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Hello all, just a quick question. It has been some time since I've played ad&d 1st edition and I can't seem to find the information on what the bonus hitpoints are for magic-users from their familiars. If someone would be able to tell me in what book and where I would find it that would be awesome.
Thanks in advance.
It's in the spell description in the PHB. As long as the familiar is within range the MU adds the familiar's hp, which I think is 1d4.
They are listed as 2-4 hp.
However, many of the critters have a monster listing elsewhere (often MM2), so I tend to use whatever is better.
domestic cat mm2 pg 22
small hawk mm2 pg 64
ordinary raven mm2 pg 105 (PH HP)
owl mm2 pg 97 (but this is a large owl)
weasel mm2 pg 125 (PH HP)
and, of course, there are so many other possibilities. rat, parrot, snake, bat, etc
for the specials, see the monster entry (MM1).
Thanks, I assumed. It's just we all know Gygax wasn't the best at making things easy to read.
"Explanation/Description: A familiar is of certain benefit to a magic-user, as the creature adds to the spell caster's hit points..." Doesn't really say it adds it's own hp to the magic-user. Which was my downfall to assume it was else where.
But again, thanks for the quick replies.
This isn't RAW by any means but in 1&2E games my group typically treated the Familiar and Spellcaster as "sharing" a pool of HP. Simply put we looked up the creature's HP in the MM and added it to the Spellcaster's own and vice versa. It was sometimes a nightmare to track but it was a really good way of keeping our Spellcasters from treating familiars like they were disposable meat shields.
If you were playing RAW, there's no way you'd treat a familiar as a meat shield. If it gets killed, the MU permanently loses not only the familiar's HP, but again that many (so if the familiar had 4, the MU loses 8 permanently) A low level MU could die from their familiar getting killed. And you can only cast the spell once a year.Quote:
Originally Posted by jojo