Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 95 - Familiars, Animal Companions, and Summoned Creatures

Episode Date: October 17, 2021

PCs have a number of options when it comes to bringing more allies to the battlefield and to the campaign.  What are some best practices for PCs who want to have a super-intelligent celestial dinosaur best friend that they can bring into this plane anytime they want?  Tune in and find out.

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. Summon creatures give you all sorts of versatility to respond to unique situations on the battlefield and in the adventure. Players, think about taking those summon spells, summon nature allies, summon monster, etc. They can really help you solve some of those one-off problems that do crop up during adventures. during adventures. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 95 of the Taken 20 podcast. This week we're talking about familiars, animal companions, and other summoned creatures. This week's sponsor, seafood. There's some great seafood buffets out there, but don't reach blindly into the food, you might pull a muscle. We're five weeks out until episode 100, and it looks like I'm not going to have any takers on a sponsor for that episode. Oh well, I'll release

details about the contest at the beginning of episode 98, so stay tuned for that. If you'd like to gallop in over the hill at first light of the fifth day and offer some prizes or sponsorships for this episode, or if you have any topic ideas or feedback, please send it to feedback at taking20podcast.com or post it to my Facebook page or Twitter at Taking20Podcast. Players can bring additional creatures to the battlefield in any number of ways and they're called by various names. Familiars, animal companions, summoned creatures, eidolons, living holograms,

voluptuous cat people that give vague hints that the player really wants to have sex with them. I know I'm missing a few, and goodness knows how many other names you can call these types of temporary and permanent creatures. For ease of this episode, I'm going to call these companion creatures, except the overly sexualized cat thing. I'm not calling that anything, because that's outside of the scope of this episode. This week I'm going to focus on players first. DMs, you always get first billing and I'll always love. This week I'm going to focus on players first. DMs, you always get first billing and I'll always love you, but it's time to give the players the leadoff position. You'll just have to wait your turn. Also, I'd originally planned on talking about followers and cohorts, but human being followers on a battlefield really

deserve their own episode. I'll get to work on that and post that at a later date. So players, my first piece of advice. If you want to have a companion creature, regardless of what that looks like, talk to your DMs about it before you roll it out to the table. Unfortunately, some DMs just aren't keen on summoned creatures, animal companions, or other types of companion creatures, and either treat them as second-class NPCs or show open disdain for them. Players, though, you should embrace these companion creatures. I had one of my players say it best because they said,

why should I do this when I can summon a creature to do it for me? He had a point. Would you summon a duplicate version of yourself to go to work for you? I sure as hell would. So let's talk about these by category and begin our study of companion creatures with the most common summoned creatures. Summoned creatures solve a lot of problems. You have so many options for creatures you can summon with any summon monster spell in any game system you want to pick. You can summon creatures that can fly to get to areas that you can't,

or have a climb or swim speed that can take a rope somewhere and help guide the players up who can't climb or swim very well. You can bring creatures in that can smite evil if you're fighting creatures without alignment. You can bring in creatures that can trample foes, trip them up, and keep enemy combatants on their heels. The other benefit is that summon creatures are completely expendable to you as a player. First off, do not feel bad about summon creatures, living holograms, and any other companion creature you want to name. Even if they get killed, they just poof back to where they came from, no worse for wear. If they do get hurt and the spell ends, they return to where they came from with no wounds. It's like

it never happened. And they probably have a good story to tell their friends when they get back. They return to their earth elemental friends on their home plane. Hey Bob, where'd you go for, uh, 24 seconds? Guys, have you ever been to Fandover? We have to go there next spring break. We can go there and get stoned. And the earth elementals there are really gneiss. Oh, shut up. That joke was a gem. Sorry, y'all. Let's just start with a clean slate. What? Oh, come on. No rim shot for that one? Since these creatures aren't permanently hurt, you shouldn't feel bad about using summon creatures to, for example, set off a trap. The rogue can't disable the swinging scythes that are up ahead? Fine. Summon an elk to go stomp on the pressure plates and dismiss it as soon as the scythes fall. Can the trap be reset

by pushing a button on the far end of the room? Summon an air elemental to fly over there and push the button for you. They won't be hurt permanently and they can really help move the adventure along rather than spending two hours trying to figure out how you're going to disable this one trap. Summon creatures can also give you more actions per round as a PC. You can act and your creature can act. Pathfinder 2nd Edition balances this a bit by requiring you to spend an action to give your summoned creature two actions, but they're still net positive there. The vast majority of the time, by the way, the player retains control over the summoned creature. There are exceptions when we get to the DM area that we'll talk about in a little bit, like the summoned creature being intelligent and

the summoner asking it to do something against its nature. Hey, bone devil, come with me and help serve lunch at the local church. Uh, no, I don't wanna. Summoned creatures give you all sorts of versatility to respond to unique situations on the battlefield and in the adventure. versatility to respond to unique situations on the battlefield and in the adventure. Players, think about taking those summon spells, summon nature allies, summon monster, etc. They can really help you solve some of those one-off problems that do crop up during adventures. So let's move on to Eidolons. Eidolons are a lot like summon creatures, except that your character has a special connection to a particular extraplanar creature. Now, let me pause this by saying, Pathfinder Eidolons are different than 5e Eidolons.

In 5th edition, Eidolons are undead spirits, whereas in Pathfinder, they can be any outsider. These creatures are tied to a player class called the Summoner. When your PC summons her Eidolon, you're bringing the same creature every time from their home plane, no matter how many times you cast that summon spell. Eidolons can be re-summoned if they die, so summoners, because they share a connection with a particular creature, unlike the general summon, when the Eidolon dies, it gets shunted back to its home plane. But when they cast Summon Eidolon again, the same creature comes back. If it dies and you try to summon it immediately, for example in Pathfinder, it'll only come back

with half hit points. Generally, the summoner will have control of the Eidolon, but there may be cases where the GM asserts control over the creature. Eidolons have their own thoughts and feelings. They are intelligent. They are self-aware. And it's up to each DM or GM to determine how they handle any unusual situation that crops up. For example, the Eidolon may resent being summoned just to set off a trap and being returned to its home plane a lot more than any just generic summon creature who only has this happen once in a lifetime. Now, just because you're getting the same creature over and over and over again doesn't mean that it can't change. Eidolons can evolve as the summoner grows in power,

getting extra arms, wings, the ability to do fire damage, and so forth. Much like summoned creatures, though, Eidolons can be brought in to solve a specific problem, but for role-playing purposes, you should probably have some sort of relationship with your Eidolon. Wait a minute, not like that. I mean, you do you, but keep that extra-planar, dinky, tickling mess away from my table, okay? So let's jump over to familiars. Familiars are part intelligent animal and part valet. They're extremely capable, they can come in handy in a very, very long adventure. You can only have one familiar

at a time, unlike summoned creatures, where you can bring to bear one, two, four, eight, or maybe even more creatures at a time, depending on the spell that you cast. The easiest way to get a familiar in 5th edition is the Find Familiar Wizard spell, or Pact of the Chain, at 3rd level for warlocks. The Find Familiar spell takes about an hour to cast and costs 10 gold pieces and incense. A spirit is summoned. It takes the shape of an animal. Technically, the familiar is Celestial, Fiend, or Fae. You don't get to pick whatever animal you want, by the way. There's a short predefined list of creatures from which you can pick. Most of the time, as in 99% of the time, the player will pick the animal shape from the list, but as we'll discuss later in the episode, there are occasional times where the DM will

want to specify the animal shape. When familiars reach zero hit points, they disappear and wait until they're summoned again. This summoning is mechanically no different than summoning a new familiar, but the player can bring back a particular animal that they've grown attached to. new familiar, but the player can bring back a particular animal that they've grown attached to. Familiars and their PCs can communicate telepathically. They can use their minds to talk to each other. Telepathically is the word I was looking for. Familiars have to do whatever their summoner commands them to do and can't attack other creatures on their own, but they

can deliver touch spells. It's a big deal, right? Some healings have delivered via touch, and Shocking Grasp is done via touch. Imagine you have a hawk that swoops down and touches a baddie on his head and sends them into painful electrical convulsions for eight hit points of damage. Familiars in 5e and Pathfinder are very, very similar. In Pathfinder, though, the familiar you pick will grant you a bonus depending on the species. Bonuses to perception, acrobatics, swim checks, sleight of hand, fortitude saves, and so forth. In Pathfinder 2nd Edition, familiars can be acquired with certain ancestries, classes, and archetypes, not just spells. The stats of the familiar are determined by a particular ability score and depending on how you acquire it.

The general lore says that a familiar and the creature that summoned it should grow close to one another. They should be friends, allies. This familiar is looking to you to protect it. So this is not just a summon, fire, and forget, and oh it died, no big deal. You should roleplay this as if you do have a connection to this like a super intelligent pet. Jumping over to animal companions. Bards, druids, rangers, mark of handling humans, and in a more limited form, wanty purebloods can cast the first level spell Animal Friendship. Unlike familiars though, animal companions are actual animals. And unlike summoned creatures, if an animal companion drops to zero hit points, it's dead. Dead dead. Animals have their own free will, though, and they can resist the summoner's requests,

and if any of your party try to harm it, it immediately loses friendship with the summoner. To get the animal to do something, you will need to make an animal handling check. They're not just going to mindlessly follow what you tell them to do. So in a way, they're nowhere near as loyal as some of the other companions, like summoned creatures or familiars. But that being said, you can drop this spell and begin to look like a damn Disney princess as deer and birds and various cute and fuzzy animals are willing to get close to you and treat you like a friend.

And while we're on the topic, if your character has a relatively flexible moral set, you can always cast the spell and when the deer's all happy and snuggling up next to you, you can kill it and you've got food for the night. I'm not saying I would do that, but that's a hell of a lot faster than hunting. Say, Jeremy, that's a very nice fur coat. Where'd you get it? About 15 castings of animal friendship and a very sharp knife. This part of the coat was named Fluffy. This part of the coat was named Fuzzy. And this is the part of the coat that came from Snufflewhiskers,

the nicest deer you'll ever meet with the tastiest meat you'll ever eat. Wow, hang on, that went dark. I apologize for that. Animal companions can grow stronger over levels, though. For example, as a druid and a ranger level up in Pathfinder, their animal companion grows stronger as well. Another type of animal companion that you can run into is that paladins can cast the Find Steed spell in 5th edition. Also, from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, druids can gain a wild companions feature and have a permanent animal companion. In Pathfinder 2, animal companions are very similar to familiars with regard to rules. You can share spells with them, they're more intelligent than regular animals.

You still need to make handle animal checks to get them to do stuff, but the good news is that the difficulty class, or DC, is relatively low at 10. I know this was just a brief run-through of the different types of companion creatures that you can have as a PC. They really do vary greatly depending on how you acquire them. The main advice I want to give to players is this. Make sure you read up on the rules of any companion animals that you want to bring to bear on the campaign. Get it? Animal companion? Bear? As in Ursine? As in Yogi or Smokey V?

Nothing? Okay, let's move on. DMs and GMs. Some of your players will want to play characters that can summon things. Yes, familiars are dull and don't really do much. Yes, summoned creatures clutter your battlefield. Yes, players' ability to summon companion animals makes it difficult to plan your encounters. Yes, companion animals can serve as scouts for the party, making it difficult to surprise the PCs.

And yes, this is something else you'll have to keep track of. But you need to support your players' decisions to have these creatures. My players say I have a well-known dislike of permanent animal companions. And I'm not the only one, by the way. My Pathfinder 2nd Edition GM, Tom, asked me not to play a druid with an animal companion. They get in the way, is what he said, and I agreed with him, so I had no problem with that. So I'm a wild-shaping dinosaur druid now. I'm out of attack spells, you know what that means.

Somebody's gonna die! It's the circle of life! But, but, but, I bury the corpses, or at least what's left of them, so they can feed the grass, or lately the mushrooms in the Darklands. Part of my well-known disdain for animal companions is played up for my players, but part of it isn't. Oh, you have a permanently enlarged celestial tiger as your permanent buddy on this adventure. Yay! Look, just because I've killed, um, I think I'm up to three animal companions in this campaign or permanently summoned creatures

doesn't mean I hate them. They're just convenient targets with low armor class and low hit points. And they make great red shirts that you can kill off to show how dangerous shit's getting. By the way, you know that's why red shirts existed in the old Star Trek, right? So a nameless nobody can be eaten, dumped down a bottomless pit,

shot by an enemy, ejected into space when the ship's hit by a torpedo, or turned into a mineral cube and crushed. All of that just showed how dangerous the situation is becoming without killing off a named character. This dovetails nicely into my next point. An animal companion death is a relatively harmless way to show how dangerous an area is or how powerful the big bad has become. These should be rare, you shouldn't use them very often, hardly ever have to kill something to prove a point.

But every single time a companion creature has died in one of my campaigns, the players realize how serious things have become and, or, it's because its summoner got a little cocky. They left it in melee combat a bit too long and it died to a critical hit. They sent it on a scouting mission without any available support and something picked it off. They left it somewhere where it was discovered or could revert to its default behavior. Okay, a couple of campaigns ago, one necromancer left zombies behind in the graveyard.

In town. Overnight. Of course the city watch is going to find them and they put them down. Re-killed them, if you will. Duh. One other player was playing an aberrant that had finagled their way into having a faceless stalker for a companion. Think shape-changer like a doppelganger, but much weaker. The player convinced a brothel

owner to hide the shape-changer until he returned. So she did. She hid it as a brothel worker. And it earned quite a few gold before it reverted to its chaotic evil nature and killed a client. Then it ran away with the money that it had made. And that's how I got that damn faceless stalker out of my frickin' campaign. What? No, I'm sorry. I don't hate companions.

They're just annoying and take up time in combat while the player says, um, I want my frog to, uh, uh, uh, two minutes later. Um, can I, you know what, Libor? We're just going to move on to the next player in the initiative tracker while you give it

a good think, yeah? One of my witch players in a campaign that just finished up had a rabbit familiar that she never let out of a robe. That robe and that bunny had to just reek by the end of the campaign. I'd ask her, doesn't it need to come out and eat and poop? No, you're not killing my bunny. Oh, come on. No, my bunny, you're not killing it like you did his tiger and her eagle and his wolf.

Maybe I do hate animal companions, Which is ironic because I love animals Especially Big Bumper's dander She's laying right here next to me Oh, just a big sweetie Daddy's got to record right now, okay? Daddy's got to record, hang on Alright, I'll pet you in a minute Summoned creatures can help their party even combat odds

So let them summon the companions they need In order to have fun in the campaign And give them a better chance of surviving a battle. If you don't ban companion animals at your table, which is your right to do, but if you don't do it, don't grouse, don't gripe, let the players use the tools at their disposal. If you make a ruling that these creatures exist in your world, it does no one any good to just bitch about it later. You've made your call, just move the game forward.

If one issue you have is that these companion animals are bland and faceless and have no personality, give them a random personality. Go to a random NPC generator that includes personality details and roll randomly to give this companion creature a bit more life and make it less of a mindless scaly extension of the wizard's body. Even if the creature can't talk, it can still show disgust, annoyance, over-exuberance, clinginess, or complete lack of desire to bathe. It does beg the question, though, how do you deal with a player that keeps summoning weird creatures to gain an unfair advantage, trying to cheese the system? There was a story on Reddit of a player who kept summoning eight pixies, each of which could cast fourth level spells. I'd advise, number one, that you talk to the player to get them to stop trying to do this on your encounters. Barring that, the DM should decide

what creature answers the summons. It could piss your player off, but they may say, I want to summon eight pixies. Too bad, a rhinoceros is what shows up. Or you could drop in a creature with really high spell resistance that can ignore these spells cast by the pixies, or maybe likes to eat pixies for snacks. Or you could have one of your NPCs save a fireball for the annoying little shits and kill them before they go on initiative. Also, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If your players like summoning creatures for the battlefield, then you know what, some of your baddies should do so as well. Companion animals are part of the game for a reason. Wizards of the Coast and Paizo intended for them to be used to assist party members, whether that's help them fight in combat,

deliver spells in a surprising and novel way, or just to retrieve that potion from a high shelf. DMs and players, work together to use these creatures to everyone's enjoyment, and I'm sure everyone will have fun doing it. Next week, oh next week, we're going to be talking about my favorite paranoia-inducing monster of all time, the Mimic. I have tons of evil ideas, and I can't wait to share them with you. But before I go, I want to once again thank our sponsor, Seafood. I generally feel bad about eating fish because they're so intelligent. I mean, they spend most of their early lives in schools. This has been Taking 20, episode 95, all about familiars, animal companions, and summoned creatures. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 podcast is a Publishing Cube media

production. Copyright 2021. References to game system content are copyright of their respective publishers.