Find Familiar makes BG3 a perfectly balanced game

[TEA CAT]

I've been trying stuff and found out that the way Find Familiar is implemented makes it "perfectly balanced" (tm).

First, the reason it's not perfectly balanced in 5e, is that Find Familiar is a ritual with 1 hour casting time, so you can resurrect your familiar at most 10-15 times per day and need to take an entire hour each time. The familiar is also limited to being within 100ft of you, unless you give it some simple command to carry out and then hope the DM doesn't make it run into a pit of spikes once it's out of telepathy range.

However, in BG3 both of those limiters are removed. You can Find Familiar after it dies as many times as you want and have control and vision over it in an infinite range. So you can quite literally sit outside of battle and keep sending in invisible stealth imps to kill whatever you want.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by TEA CAT:

I've been trying stuff and found out that the way Find Familiar is implemented makes it "perfectly balanced" (tm).

First, the reason it's not perfectly balanced in 5e, is that Find Familiar is a ritual with 1 hour casting time, so you can resurrect your familiar at most 10-15 times per day and need to take an entire hour each time. The familiar is also limited to being within 100ft of you, unless you give it some simple command to carry out and then hope the DM doesn't make it run into a pit of spikes once it's out of telepathy range.

However, in BG3 both of those limiters are removed. You can Find Familiar after it dies as many times as you want and have control and vision over it in an infinite range. So you can quite literally sit outside of battle and keep sending in invisible stealth imps to kill whatever you want.

So what you are saying is, you want the cast time to be 1 hour of just standing around?

[DAVOS CENSORSHIP 2030 FTW!!!]

Yeah, the whole game depends on that one spell kid.

[Planeforger]

Originally posted by TEA CAT:

First, the reason it's not perfectly balanced in 5e, is that Find Familiar is a ritual with 1 hour casting time, so you can resurrect your familiar at most 10-15 times per day and need to take an entire hour each time.

It's also 10gp per cast in 5e, which puts a bit of a dampener on that idea at early levels.

[TEA CAT]

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

So what you are saying is, you want the cast time to be 1 hour of just standing around?

No, it should have let's say 10 charges that are replenished on long rest. And yeah should cost 10gp.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by TEA CAT:

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

So what you are saying is, you want the cast time to be 1 hour of just standing around?

No, it should have let's say 10 charges that are replenished on long rest. And yeah should cost 10gp.

The Imps are strictly to Warlock though. If you choose to bring Warlocks, they need to have some merit for being there over other casters.

If the invisibility is the issue, simply give certain enemies True Sight or similar. Job done.

[Free Luigi M.]

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

Originally posted by TEA CAT:

I've been trying stuff and found out that the way Find Familiar is implemented makes it "perfectly balanced" (tm).

First, the reason it's not perfectly balanced in 5e, is that Find Familiar is a ritual with 1 hour casting time, so you can resurrect your familiar at most 10-15 times per day and need to take an entire hour each time. The familiar is also limited to being within 100ft of you, unless you give it some simple command to carry out and then hope the DM doesn't make it run into a pit of spikes once it's out of telepathy range.

However, in BG3 both of those limiters are removed. You can Find Familiar after it dies as many times as you want and have control and vision over it in an infinite range. So you can quite literally sit outside of battle and keep sending in invisible stealth imps to kill whatever you want.

So what you are saying is, you want the cast time to be 1 hour of just standing around?

Or give it a limited number of casts per rest.

[Hullahopp]

Originally posted by TEA CAT:

First, the reason it's not perfectly balanced in 5e, is that Find Familiar is a ritual with 1 hour casting time, so you can resurrect your familiar at most 10-15 times per day and need to take an entire hour each time. The familiar is also limited to being within 100ft of you, unless you give it some simple command to carry out and then hope the DM doesn't make it run into a pit of spikes once it's out of telepathy range.

This is wrong on a few levels
Find Familiar is an Instantaneous spell. It has the ritual property, but rituals take 10 minutes, not 1 hour (technically 10 minutes LONGER, and not 10 minutes)
The familiar can go 100ft + from you, you just cannot communicate with it telepathically. You can overcome this limitation with other effects, however. Either way, the familiar is most often intelligent enough to not die on it's own, if it goes beyond 100ft.
If you can overcome the 5e gold cost, you can cast the spell as many times as you want.

But speaking of 5e and BG3 changes, yes, Find Familiar is buffed. A lot.
You're a madman if you actually cheese battles with this, the goblin camp would take SOOOO LONG to clear with just this spell lol
If you properly try to use it in battle, it's often just a distraction to your enemies, at best. Which I think is fine.
The spell is better used for scouting though, for sure.
(Also, the Imp familiar seems to be the option for warlocks only)

[Meowella]

Find Familiar has a duration, not cast time, of Instantaneous. No spell in 5th edition has a cast time of Instantaneous that's just silly.

Secondly, familiars should not be dying every 5 minutes what sort of crazy shenanigans are you doing with the spell! It's not a combat spell in that it specifies CANNOT ATTACK in the real game of DnD so comparing the actual spell to the Larian version is silly too.

Don't compare Larian's vision of Larian's DnD to the 5th edition ruleset because they are considerably different. Larian have taken 5th edition and altered it for their style of game creation as opposed to what most dnd games did in the past where they attempted to follow the rules as much as possible.

Also the goblin camp isn't hard enough to warrant this, just make sure you have actual armor classes on your characters instead of 15 or lower (Light armor users should be 16 minimum at level 4, medium armor should be 19 with half plate, dex 14 and shield while heavy can be ac 16 with ring mail).

[Master]

In NWN you could get a Panther Hellhound and a Pixie that can do all your locks and traps they all level up with you.

These familiars are lame as hell they don't even scale.

[hrafnskald]

Originally posted by TEA CAT:

I've been trying stuff and found out that the way Find Familiar is implemented makes it "perfectly balanced" (tm).

Only if you like drinking Yorkshire Tea.

BG3 is a lot of fun, but it doesn't have ritual casting implemented. Instead, it makes Find Familiar a standard 1st level spell that consumes a spell slot, and allows you to summon a familiar from a list of animal options (and for Warlocks, imps/mephits). I like it because it adds another companion (who is more interesting than Shadowheart), but the implementation is different from 5e tabletop rules.

Now if you are looking for perfectly balanced things for, say, a hypothetical Youtube Video, I would suggest the Wizards spell exploit: Wizards can copy/learn any spell from a scroll for a gold fee. This includes Healing Word, Guiding Bolt, Bless, Animal Friendship, and a ton of other overpowered, 100% Not-Designed-For-Wizards-To-Use spells. That's right, you can make Gale or any other Wizard into a Cleric too. And you don't have to vassalize Feudal Japan to do it.

Also, if you get a chance, let Gale die. The results are something everyone should experience at least once :)

-Hr

[Xenith_Shadow]

Originally posted by hrafnskald:

Originally posted by TEA CAT:

I've been trying stuff and found out that the way Find Familiar is implemented makes it "perfectly balanced" (tm).

Only if you like drinking Yorkshire Tea.

BG3 is a lot of fun, but it doesn't have ritual casting implemented. Instead, it makes Find Familiar a standard 1st level spell that consumes a spell slot, and allows you to summon a familiar from a list of animal options (and for Warlocks, imps/mephits). I like it because it adds another companion (who is more interesting than Shadowheart), but the implementation is different from 5e tabletop rules.

Now if you are looking for perfectly balanced things for, say, a hypothetical Youtube Video, I would suggest the Wizards spell exploit: Wizards can copy/learn any spell from a scroll for a gold fee. This includes Healing Word, Guiding Bolt, Bless, Animal Friendship, and a ton of other overpowered, 100% Not-Designed-For-Wizards-To-Use spells. That's right, you can make Gale or any other Wizard into a Cleric too. And you don't have to vassalize Feudal Japan to do it.

Also, if you get a chance, let Gale die. The results are something everyone should experience at least once :)

-Hr

Is the wizards ability to copy any spell into their book are oversite or intended do you think?
There is a reasonable posibility that if it isn't an oversite than if warlock gets pact of tome they would also be able to put any spell into the tome,
and since no ritual casting well aside from having the spell just cost no spell slots, warlocks now get the ability to learn and cast any spell equal to half their level without using spell slots.
So they either introduce ritual casting and tag what can be ritual cast and not or warlock gets screwed on pact of tome or warlock is the ultimate caster come level 3.

[Snobby Hobo]

Originally posted by 👌Ｍａϟｔｅｒ👌 Ｂｌａϟｔｅｒ👌:

In NWN you could get a Panther Hellhound and a Pixie that can do all your locks and traps they all level up with you.

These familiars are lame as hell they don't even scale.

I'll definitely agree the balancing is off right now. Nothing besides the spider and maybe the bear seems worth summoning. All of the familiars have an abysmal hit chance too(usually around 40-60% in optimal conditions). The raven and wolf are so bad I don't even understand why they exist - both of them die in a single hit.

That being said that's not really the point the OP tries to make; the summons can be summoned indefinitely if you keep the summoner outside battle range.

[Stabbey]

Originally posted by hrafnskald:

Now if you are looking for perfectly balanced things for, say, a hypothetical Youtube Video, I would suggest the Wizards spell exploit: Wizards can copy/learn any spell from a scroll for a gold fee. This includes Healing Word, Guiding Bolt, Bless, Animal Friendship, and a ton of other overpowered, 100% Not-Designed-For-Wizards-To-Use spells. That's right, you can make Gale or any other Wizard into a Cleric too. And you don't have to vassalize Feudal Japan to do it.

Wizards learning any spell from scrolls is because scrolls do not have restrictions in place at the moment. They are coming, they aren't in, because this is still EA.

It would be rather stupid to make a hypothetical "perfectly balanced game" video based on a clearly incomplete work in progress.

[hrafnskald]

Originally posted by Xenith_Shadow:

Originally posted by hrafnskald:

Is the wizards ability to copy any spell into their book are oversite or intended do you think?
There is a reasonable posibility that if it isn't an oversite than if warlock gets pact of tome they would also be able to put any spell into the tome,
and since no ritual casting well aside from having the spell just cost no spell slots, warlocks now get the ability to learn and cast any spell equal to half their level without using spell slots.
So they either introduce ritual casting and tag what can be ritual cast and not or warlock gets screwed on pact of tome or warlock is the ultimate caster come level 3.

I don't know if it's an oversight or a choice by the devs, as I wouldn't want to guess their intent.

I will say that it makes Wizards MASSIVELY more powerful than Clerics or Warlocks, because it means they can learn core buffs, healing, etc., that currently only Clerics and Rangers get.

[hrafnskald]

Originally posted by Stabbey:

It would be rather stupid to make a hypothetical "perfectly balanced game" video based on a clearly incomplete work in progress.

My reply is based off the original post's comments, which refer to the Youtube Channel Spiffing Brit's trademark phrases, including "perfectly balanced game", and nods to tea drinking.

If you're not familiar, his channel is filled with videos of him abusing, exploiting, or having a lot of fun messing with game bugs, quirks, design oversights, imbalances, etc.

Basically he shows how to have fun while doing things the developers probably never intended players to do, like launching armies filled with unstoppable War Dogs.

Each of these videos, by tradition, is titled something like "Game ____ is a perfectly balanced game, with no exploits". The title is meant to be read in tongue-in-cheek mode.

It would be hilarious to see such a video exploiting this or other options in BG3, and it would likely generate interest in the Early Access, which is good for the community.