Baldur's Gate - familiar

[Alienman]

Started to replay Baldur's Gate, Beamdog edition. Been years

Anyway, rolled a mage and summoned a familiar. What use does it have? It seems when it dies I die, but it's supposed to remove constitution only? Not sure what is going on here. It's a pseudo dragon. Sure it is cute, but there seem to be real no use, except maybe scouting?

I could be missing something here, since my D&D lore is not up to scratch.

And I might add, I have always played fighter / paladin before. First time rolling mage as main character.

 

[Excidium II]

Some are more useful than others, I think pseudodragon is the shitty one that does nothing. Congrats.

 

[Alienman]

hah. The thanks for rolling a good guy.

 

[Excidium II]

I think the best one is the neutral because it can stealth and pick pockets iirc.

 

[hoverdog]

It gives you some bonus HP for the cost of one inventory slot.

 

[pippin]

If I remember correctly, familiars in BG2 were tied to an attribute and if the familiar died you received a penalty. But I could be wrong.

 

[Excidium II]

If I remember correctly, familiars in BG2 were tied to an attribute and if the familiar died you received a penalty. But I could be wrong.

You lose 1 con.

 

[Alienman]

In BG I though, the one I'm playing, if the familiar dies I die. So now I just keep him in my backpack.

 

[Lilura]

In vanilla, PCs receive a HP bonus equal to 50% of the Familiar's HPs. A Pseudo Dragon would give you +12 HPs in SoA and +24 HPs if summoned in ToB (they were upgraded for the expansion). There were no Familiars in BG1.

 

[Excidium II]

Huh no idea where i'm getting this 1 CON loss from then.

 

[Alienman]

I see. So familiar in BG I is a enchanted edtion addition?

Here is a pic of the in-game description:

You are supposed to lose one con as Excidium II says, but for some reason, when the little thing dies, it is insta-death for me.

 

[ArchAngel]

In addition to bonus hp familiars often have rogue skills and some have useful spells. If you are doing a solo run you can use some of them to tank for a while if you want to savescum each time it dies. In a group, it is best to put them in inventory and enjoy the bonus HP they give.

 

[laclongquan]

What heresy! You need spare inventory space for loots, not for measly rodent that give some HP buff.

 

[Alienman]

The picture I took from my save. No mods. So I guess it's a bug.

I'm not soloing either, just playing it "normally".

I was just curious about the usefulness of the familiar. I really like the concept lorewise? Your own personal magical pet that looooves you and can talk

 

[Lilura]

You would likely enjoy the Familiar system in NWN: lots of variety, they level up, some are actually very useful, and you can possess them for full control. I don't recommend the OC, but HotU and many mods are quite good.

 

[rashiakas]

Best familiar is an Imp who can polymorph into an ogre (iirc). You can even kill most of candlekeep with it.

 

[Xor]

In BG2, the only use for any of the familiars is a small HP buff. If you're using BGT, though, you can pick Summon Familiar as a starting spell and end up with a (relatively) huge HP pool and most of the familiars are strong enough to take on the weaker enemies you'll be fighting early game since they were statted for higher level BG2 characters.

The reason there are familiars in the game at all is because it's a concept from D&D (I'm not sure when exactly it came about).

 

[Kayerts]

The familiar also has one obscure usage in BG2, but it's a pretty great one. There are a few cases where the game doesn't want you to have certain items beyond certain areas. (Drow equipment is the most obvious example.) The way this is implemented, there's a periodic check for whether the item exists in your inventory on the maps that are intended to act as boundaries between those areas. These checks looks in your inventory and any bags of holding you have, but not your familiar's inventory. Since the checks are only conducted on the boundary maps, you can reclaim the item in question once you've made it outside.

Story time: I know this because there's one particular quest item in BG2 that acts as a single-use, irresistible, instacast, ranged harm spell. I was plotting a solo ironman run of the game with the most unpleasant tactical mods I could find, and I wanted to save the device as a last resort option versus some of the nastier ToB enemies, instead of blowing it on the only mildly scary boss it's designed to be used on. The designers were aware the device was disgustingly overpowered and didn't want you to do that, so they scripted in a check in the gateway area that just straight-up kills your PC if the device is in your inventory while you're there. It was kinda bullshit, but in fairness, it was countering abuse of a bullshit item, and the game repeatedly warns you not to take it out.

Anyway, I picked a chaotic neutral character solely so that I could take advantage of trusty Mr. Snuggles, The Cat Who Stole From The Gods, and thereby smuggle out the superweapon. (I ended up never using it, on account of it being too broken, but if one were inclined, one could use simulacra / project image cheese to duplicate it indefinitely and thereby trivialize every boss fight in the game.)

 

[Moth]

The best one is naturally the cat, because it is a cat. The worst one is part dragon, because it is a dragon. It's really common late nineties logic, I think.

 

[oldmanpaco]

The familiar also has one obscure usage in BG2, but it's a pretty great one. There are a few cases where the game doesn't want you to have certain items beyond certain areas. (Drow equipment is the most obvious example.) The way this is implemented, there's a periodic check for whether the item exists in your inventory on the maps that are intended to act as boundaries between those areas. These checks looks in your inventory and any bags of holding you have, but not your familiar's inventory. Since the checks are only conducted on the boundary maps, you can reclaim the item in question once you've made it outside.

Story time: I know this because there's one particular quest item in BG2 that acts as a single-use, irresistible, instacast, ranged harm spell. I was plotting a solo ironman run of the game with the most unpleasant tactical mods I could find, and I wanted to save the device as a last resort option versus some of the nastier ToB enemies, instead of blowing it on the only mildly scary boss it's designed to be used on. The designers were aware the device was disgustingly overpowered and didn't want you to do that, so they scripted in a check in the gateway area that just straight-up kills your PC if the device is in your inventory while you're there. It was kinda bullshit, but in fairness, it was countering abuse of a bullshit item, and the game repeatedly warns you not to take it out.

Anyway, I picked a chaotic neutral character solely so that I could take advantage of trusty Mr. Snuggles, The Cat Who Stole From The Gods, and thereby smuggle out the superweapon. (I ended up never using it, on account of it being too broken, but if one were inclined, one could use simulacra / project image cheese to duplicate it indefinitely and thereby trivialize every boss fight in the game.)

Shit. I didn't know you could use the rift device on anything other than the Unseeing Eye.

 

[Shaewaroz]

It would actually be an interesting challenge to try to mage solo BG1 with familiar always out of the backbag.

 

[Lilura]

It would actually be an interesting challenge to try to mage solo BG1 with familiar always out of the backbag.

I'm not sure this would be a challenge, let alone an interesting one?

It's less EZ to solo a mage in the original BG1, without all the EZ mode offerings brought on by the BG2 engine..

 

[Shaewaroz]

It would actually be an interesting challenge to try to mage solo BG1 with familiar always out of the backbag.

I'm not sure this would be a challenge, let alone an interesting one?

It's less EZ to solo a mage in the original BG1, without all the EZ mode offerings brought on by the BG2 engine..

Not as challenging but just interesting due to actually having to micro manage the familiar, making sure it doesn't get squashed. And actually fighting battles with the familiar in the front line, just like a NPC fighter. Soloing BG with mage is not by itself that interesting because it's far too easy to just bypass all dangerous situations, exploit meta game knowledge, wands and scrolls etc.

 

[Shaewaroz]

I just noticed that BG:EE has changed the familiar stats and skills quite dramatically, mostly they're nerfed to not make having a familiar too OP.

However there's one exception - the imp familiar. Holy hell, what were they thinking? Instead of it having 1x Polymorph Other spell it actually has 1x Polymorph Self. This means from the beginning of BG1 you can have a hasted Flint or a Sword Spider fight by your side. I guess they thought nobody is ever going to use the Polymorph Other spell so they changed it into something more useful. But now the imp is so OP it's not even funny - you can for instance polymorph the imp into an ogre and force open almost any lock.

Although, now that I'm actually playing through Candle Keep with an Ogre stumbling around with me, it's actually pretty exciting.

 

[Vandringsmann]

Familiars were highly useful when playing NWN on private PW servers. I frequently possessed my familiar and used it to eavesdrop on conversations.

Aside from that, I've never used them much.