Announcing WTP Familiars, The Find Familiar spell the way it should be! ^_^ Options

[Salk]

Hello people!

Using Rabain's work as ground (version 0.5 was released in 2007 and had a number of issues), I have expanded his modification and adapted it to Baldur's Gate Trilogy. The modification is fully compatible with Baldur's Gate 2 and it's downloadable here.

Future versions might be made compatible with EasyTuTu and BG:EE but that's not a priority.

WTP Familiars revises the classic and iconic Find Familiar spell, rebalancing it and making it closer to its PnP counterpart. Sounds, portraits and additional dialogue choices are included, together with a nifty level up system. The familiars are now nine (new entry: Spider as new True Neutral, Rabbit is now Lawful Good) and mages can choose between 3 or 4 (depending on alignment) creatures (exception: True Neutral mages are restricted to the Spider). The violent death of the familiar has severe consequences and the little critters cannot just be used as boost for hit points and then stuffed into the backpack. They will make themselves heard if you do!

Additionally, the familiars have totally different innate powers that are PnP inspired.

The readme is included in the zipped archive. As installation goes, this modification needs to be installed after any other modification (like Spell Revisions) that changes the Find Familiar spell.

This modification needs Ascension64's ToBEx to function properly (if this is not detected, it will be installed automatically).

Thanks and enjoy!

This post has been edited by Salk: Nov 22 2017, 05:39 AM

[Kross]

Apologies if these questions have been answered elsewhere, but I looked in the readme file and couldn't find any of the info I wanted.

1) Do the familiars level up with the character's total XP from all classes, or just with their mage class level? I ask because I'm fond of giving all my PCs a familiar through the potion swap exploit. (If Minsc can have Boo, I can have a rabbit!) I would rather not be running around BG2 as a barbarian with a level 1 familiar if I can help it.

2) Is there a list of the individual familiars and the specific abilities/classes they possess somewhere? Since the mod lets us choose which one we want, I figured it would be a good idea to pick the one that fits the party's needs the best before I summon one.

By the way, I must congratulate the author on reviving this mod. Familiars, in BG2 at least, basically served little to no purpose other than a splattering of extra HPs, someone to talk to, and maybe a useful spell if you got one of the nicer ones. I have hope that this mod will make them into "Party Member 6.5", and expand their role in the game. I'm also excited to read that you've done some work expanding their dialog as well, since interaction with your familiar is half the fun of the spell. Would it be possible to write interjections for familiars some time in the future? I bet the spider would have something to say when you talk to Pai'Na, or the cat loving the nice, warm fireplace of an inn.