Familiars

Ok. I took the bait. I now have a little kitty familiar (the big kitty kept getting in my way, and even sent me to teh Great Hall a time or two). What does it do for me? And, yes, this question is inspired by the posts about familiars in the Beholder thread here - I just didn't want to hijack the thread with questions unrelated to familiars.



It's funny, though, to watch the little black cat rush into combat and strike at ... say ... mummies! particularly when said mummy turns its attention to the cat, and tries to give it a good kick! Dumb mummy. Never turn your back on a sorceress with a flaming +whatever morning star! that only leads to hurt-town!

Heh id like to see more familiars opened up myself...the limited ones nwn gives makes it kinda dull. I noticed a floating skull in the toolset that reminded me of morte from planescape:torment game from way back.

That would be a cool familiar for a pale master/necro

It would be cool to have a greater variety - not necessarily more powerful ones - I agree with the whole assertion that a familiar is NOT a meatshield - but something beyond your standard imps, psuedodragon, fairy dragon, etc. would be a nice offering.

Still, though - what does the cat give me? I can see from teh descriptions what the various other beasties do, but cats - no luck.

For scouting, the cat and mouse are great. Possess them and go into stealth mode...they're very good at Hide and Move Silently. The cat also has some skill with Spot and Listen, while the mouse is the best at sneaking.

ooooh, I see ... i forgot about possessing the darn things! I can see the value of that, although at heart I'm a break-the-door-down-and-kill-everything-lack-of-subtlety kinda guy.

I like the black panther pet myself

Mephits, bats, and ravens, in my experience, make awesome lowbie mage pets. (DR, man!) While pseudodragons and pixies are good for higher levels for certain reasons.

Then again, I'm not sure if they've been altered here.

In original PnP familiars provided skills and skill bonuses to thier owner. The cat gave a point or two to hide and ms, the bat gave improved listen...and so on. Interestingly most of the familiars in PnP were never included in nwn.

There were some cool ones too, which is why i mentioned the skull for necromancers. I think in PnP necros could get a necrophidius but dont quote me on that.

A simple trick i used to do if i wanted different lookin familiars in single player. Was i would find whatever beastie on the vault i wanted...extract the mdl and model files...and simply rename the model file to the same name as say...the beholder eye. It would still be called that in the selection window...but the game would by default load the new model when it recognized the file name in the override. I had morte followin me around in a planescape mod i downloaded