Familiar is too weak

from Elemental Forums

the summon familiar spell creates a little pet which can cast the same spells as your soverign, and seems fun to have around

 

however in practise, it's not. in fact it's an extremely frustrating piece of deadweight you have to lug around until you finally give up and let it die.

 

It has 8 HP, and only gains 2 per level. it has no defense, no dodge, and Not Enough initiative. Also it counts as a unit, not a champion. Which severely limits the buff spells you can cast on it. Most notably, it's barred from Stoneskin and Courage, two spells which might have been able to make it useful.

These facts are compounded by the battle system not allowing us to choose formations or deploy units. in combat the familiar always seems to get placed somewhere around mid-front.

And lastly, enemies always seem to gang up on the weakest target and try to eliminate it quickly.

So as a result? first turn of battle, every enemy focuses the familiar, and it almost certainly dies. Unless you get some lucky misses or an occasional nice deployed formation that shields it. or some low enemy damage rolls. Trying to keep the thing alive becomes a tiresome exercise in save scumming and luck. IF it DOES manage to survive the first round of combat, and actually live long enough to get a turn, then it has to spend that turn running away and casting heal on itself, in which case it's still not being useful to an army.

 

Put simply, it's too vulnerable, too fragile, and the player's hands are apparently deliberately tied with regards to any way of mitigating that problem. The only real way you can make it tougher is by slowly grinding it up a few levels against bandits and other assorted weak enemies.

 

 

I did notice, to my pleasant surprise, that Legendary Heroes now gives familiars 50% damage reduction against physical attacks. And this is nice. it shows that you guys are at least aware of the problem, i think. but it really doesn't go far enough. Doubling almost nothing is still almost nothing. needs moar tankiness

22,648 views 17 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Agree, Familiar has always been a neat idea that was implemented terribly.

Maybe if damage done to familiar was dealt to summoner instead? That could make it interesting and more balanced.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Familiars are good for summoning on strategic map.

TouchTasks - Access tasks with ease on Windows touchscreens.
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top


Familiars are awesome if you go a summon path, as your familiar can make duplicates of all your summon creatures.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

A familiar could be a summoned champion (i.e. doesn't really die).

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting GFireflyE, reply 3
Familiars are awesome if you go a summon path, as your familiar can make duplicates of all your summon creatures.
End of GFireflyE's quote

... and they are amazing for combat mages, too, because the familar can cast spells with positive effects (haste, heal, ...) on the mage while he can cast damage spells.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top


Whoa, I agree he is weak, but any tougher as a creature and that would be absolutely ridiculous.  The ability to cast a badass spell in tactical battles TWICE, better be a weak being casting it.  If you are a summoning master, you summon into the mage's stack, and in a completely different part of the world, summon into a different stack. 


That is some badarse shizzle right there. 

He better only have 8 HP lol

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

As a Empire summoner the familiar is VERY powerful when combined with the swarm mechanics. I think the low hp is justified.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

I thought that the familiar was going to be immune to normal weapons.  If you did that and took away their physical attack I think they would be interesting.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

The only thing keeping it from being vastly OP is that it dies so easily. It's a great skill. I used it as an Air Mage as an extra Cloud Walk transporter of units.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

I have constated that while most units starts near in combat, units with ranged attacks always starts the fight in the rear.

So I have a suggestion to resolve the problem: give the familar a weak magical attack, something like one of the magical staffs (maybe even wealer, like 4 fire damage or so instead of 6).

 

The familiar will still have low HP, but it should be safe against first turn charges (but not opponent spells and ranged weapons), making him more able to survive, and the weak magical attacks could also give him something to do when you don't need or want to spend mana to cast a spell.

 

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

if the familiar was treated (and deployed on the battlefield) like an archer, then i think that'd solve most of the problems immediately.

 

that said, it is still vulnerable to enemy archers and other ranged attacks. just being able to cast courage and stoneskin on it (rather than directly giving it more tankiness) would help just fine with that too.

perhaps as a balancing mechanism, having a familiar out could somewhat reduce the sovereign's XP gain. maybe by 15-20 % or so.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting NanakoAC, reply 11

that said, it is still vulnerable to enemy archers and other ranged attacks. just being able to cast courage and stoneskin on it (rather than directly giving it more tankiness) would help just fine with that too.
End of NanakoAC's quote

 

This is the problem, and the enemy AI often knows to use rangers and take out the familiar immediately. At such times it's not a glass cannon. It's a paper one. Leaving it out of battles where ranged and magic ranged users will be defeats the purpose of having a familiar.

perhaps as a balancing mechanism, having a familiar out could somewhat reduce the sovereign's XP gain. maybe by 15-20 % or so.
End of quote

 

Provided the familiar is pumped up to a reasonable HP, that sounds good. Other possibilities are a significant drain on mana or gold (or both) as long as the familiar is in existence, as long as the mage-champion has the option of dispelling the familiar whenever s/he wants.

 

 

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

Kinda a tangent, but would it be possible to mod in a spell that targets familiars only?  So that the familiar could be counter-spelled?  Or, less drastically, maybe a something that stuns the familiar for the remainder of the battle.

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

another option (a bit cheesy, though) would be to make the familiar an inventory item. familiars in D&D for example are often small animals like birds or cats or exotic creatures from other planes such as imps

 a different champion could equip that item and it would grant them access to the same spells as the sov. this way, it would obviously use the champions defensive stats/hit points making it significantly harder to kill, but on the other hand you'd have to choose whether you use the abilities of the champion or cast the spells granted by the "familiar item".

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't think it was ever intended to be used in combat. There's no real reason to cast weak unboosted tactical spells, you are much better off using a caster champion. It's a summon designed to sit in a city casting more strategic summons. It's ridiculously fragile and expensive so you'll keep it out of combat.

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

But what if you're an Empire summoner with the Tactical Skeleton summons? Having a second casting of those would be very useful indeed.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

It would definitely be more interesting if it were given a number of non-combat functions it could perform. Maybe some sabotage or espionage, or some other utility. In terms of familiars in other fantasy settings it would be insane for the caster to use his familiar purely for combat!