy and fast way, be it for a PC encounter or be it for some hazard in the wilds. In the end, it seems that there is a huge No-No set of systems to push the player into NOT summoning their familiar and into NOT possessing them for most activities.

Lucky you some of us are too stubborn and do marvels out and instead of it. Like Tobit and his charmy slime, for instance.